Back to KayB's Profile KayB's Profile

For reference, I watched the entirety of the original Major series from S1 to S6 in one go, including all OVAs and movies. While I consider myself a fan, I think the original series is far from perfect and suffers from consistent flaws from start to finish.

One of my biggest issues with the previous show was how similar each arc was. This may be a controversial statement, but the original Major kept retreading on the same conflicts, some you even see in other baseball manga before and after its inception. Goro's development, at least to me, peaked in S2, and we've only seen micro-improvements ... to Goro's skill and character since then, with the only unique issue being his yips in S6.

All of this to say is that I was pleasantly surprised to see Major 2nd tread in a completely different path than the original series. Goro from the start was shown to be an incredibly talented individual with his independent goals. Daigo on the other hand is less talented and has to fight the pressure of his legacy. The combination of the two makes his journey as a character more poignant as an athlete than anything I really saw from Goro in my opinion. There's also significantly more highlighting of the side characters in Major 2nd that the original started to mostly forget, especially in later seasons of the show. Finally, Daigo is a catcher, one of the most interesting positions in baseball but one that's constantly overshadowed by most baseball manga in favor of highlighting the pitcher. This new perspective that you don't see in almost any other manga makes this a unique and fascinating read.

This is not to say that Major 2nd is perfect, I think the show in particular has a weird and borderline unhealthy view of child development in how they go about encouraging baseball. While it's not really too bad in the beginning, it gets really bizarre in the final few episodes to the point where it's hard for me to wrap my head around.

That being said, Major 2nd overall brings so much flavor and uniqueness using Daigo as the star of the story that Major never offered. The original Major felt like gourmet french fries. It tastes good, it's flashy, and it's well-made, but ultimately you only appreciate the first fry for so long before you just scarfing piece after piece down and it all blends together. I genuinely believe that Major 2nd is on track to be much more ambitious than that and more than any other season of Major I've seen to this day, I'm incredibly excited to see what comes next.

For an author in the modern age, there is perhaps no greater accomplishment than being able to craft a captivating story that no one has ever seen before, but there is something to be said about authors who are able to revisit old, overdone ideas while still managing to innovate them in new ways. Asou Haro’s **Imawa no Kuno no Alice** is an excellent representation of the latter, finding success in the Battle Royale subgenre normally tainted by mediocre writing.

The most immediate draw of **Imawa no Kuno no Alice** is simply how creative some of the individual games can be. Other titles such as **Kakegurui** ... or **Kamisama no Iutoori** often have games that, while unique, are either far too simple or complicated for their own good, while others are too fundamentally similar without much twist. While **Imawa no Kuno no Alice** does occasionally have moments like that, the majority of games presented are either completely unique or have an added twist to them to make them more interesting. Both the King of Diamonds and Jack of Hearts events are excellent examples, constructing unique games with simple rules but a wide room for story telling and strategy. The Six of Diamonds is a good example of a game where it completely borrows from another (Blackjack) but still manages to make it narratively interesting by exploring the many different ways the game can be approached. Asou Haro also seems to understand that the task doesn’t end at creating the game but seeing it to its completion; many games are well-thought out and crafted, but they also end in clever ways that don’t betray the entire concept of them to begin with. Even the Five of Spades uses a layer of strategy that could’ve easily be written as something far lazier such as the use of raw strength.

To reiterate, it’s impressive when authors can still come up with new ideas in previously explored subgenres, and even moreso when it’s done in an area where it isn’t required. In that regard, **Imawa no Kuno no Alice’s** card system should be considered as a stroke of genius. Upon sight, each card immediately conveys to the reader two vital pieces of information of what the implications of the game are. A higher number means a harder game, and the specific suite hints at what kind of game it’s going to be. A lot of titles that involve having different trials and events like **Gantz** and the aforementioned **Kamisama no Iutoori** either don’t offer the consistency or variety that there events have between them, nor arguably do they need to. Regardless, the suite provides that little knot that adds the sense of a greater systematic and nebulous theme to the wider picture while also grounding the games within some degree of reality without going too off the rails. It can even add a more psychological dimension to it as effectively demonstrated in the Four of Clubs side story. In addition, the difference in games allows characters to specialize in some games more than others, giving them uniquely individual flairs and specialties while at the same time giving them harsh weaknesses. Even simply revealing that the game is one of "Hearts" is enough to strike fear in both the characters and the reader. The overall point is that the card system is a brutally efficient idea that eloquently ties many of the elements of the story together while also providing an easy thrill and sense of understanding for the readers. Even the numbers on the card have a dual function as they also explain how many more days are added to a player’s visa.
The card system is only one example of how effective Asou Haro is at executing simple ideas to add to the narrative. The laser beams that come from the sky to eliminate players are fantastic; not only is the execution visually simple, but it also demonstrates an ability to reach the player no matter where they’re hiding, adding to the claustrophobic setting provided by the story. Not only that, but its visually simplistic design allows it to be drawn at a macro scale that immediately conveys to the reader what each laser implies without having to show what each individual one directly resulted in. It is a far more eloquent solution for **Imawa no Kuni no Alice’s** setting than the often used “brain bomb” trope.

Speaking of efficient, **Imawa no Kuno no Alice’s** art deserves extremely high praise. It’s not impressive in the same way such titles like **Vagabond** and *One Punch-Man** are; while there are some aesthetically pleasing moments, there aren’t many moments where the reader is completely blown away by the art. Rather, the art is impressive not in depth but in breadth. Bluntly speaking, art in manga at the end of the day is just another tool, and a tool is only as useful as the skill of its user. Takehiko Inoue, the author **Vagabond**, didn’t even know how to draw a foot when going into one of his first works, the ever-popular **Slam Dunk**. The reason why this is relevant for Asou Haro in particular is that his style is incredibly flexible. The reason why games can have venues like exploding water geysers, courtrooms, traditional festivals, zoos, and more is because the mangaka is able to draw literally all of them. It isn’t easy at all to draw animals like leopards and crocodiles, nor is it easy to draw cities, much less in a dilapidated state, but Haro is able to do all of them effectively. To put it in another way, the story of **Imawa no Kuno no Alice** is only made possible because Haro is able to draw it. However, the most important result of Haro’s high breadth in his art is not that he’s able to draw so many different individual objects, but rather the character design’s themselves. Many authors fall victim in making their characters look too similar, and it can often be hard to remember characters because their designs are too redundant. In **Imawa no Kuni no Alice**, almost every single character in the manga is drawn in a different and unique way, whether it be through posture, structure, facial expression, or clothing. No two characters have very similar designs, even minor characters that don’t appear for very long. For a manga that pumps out side characters like it’s nothing, this is an extremely impressive accomplishment in the scale of the story.

I’ve been mostly talking about the more superficial dimensions of **Imawa no Kuni no Alice**, so you might be wondering what there is to say about its more central, thematic ideas that drive the story forward. Unfortunately, this is where the story falters a little bit since the main character and the end goal of the story is a little cliché. The main character fulfills his role as main character should quite well, in that he becomes the blank canvas that becomes more detailed the more he interacts with the world around him. Arguably however, the story paints on him a little too much, and the colors often muddle and overlap with each other. While a main character should go through development, his ideology changes a little too frequently and reactively based on what just happened. Thankfully, the author beautifully executes side stories, creating a healthy amount of different characters to distract readers from the main one. Not only does this provide somewhat of a fresh state and perspective while undermining plot armor, but it also allows the world to build more and not revolve solely around the actions of the main character. While all of this does serve another purpose, for better or worse they also serve as a band-aid for how frivolously the narrative addresses the main character’s perspective.

That being said, the important thing is consistency, and despite how cliché some of the narrative can sound, it’s impressive that the central theme of “What does it mean to live” is effectively addressed throughout the entirety of **Imawa no Kuni no Alice**. While the theme itself isn’t exactly original nor can I personally admit it’s particularly that evocative, Haro is fairly effective on addressing the different types of ways people can answer this question while also making sure it stays as a central focus for the main character. However, perhaps the biggest saving grace for **Imawa no Kuni no Alice**’s less original themes is how creatively Haro implements them as plot points. One of the biggest mystery’s in the entire manga is the explanation of why the world they’re in exists in the first place. The reader understands that to answer that question also inevitably explains how the characters can escape, which is the implicit end goal for the wider story. However, the story hints many times that there might not actually be an escape to their world, which fundamentally changes how the central theme is asked. Why did we play the games? Are our opponents just mirrors of our future selves? Will we still have the will to live? The condition that there might not be anything left even after everything’s all said and done is a harrowing thought that by itself already distills a sense of dread and wonder that allows the atmosphere to prosper. But if added with the overarching question of the meaning of life, the once cliché theme is given a level of tangibility that requires it be addressed before the story reaches its conclusion rather than allowing it to exist as a more fundamental idea. As stated before, consistency is key, and Haro does an impressive job in still tying everything together without superficially adding too many elements. In comparison, titles like **Gantz** and **Kamisama no Iutoori** have comparatively sloppier executions with very little or no consistency in what they want their overarching theme to be, which is often why titles like those have unsatisfying endings that don’t serve as proper conclusions.

Upon reading **Imawa no Kuni no Alice** for the first time, it’s easy to brush it off as just another generic title based on its first few chapters. After all, the beginning doesn’t really hint to anything that other titles haven’t already offered. However, most people who have read this story will tell you that the journey is worth it if you keep sticking with it until the end. As time goes on and more stories are created, truly original content will only become rarer and rarer, and it’ll all become that much more worth it once we all find that title that grants us that new perspective. But **Imawa no Kuno no Alice** is a fantastic example of how perfecting old ideas can be as equally as satisfying as the real thing and shows that the solution to stagnation doesn’t always have to involve relying on that unlikely chance.

The original Tokyo Ghoul is, by quite a few metrics, your standard action manga. What made it particularly unique however is that it did a fantastic job humanizing the conflict it presented. Writers that tackle this theme have this tendency of making one side of the conflict comically evil while the hero’s side unbearably good. Ishida did his best to avoid this cliché entirely by making the two groups, humans and ghouls, quite literally natural enemies of each other, while also implementing a main character that was forced to represent both. Not only was this dynamic interesting, Ishida also applied the finishing touches to this ... theme by humanizing these characters outside of the fights themselves in a natural way. While Tokyo Ghoul didn’t always clear this hurdle every time, I would still say that it did a great job *providing* context to the fights instead of just letting them happen, utilizing its unique setting to provide conflicts instead of pulling from typical ones.

The unfortunate thing about Tokyo Ghoul: re is that it’s literally just non-stop fighting from start to finish. This is a bit of a hyperbole, but it is very telling when re manages to have almost twice the amount of fight scenes in almost the same number of chapters.
The important thing to note about the original Tokyo Ghoul is that what made it particularly emotional is that many conflicts centered around the idea that ghouls just wanted to live like normal people, and the inherent tragedy is that they often couldn’t. Anteiku was a place to call home for much of the main cast, which is why it’s destruction was contextually meaningful. The problem with Tokyo Ghoul: re is that very few of the conflicts themselves really deal with more humanizing dimension of the story. Not only does the main conflict of the story shift between fighting major groups like the Cochlea rather than tackling smaller and more personal events like the original did, re also introduces characters at an extremely haphazard rate while giving them very brief backgrounds, if any at all. Even main characters like Urie and Shirazu are given extremely brief expositions while characters like Saiko are basically given none at all, and by the first 40 or so chapters you’re introduced to dozens of doves that you can’t possibly be expected to keep track of, and frankly even less so to care about.
It seems apparent that re seemed to prioritize far more on the fights themselves then really who comprised of them, possibly to capture a sense of scale and pace, but really this can be summarized by quantity over quality. The latter half of the manga unfortunately devolves into a more basic concept of this “evil mastermind pulling the strings” which magically dissolved much of the basic contrasts between humans and ghouls. Once again, this failed to take advantage of a conflict that would be unique to Tokyo Ghoul and instead takes one that could quite literally be in any other narrative.

If the fights themselves were good then this would at least be somewhat acceptable, but the fight scenes in Tokyo Ghoul have never really been that amazing by themselves; in my opinion have only seemed so because the manga did a great job establishing the context to each one. Not only is this dimension extremely neutered in re, but the rough art that initially defined the aesthetic style of the original Tokyo Ghoul was, combined with the consistently abhorrent paneling and the frequently busy fights, far too messy, and it was often unnecessarily difficult to tell what was going on (though to give credit where credit is due, I still like Ishida’s art style and there are some scenes where it ended up working phenomenally in his favor).

The original Tokyo Ghoul isn’t some untouchable masterpiece; like I said, by many standards, it can be considered a fairly average action manga. Perhaps re can’t be completely blamed for what it came to be since the original did start some of the gears that saw its conclusion in the sloppy final arc of re. But it at least did an honest, (and I would say) successful job on trying something different, even if it had to borrow from a few ideas along the way. It tried to be a piece much more than just the fights that it had and gave personality to characters that we will now remember for years. Re is incredibly soulless in comparison, trying far too hard in making the narrative all about the fights while misunderstanding the power characters can have on them.

**Spoiler Free**
I normally don’t write reviews for series I’m not overly passionate about, but I feel partially more motivated to at least comment on Hinomaru Zumou; despite its popularity and the recent conclusion of its “Part 1,” the latest review written on MAL only goes up until chapter 25 of the (current) 195 chapters at the time of this review.

If I had to describe how I felt about Hinomaru Zumou in a few words, I would say it’s a sports manga that *almost* gets everything right. If I had to phrase it a little more bluntly though, I’d say it’s a sports manga that ... barely gets everything wrong.

To elucidate, it’s not as if Hinomaru Zumou is some terrible manga, nor is it a title that tries to rely on its flash in the same way that titles like Prince of Tennis does. It makes a commendable effort trying to tackle the themes like competition that has made series like Eyeshield 21 and Ashita no Joe so popular, and it does this all while tackling a relatively unpopular and comparatively less dynamic sport. However, despite its epic speeches about heart and competition and the wide cast of characters that have blessed the 200 chapters thus far, the manga in my opinion lacks a fundamental soul that ties all these pieces together.

There are two major components of really any story that provides the fuel to keep the narrative going: one, the main character, and two, the motivation. While really this is helpful for any story format, it’s particularly more relevant when addressing sports narratives as they naturally always gravitate towards the hero’s journey. In my opinion, Hinomaru Zumou is weak because it doesn’t tackle either of these components very effectively.

There are usually two ways that shounen mangaka like to write their main characters; they’re either already shining jewels blessed with talent and experience (Prince of Tennis, Kuroko’s Basketball) or they are diamonds in the rough with potential for talent requires training (Haikyuu, Eyeshield 21). As entertaining as the former can be, it’s usually the latter that ends up leaving a lasting impression past the sport itself because it allows readers to grow with the characters that they read about, which forces the stories to tackle themes that don’t only exist within the court; as they say, the best sports narratives are ones that aren’t actually about the sport itself.

Hinomaru Zumou is kind of in a weird spot because it seems apparent it doesn’t really want to be like the exaggerated shounen sports titles, but it’s foundation doesn’t seem to really reflect that. This can be exemplified by how the main character, Hinomaru, is structured. He isn’t like Joe from Ashita no Joe whose talent is hindered by his brash personality, nor is he like Sena from Eyeshield 21 where his unreal speed hasn’t reached its full potential yet. Straight from the start, Hinomaru is an already talented sumo wrestler with years of experience behind his belt; much like Kuroko’s Basketball, he was already endowed with a special title due to his accomplishments as a sumo wrestler before the events of the manga take place. Of course, you can’t have an underdog story without an underdog, so the manga tries to rectify this by giving Hinomaru a small figure, a natural disadvantage in any sport, much less one as tough as sumo. However, the damage is done, and it is already incredibly difficult to write Hinomaru in a sympathetic way in which readers can grow with the character; despite any attempts that the manga tries to make you think otherwise, it’s very apparent that the main character is both highly physically and mentally developed. Normally, manga like Kuroko’s Basketball and Prince of Tennis can get away with doing this by making the sport visually interesting to see, but Hinomaru Zumou is unfortunately hindered by its sport of choice. It’s comparatively much harder to draw competitive sumo in an endearing way like tennis and basketball, especially when the reader is unaware of how the sport functions past its most basic rules. Hinomaru Zumou does make a heartful honest effort to make sumo look as interesting and epic as possible, but at the end of the day the techniques blend together too often due to how visually inflexible the sport is and how difficult it is to understand the nuances by the layman.

The second major issue that Hinomaru and frankly tons of new shounen manga are suffering from is its lack of a strong central goal. Now people will argue with me on this one, saying the high school championship is the ultimate goal for Hinomaru and his team, but in my opinion it isn’t conveyed nearly as well as it could be. Motivations in sports manga can be expressed in many ways, but often they’re expressed as some form of emotional debt: in Eyeshield 21, Sena and the Devilbats are highly driven to win the Christmas Bowl by how much they owe Hiruma and Kurita for bringing the team together. In Hajime no Ippo, Ippo is motivated to become the world champion by how much he feels he owes Takamaru and his coach for getting him into boxing. In Ashita no Joe, what pushes him forward is the legacy that Rikiishi left behind after their match. In Hinomaru Zumou’s case, while he does have some kind of debt that he feels through his mother, it isn’t really referenced much, and more importantly, it has very little to do with sumo wrestling itself. Of course it’d be shortsighted to say this is the only way to write an end goal, but in Hinomaru Zumou’s case there isn’t really anything else that exists in the narrative to supplement a motivation in any convincing way past just winning. Thus, in my case, it was extremely difficult to feel emotionally attached with the team’s journey no matter how far the story progressed, much less Hinomaru.

While I have other issues and compliments I can shower this manga with, all of them are less relevant because they all are negatively affected by these two issues in some way. The problem is that these two components are extremely hard if not impossible to fix and will most likely persist until the manga finally completes its serialization.

Another reason why I choose the words “this manga does almost everything right” is that the line between my less-than-positive impressions of the manga and thinking very highly of it (which is where a good deal of people I feel like seem to lie) is fairly thin; you could find yourself really enjoying this title if you’re able to look past these two issues or not believe they exist at all. Perhaps you do sympathize with Hinomaru in some way, perhaps you do find the way sumo is drawn in this manga to be captivating. Past that, the manga in reality is actually mostly solid in quite a few places. However, it isn’t enough to do it for me, and as much as I want to believe it, I can’t get myself to see the soul that the manga tries to convince me it has.

To get straight to the point: personally, I feel that Re: Zero is a superficially shallow show that often tries to disguise itself as something more meaningful.

The overall “gimmick” of the show is the best demonstrator of this. Re: Zero applauds itself as being somewhat of a deconstruction of classic fantasy/VN narratives where the main character finds themselves in a world they don’t recognize. As opposed to typical character-teleported stories where the main character is given artificial benefits, whether it be through the plot or physical advantages, Re: Zero is mostly the opposite where Subaru really isn’t given any benefit ... whatsoever besides the ability to travel back in time. Instead, Re: Zero is comparatively more bloody and gory compared to your average fantasy, subduing the idea of an over-advantaged main character and instead looking through the lens of how a fantasy might pan out in the eyes of a modern day character.

But this is ultimately Re: Zero's most glaring flaw. Re: Zero really tries to force its deconstruction forward, but the result is something that I found incredibly unnatural. Time travel is an extremely overpowered plot device and it’s easy to make a story incredibly bland if a plot device isn’t held back with some cost to equal its benefit. In Re: Zero’s case, it does this by not only making Subaru die in fairly gruesome ways, but it also makes him bear witness to the deaths of the people he cares about the most. The problem with the way Re: Zero handles this is that they really push this cost to the extreme. In many reincarnations, literally anything that can go wrong will go wrong, no matter how much of a crazy coincidence it is. There WILL be tiny dog that kills someone in the narrative for no reason. There WILL be a giant killer whale that appears in order to push the plot forward that will somehow find a way to kill Subaru anyway. Subaru WILL be captured and tortured, possessed, maimed, or so on and so forth in pretty much every way that you can imagine regardless of how much it does or doesn’t harmonize with the plot or pacing of the story.

To me, this makes it fairly difficult for me to take Re: Zero seriously. Yes, many of these reincarnations have a setback in the form of dead side characters that you may or may not be invested in, but they happen so frequently and extremely that my reactions to many of these deaths became diluted. Many of the reincarnations felt flashy for the sake of the shock factor rather than have any further meaning to either the plot or the characters. The example I’d reference for this is when Petelaguese breaks Rem’s bones depicts her slowly crawling towards Subaru. Coupled with the deaths that we see before of after this event, it's needlessly dramatic and mostly unnecessary to prove a point. The remnants of how over the top this show is can be seen in other areas outside the deaths too. Petalaguese is the worst offender of this, constantly distorting his body and ripping his skin for no other reason other than to look disturbing. On one hand, yes, this makes the character memorable and it becomes instantly recognizable when this character or someone he possesses appears on screen. On the other hand, it’s really hard not to laugh at how ridiculous and stupid he looks, which once again undermines the atmosphere of the actual scene.

That leads to my next point, where if you can’t really take the conditions seriously, then what was originally an absurdly powerful plot device remains as such. There’s virtually no other reason why Subaru shouldn’t kill himself constantly when all shit breaks loose. There’s no consequence in killing yourself to reset the situation when things go wrong once a repeat is established. At that point, there really doesn’t feel like there’s a reason why I should be particularly invested in any of the reincarnations if there are no stakes.

One counter argument is that you might feel a visceral connection to these deaths because you care about the characters, thus giving the cost some tangible value. And to a certain extent, this is true. If you disregard all the laughably extreme ways they make characters like Rem die, there is definitely a real and emotional reaction that you should theoretically have when watching these characters perish, even if they’re ultimately revived; Steins;Gate is an excellent example of this. However, unlike Steins;Gate, I found it difficult to be emotionally invested in much of the cast. For example, even amongst casual fans, there’s a reason why people tend to make fun of Emilia and prioritize Rem more, and it’s mostly because Emilia is a straight up poorly written character, partially due to how Subaru was written. The chemistry between Subaru and Emilia is given minimal development; it’s mainly just a relationship we’ve just had to accept. Sometimes this kind of dynamic isn’t totally unacceptable and can eventually find its own footing, but the problem is that Emilia dies a lot in the show and she also isn’t given a ton of screen time either. Steins;Gate used the first half of its 24 episodes to establish a connection with each of the characters involved in the story rather than just jumping straight into the thriller component. This doesn’t exist in Re: Zero. She feels like a particularly empty character given no inherent value other than to be Subaru’s seemingly unreciprocated love interest. This mainly applies to most of the cast, but I will say that the main exception to this is Rem. At the very least, there is an actual development and a real reason why she has an infatuation with Subaru, and it wasn’t done in any particularly contrived way (though albeit unoriginal, but hey, it works). My only criticism with Rem is that she’s a little too infatuated with Subaru almost to the point where it’s comical, which is a shame since it undermines one of the few good characters in the anime.

Speaking of development, Subaru isn’t the worst character in the anime, but he isn’t the strongest either. He can be a frustratingly selfish character to watch, but it’d be disingenuous if I said his infuriating nature didn’t eventually go through some much needed and refreshing development mid-way through the show. That being said, he still fulfills the trope of being loud and unnecessarily eccentric, constantly referencing games, manga, and anime as his go to media for comparison to real life. His banters and outward monologuing are fairly cringy and often took me out of the experience of trying to relate to someone who was otherwise an everyman character. In fact, he reminds me exactly of the type of character Kazuma from Konosuba is trying to parody and make fun of.

To touch back on the gimmick of time travel, another reason why this overall had a negative impact on the show is how it influenced its pacing. It was atrocious; though the first time loop happened rather elegantly, the second time loop in the mansion occurred for almost a whopping eight episodes or so, where mostly the same thing happened each time. That’s ridiculous, especially concerning that the time loop has little emotional investment with it for the reasons stated earlier and the fact that Rem’s development hadn’t even occurred yet. The earlier parts of the show should be either spent building the setting (which they actually did very little of throughout the show) or developing the characters. Instead, the show jumps right into the plot, and the negatives of the loop are highlighted as a result since the investment isn’t as strong. Of course, on a simpler level, just watching the same thing happen repeatedly is also just boring. The rest of the time loops more or less follow this trend, and it hampers the pacing and quality of the show significantly.

The materials of a good show are there. The character designs are mostly vivid and colorful, the time loop mechanic has the potential to work well when looking at shows like Steins;Gate, and at least with Rem and to a lesser extent Subaru, we see that characters are able to go through some real development that allows us to be more emotionally invested in the story. However, the rest of the anime falls apart because of how poorly it handles its central plot device. It tries to be a deconstruction despite having very little depth, the story itself moves at a snail’s pace, the extraneous details and polish of the show are weak, and when the show tries to merge all of these flaws together, the result is a boring show with less potential that it seems to have.

The reason why I believe Welcome to the NHK is strong and particularly rare anime is because of its ability to convey a theme and message effectively without being overtly condescending nor pretentious.

The core theme of NHK focuses on major insecurities that eventually plague their individual lifestyles and often times those of others. Though there are many types of "shut-ins," the writers chose to make Satou more of a general, all-encompassing "hikkimori:" his behavior revolves around a very basic but potent fear of people. This becomes a simple but vital component of what makes the show work; Satou’s malleable design ... becomes a perfect vessel for expressing the different mental insecurities the show explores by reflecting many of these characteristics right back at him, constructing a unique perspective on how these personal anxieties affect the relationships between our friends and own selves.

To illustrate further, Satou comes across a variety of different characters that all in some way have had a hazy relationship with him in the past. Yamazaki is one of the first characters the viewer meets along Satou’s journey. He is arguably the least flawed out of all the characters in the entire show as his motivation is primarily driven by the rejection of his ultimate fate, that of being a farmer. It’s interesting because Yamazaki’s main introduction comes in the form of being an insufferable nuisance of Satou’s hikkimori life, which at first frames him as a being as selfish as Satou. However, he is, at heart, probably the most honest character among the cast of misfits Satou meets. The purity of Yamazaki’s intentions directly juxtaposes with Satou’s who partners up with Yamazaki only on the pretense of deceiving Misaki, emphasizing Satou’s dishonest personality birthed by his inner cynicism. Out of all the issues that Satou encounters, Yamazaki’s is probably the most general and thus the most likely relatable. He still goes to school but still experiences rejection in the form of his passion and as a resulted feels alienated because of his stubborn dedication to his interests. Though he initially seems like an extreme case, he does not have any severe conditions but rather simple insecurities that plague the average person. Yamazaki does ultimately give up his dream of being a game creator to accept his inevitable fate of being a farmer, but in my opinion, it’s a fine resolution of the insecurity Yamazaki represents: denial and fear. The message of Yamazaki’s dilemma isn’t that people should give up on their dreams, it’s moreso that if those dreams don’t come true, it’s still possible to find happiness and peace in a path that you once vehemently rejected. Perhaps if Satou was more willing to acknowledge that common human instinct that lies within him and others, he would be able to see himself for what he is rather than what he deludes himself to be.

Hitomi’s arc is possibly the most poignant. To Satou, she is the one that introduced to him the concept of conspiracy theories, so it becomes easy to see how their distrust in others naturally formed. Individually, she suffers a more general desire to be wanted, but it comes in the form of an extreme that leads herself to suicide. The interesting dynamic here is that Satou only plays along with her scheme and doesn’t initially want to commit suicide, but the more he realizes how pathetic he is as a human being, he inches closer and closer to the edge. Even when he attempts suicide, he still fears death, and Satou’s realization that who he is is not who he perceives himself to be leads to an emotional ultimatum (https://web.archive.org/web/20200527183117/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMCJVvYj00Y) (10:26 mark).

Megumi and her brother are the last pair that Satou and Misaki come across. They’re perhaps the most interesting, particularly because Satou and Megumi’s brother share many parallels, and ergo, so do Misaki and Megumi. Formerly a figure of respect, Megumi eventually devolves down to a pyramid scheme, and many of her relationships with others become defined by deception and manipulation. Instead of actually helping her out, like always, Satou falls back to his demons and entertains the idea of participating in the pyramid business for personal gain himself. While Megumi's flaws act more like a literal reflection of Satou's personality, Megumi’s brother on the other hand represents more of a metaphorical idea, foreshadowing the final stage of Satou’s potential hikkimori state and how degenerate his life can become. When Megumi's brother eventually works at the ramen shop, it also hints that even for Satou not all hope is lost.

What’s interesting about all these problems is how they were approached and how they were resolved. Satou never actually helped any of these people solve their issues. In fact, in many of these cases he realized he needed help instead. In reality, many of the problems solved themselves through self-realization with no help from either Satou and Misaki, and Satou was often the one absorbing the experiences of the people he met along the way. It’s only after all of these experiences does Satou finally escape from his hikkimori lifestyle. Additionally, it becomes steadily obvious that Misaki, who was initially framed as the voice of reason in Satou’s life, is just as flawed as every other character that Satou meets in his journey. Ironically, she too is the last one in the show to be “reformed."

Of course, the primary idea of NHK is the fact that, well, the NHK is the one that’s secretly creating all these problems for Satou, and it almost morphs into its own character as the story progresses. Different appliances and furniture start talking to him as if they were a part of Satou’s own conscience, and many times during the show he uses them as his guiding voice. Ultimately however, much of the time it’s more or less a projection of what Satou wants to hear versus what he thinks he should to do. The “Alone in the Universe” scene (https://web.archive.org/web/20180729042541/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DRLiLCDsB0) in my opinion I think captures this fairly well as he devolves into delusions of grandeur only to be met with the silence of reality. The theme of breaking out of your own mental prison is exemplified by a wonderful scene in the last episode that parallels the “Alone in the Universe” clip (https://web.archive.org/web/20200531120437/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EETYBwHpTuM&gl=US&hl=en). Satou contemplates his life against his hallucinations, admitting the harsh reality than building a false persona. Instead of incarnations of household appliances, his hallucinations come in the form of those he met along his away, and the scene is done in absolute silence instead of playing the classic “Welcome to Loneliness” track. The clip ends with a haunting “You guys… Who are you?”, where Satou for the first time questions the voices that seek to control him.

Neither Satou or Misaki are truly reformed by the end of the show, but in my opinion, this is alright. To reiterate, none of the actual problems in NHK were solved via divine intervention or some other means of a forced hand; they were all resolutions that ultimately came about on their own terms and with the ones they share a visceral connection to. The show ends on the note of how it started, but instead of Misaki helping Satou vaguely through dubious intentions, it’s a mutual relationship that’s developed on the basis of trust. Symbolically, it’s represented by his perceived destruction of the NHK conspiracy which he does by attempting to commit suicide. It’s a bit of an overdramatic moment, but it does represent a moment of conviction. It references his previous suicide attempt, but this time its done as a means of sacrifice to save another in an ultimate attempt of selflessness, finally rejecting his fatalistic and cynical worldview. The destruction of said NHK projections indirectly frees Satou from his belief that the NHK is ruining his life, finally allowing him to take the next step forward. It's a beautiful conclusion that neatly ties together all components of the show that came before, and promises an uncertain but existing future for everything that may come after. It's about as perfect of an ending as you could hope for, but it was only possible because of how carefully and boldly constructed the rest of the show was.

It's tough to admit whether or not you enjoyed a show if it isn't very consistent. A show that starts off phenomenally can end terribly if it forgets itself during the process. On the other hand, a show that struggles to find its footing only to reach it at the end asks the question if the initial episodes were even worth it. The ability to construct a complete package from start to finish is a core factor of what turns an average show into something special, as it's the quality that truly demonstrates what it means to be a story that's more than just the sum of its parts. "Welcome to the NHK" is an excellent example of this idea in motion, creating such a thorough and complete genre-defining show that it has allowed this piece of work to be remembered and regarded as one of the most important and recognizable pieces of media that the 2000's wave of anime has ever seen.

**Spoiler Free Review**
Also, there isn't any explicit incest, don't worry.

Fire Punch is probably one of if not the most unique shounen manga I've read. While the premise of the manga initially seems rather cliche, the tone and characters in the story sets Fire Punch from the rest.

The tone is probably one of the largest highlights of the manga. Mixing together a dystopian setting with somewhat comical characters and dialogue contextualize Fire Punch of being campy as much as it is self-aware. As a result, the character banter is enjoyable and weird in the right ways that give character to the otherwise bleak world the story ... takes place in.

The phrase self-aware implies that the story itself isn't to be taken seriously, and in some ways it isn't. That being said, while dystopias are obviously nothing new to fiction as a whole, Fire Punch does a great job of building a captivating world with seemingly little to work with. The theme that characters are connected by a shared sense of insanity gives the world of Fire Punch a living and breathing feel that seems to connect with its anti-climactic tone very well.

To touch back on the idea of cliches, another large reason why I think Fire Punch sets it self apart from it's shounen counterparts is how it treats its characters. Shounen characters are generally driven by usually fairly shallow motivations (which isn't always a bad thing if executed correctly). By contrast, the motivations and what inherently drives Fire Punch's plot and characters forward are unclear. Normally this leads to a very mislead story, but in Fire Punch's case it still manages to connect these characters and ideas with a touch of cohesiveness, and the unstableness in my opinion adds to the characterizations to every facet of the story more than it takes away from it.

I don't mean to say that Fire Punch is the most flawless manga in existence nor would I say it comes close to being one of my top favorites, but I can't stress enough that this is the kind of title I'd like to see more of in Shounen magazines. It really gives an attempt at something new, which in turn carries its own value that makes me want to recommend this title to others.

Like I said, I think even typical shounen manga like Fire Brigade of Flames and Nanatsu no Taizai have value, but I think it would be an incredible shame if Fire Punch got axed because it didn't conform to the same norms as its competitors did.

Oh and the art is fantastic if any of that wasn't enough to convince you to give the manga a shot.

To talk about Denpa Kyoushi, you need to talk about Great Teacher Onizuka first. GTO was an incredibly popular manga about a delinquent named Onizuka who became a teacher. Its popularity derived mainly from two qualities: one, it’s hilarious. More importantly however, it was well-received because it managed to properly capture the relationship between student and teacher that many readers could relate or aspire to. More so than being a manga just about Onizuka, it was a manga about how students who have suffered from their own individual problems could improve themselves and be functioning members of society on their own merit. The classroom isn’t ... just about the raw content you learn, but the lessons you retain. Great Teacher Onizuka managed to convey *teaching* very well.

So that brings us back to Denpa Kyoushi. It basically follows a similar premise. Kagami, a genius-level otaku and NEET, is forced to become a high school teacher. The setting is pretty much identical albeit Kagami being basically the opposite of Onizuka. So what makes Denpa Kyoushi different? Instead of using Kagami as a means of teaching students, Kagami serves more as an idolizing figure. If there’s ever a bully or conflict, he almost always solves it through his own skill set. This aggrandizes the character and is only meant to glorify Kagami; it doesn’t properly convey any form of teaching. It’s just a way of Kagami exerting dominance over the antagonists. There’s one arc where Kagami teaches a student a lesson by basically outsniping him in an arcade game. Where is the lesson here? It’s fairly non-existent, nor is it even a conceivably realistic scenario or a scene that can parallel a real life lesson. There’s not much readers can actually relate to other than having meaninglessly flashy scenes. As I said before, GTO was a manga that wasn’t just about Onizuka, but Denpa Kyoushi is a manga that is almost wholly about Kagami. There isn’t a conflict, nor are there any strong subtle themes about teacher-student relationships. It occasionally does try to go out of its comfort zone in that regard and does occasionally bring interesting ideas to possibly flesh out on, but most of the chapters really just highlight how good Kagami is at strategizing and at video games. It’s hopelessly boring and borderline pathetic; it feels more like escapism glorifying NEET and otaku culture than an attempt at a coherent and interesting plot.

Hopefully you feel differently about Denpa Kyoushi than I do since I can’t see Denpa Kyoushi past a poor attempt that completely misunderstood why GTO was so popular. That’s not to say GTO was flawless, but it at least had a consistent and well-executed theme that could extend into the real world. That only exists in small, tiny portions in Denpa Kyoushi if at all.

Occultic;Nine is the newest entry in the semicolon universe among other titles such as the beloved Steins;Gate, the not-so-beloved Chaos;Head, and the no-one’s-quite-sure-how-to-feel-about-it Robotics;Notes. For most people browsing sites like anichart and putting upcoming seasonal titles into their proverbial shopping cart, any show that has a semicolon in its name immediately gets thrown in the basket thanks to its storied legacy. As of late however, it’s easy to lose faith since the majority of the semicolon titles have come with mixed reception. Fall 2016 has rolled around, and the first semicolon entry since 2012 unveiled itself as Occultic;Nine. 2016 was, in many people’s eyes, an ... overall weak year for non-sequel anime, so many saw Occultic;Nine as the last bastion of defense of 2016 before going into the new year. In many minds, this begged a controversial question filled with a lot of expectation and (in some cases, hesitant) excitement: would Occultic;Nine be a Steins;Gate or another Chaos;Head?

As the final minutes of the 12 episode long series come to a close, I unfortunately have to conclude that Occultic;Nine falls under the latter category. While it has its fair share of interesting and cool moments, the majority of the show is marred and sabotaged by its overall abhorrent pacing and sloppy execution.

Upon watching Occultic;Nine for the first time, the most immediate aspect of the show you might notice is the blindingly fast dialogue. In moderation, this style of narrative isn’t automatically terrible; it can be considered a stylistic choice to help support the atmosphere of the show. Unfortunately, the dialogue speed feels less like a stylistic choice and more of way of squeezing as much content as possible within a given time frame, and it remains consistent in all 12 episodes of the show. The result is a sloppy, exhausting mess that drags down nearly every other element of the anime, including character development, setting, and plot progression. But it’s not simply the dialogue speed that’s the problem; it’s the little breathing room in between each line in the next, and this dramatically affects the immersion and effectiveness of the show. It doesn’t matter if the characters are talking about what they ate that morning or revealing important plot elements to the viewers, each line of dialogue falls directly over the next and this continues until each episode concludes. The viewer is given almost zero time to absorb any information at all and it becomes difficult to distinguish what is fluff and what is important. Because the dialogue moves at such unrealistic speeds, the scenes and characters seem more unnatural, almost as if they’re reading lines from a script. Any build-up effectively gets ruined, and any investment diminishes even at reveals or character development. In addition, quick dialogue is often times a specific character quirk meant to tell us about a character’s personality. In Occultic;Nine, everyone shares this unnatural quality which greatly homogenizes the already bland cast.

It’s not just the dialogue that moves unnaturally either. The plot jerks around at different speeds, often spending either way too much time in extraneous details or suddenly advancing the plot with no warning at all. While the first episode pushed the plot forward a little by unveiling a murder scene in the final moments, not much actually occurred in the show until around episode 6; until then, the show was mostly exposition. Aria is one such example; her exposition occupied an entire episode, yet she remained relatively uninvolved with the story even at the end of the 12 episodes. Now it’s not necessarily a bad thing to give more exposition to side characters, but it is when it comes at the expense of the main plot. In the latter half of Occultic;Nine, scenes would sometimes jerk from one to another, and often times I would bear witness to a scene where I had no idea what was going on. The most noticeable moment of this to me was when a scene shifted from our cast of main characters to suddenly the board meeting of villains (unveiled for the first time) with zero transition or exposition. It’s disorientating for no reason and made the show not only feel rushed but also unnecessarily confusing.

The story on average isn’t well-polished either. While there’s grounds for a relatively interesting and creative plot, it’s watered down by the amount of telling over showing. Occultic;Nine at its base is supposed to a thriller, and most tend to stay more dynamic in order to keep the viewer invested. Occultic;Nine rarely does that, and most of the plot isn’t explained through action but through dialogue (and like I said earlier, the style of dialogue is horrendous). As another friend of mine put it, “the show is all exposition,” or in other words, rather than letting the plot itself do the talking, it’s often the characters that have to explain the plot and pseudo-science toward us, which 80% of the time is mostly just unnecessary filler to justify the hazy connection between hard science and spiritual superstition. To elaborate on this further, the reason why I say that that the explanations are usually unnecessary justifications is because despite how fervently the anime might try to insist scientific jargon, a lot of the time it invalidates itself, often through the use of deus ex machina plot devices (one such example is Gamon magically sprouting wings under the validation that he is in fact a ghost, the possibility conveniently unveiled to him only at the final episode of the show). Finally, as you might expect from the dialogue, the show ends blindingly fast, riddled with more loopholes than a Starbucks Wi-Fi network. What happened to Ririka? Who is the mastermind that orchestrated this phenomenon? What on earth happened to the other 250 victims? Many large questions are still left unanswered if not straight up forgotten, which is incredibly frustrating and borderline unforgivable for a narrative that claims to be a mystery.

The characters, in my opinion, are painfully bland as well. Both Touko and Sarai are incredibly dull characters that fulfill the same role, that being the smart and composed type. Ryo-tas served mostly as a nonsensical background distraction (which was occasionally charming but overall dismissible) who eventually turned into an equally nonsensical character (Tesla’s daughter) with no unique personality with her appearance having about as much effect as a shallow plot device. Miyuu is an overall boring personality with no qualities that make her stand out from the rest of the cast. And Shun is an incredibly boring character who seemingly knows pretty much everything for no reason, often deflating otherwise interesting conflicts with randomly obtained knowledge. Gamon is actually not a bad main character since he serves as an everyman in this cast of characters and bizarre setting. Ultimately however, he’s shoved with conveniently tied character traits that make him artificially special instead of naturally developing his own character to connect with the viewers as an everyman type should. The antagonists in Occultic;Nine are also insultingly boring. They have zero connection to any characters of the plot and as a result only fulfill the role as a vague, stereotypical organization that the main characters are tasked to defeat. The aspirations are as usual the most boring possible, which is to expand their businesses and create profit. Their designs are laughably typical, simply looking like corporate CEOs and businessmen. Most other solid thriller shows have interesting villains, whether it’s something as simple as being visually striking or psychologically threatening or slightly more complex as being relatable and empathetic or sometimes a little mix of both. Occultic;Nine’s villains are none of this, and it makes the story much harder to be invested in.

To give credit where credit is due, I do think Occultic;Nine did a few things right. The show on average was consistently well-animated, and the majority of the character designs and settings are aesthetically pleasing and occasionally unique (save for Ryoka’s unrelenting force that is her stupidly massive chest). There are even a number of well-executed shots throughout the entire anime. In particular, the scene where Gamon stares over his lifeless body was particularly brilliant and awesome. And the overall set-up for the plot isn’t necessarily bad. As much as I’ve harped on it, combining hard science fiction with the supernatural has the potential to be interesting due to how contrarian they are, and the duality of characters being both dead and alive in a single show hasn’t been explored as deeply in narratives as it can be. It’s not necessarily that the plot is bad, it’s more that it was executed poorly.

I’m sure most of us that were hoping for another installment of the semicolon series were looking for another Steins;Gate since a lot of us want to relive those thrilling 24 episodes that we experienced way back in 2011 over again. Unfortunately, Occultic;Nine is anything but that, delivering a sloppy and mediocre experience for those that have stayed dedicated to the series. With Chaos;Head and debatably Robotics;Notes, Occultic;Nine is a third strike, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who will dismiss the next semicolon anime when browsing for things to watch in future seasons.

Disclaimer: I’ve never exposed myself to the Working!!! franchise in any shape or form prior to watching WWW.Working!!! I picked this up when this started airing on a trusted friend’s “recommendation,” who’s somewhat of a fan of the original series. I was told by this friend that it is completely possible to watch this without any experience with the original series, and after watching all 13 episodes I can confidently confirm that statement.

WWW.Working!!! is a gag anime and nothing more, so it’d seem a bit disingenuous if I graded it in any other area other than its humor. I don’t think it’s fair for people ... to grade gag anime with “story” or “character” as a metric as so many reviewers are privy to doing. A gag anime/manga should be judged simply by one thing alone (plus or minus a few complimentary factors), and that is how funny it is.

WWW.Working!!! is not funny.

The reason for this is easy to point out, and it’s really the trap that dooms so many of these gag anime into failures. While the initial presentation of the jokes in the show are funny (Adachi being poisoned by Muranushi’s smile, Saiki being unable to speak Japanese, etc), as the show progresses through its 13 episodes, the same jokes end up being recycled over and over again with little variation in the premise and the punchline. While it’s endearing and charming at first, listening to the same joke gets tiring no matter how funny or cute it is to begin with. The worst abuser of this is the chocolate gag between Higashida and Miyakoshi. Not only is the initial presentation not very funny (the joke uses the tired “poisonous cooking” trope that you can find in various comedy anime like Nisekoi and pretty much any romcom) but you are forced to sit through the same variation of this joke for what feels like more than half the show. While this gag is the worst victim of this instance, almost all jokes in the series follow this main flaw to varying degrees.

Part of the reason why the jokes are repeated so often in the same manner generally have to do with how inflexible they are to begin with. Each of the premises are so specific it’s honestly not surprising that the jokes couldn’t push themselves farther from their initial mold. Too often the punchline ends with the premise more than it highlights the process. Lots of comedy anime like Handa-kun tend to share a similar fate of driving a joke to the ground dude to how specific the set-up is (though some manga/anime tend to pull it off brilliantly like Kaguya). The jokes do eventually branch out in new directions, but not until the last few episodes of the series where the jokes and character are given actual development; the episodes in between are still devoid of any creativity.

That’s not to say that the problem couldn’t have at least been mitigated, but unfortunately WWW.Working!!! Did not use all the tools it had in its disposal. For example, WWW.Working!!! Boasts a wide cast of interesting and quirky characters, but instead of letting them expand their repertoire and utility, each character is inflexibly paired with another to set-up each joke. Very rarely do any of these pairs mix and exchange with each other, ruining the possibility of any creative comedy and chemistry that could otherwise have been formed. In other words, much of WWW.Working’s inflexibility I would argue comes from not diversifying itself when it had many opportunities to do so.

Some jokes simply aren’t performed well either. Saiki’s inability to speak Japanese is an extremely creative and hilarious premise that could be utilized in many ways. However, the VA for Saiki can barely speak English himself, and it ruins the immersion and novelty of the joke. I will admit that I don’t know much about Japan’s VA industry, but I do know that positions for VA’s are often influenced by the status and renown of the VA (i.e. the influence of the studio that owns the VA) just as much as how much they fit the position. Now, I don’t know about the relative abundance of dual-speaking VAs, but I watched an anime that aired recently (Koutetsujou no Kabaneri) that had an English-speaking VA by the name of Maxwell Powers, so at the very least I know it’s possible to obtain such an actor to some degree. If it was possible to have an experienced dual-speaking VA hired, then the onus is on the staff for not doing their best to find the most suitable VAs for the job.

In conclusion, I have to say I was disappointed with WWW.Working!!! While it had a very charming and entertaining initial presentation, it suffered from lack of creativity and variance to really be worth your time. It simply isn’t consistently funny. I’d like to check out future seasons though to see what they can improve upon, since the quality of the original Working!!! from what I’ve heard suggests that a funny and effective season of WWW.Working!!! can be done.