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Apr 26, 2021
Ok, I'm gonna be 100 with all of you. I haven't finished the show. In fact, I don't really ever plan to, as for lack of better terms, it just isn't for me. With that said however, the Demon Slayer movie was actually pretty fun.
I won't regurgitate the plot to you because their isn't really any deep plot here. Everything in the trailer is exactly what the film is and to a fault. That said, the animation of the film is ALOT more consistent here then in the show. The character work is still solid, but the fluidness of the animation never feels nearly
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as disjointed as the show. The WOW moments are indeed WOW and although this is nowhere near the level of quality that Ufotable puts into Fate, or even in the same ball park as Garden of Sinners, it does have a nice pop to it that most Shonen shows tend to lack. Alot of the humor that ruined the show for myself, is also tamed down as the runtime being left with under 2 hours means that every second wasted on their shit jokes, means a second wasted on flushing out the villain and heroes. Luckily, the filmmakers went with the right call and cut the needless humor in order to give us a smart and compelling bad guy. And he is just that. A bad guy. The show also has a tendency to Naruto its bad guys and make them "tragic", which in reality has become such a bad trope in Shonen that it's almost worth it to make fun of. No, here in this film we get a BAD GUY and that's awesome to see.
On the other hand, this film is set up for the second season. We get a shocking death. Unclosed ends. A tragic note. On the one side, I commend the film for do this and making the movie actually matter, because seriously the amount of anime films that are just useless cash grabs in this genre is unbelievable (looking at you My Hero), that said though, if you're like me and don't care about the show, the story and death of a character really doesn't mean sh*t to you. With how long his death scene is, it really starts getting repetitive. The little amount of humor that is in this film are awful. The jokes aren't' funny. They're badly timed. And they make a joke out of any of the tension so the film has to work itself back up after losing it.
all in all, this film is a mixed bag. As someone who has seen ALOT of sh*t anime "tie in" films, Much of what this film does make me appreciate it. That said, what makes it Demon Slayer is what makes me hate it. I wish this level of craft and writing went for other series because wow some really needed it (again looking at you My Hero) but as far as this goes. It's a solid watch and well worth seeing in theaters if you get the chance. Fan or Not.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jul 22, 2020
Trigger can be a great studio. That's pretty simple to understand as they've made some of the most influential anime of the modern ear of anime. This has brought them claim from many as "the savior of anime", but just like M. Night Shyamalan it seems Trigger over the past year/two year releases has fallen from what they once where. BNA is not the worst thing they've put out in that time. Darling in the Franxx was.... a wasted potential that had bad writing and went on far longer then need be. Promare was a tech demo stretched out into a movie that had no
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interesting aspects outside of the flashy visuals and lacked any sort of interesting characters. Now with all the set we'll move on the BNA.
As for the good qualities of BNA it seems Trigger has finally gone back to what made their art style and world design so fun and used a more subdued uses of visual effects. That's not to say this is a minimalist Trigger show, but it does feel like they've cute down on the flashy visuals and the wacky over the top characters and made a show more inline with a Little Witch Academia or Kill la Kill then the more recent throw colors at the screen and hope it make sense way of presentation of Promare. The character designs aren't the most stand out when it comes to Triggers catalog of characters (the best in my opinion is still Space Patrol Luluco) but the main design for Michiru is easily the stand out of the show and could go up against some of the best Trigger has done. The rest of the characters are more hit and miss with a few stand outs being Maire, Nazuna, and Gran Grama. All of which stand out compared to the rest of the cast. The animation itself is fluid and never goes to over board but is never lacking. When it wants to go big it does and when it wants to be tame it is. The show is consistent and that when it comes to a seasonal anime is one of the most important parts. Speaking of seasonal anime SEGWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
The negative aspects of the show come out in a few different ways and sadly are present for the majority of the show. The runtime is the first issue. Trigger has a tendency to up the stakes when it comes to their show to the point of being "world ending". Most of the time this works when the show is 24 episodes long and we have enough time to really explore and understand the world, but BNA is 12 episodes, 6 of which are main plot and the first half are split between 2 introduction episodes and 4 side stories used to try and give us those needed world building. It does not work as the main flaw of this show is presented in each and every one of the 6 episodes over having just character/world exploration in order to earn the "world ending" finally. Trigger is not new to having political messages in their shows. Many of them have underlying ideology and commentary on many political and theological things, but BNA is the worst when it comes to how it's handled. If you never felt like trigger had these messages in their show congrats, that's because they knew how to incorporate it into the narrative without making it feel like the messages where the narrative or the point of the show. BNA has absolutely no subtlety in it's comments on race, religion, and governmental systems. In the first 5 mins of episode one we are introduced to our Main protagonist not by seeing her and her personality but instead seeing her hide from humans who deface a Beasts and Humans equality poster. Then one the bus ride to Anima City we run into gangs who want to kill her for being a Beast. This adds up to the first 15ish mins of the show and tells us more on the message then it does on our main character. BNA is a message wrapped with a thin story, not a story wrapped with a thin message.
BNA is the continuation of the slope that trigger has been on. It's not the low point of the slope (Promare) but it's not a sign of going up. I love Trigger a lot, so I hope they get themselves together and produce something good again because everything else so far has been disappointing at best. BNA is on Netflix so if you have that maybe give it a try if you want to, but I would honestly just say if you're in the mood for Trigger go watch the older shows from them.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 28, 2020
What happens when you take a dated idea and use every single trope in the genre to make a story out of that idea? You get Tower of God. It strikes me as oddly funny how this show has become so popular in an anime community that tries so hard to convince itself that they only like the cream of the crop because this show doesn't do anything different. No new ideas. No new takes. Every moment of this show is spent on making the same points made by other "edgy" shounen shows. Which brings us to the question of is this show worth watching?
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What qualities does Tower of God have that make it stand out? What makes this show so boring to anyone with half a brain cell? Finally, will Tower of God be worthy of your time as an anime viewer?
I suppose for the good parts of this show I'll make it quick. The animation is solid. It seems frequently the new "thing" in shounen anime is to make the animation and character designs so "beautiful" that you can't help but think it means theirs quality to the show. Shows like Demon Slayer, My Hero Acadamia, and so on try to hide the bad artwork on its downtime in the overdone visuals on its high pace action scenes that on first watch look impressive but are just feel like a new layer of pain on a broken car. The action looks amazing, but the rest of the show looks like trash. The best of the best look amazing in stills, but when played it looks like nothing more then an explosion of colors in your face that make no sense. Tower of God thankfully doesn't do this, but instead uses a more conservative approach and downgrades the action to keep the over all consistency of the animation in tack. No part overly stands out in both a good and bad way. No amazing moments, but no horrifying moments of jank. This show is consistent in its presentation and frankly in a genre that seems to punish the show if it isn't pushing the envelope in animation I find it refreshing to see a show that isn't trying to be something it clearly can't be.
As for the negatives of this show. My god, the story is so generic. From the characters to the plot to the way the show progress through its episodes, nothing in the show is done in a way that hasn't been done before. Our main character Ban is just as boring and predictable as every other shonen hero (I had Deku from MHA in my head as I watched how Ban would talk and his body language), Khun is your stereotypical tragic past brain boy (think Sauske and you know the character from front to back), Rachel is the boiler plate female character that everyone hates because she was willing to sacrifice people to get what she wanted (think any female anime character that people hate for no reason an you have her), Rak is your fight fight! FIGHT boy that all he wants is Fight and do you wanna FIGHT? because i like to FIGHT. FIIIIIIIGIHT (if that annoyed you then he'll annoy you), and so on. Every other character falls into the same tropes and most characters you would find in say HunterxHunter, however where HxH makes good on each character by delving into them and making them feel like fully realized characters this show does not. Once you've meet your core people no other character really matters. The power of plot armor is strong with our main characters because when the nameless faceless cannon fodder are dying it just so happens that our heroes are not. It makes the show boring. On top of that the story is just as boring. Over the course of 13 episodes we watch our cast be put through different tests in order to see if they can partake in the climb of the tower. After about the 2nd test it becomes clear that most of the tests mean nothing as the show tries to come up with more and more ways to keep testing our characters in order to thin the heard. Each time making it more and more clear how the show is trying very hard at tricking you into thinking one of our main cast might just get taken out. With that we also have the required "Ban has a hidden power" plot line that goes nowhere but to genericvil, the "we need to make friends in order to use them in the next test" two episode mini arc that goes exactly like you would expect. So on and so forth. Think the Chunin Exams arc in Naruto but each exam is 3 episodes and none of the characters had enough back story to really get invested in them. I've seen people fight the criticism of the plot in this show by saying that this is just set up and the really shit is coming in the next season. To you I say BAD WRITING. If your show has 13 episodes and all of those episodes do nothing to get me as a viewer invested in your show then you fail at being a show. It shouldn't take 13 episodes to set up your world and your characters before we get into the meat of your story. At most maybe 3 or 4, but a good writer works the plot forward and reviles the things we need to know as it continuances so it never feels like we're just stuck in place waiting for the exposition to stop. It's become a common thing in shows now to do this and it's just sad.
Tower of God isn't anything we haven't already seen before. It isn't anything we've seen done way better, but it is something we've seen done way worse. At the end of this day your enjoyment of this show will come down to a simple factor. Are you bothered by something that is generic? If you aren't then give this show a try. I do think theirs enough in the animation to make anyone at the very least appreciate what they were going for and get enjoyment out of the show. If you aren't then don't watch the show. The bad writing and overused ideas and tropes will drive you up a wall and you'll hate every minute of it. For me personally I found that at the end of the day this show was just bland. It was something worth putting on in the background and listening to till something of interest happened, watching that something, then going back to what else I was doing. I wasn't offended by anything the show did but I wasn't impressed. It was just generic.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jun 20, 2020
Good god where to begin with this flaming pile of garbage otherwise known as Arte? Once in a rare while do you come across something so pointlessly dull and boring that you actually get offended by it, so offended by its poor writing, poor characters, poor shallow attempts at making "commentary", poor genre workings. Everything about this show is poor. After 4 episodes I had a bad feeling, after 7 I had no hope, and now? Now, I'm here to tell you to not bother wasting your time on this trash.
Before we get into the slaughter of Arte I'd like to point out some
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MINOR good aspects of this show that keep it from being a 1. The character design isn't anything to write home about but the dress designs are historical accurate and add a level of elegance that I rather enjoyed. The VA work is also worth praise. It's not hard to find lots of new anime just putting VAs in roles to have a name to the project or so badly miscast that it takes you out of the story, but every VA sounds like they fit that character. It's rare to find and underappreciated when done well and I hope people star taking notice of this factor. It's a shame the cast is stuck to such a bad script but hey the little things right?
As for the bad. God where to start? First, why make your setting one of the most interesting point in art history (Florence in the 16th century during the Renaissance) if you're going to make no attempt at displaying the beauty of this time period? The background art for FLORENCE ITALY looks so poorly put together that you could honestly believe that we were in just some nowhere town in an Isekai. For a show set in the town that had some of the greatest works of art during this time period every building looks the same. Their is NO differentiation in color pallets or depth. It is so poorly put together that you could honestly set this show in a High School and get more out of it. On top of that by episode 8 the character art and animation starts to take a nosedive which is super ironic because it wasn't like they had the budget there to begin with. It went from being passable (if not a little bland) to being something a visual novel would use for its animated scenes. In fact I think Persona has had better animation.
Second, the plot. Let me take you through the formula for this show, because their is no real plot.
Opening -> Mary Sue wants to do art related activity or is given art related activity -> Mary Sue is told "WoMEn CaNt Be ArTIsT" or "ArT iS FoR MeN" or "YoU CaNt Do ThAT, OnLY MeN CaN Do ThAt" ext. Whatever variation of surface level misogyny you can come up with goes here and for anyone who has ever dealt with misogyny you will laugh your ass off at how fake this comes off as -> Mary Sue does whatever activity the men think she can't do because the power of her WILL AND DREAMS -> insert either just enough comedy to not be take as a serious drama or Just enough "foreshadowing" of romance to be taken as a Romance anime without giving actual romance -> end credits.
I'm sure defenders will say "it's taking its time to set up a believable relationship" or "It's depicting serious gender inequality" and to you I say...where? The relationship idea is broken by episode 5 when the only thing close to romance is a teenage girls chest getting tight because she's around this dude. Is this supposed to be Romance because it looks more like bullshit to me. BTW three months have passed at this time (or three years if you go off what the second dude said about progression in the system of being an apprentice) so if the only thing in show you have to show me as "romance" is something a one-sided preteen crush then I'm sorry you fail. As far as Gender Inequality... sure? I mean we get surface level remarks in episode 4 from the prostitute that are once again something a teenager could put together and grow up to realize theirs more depth and nuance then that surface level remarks. Everything else is comedic levels of FEMALE OPPRESSION you would find in a meme making fun of feminist. Theirs no interesting commentary to be made and no depth to it. It's laughable forced.
Thirdly, what is the point of setting this show in Italy with Italian characters if you're just going to have them practice normal Japanese customs? Yes, I'm sure this is nitpicky but I'm not the only one asking this question. If you want to have character of different cultural backgrounds you have to build in those cultures to your narrative or else it's just changing the paint of a car. It might look and seem different but under it's just the same. This show could have took a look at the culture of Italy and made for a rather different type of anime that despite the issues could still have praise for something new. Instead it sticks with every single Japanese cultural norm we see in anime and comes off as rather immersion breaking.
I think that's enough bashing on this show for it's piss poor quality. It seems alot of people liked this show, and to you I say great. Glad you did. This show is awful and bad and makes no attempt at coming into its own. All I see is another run of the mill "romance" anime that takes no chances and makes no statements. I hope it never comes back. I hope it gets forgotten in time with the shows just like it because if this show becomes "popular" or makes waves in the anime community I'll truly be shocked at the ability for the anime community to turn a blind eye to anything resembling quality. Then again Bunny-girl senpai is popular and that's just as bad so who knows...
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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May 16, 2020
Honestly I don't know why I'm writing this review for a 2 year old movie at this point that probably gets less foot traffic then a dine in restaurant in this messed up Covid 19 world we live in, but with Netfilx adding Mutafukaz (or MFKZ) I was finally able to watch it after missing its small run in theaters. I doubt anyone will read this but if you do cool, I hope you like this review. Here's my thoughts on the movie.
The good, This has some of the best animation I've seen out of the world of anime in recent times. No it's
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not on par with things like A Silent Voice or other critically acclaimed "beautiful" anime but maybe that's because this movie isn't trying to be anime. It's almost hard to think that something like this could be made by an anime studio because it's so not anime. Yeah I know Japan wasn't the only one who had their hands on this project but maybe that's the reason it's so good. This is the type of movie you show people who aren't into anime. It doesn't do the boiler plate same old AnImE that people make jokes of or your parents think of as just cartoons, but instead actually tries to be something different. Character designs are unique and ones you won't forget about in the mishmash of "anime" characters, the fights feel like they would fit better in a video game and bring this energy that you don't normally see in "anime" movies, and the soundtrack... omg the soundtrack is probably the standout aspect of this movie. Plenty of times I found myself vibing to the music more then paying attention to the movie. Its mix of techno and latino music mesh so well together that you can't help but have fun. A stand out is the Ice Cream truck chase scene. Everything is made to stand out and be different and hits all the marks. This alone makes the experiences great...but
As for the bad, the plot is so scatter shot you'd think the script got hit with half the bullets that went flying in this movie. Bit off more then they could chew is an understatement for this movie. Starting as a fugitive on the run story we grow into aliens and gang wars and romance and a half baked message about the world. This thing is all over the place and none of it is done well enough to say their was a standout but none are done so badly to say that they were the weak point of the movie. It feels like so much of it was just thrown together to have a plot when you can tell watching the movie that a plot was the last thing on the creators mind. If you go into this expecting to get any sort of fulfillment on anything that then movie offers in its first 10 mins then sorry to say but you're wasting your time. It's particularity a shame when the characters are so well written. I guess not everything can be perfect but it was a damn shame to an otherwise great movie.
In the end Mutafukaz is just a small movie that came and went. It didn't make any landmark, groundbreaking, amazing noise in the small amount of time it was in the public consciousness and much like the page on MAL it is forgotten, but now with it being on Netflix I hope people give it a try. It might not be the best thing out there to watch but I don't feel like it wasted my time and I was taken on a ride that although the road wasn't great or even purposeful at times, left me none the less entertained by what I saw. Who knows maybe you'll think so too.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Apr 15, 2020
I would make a joke about this show as the opening of my review but it seems the 9 episode runtime of this season of High Score Girl is enough of a joke. High Score Girl 2 is the hyped(?) second season to the sleeper hit first season anime that mixed video games and romance in a way that felt new and fresh... well at least enough to make an enjoyable binge. Did the second season live up to the bar that High Score Girl 1 set or did this fun little gamer romance run out of lives?
The positive parts of this new season
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can best be seen in the animation. The biggest issue season one had was how spotty the animation quality happened to be scene to scene. The 3D CGI of the second season feels more smoothed out and consistent, never leaving you with hideous looking shots like the first season had from time to time. My next positive might come as a surprise but the 9 episode runtime felt perfect for the story. The pacing was never halted and nothing this season felt like filler in the way that some of the Hidaka episodes in the first season felt. It's hard to make a show feel natural with fewer episodes then a normal seasonal show, but High Score Girl 2 did it perfectly.
A lot of the issues I find with this show however come down to the simple fact that this season doesn't make an effort to change the dynamics of or characters. The vast majority of romance anime fall into this trap of showing our characters just dip a toe into the world of being a relationship and sadly this second season of High Score Girl spends all of the runtime just teasing you with the possibility of our main characters becoming a couple. When you reach the end and finally get the conclusion to the two season arcs for our characters all you're left with is...oh? I guess that's it. For most younger audiences i'm sure this isn't an issue, but for anyone who's older or have seen more romance anime it just feels like a waste of time and if you're a romance show that fails at being a compelling romance what do you have left? Maybe I'm just cynical though.
High score girl isn't bad. It's worth watching and if you can, you should binge the show because I think that's the best way to watch it. This show won't stay on your mind for more then a month though. It's just a simple, easy, average little anime, but sometimes those are all you really need.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Apr 4, 2020
What can be said about My Hero Academia that hasn't already been said? We all know that people who are die hard MHA fans will defend the show and people who aren't those will criticize the show for its faults. It's undeniable that MHA is the most popular shonen of the past few years (aside from One Piece) and over it's now 88 episode run it seem that we're only getting started, but in there lies to issue with MHA. I'm going to divide this into two parts and talk about the pros and cons of each part.
First part- the rip off of
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the Chimera Ant arc
To the surprise of no one we've now reached the point in the run time of this show that we get it's attempt at a Chimera Ant Arc (from HunterxHunter for those who have yet to see a good shounen). To be honest with you I had so much fun watching this arc. It felt like the show had come back to being on par with season 2 (after the train wreak that was season 3). The animation was consistently enjoyable which lead to some of the coolest fights we've seen in MHA sense the tournament arc back in season 2, and the writing was tight and never felt dragged out over the 14 episodes, Sadly thought the lack of character development for the majority of our cast (from the villains motivations being shown in flashbacks to our main heroes getting tragic backstory = New Power up) it just comes off as lazy. The only exception to this is the episode Lemillion in which I would argue MHA has finally made a 10/10 episode. If season 4 was just these 14 episodes (maybe a 15th to wrap up and tease) then this would have been great, even for all it's fault it was fun and showed the best parts of what makes a good shonen work. But......
Part two- The Clusterf@#$ Arc
I don't like festival arcs. I think the majority of them a lazy and pointless from a writing perspective and just serve as filler, so that we can have a "break" from the action, but with MHA it seems like taking a break from the action means spending 11 episodes ramming as many sub-arcs as we can into this space. The first 4 episodes are about Bakugo and Todoroki (because those are the only two characters the show cares about) teaching preschoolers not to be little monsters and listen to their teacher. The biggest issue I had with this arc aside from the boring drag it it so watch is how CRINGE it can be. From the children to the forced "look at how nice they are to children" moments, theirs not a single part in these 4 episodes worth watching. Next Arc is the festival arc. When you came into MHA didn't you want to see our class in 1-A spend 5 episodes learning how to play a jamming rock song and dancing and doing "what kids do" because hey they're normal high school kids to! Right? I can't answer that for you, but for me all these episodes boil down to are a waste of time. Nothing interesting happen. The new mini villains feel rushed and don't present any threat which leads to the majority of the time spent with them feeling pointless. If you wanted to say the point of these episodes were to show Eri (the loli girl I'm sure you've seen) what it's like being a normal kid then show it through her eyes. Have her be our main character. Instead she's not and she's just turned into a side character. Finally, the last 2 episodes move away from the children and instead move to Endover and the world of the superheros. It's in these 2 episodes that MHA shows us once again what make the show good. You know, THE SUPER HEROES. Looking into the ways the hero world moves and functions is entertaining and even thought it just serves to introduce us to Hawk it's still interesting to see the world through the eyes of characters who aren't our main kids. All I really wished was that we would get a good foreshadowing of our next villain, but at this point I'll take whatever positives I can get.
My Hero Academia season 4 is a mess. With a great first half and the worst second half I can't help but wonder why this show is 24 episodes long. At 12 episodes the first season was fantastic and season 2 worked at 24 episodes because it had enough story to support the amount of episodes. As for season 3 and now 4 all this show feels like it's doing is building up to 1 or 2 amazing moments and then padding out the run time with nothing but filler. My Hero Academia season 5 needs to change this trajectory or all we'll be left with is a never ending cycle of mess.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 30, 2020
I would make a joke about watching this show while on a toilet, but that would be a little on the nose, so instead of flushing away whatever little dignity I have by making a toilet joke I'd rather just skip that and get to tell you about Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun. It seems for a show that at the start of the season had very little interest has now grown to be what some people are calling the best show this season, or maybe more appropriately the most interesting show of the season. Although I disagree with both of those the latter claim is something worth
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talking about when it comes to Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun.
What this show dose right ironically is what will turn the most people off of watching Hanako-Kun. The level of animation is more in line with a visual novel then an anime. In the vast majority of its 12 episode run almost every scenes will have little to no animation, now you could chalk this up to having limited budget or time constraints, but instead I would say that this is a purposeful artistic choice. A choice to sacrifice the time to animate and instead work on the beautiful artwork. I'm not joking when I say this show has some of the best artwork of this season. Shot after shot, over numerous episodes the artwork not only keeps you invested, but levels up the quality of a otherwise average story and brings life to these characters in a way not many new shows this season have done. These character designs are some that will stick with you for many many seasons to come and all of that is thanks to the choice to put art over animation. That being said we should talk about this big issue of Hanako-Kun.
Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun lacks the ability to pick a consistent tone. Not just episode to episode but even scene to scene. One moment we're having a lighthearted comedy more in the vein of a supernatural slice of life, and the next we're having a semi-deep character drama in the vein of a light seinen, only to be instantly thrown back to the lighthearted comedy. The worst offence of this can be seen in episode 11. This episode (particularly the last 10 mins) sums up my issue with the show, and why keeping myself invested has been such a problem. Honestly it's sad because so many moments of the character drama are FAR more engaging then the comedy, but we're only treated to glimpses of that drama in what seems like bait to watch a second season. What's the point of watching a show that keeps its major conflicts for a second season that might never come? Why not give us a satisfying conclusion to this season while also laying the ground work for more episodes? These are the questions I found myself asking once finishing the final (as of writing this review) episode.
At the end of the day Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun started off as what could have been one of the best underdog anime of this season. Doing things different and making a name for itself as a show not like any other, but a lack of clear intention in the story telling ended up shooting Hanako-Kun in the foot and leaving itself as a slightly better then average anime. Worth a watch? Sure, if you take more interest in artwork and shot design then give the show a go and enjoy. If you want enjoy more meat on the bones of a story like Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun then I would recommend to try something else instead so the frustration of an incomplete narrative won't drive you up a wall.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 27, 2020
Smile Down the Runway was going to do for the fashion world what Food Wars did for the culinary world. Now maybe that's a rather monumental assessment of this show, but for the first few episodes I honestly felt that it could. This show had the ingredients to be not only a good show this season, but a great show for this year. Notice how i'm using past tense? Don't worry when you watch this show yourself you'll understand why.
As per usual lets talk about the positives of this show. This is a beautiful show. That's just plain and simple. The moments in the
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show that require it to be jaw dropping gorgeous are just that, jaw dropping gorgeous. On top of that this show also takes a page from the shounen hand book and makes the majority of the pacing flow in a way that you never feel bored. Many shounen shows try to keep this style of pacing (Think about the very first season of My Hero Acadamia as an example of this style of pacing done right.) but fall flat with the amount of episodes being to much for the amount of story. This show keeps itself to 12 episodes and not a single episode is spent on things that don't become plot important. Every moment and character become important, and honesty I commend the show for being able to pull that off.
The biggest issues with this show however fall into two categories. The story itself and the last 3 episodes. I'll start with the story. If you take a look at the poster art or the trailer for this show you'd probably think that this show is about this short girl named Chiyuki trying to become a HYPEMODEL (watch the first episode and you'll get the joke) and the trials and tribulations she and her friend Ikuto, who's trying to become a fashion designer, face as they get into the fashion world. If this is what you thought then congratulations you've been suckered. Chiyuki is not the main character of this show. Ikuto is. So I hope you're as excited about the trials of building clothes because that's what you get from a good 85% of this show. That's not to say the story is bad at all. I'm just saying for what the show sold itself to be it 180s and becomes something it wasn't. If this doesn't bother you then that's ok, but it's worth knowing before going into this show expecting what the show looks like it'll be. As for my second issue with the last 3 episodes I'll keep it with no spoilers. Episodes 10 and 11 are the climax of the show and you can tell by the amount of time put into them. Episode 12 feels rushed, and with one of the major character conflict having to be resolved in episode 12 you can tell by how fast they go through it that they didn't really care about that conflict. It leaves you feeling unsatisfied.
At the begin of this review I said Smile Down the Runway was going to do for the fashion world what Food Wars did for the culinary world. Sadly, it won't. Food Wars understood that you need to treat every character and plot as if it was a seasoning to a dish, and make them all work together without overtaking the others. Smile Down the Runway doesn't do this and because of that what could have been a "wow you remember that great show from a few seasons ago" is actually a "you know that show was pretty good this season". This show is worth watching and enjoying but at the end of the day it's not worth remembering.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 22, 2020
[Minor spoiler ahead]
What do you get when you mash well thought-out ideas from other great sci-fi cop shows into a stew and then leave that stew on a oven that's not turned on? A cold mess. ID:Invaded as a product is a cold mess. I can't help but try to understand what people are praising about this and wonder to myself if we even watched the same show. Yes, it's not awful and in a landscape of established IPs and forced squeals/remakes having an original anime come out is fantastic, but is the bar set so low that this show is considered good?
I suppose
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we should talk about the good first. Despite my initial bitching if you enjoy sci-fi/cop shows this anime isn't awful. It'll scratch that itch you have and maybe even keep you going with its case of the week (2 weeks) set-up for awhile. The mystery isn't always hard, but they do give enough to them that you find yourself playing along with the show to try and figure out who the killer is this week. On top of that the character designs are worth praise given how distinct and memorable they happen to be, as well as the animation which although no Ufotable dose keep itself from feeling like they lost budget. Even if some of the shots are laughable bad.
As for the bad.....well where to start. The final big bad of the show John Walker has absolutely NO mystery to it. By episode two you could make a guess and I promise you you'll be right. A child could figure it out which makes the whole shows over arcing mystery (who is John Walker?) a complete bore. The character development is almost as bad. Only really given to our main character Sakaido all the other characters take a backseat till the plot calls for them to actually do something. Yet, when we reach our final few episodes and major (?) deaths start to happen we're supposed to care? I honestly found myself laughing when these people were dying and the show was playing the super sad music like it mattered. On that note the last two episode drop so much exposition that I'm honestly truly baffled that a studio green-lit this project. Nothing in the last two episodes feels natural and spending every five minutes to info dump so you can understand what the hell is happening you loses all tension the show had going into the finally.
I won't lie, I fell behind on this show (and others this season) and ended up marathoning the past six weeks of this show. I'm glad I did because if it wasn't for that ID:Invaded would have ended up dropped. This show isn't good. If you want to spend time watching 13 episodes of an anime in this genre please go watch something else. Psycho-Pass, Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor and if you've seen all those shows and REALLY need something new then fine. Try this show. Maybe you'll find enjoyment out of it. Or at least enjoy watching concepts from better shows get so badly botched. After all their's enjoyment in a train wreak.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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