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This is a decent isekai power fantasy if you like MILFs.

Okay apparently MAL won't let me publish a 1 sentence review, so here's some more:

This is on the better side of isekai cheat-power manga for the first two arcs or so. The MC's power is somewhat interesting, the worldbuilding is decent, the art is nice, and the MC's background actually matters and plays into his decision-making and judgment of other characters. But above all, his power is introduced with limitations that stop him from trivializing every fight and has real consequences for overuse.

But very quickly, the manga just devolves into your typical isekai power fantasy ... that you've seen done better elsewhere, with chapters upon chapters devoted to sucking the MC's infinitely growing cock.

It could be a lot worse. There are still some decent characters and worldbuilding here and there, and the MILF designs are nice. But it's hard to take the manga's themes seriously when the MC has done so little to deserve what he ends up achieving besides being a cheat-power isekai MC.

If you're a fan of mahjong and superpower sports/game anime, THIS is the real Saki.

This is Saki without the meandering backstories, the boring yuri-bait that never gets anywhere, and the gratuitous fanservice shots of every loli character in the show (mostly). Side-A cuts out most of Saki's original grievances while being even better at what Saki did best: Intense, chaotic, and ridiculous mahjong battles.

In fact, since 95% of this anime doesn't rely on the original Saki, it's completely watchable as a standalone. Just make sure that you know the rules of mahjong, because there isn't as much time to explain everything like in Saki. ... If anything I said about the original Saki worries you about that series (I wrote a review on it if you want more detail), I recommend giving Side-A a try instead.

If you watched Saki or any sports anime, Side-A has a lot of what you'd expect: A simple school-tournament plot structure, games full of twists and turns, and fun/exciting/beautiful animation flourishes to emphasize the characters' emotions after pulling off a daring play or a nail-biting victory.

The difference for me is mostly in the characters. Saki leans too hard into making every character gimmicky with lots of unfunny running gags to make sure that you remember everyone, even if you also hate them in the process. Meanwhile, Side-A immediately introduces compelling reasons for all of the main girls to want to win the mahjong inter-high. With maybe one exception, they are more believable and more characterized than much of Saki's main cast, so it's much easier to get invested in their journey right from the start. It's almost jarring how much more respectful Side-A treats its characters compared to Saki, like an actual sports/game anime.

And by the end, the mahjong tournament battles DO deliver--in spades. Mahjong being a 4-player game, like in Saki, allows for complex yet emotionally charged battles of wits that leave you on the edge of your seat. Any player can be a relevant threat, and sometimes you never know who will take over the narrative in the end. And this aspect of chaos and unpredictability is even stronger than it is in Saki, which was what made that series refreshing to me as a sports/game anime in the first place.

This is also where the Saki series turns up its superpower tag to 11.
*MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*
Side-A starts with one character with an incredibly impossible mahjong "talent" in episode one, and then continues to introduce some of the most ridiculous "totally-not-superpowers" I've ever seen in sports/game anime. And it's great, because every one of them has clear strengths and weaknesses and can be played around within the rules of the game, and they'll also have some crazy interaction with another character's almost-equally ridiculous superpower. And even with all this craziness, the superpowers never manage to truly overshadow the actual game of mahjong, so it just adds another layer of excitement and intrigue.
*MINOR SPOILERS END*

The biggest storytelling obstacle in these matches is the need to establish every character's background, personality, and playstyle during the match, and it's really difficult to do this without bogging down the pacing with constant flashbacks. However, Side-A manages to avoid this problem well enough by the end. There aren't excessive flashbacks to bog down the final matches' pacing, the characters are given just enough characterization to establish entertaining dynamics, and the buildup to the climax is just superb.

Now for the elephant in the room, while I do like the characters and characterization in Side-A better than in Saki overall, they are still quite weak, especially in the middle portion of the anime. Saki will at least drip feed interesting mahjong plays before moving onto the tournament, but Side-A isn't interested in showing the main girls' intermediate steps toward the mahjong inter-high. There might be a training montage but without delving into what they learned or improved on, which hurts the overall emotional payoff when they actually do win over a tough-looking opponent. I think the final matches succeed in spite of that, but it does hurt that a third of the anime feels like a slog to get through.

But none of those dull moments were painful like in Saki. I can at least excuse Side-A for rushing to the main event when it knew it didn't have much time to do so. The result is still that Side-A accomplishes more in SIXTEEN episodes than Saki does in 25. (The "Specials" episodes are just the last four episodes of the anime. They are a direct continuation and you should watch them after finishing the first 12.)

With maybe more effort put into the characters and drama in the middle episodes of the anime, Side-A could have easily been an 8 for me, regardless of its dressing as a mere side story to Saki. It's kind of depressing to me that Side-A will just be in the shadow of Saki forever because of that. Despite its flaws, Side-A manages to simultaneously be the more entertaining and the more well-rounded experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who knows or is willing to learn the rules of mahjong--and isn't afraid of a little zaniness in their battle-of-wits.

I love the mahjong games. I love the animation, music, and sound effects that go with every winning play. I love how the game jumps from one character to another, all trying to take control of the game with their unique strengths and weaknesses. It's often ridiculous, but also intense, chaotic, and exciting. And speaking as a novice player, it feels true to the spirit of mahjong.

I am indifferent to or outright hate everything else about this show.

Beyond establishing the characters' basic personalities and skills for the mahjong tournament, this anime does very little with them. There's maybe one scene for the MC's family situation ... and one scene for her yuri-bait partner's family, and we're supposed to be led to believe that these are important parts of their characters. But then for the rest of the 25 episodes, we get to see almost nothing new about them. And then they are vaguely in love with each other, but all I can see are cardboard cutouts with boobs making blush faces--hence, "yuri-bait."

The rest of the main cast is similarly criminally underdeveloped. One of the other club member's characterization ends up just being a pedophilic running gag that gets run into the Earth's core by the end and wasn't even funny to begin with. The club president has so many ways to be interesting with her connections and power in the school, but almost all of that is ignored in favor of repeating her one backstory in the mahjong club over and over. Effectively, the MC's school is just the mahjong club.

It's clear that the anime just wants to focus on the mahjong games and only wants to establish what is necessary to make them work in the end, and if the anime really WAS just mahjong games, then I'd be more or less willing to accept that. But there is SO MUCH time wasted on yuri-bait pandering and fanservice episodes that are completely devoid of any personality or substance.

It doesn't help that, in the actual tournament, the anime sometimes struggles to keep every character at the table relevant without bogging down the pacing with constant flashbacks, sometimes to scenes that were IN THE SAME EPISODE. And while I do appreciate characterizing the different opponents the MC and her club have to face, it also means that there's even less time to focus on the actual main cast, which makes the yuri-bait sequences feel even more empty and unearned.

Not to mention that it's just kind of creepy that at some point every loli girl wears very loose or scanty clothing, sometimes both. It happens too often to ignore.

This can only be a 6 for me because the mahjong battles are just that good. As someone that enjoys sports and game fiction, mahjong games being 4-player free-for-all make them refreshing to watch. All of the major battles have multiple competing narratives, and it's not always clear which one will dominate in the end. A player may be preoccupied with beating one character only to be surprised by a completely different character that was enacting their plan the entire time. It never feels overwhelming either; having 4 players has just the right balance of complexity versus emotional resonance.

The game being partially luck-based also works in the show's favor, because it gives the sense that anything is possible and any player can still come back from seemingly insurmountable odds. It's like the best parts of Yu-Gi-Oh or No Game No Life, but with the added complexity from having 4 players/teams.

There are episodes in this anime that I would absolutely watch a second time. Every character has some special strength that gives them the edge, but any other character can disrupt them with their own special strength and take over the narrative. When someone finally breaks through a character's dominance of the game, the show's excellent presentation does everything in its power to make you feel that high, even if you don't play mahjong.

Not every mahjong game is a huge hit; there are times when I think the characters' powers get too ridiculous to the point where, even when another character starts to beat them, it's not really clear HOW the other character is winning or what they did differently. The pacing being sometimes interrupted by too many flashbacks is also a bummer. But even the worst mahjong battles in this anime aren't a slog to get through, and the highs are still just as high.

In the end, I'm torn, but overall I'm glad I got to have watched this anime. It helped in my introduction to the game of mahjong and how it can be fun and interesting, but anything beyond that is just a mediocre shoujo ai fanservice schlock. I'd recommend this to anyone who can at least somewhat tolerate/enjoy those distasteful parts, because getting to those mahjong fights was well worth it.

If you're interested in really heady sci-fi and philosophical concepts, this might be worth checking out if that's all you're looking for. To say the least, Murasakiiro no Qualia is ambitious. After a somewhat slow start, it blows up into hyperspeed in directions you might not expect and never stops. The best part of the manga is seeing what insanity the author has thought up next, but in the process it loses a lot of what would make that kind of story interesting in the first place, making the whole thing feel clumsy, rushed, and full of unrealized potential.

This manga is apparently a novel adaptation, ... and it shows. It's very text-heavy and ultimately prefers to tell rather than show, which hurts in the manga format. So much of the manga is spent explaining and discussing scientific theories, and in the latter half, an astonishingly small portion of the manga is spent showing what happens in the story. Instead, a few panels may represent what happens, then some textboxes will gloss over a few points and move on. It gets old really fast, and it becomes impossible to connect with the MC's struggles. Eventually, it doesn't feel like reading a story anymore--but a story about a story, and it's as dull as it sounds.

Now, if you have already read the manga and say, "But that's the point of the story!" I realize that, but that alone doesn't justify its execution. If you set out to write your story in a boring manner and succeed, the story isn't any less boring. The author/artist could have conveyed the story in a number of more interesting ways, such as expanding on ideas that could have been their own story arc but instead were only given a few panels. The MC has a lot of focus, so perhaps it would been more interesting to focus on other characters' perspectives, providing new insight on an otherwise sterile thought experiment of a manga.

The story is also pretty bad at justifying its use of these concepts, which creates plot holes. It's most easily seen in the latter half, when the author decides to take increasingly daring leaps of logic in order to keep the plot interesting, but even without that, there are times when the characters seem to know way more than they should, or they're more right than they should be. The strength of your suspension of disbelief will matter here. For most of those little instances, I don't mind that middle school students happen to know a little about some weird theories, but I would like to see more into how they came about these theories or how those theories affect their lives, rather than taking it all for granted.

But while I think most of these problems occur in the latter half, I would rate the manga even lower if it didn't have those things. The beginning part is just kind of boring without any noteworthy points. Meanwhile, though the latter half has its fair share of issues, there are some interesting ideas that are thrown around played with, and seeing the author attempt to bring those ideas together into a semi-coherent story was entertaining.

The ideas themselves are interesting, but the way they are presented is not. There aren't that many manga like this...but I would still look elsewhere for heady sci-fi stuff.

Fairly solid, short and sweet action manga.

I don't have much to say about what's good about this manga. It executes its time loop premise very well. The drama, action, and character moments are all there. The most notable strong point would probably be Takeshi Obata's outstanding art, especially when the manga shifts into more intense scenes with glorious detail in shading (although the character designs are way too similar to Bakuman).

So anyone looking for a quick, satisfying read that does almost everything right should try reading this.

Otherwise, while the execution is top-notch, the manga's concept is kind of weak. It suffers a little from ... the problem that a lot of time loop stories have, which is being ... repetitive. Seeing the same character repeat the same scenarios again and again can be tiresome, and this manga only barely avoids that problem by being short, not because it manages to somehow make those loops feel more meaningful or interesting.

The character moments in the manga are good, but it feels like there's a lot of missed opportunities in characterizing some of the overlooked characters a little more, or in showing MC develop from other characters. Some of that is implied, but it's not enough to give weight to the action scenes. The MC's pain is weighted, but the pain of the other characters' feels glossed over a bit.

Outside of the scenario, we barely know the MC's history, likes/dislikes, etc. His development as a character is, for the most part, standard. It's only later in the manga that he starts to feel a little unique. The length of the manga feels like an issue here, since it does seem difficult to squeeze in meaningful characterization outside of the plot scenario.

The conclusion is satisfying for the plot and characters, but I'm left feeling that there was little to take away from the whole thing. I can't really say that there's some noticeable theme or bit of insight, so it's difficult to relate to or feel like everything that just happened really mattered.

This was a good manga for how well it used its concept, but beyond that, it isn't that memorable. Still worth a buy for how short it is, and Obata's art is godly.

Watch the first episode. It has one of the most memorable scenes I've ever seen in anime, and that one moment is enough for me to rate this show highly, and that scene is from a slow-paced, atmospheric, character-driven show.

Girls' Last Tour (Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou) is full of these moments of innocence, hope, and the fragility of life. The character designs are adorable, the scenery is beautiful (if rusty), and the music and sound effects are soothing. These elements do well in distracting from how alone the two main girls are and how brittle those beautiful elements can really be.

The girls' lives are enjoyable to ... watch, but they are traveling to new areas and seeing new vistas because they are ultimately just searching for food. They are surviving. But when they laugh, joke, and marvel at whatever they find, it's hard not to cheer them on for them to live another day and experience more of their world's surreallity.

Their lives feel brittle, their destructed environments feel brittle, but you know what else feels brittle? The girls' friendship. They step over each other fairly often, and when they're the only ones around, it can be scary. There's a question of whether either of them will finally cross the line with their next antic, ending the relationship altogether, but it's okay. The girls are honest about themselves and each other. They don't get in the way of what the other wants to do, and they reconcile when things get out of hand. These moments that highlight the fragility of their friendship just makes that friendship more tangible and powerful, more so than other iyashikei (healing/soothing) anime, or other anime in general.

Girls' Last Tour is also pretty philosophical, asking simple yet profound questions about life and humanity as they travel through war-torn cities, yet the show isn't pretentious about it. The questions come from a childlike curiosity, seeing the remains of a world that the girls never knew and wanting to know the most basic, fundamental reasons for why the world is the way it is. Their blissful ignorance of the desires and tragedies of humanity lead to some interesting and fun conclusions, finding a way to sound unesoteric without sounding any less profound.

In general, the show is at its highest when it strikes that delicate balance between hope and hopelessness, finding joys in both as the girls whimsically ride to their next destination. Even in its episodic nature, the show manages to have emotionally powerful moments throughout the season—in between moments of pure, rhythmic bliss.

If there is any flaw, it would be the animation isn't noteworthy, particularly in CG segments with the girls' tank-like car. Most of the time, the world is empty anyway, and the girls 2D designs look like dolls so the CG still fits, but there are moments when better animation could have made some of the show's best moments even better, and the CG is a bit overused overall. It's enough to take me out of the experience slightly from a perfect score.

Regardless, Girls' Last Tour is my favorite seasonal anime in a long time. In just about every sense, it was incredibly enjoyable, and I would love to dive back into the series with a second season or rewatch in the future.

Zetsubou~ Zetsubou~

Worth watching if only for the CG animation.

Houseki no Kuni does a great job replicating the 2D anime look and feel. Sometimes it's almost impossible to tell the difference, and other times the glassy textures and reflections from the characters' jewel-colored hair makes me wonder if 2D animation could have that same stunning appeal. The many strange solid and liquid substances in the anime are a fantastic fit for the CG. They look so malleable that it looks like I could touch it.

When the characters are in the school or roaming flowery fields, it's just fun to see them bounce off each other. The ... protagonist, Phos, is especially expressive in both animation and acting. Even when plot things start to happen, Phos somehow manages to pick herself up and brighten the mood again soon after.

Yet the show is surprisingly contemplative, more often than what the bubbly protagonist might suggest. Finding purpose in one's life is a heavy theme all throughout, and it especially matters for the jeweled girls because they're immortal. How can you live for hundreds of years without losing your sanity in silence and boredom? Find something to do, and something only you can do. For most of the girls, the main antagonistic force, the Lunarians, create that something.

The mysterious, alien-like Lunarians are the catalyst for most of the show's developments in character and plot, and it unfortunately works to the show's detriment. As the antagonists, they aren't interesting. They appear the same way each time, through wormholes that suddenly appear in sunny skies. They usually appear when Phos is around. The gemstone girls usually travel in pairs, so it's usually Phos and one or two or other characters that have to deal with it. Inevitably, one of them screws up, and the others have to salvage the situation and literally pick up the broken pieces. There are very few developments that aren't reactive in nature, so it feels like the characters are just waiting around for the Lunarians to show up and speed up the plot again. In-universe, the characters DO essentially just wait around for Lunarians to come and attack them, and it's kind of boring.

The action itself makes up for it somewhat. Since all the girls are gemstones, their body parts break away depending on their durability when they take damage. It makes combat feel more visceral when a character has to break off part of their body in order to finish off a Lunarian. There are definitely intense moments to be had watching characters struggle with their last limb; it's just a shame that there aren't more interesting enemies to fight.

But while the Lunarians feel like cheap plot devices, the character development they instigate is fantastic. It's quite a sight to see how far Phos grows in such a short amount of time, and from the way the season ends, it feels as if she still has room to change. Other characters have nice moments of characterization and development of their own, so if nothing else (besides the visuals), the show leaves me satisfied on the strength of its characters.

Of course, there is still the looming mystery of why the Lunarians exist at all and their relationship with the gemstones, but I highly doubt that would change my opinion on the encounters in this season. A second season or a manga reading could answer some of those questions, but the season doesn't make me interested, despite its effort.

Houseki no Kuni is definitely unique, and I'd say it's strongest points are worth watching for. The weaker plot elements left me with a strange dissatisfaction, but not enough to regret watching it, not when there's nothing like it at the moment.

Can you feel your anxiety just wash away?

Recovery of an MMO Junkie knows about the pain of anxiety/depression and the NEET life, but instead of showing you that pain, the anime conquers these issues with unbridled power of CUTE. In the MMO world, the world is bright and colorful and everyone has a good time hanging out, raiding dungeons, and trying on new outfits. In the real world, though MC Morioka's room is usually dark and lonely, the cute character design and chibi-art comedic punchlines make you forget just how hard Morioka's life is.

Perhaps it glosses over it TOO much, but this anime isn't Welcome ... to the NHK and it doesn't want to be. The show never forgets about Morioka's issues, but it is also content to acknowledge them in the background while the foreground is filled with the fluffy stuff. The fluffiness is enough to make me smile and laugh while watching an episode, but it's such a different approach that I feel weird in retrospect. Maybe the anime could've been stronger if it made more explicit connections with Morioka's issues and the game world, but the fact that it doesn't at least makes it unique, and that's fine.

MMO Junkie's real problem is its inability to juggle its characters and subplots with the romantic plot that starts during the second half. The guild members are all great, and it's sad to see them ignored for a romance that is honestly not very interesting. The romance is slow and a bit cliché toward the end, and the show slowly moves out of the MMO world altogether and takes away from what made the show interesting in the first place. Some characters we only see once or twice, and others are left with their issues acknowledged and then forgotten soon after. The drama from the romance is too weak to justify moving away from the game setting, even though it is symbolically necessary. While the pairing itself works, the last few episodes were a bit disappointing in that regard.

Still, the fun, fluffy MMO times and extremely understated adult themes make this anime a nice watch, especially if you've experienced some of these issues yourself. It's just so CUTE.

And DEFINITELY watch the OVA 11th episode. It's a step up in quality and has a bunch of great moments, enough for me to like it more than the actual episodes. If the romance plot had more of THAT, I would've liked this show better.

Wizard's Soul isn't a great manga, but it definitely felt unique and has a nice premise going for it in the beginning. The cute art and card game shenanigans kept me going for the rest of the series, and the premise alone makes the manga very memorable. Its first couple of chapters were definitely strong, and I could give them a 7 or so on their own. However, it never really takes that next step into something more, and instead kind of reiterates itself over its single tournament arc, ending quickly over a period of little progress.

The protagonist Manaka is the star of the show. ... She twists the card game MC archetype by primarily playing "permission," a style of deck that relies on counter-spells to prevent opponents from doing anything. Naturally, she gets a lot of hate for this, and she knows it and hates herself for it. This is the primary and -- for the most part -- only conflict that drives the manga. She's forced in a situation where she must play card games, despite only knowing to play in this distasteful style and having conscious aversion to the game. Seeing Manaka win with her impressive skills in spite all of this gave me most of my enjoyment from reading. It helped that the card game itself felt like a real MTG clone that looked decently fun to play.

The problem starts when the tournament begins and steals all of the panel space that could have been used for development. Manaka develops really slowly across every match, so much of the interest in these matches instead come from her opponents and the card game antics. From a chapter-to-chapter perspective, they can be entertaining, but afterward there just isn't enough. While her opponents can be amusing, most of them are kind of flat and become relegated to commentators for the rest of Manaka's matches. Manaka doesn't really interact with them or anyone besides her obvious love interest a couple of times. There isn't much to set up future opponents to look forward to besides a few pages before the match's chapter. When the tournament really starts, the tournament venue becomes the manga's only relevant setting. None of the characters DO anything outside of the tournament matches. There are a few (mostly flashback) chapters that do attempt to flesh out the characters a bit, but while they do a decent job giving the reader a sense of what the characters are about, they fail to make me actually care about them. I would have loved to see some of these characters go out and have fun, discuss things about the overall card game scene, or play short little practice games to foreshadow upcoming developments. While the side characters do talk among themselves, they all feel so disconnected from each other, never doing much except talk about Manaka and the current match. It's not enough for me to be told about these characters' personalities; I need to be able to see it through their actions, but the manga doesn't give me much to work with. The card games are cool, but after a while, it was just too many matches and not enough personality.

It doesn't surprise me that this manga ended so quickly. It felt like that after Manaka's history was revealed and played with a little, the manga didn't build enough other interest for it to live past that. This has the side effect of making the ending, while short and possibly abrupt, feel oddly fitting for a series that ran out of good ideas in its first volume or two. If there is anything good to say about the ending, then it would be that it wasn't disappointing.

That doesn't take away from the strength of those first couple of chapters. If you ever had the slightest interest in card games and want a slightly more grounded and cynical take on it, I definitely recommend reading up until a few matches into the tournament. I would only really recommend the rest of the manga for fans of the cute characters and card game strategy.

The first two episodes are funny school life characterization stuff that was genuinely enjoyable to watch. Then the mystery, supernatural, and action elements begin to become more prevalent, and my interest dived.

This anime is plagued with issues. Some of them have to do with having too much source material to adapt and thus make the anime feel rushed or overall poorly paced. I will not be talking about those issues.

Even if an anime is poorly paced, there is a limit to how much an anime can jump from one scene to the next with wildly different tones without it being jarring. One scene can seem ... pretty tense and traumatic, and then the next scene goes to a short BS school drama thing and sours all of the emotion of the previous scene. The characters act as if they have NO MEMORY of past events unless the plot demands it, and it screams bad writing. This occurs from the very first episode and doesn't stop until the plot kicks into high gear around episode 8-ish (your mileage may vary).

The animation is serviceable in the slice-of-life-y portions, but in action scenes apart from maybe the last episode, the animation is cringe at times and almost laughably bad at others, especially with the anime's heavy use of CG. Even when the characters are standing still, I don't remember any points where they looked great. There is nothing visually interesting in this show, which really hurts it since some characters are supposed to be super powerful and action is supposed to play up the tension in some areas.

These two things alone make the anime painful to watch, but if you are willing to look past them, then you might find a surprisingly interesting story with a few twists. The problem is that the storytelling is bad enough that you might not see the story.

At the very least, I kind of liked the ending, for both ironic and non-ironic reasons. It sort of hints at the possibility of a continuation. Idk, it could go either way, but I can't say I'm excited to see another whole season with this kind of quality.

My advice: Maybe watch the first two episodes. If it looks something like you'd be interested in experiencing, stop watching and figure out some way to play the game. The anime has a different story from the routes in the game, but every route in the game is probably way better than the anime so don't look back.