Do NOT watch this series. Whether you’re a fan of the Higurashi series or have never watched it before, do whatever it takes to avoid this at all costs.
The idolized Higurashi franchise, being part of the 07th Expansion series, is well-known for its blend of intriguing murder mysteries, conspiracies, and gripping horror / thriller vibes, juxtaposed befittingly with comedic lighthearted slice-of-life moments. Seven years after its last installment, the acclaimed creator Ryukishi07 was apparently either under some complicated contractual obligations or was in desperate need of easy revenue. So he decided to drop a new project advertised as a remake, except it turned out to
...
be...an actual sequel. Countless nostalgic fans jump on the bandwagon in anticipation and delight for what this new installment has to offer. Instead, what we got here is a near-perfect epitome of what happens when one milks their own acclaimed and renowned franchise to the bone. While I’m not the biggest fan of Higurashi myself, I had my share of due respect for the original series. So when I look at this abomination and the previous season known as Gou, all I can really think was...what in the actual god damn hell was Ryukishi07 thinking? I heard people praising and defending this new installment with overly conceited and convoluted explanations; I bought none of that nonsense, and neither should you or anyone else.
Higurashi Sotsu is the sequel to the events in Gou; interestingly enough, the name of the two combine to make the Japanese term “Sotsugou”, meaning “graduation”. Regardless of whether or not that was intentional, this sure wasn’t the commemoration ceremony anyone expected or wanted. To start off, it’s stated as a followup to Gou, but it’s essentially more like a tweaked recap. Most of Sotsu consisted of reiterated content of what we’ve already seen in the original series and in Gou, with only slight differences. All the arcs progress in a similar way and all the answers are presented upfront with without any sense of mystery whatsoever. There’s no mystery. There’s no sense of intrigue or engagement. In fact, it quickly become a boring and inept cycle. The slight deviations aren’t changing the fact that we’re essentially experiencing the same damn thing over and over again. Focus may be shifted at times; sometimes to Rena, sometimes to Keiichi, sometimes to Mion. One of the fortitudes of Higurashi is that it’s able to highlight its characters in a reasonable way to make their arcs feel well-earned and impactful. None of that is present here in Sotsu. Everything feel recycled excessively to the point where nothing matters. The arcs finish void of emotion and progress. The one venture with giving some form of redemption to the likes of the initially despicable Teppei Houjou, Satoko’s abusive uncle and foster father, didn’t matter much in hindsight, if at all.
The only thing that we need to know is that one single revelation (if you want to call it that): Satoko is now the villain of the series. I can’t comprehend the need to make her the bad guy. What exactly did she do in the original series that would warrant or foreshadow her actions in Gou and now here in Sotsu? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Her reasoning to be antagonize and torture her friend Rika is so silly in context when you step back and realize what it is: that fact that Rika broke her promise to spend time with her in high school. The audacity to make this the main plot device and excuse for Higurashi’s version of the Endless Eight is astounding. Satoko thinks that her former friend should suffer a century’s worth of looping endless torture and mindless suffering, all because she overlooked a single vow between besties. This isn’t clever or engaging writing, this is just a silly and contrived interpersonal drama filled with heaps of misery porn. To add to the bedlam of ridiculousness, Satoko has those supernatural looping powers similar to that of Rika, given to her by some randomly inserted literal god character named Eua, whose looks and design are an obvious straight rip from the Umineko sister series. Her sole reasoning to enjoy observing the suffering of others inferior to her. Her motives and role to the story are so vague and muddled, only serving to add some fake sense of mystery to her, when she’s ironically just a mere engine to fuel the repetitiveness and recycling of the conflict. Seriously, what’s the deal with the need to add one-note pompous antagonists like this? If anyone has remembered how the original concluded its narrative impressively, you can despair now. Gou and Sotsu wasted away all of that. Nearly everything from the main story arcs is recontextualized. All of Rika’s efforts and development from before this unnecessary edition is essentially done away. There were no improvements or positive implications; instead, we’re given new issues instead. And as if to add more salt, Ryukishi07 decides to have a climax in the form of….a Dragonball Super battle? A ripoff of Naruto vs Sasuke? Seriously, I kid you not, everything gets truly tossed out the window from the top floor for the sake of magic battles and roid-rage clashes through loops and timelines that would make the likes of Beerus and Itachi shake their heads in disbelief. When the dust finally settles with your typical Hollywood epilogue, it's as if everything is simply back to normal; one can only ask if this was any bit worth the effort. If this was somehow a ploy to connect Higurashi with Umineko, then why go through all this pointless trouble to begin with? If anything, that would only serve to further adulterate the context of Higurashi as a whole.
The art of Gou and Sotsu is absolutely atrocious. I understand that Studio Deen wasn’t the best back then and especially not now, but they were still able to capture the enticing, thrilling, and dreary tone and atmosphere of the original story. Here with Gou and Sotsu, we got Passione, a studio who’s only known for making shows heavy with fanservice, which include the likes of the infamous Interspecies Reviewers. The overly bright and flashy modernized color palettes make the animation look stiff and cheesy. The Monogatari-like character designs are too fickle a combination. The thing is that the Monogatari series does have mystery and suspense as well, but it doesn’t focus so much on horror aspects like the Higurashi series does. Akio Watanabe’s Shaft-born style just doesn’t mesh well with the more melancholic identity and tone of the latter. Instead it makes the characters look goofy, dumpy, and hard to take seriously, like they’re the typical gag characters right out of a pure ecchi slapstick comedy. I’m not gonna lie, Gou and Sotsu would’ve come off more like a completely original show if you pretended to be blind. With all those saturated color gradients and highlights courtesy of Passione, it looks like something right outta Anime PornHub. Even with the most violent scenes, body parts and organs straight up look like spilled candy and blood genuinely could’ve been mistaken for fruit juice. It can still look unnerving to most people, I’m sure...cause I can agree that spilled food can look disgusting with the given conditions. Jokes aside, Passione’s aesthetics are far more befitting for a hentai show than a series driven by serious tension, drama, and mystery like Higurashi.
I’m not gonna say too much about the music and sound design. The opening theme is hilariously unfitting. I don’t really understand the reasoning to choose some random dubstep-esque soundtrack for a series like this other than some unspecified business reason. The ending theme and the insert song at the final episode aren’t anything special and quite forgettable, but at least they somewhat fit. The background music is mediocre at best; the only time the sound gets good is when they reuse tracks from the original. The voice acting department is really a struggle here, with Yuki Tamura at least making a valiant solo effort to channel Rika’s emotional beats.
The character department took the biggest blow in Sotsu. Back in the original story, the ensemble cast of Higurashi had a great sense of bonds due to their numerous interactions and shared growth. As much as I never really liked them, their ability to link to each other is so commendable and impressive and functioned as a main engine for Higurashi’s story more often than not. But in Gou and now especially here in Sotsu, all those positive and respectable aspects of the characters are snatched away, as they are merely reduced to toys for Satoko to mess around with during her plot for revenge. Defiled and desecrated, they’re turned into robots made to kill each other endlessly. For what? Why exactly do they deserve this? Why is Ryukishi07 undoing his beloved characters like this? While all of this is happening, Satoko continues to be the irritating cartoon level villain. Again, what’s with the random decision of making Satoko the bad guy in the first place? You’d think it would show a methodical descent into madness for her, but it doesn’t. Despite all those times she does something utterly awful to those close to her, she shows no signs of letting up or changing in any notable way like showing remorse or anything. Meanwhile, that Eua character is merely there to find pleasure in her observation of how twisted Satoko and nothing else, only acting when someone tries to intervene. Rika herself is tragically regressed to a stale typical “queen bee student” archetype and does nearly next to nothing about Satoko’s jealousy-driven actions until she finally decides to put the plug, which unfortunately simply leads to that ludicrous showcasing we see in the penultimate episode. Something else about Rika also really bugged me: why did she bother dragging Satoko along to the same school in the first place, only to end up breaking that promise, anyways, as stated earlier? I can only see this as another ridiculous plot convenience to start up Satoko’s malicious actions in the first place. It’s funny how the only remotely decent character work here involved Teppei of all people, and yet even that little development is a mere detour with minimal purpose. Everyone else cannot be considered characters at all, they’re just there to be moved as the plot demands it. Ryukishi07’s character writing here has truly fallen off the deep end here in Sotsu, and the series pretty much loses the strongest aspect of the story.
For my personal enjoyment, it’s safe to say that I absolutely hated the experience. As stated before, I wasn’t a fan of the original Higurashi to begin with, but Passione’s installment has been disgraceful to behold. I stuck through Gou and Sotsu to see if any decent revelation or development would turn up, but for the most part, it was a snoozefest at best. At the very least, Gou did have a few interesting things to observe at the time, but I got none of that here in Sotsu, on the other hand. Words couldn’t properly describe how infuriating it was to see Satoko channel her inner Scooby-Doo villain on a regular basis. Repeatedly. Over and over. Many times I lost my temper and many times I shook my head and laughed in disbelief. Not once did I feel fear or suspense, only disgust and some laughs...not from the lighthearted slice of life humor, but more from the derpiness of the bright, and flashy violent scenes. I personally don’t see how people can get easily creeped out by something like that. When it finally reached the point where Ryukishi07 had essentially ran out of ideas and went for some shounen-style battle, I was completely besides myself.
Like the Gou season, Higurashi Sotsu is an obnoxious cash-grab sequel that should’ve never existed in the first place. Riddled by ridiculous plot devices, redundant and repetitive plotting, utter disrespect of its characters, and a complete lack of purpose, it was one of the worst things I’ve ever watched in recent years. All it did was violate and disregard so much of the impressive groundwork that the original series by Studio Deen established with much care. It is completely worthless and added nothing beneficial or substantial in value to the 07th franchise. If you’re a fan and truly care for the Higurashi series, please stick to the original series by Deen and steer clear of this blasphemy. Otherwise, it’ll have you feeling extremely frustrated, dismayed, and betrayed in the end.
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Sep 30, 2021
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Sotsu
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Do NOT watch this series. Whether you’re a fan of the Higurashi series or have never watched it before, do whatever it takes to avoid this at all costs.
The idolized Higurashi franchise, being part of the 07th Expansion series, is well-known for its blend of intriguing murder mysteries, conspiracies, and gripping horror / thriller vibes, juxtaposed befittingly with comedic lighthearted slice-of-life moments. Seven years after its last installment, the acclaimed creator Ryukishi07 was apparently either under some complicated contractual obligations or was in desperate need of easy revenue. So he decided to drop a new project advertised as a remake, except it turned out to ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Sep 28, 2021
Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Spoiler
***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***
Imagine taking a great portrait like the Mona Lisa, and then furiously splashing it with buckets of different colored paint. What you get is essentially this filth of a series, and from the likes of Studio MAPPA, no less. Idaten Deities advertises itself as brainless “style over substance” entertainment, but it turns out be something far more inherently vulgar than what people wanted to acknowledge or admit. It isn’t so surprising when it turns out to be written and created by the same author who did Interspecies Reviewers, which itself was quite the shameless example of anime pornography, for better or worse. As ... much as I heavily disliked the latter being essentially anime pornography, it was at least wasn’t something I found especially offensive or grotesque. Idaten Deities, on the other hand, has a sense of embellishment that is foul and tactless in nearly every way thinkable. The basic premise of Idaten Deities sounds really neat at first. During the earlier days of human history, mysterious monsters known simply as demons attacked and came close to wiping out humanity. In response, a higher race known as deities, also referred to as the Idaten, step in and seal the demons away, effectively saving humanity in the process and maintaining peace in the world. Centuries later, humans has since advanced in technology and civilization, but have turned into their own worst enemy as a result, constantly getting into conflict with each other for multiple sociopolitical or military reasons. This is no by means anything new, but it would’ve sufficed, regardless. The long-lived deities don’t intervene, they just lay around observing stuff, their boredom fueled by the lack of adversity since the clash against the demons. The main reasoning for them to not help humans seemed compelling and mature at first: saving lives would also mean taking lives as well. I’m usually an advocate of the concept of grey morality when it’s implemented the right way. It means that the deities would eventually need to take action at some point, because the many lives that would be saved in the process of punishing and killing actual criminals would still matter more, regardless of their previous reasoning. Except that it later turns out here that the presented main antagonists turn out to be...demons themselves, revived and disguised as the radical authoritarian human figures responsible for all the main conflict. With this uninspiring and underwhelming twist, anything tactful the series had is no more. The given opportunity to judge and absolve the down-to-earth problems of humanity is discarded conveniently. The intended subtextual notes are nullified, and the show turns into your typical black-and-white action series full of conceited perilous plotting here and there that matter no more than further complications. I’m not saying a show like Idaten needs to go full-on philosophical, but what’s the point of all the chaotic splatter and action if there’s barely any sufficient groundwork done beforehand? Aside from the wasted concepts, Idaten Deities has more fundamental issues at its core. The tone is all over the place, and it seems obsessed with garnishing the obscenity, yet somehow it still wants to be something serious. Nearly every episode, the show feels obligated to insert some obnoxious, and ugly slapstick gags, yet attempts to juxtapose more serious moments. Someone gets brutally killed and turned to mush and blood, yet there’s no realistic sense of shock or impactfulness, just a stale deadpan reaction. An Idaten gets knocked around to where they have gaping holes in their bodies or broken bones all over, but then an unfunny joke or remark is inserted and immediately kills any incentive to take shit seriously. A nun is literally gang-raped on-screen to oblivion in quite visually hilarious fashion, yet she gets made fun of for being pathetic and weak. It’s commendable that the show doesn’t want to stick to the usual anime cliches, but its blatant suggestive violence and unfunny boorish humor immensely outweigh the more evocative beats this show may have had, if any at all. I've had people telling me there's subtlety and references in the jokes made. I'm not sure why we would want to know about some deep-seated meaning behind sex monsters assaulting young little boys. The pacing of the show is uneven; the narrative jumps back and forth from intense-looking action scenes to segments of tedious dialogue and contrivances. The storybuilding is uninteresting; the entire concepts regarding the Idaten and the demons as well as the history between them and humanity are delivered in literal fast-forwarded droves; they’re essentially like those extended disclaimers in a TV ad. With this inability to really establish the settings and premises in a more emphasized manner, the series is subjected to an identity crisis. I really don’t understand why this show feels the need to be simultaneously serious and funny when it can’t express any of its exalted ideologies and mechanics in a proper manner. It constantly pesters you with supposedly deep subjects while tossing all these ridiculous profane gags about rape, gory violence, sex, masturbation, and virginity. I’m not saying it’s sacrilegious to poke fun at these things if you’re watching a show that’s meant to appeal with fetishism, but Idaten Deities is too immature and unfunny to really have a good enough excuse for itself. The characters in this series are nothing memorable at all. The series continuously intends to make them look cool and quirky, but they come off as nothing more than gimmicky and annoying. There’s virtually no development implemented for them, they’re simply pulled along by the ridiculous plotline whenever it’s convenient. We get typical archetypes from the boneheaded and brash Hayato to the overly calculating Ysley to the uprighteous master figure Rin to the crazy sex-driven Miku to the evil doctor villain Oobami. Let’s not forget about that nun named Gil, who does nothing but emphasize about faith in God nonstop, but will be known more for being absolutely violated by a bunch of sexually frustrated soldiers in the very first episode. In terms of the audiovisuals, Idaten Deities does initially seem quite colorful with the artstle, but the choice of aesthetic is just off-putting. The color hues constantly change for no good reason, and the quality of the actual animation isn’t really enough to support it. There’ll be some impressive-looking cuts here and there, but the composition is a mess. Many sequences often get cluttered by annoying speedlines and awkward still frames. Many of the stylized frames are left unedited and entire scenes felt out of place and disjointed. Not surprising since this series is produced by Studio MAPPA, who are infamous for their harsh treatment of their employees and their bad habit of grabbing freelancers. Even disregarding the messiness, there’s little meaning to the drastic color changes, and the aesthetic gimmick simply comes off as completely devoid of purpose. The only time where this kinda works is with the visuals of the opening theme, which is quite impressively stylish by itself, but that is a double-edged sword, as the actual show itself simply pales in comparison. The sound design is uneven and bedridden by technical issues, as the background music plays either too loud or too soft throughout a majority of the episodes, especially during the action scenes. The OST as a whole isn’t actually that bad, but it’s not something I find memorable or impressive by any means. It’s nice to listen to by itself, but not within the show where the inconsistency in audibility gets very irritating. Much of my personal enjoyment can already be inferred from everything previously stated. I tried really hard to keep myself interested out of obligation in the hopes that I would’ve been able to think less about the plot and find amusement from the action-filled parts. That proved really hard when the show is so tonally inconsistent and the art direction. Countless times I found myself excessively annoyed by the rancid nature of the show and its fetishes and character archetypes. There was little to no engaging aspects of the show for me, whatever ideas or worldbuilding it had at the beginning were wasted for the sake of mindless fighting and fanservice. The cliffhanger ending merely served as an even more bitter aftertaste to an already stressful experience. In the end, Idaten Deities is a show whose only notable appeal is the stylish animation and not much else. Lacking a tonal identity and any commendable or interesting elements to put value in, it was a product made with no foresight or tactfulness, with everything being essentially a mishmash of different concepts that don’t mesh well at all. Even if it was fairly watchable and did some daring things, it came off more underwhelming and dull instead. I could care less about the state of its source material or whether or not it’s a bad adaptation or not, what I got was essentially a series so full of fetishes and profanity that the anime medium should avoid resorting to at all costs.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Sep 19, 2021
Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru.
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
The detective may be already dead, but this entire show was already dead from the beginning.
Tanmoshi was one of the most highly anticipated anime series from the year 2021, but ultimately ended up as one of the most disappointing and underwhelming shows, instead. With how the anime industry’s priorities are, it was doomed to be a failure from the start, and this isn’t anything new at all, especially with most light novel adaptations. However, Tanmoshi, also known as Tantei Wa Mou Shindeiru / The Detective Is Already Dead, has more inherent problems aside from the typical issues with adapting light novels. Keep in mind that ... I’m judging this series based more so on what I received in anime form, not the source material. The introduction of the story is just odd, especially with the very title of the show, and how it doesn’t seem to fit with the key visuals. The title literally indicates “the detective is already dead” and advocates mystery drama, but the art covers looks like something out of a vanilla harem romance series. I understand the series likely intended to throw people off on purpose to give the sense of suspense and speculation, but such an initial presentation risks giving the viewers a unfavorably warped vision of what to expect. The series starts off by introducing a young man named Kimizuka Kimihiko. He is presented as an individual who keeps getting into trouble due to apparently being “born unlucky”. He’s conveniently made into the “doom magnet” loner protagonist, rigged for the inevitable “faithful encounter”. May I also mention that I’m forced to accept he’s actually of middle to high school age despite looking straight up like a 20-year-old businessman? I’m not new at all to this in fiction or reality, but this case is just odd, cause his personality doesn’t seem to add up with how his maturity of his mindset may be in accordance to his age. Upon getting caught up in an airplane hijacking, Kimihiko unsurprisingly gets that “faithful encounter” of his upon meeting Siesta, a woman who calls herself “the legendary detective”. She is smooth-talking, white-haired, and very witty; a perfect character to be subjected to “simping” by the fans, as she becomes easily the most interesting thing from the show, for better or worse. After being constantly pestered by Siesta, Kimihiko finally agrees to be her sidekick, and that where’s the story begins...except not really. The premiere episode is rather long...too long, in all honesty. Double-length episodes aren’t necessarily a good choice, as they tend to test the viewer’s ability to stay interested throughout the entire length of the broadcast; it can make people lost interest to continue as a result. Shorter normal-length episodes are more favorable to allow for one to refresh and keep track of everything presented so far. Tanmoshi’s double-length premiere was half interesting, half tiresome. The first half wasn’t that a good a presentation, but it was somewhat decent enough, introducing us to the main protagonists and giving us a taste of what to expect. The best ever part was presented here: an array of impressively fluid animated cuts of Siesta fighting a random bad guy who looks like he belonged in Tokyo Ghoul. For at least a span of around a minute, it was quite a decent visual spectacle, but it merely serves to hide the dismal state of the series’ overall production quality. Nearly everything else afterwards feels so lackadaisical. The dialogue between the characters honestly feels so lethargic, flat, and suffocating, like it was practically ripped directly from the source material without anything trimmed or changed up. The second half of the premiere follows with a jarring change of pace, dropping us into a school festival segment. From what I was told, it was supposed to get us invested into Siesta as a character, but it felt more like a messy rearranging of the chronology of events in the story. By the time the episode is over, we are given that “plot twist”, that “the detective (Siesta) is already dead”. This just feels untimely. The series introduces us to the main female protagonist, only just to take her out of the picture entirely by the end of the very same episode, even if it may be temporary. After that long premiere, the rest of the story feels more like your typical romance harem-esque series with convoluted and contrived supernatural and mystery elements. More characters are randomly introduced for the sake of complicating the plot while lacking notable development or established dynamics on their end. The second female character Nagisa is introduced and established as being connected to Siesta. She is ultimately a pivotal point to initiate what was supposed to be...an emotional segment with Kimihiko and Nagisa regarding the fate of Siesta herself? The reveal itself was nothing commendable, as the direction was stale and lacked a sense of impact, with very little buildup prior. When the third female character Yui Saikawa is introduced, she is presented with barely much importance to the story. Her supposedly rough backstory related to her idol career lacks weight and doesn’t justify her twisted character motives. I sure as hell didn’t like how she easily gets all friendly in the end, despite all that previous intent to kill the main protagonist for the silliest reasons. The show’s illogical attempts to elicit emotions and expect the audience to feel for it is laughable. There’s next to nothing there to get invested in whatever backstory or background the characters get. It also really doesn’t help that the tone-deaf dialogue that I mentioned before is ever so present. There’s next to no sense of good chemistry between the characters, either; everyone seems too reclusive and obliged to initiate a free-flowing conversation. The show tries to sound witty and use humor and fanservice every now and then to try to change up the tone, only just to fall on deaf ears. The mystery elements themselves turn out to be extremely uninteresting; there’s underground organizations, android/cyborg technology, and supernatural organisms ripped straight outta Parasyte The Maxim, but there’s lack of intrigue and hook. The series doesn’t seem to know where to go and how to utilize such story aspects, as it only seems to pander to the usual tropes you’d find in any romcom or harem. Whatever further twists and revelations within the series that do come up felt either awkwardly inserted or insanely obvious. The show jumps back and forth between the present day and flashbacks of when Siesta and Kimihiko were still together. It’s bad enough that you take her out of the picture early on, but then to insert her back in after the audience was told she was dead early on...that only begets inconsistency in direction. In repeated attempts to get us as an audience to get attached to Siesta, it instead has many of us wondering why go back and forth between the past and present to begin with. What are we supposed to be truly focused on? The mystery regarding Siesta’s death? The villainous groups’ motives? The other girls Kimihiko randomly meets whom are supposed to play major roles? What exactly is the series trying to tell us? Why does it feel the need to move things out of order? The plot is literally all over the place. It fails to connect the dots when it needs to. It haphazardly plays with plot conveniences and trivialities without much care. I know it’s possible to produce a great series that follows an achronological order with the proper direction and execution, but Tanmoshi doesn’t seem to have any of that. The characters are apparently supposed to be the main strength of the series, but they’re so uninspiring and dry in terms of how they were written out. Kimihiko being presented as the “unlucky” loner makes him obnoxiously dull and hard to relate to, especially when it involves his lackluster interactions with Siesta and the other girls. I mentioned Siesta’s characterization before, but I need to mention how she doesn’t seem too useful aside from these annoying extended monologues, “magical” plot devices, and repeating the same catchphrase “Baka ga, kimi wa” over and over (oh how convenient that “kimi” is part of the main guy’s name); she ends up quite predictable and tiresome after a while. I really hate how both of the leads are made to look and sound smarter than they really are. All the other notable characters aren’t any better. Nagisa, the very female character with the closest established connection, comes off as the typical headstrong character archetype who turned out so clumsily written. Yui is the obligatory child idol character who’s said to be very mature, but has very conflicting and unfounded initial motives. Charlotte has….quite a “mother” complex with Siesta and not much else. Due to how the story direction is so disjointed, none of these characters were really given enough distributed development and highlights to really feel important. Aside from the few impressive cuts from an animator known as Ryuuki Hashimoto, the aesthetics of the show are just dreadful and soulless. Backgrounds are stitched up with zero sense of depth and realism. Inanimate objects like boats, planes, or cars seem like they were awkwardly cropped and dragged onto the frameworks right outta a photoshop app. The character designs are fairly decent but generic and seemed ripped off from numerous actual harem shows out there (like say….Date A Live?). Color tones and palettes are overly monotone and lack much variation. The camera work is uninspiring and lackluster and fails to deliver any sense of impactfulness to select scenes. Most of the overall art direction and composition in general looked amateur and half-assed. Like there was one particular scene with an idol concert that was absolutely horrendous and looked like it was done by an elementary schooler. Honestly it felt like those few amazingly fluid cuts were used to bait viewers into watching it, especially in the preview trailers. From the likes of ENGI, a relatively new studio not known for making even half-decent shows, all of this should’ve been expected, but it’s a disappointing blemish, nonetheless, and with how animation quality is more advocated and desired nowadays, it’s an extremely tough break. The soundtracks are dull and nothing special at all. The opening and ending themes are typical-sounding and not evocative enough to be something particularly memorable. Even the voice acting feels soulless and devoid of passion, as if the seiyuus don’t seem to give much care for what seems like simply another one of those countless vanilla-flavored series. I know animation and sound quality isn’t supposed be the ultimate ride-or-die rule, but art direction and writing quality go hand in hand nearly every time, but here they’re merely touching fingers. From an enjoyment standpoint, I can’t help but feel let down overall, despite having kept my expectations at a minimum. I genuinely enjoy it quite a bit early on, but I still had issues here and there. As the series progresses and jumped back and forth, it became hard for me to really keep being invested in any positive story elements. I didn’t really like or enjoy any of the characters aside from Siesta, even she ended up not being much more than mild passable entertainment. It’s not like I was expecting a godly light novel adaptation like 86 or Mushoku Tensei, but Tanmoshi couldn’t even pass for me as half-decent. By the time the series ended, I’ve given up trying to follow the confusing chronology of the plot and any particular details it might’ve had, cause it left no impact for me at the end of all of it. Tanmoshi is the epitome of both a failed adaptation and a failed anime all in one, and the near-perfect example of how NOT to write and direct a series. In the end, it winds up as yet another typical LN-derived story with no innovation or coherency to stand out from the rest of the pack. Kadokawa shat this series out without any care for the health of its production value. Perhaps the worst part is how it badly reflects its source material, which by all means should be far, far superior. Despite the popularity it begot from the light novel community, all the praise is more oriented toward its source material, instead. Unless you’re curious to see just how bad a LN adaptation can get, I suggest you turn away and look for more innovative premises and ideas, instead. Otherwise, you’ll end up with one of the biggest jebaiting moments in anime history.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Aug 30, 2021
Fumetsu no Anata e
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Any anime fan should know very well that with any piece of fiction, emotions can be a wonderful thing and make a series amazing, and the anime industry is well aware of that. When any story is able to effectively utilize many different kinds of emotions, it will definitely succeed. With that being said, To Your Eternity’s unique style is quite appealing, and most people get interested in this, hence its high popularity and reception, but it’s that very same characteristic that also brings it down. As someone who’s watched A Silent Voice from the very same author of this series, I’m shocked by how
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much praise this show got, and honestly, I don’t think most of that is even remotely warranted.
To Your Eternity is unsurprisingly deceptive. It markets itself as an allegedly deep and evocative series with a novel premise and sports neat-sounding themes like stimulation, survival, loss, and humanization. Set with an almost completely ethereal fantasy setting, it promises a compelling and philosophical journey about an empty husk developing and becoming a sentimental individual through the involvement of other people and events along the way. Unfortunately, the sad truth is that To Your Eternity is an astoundingly colorless exemplification of using emotional manipulation and exploitation in some of the most unappetizing and clumsiest ways possible. Whatever messages or themes it may have tried to convey are simply wasted or almost never touched upon in any meaningful way, as it loses itself within a delirious identity crisis. I’m not being unaware of whatever moral or ideology the show is trying to tell or express to me; what presented before me is just nothing remotely remarkable or impressive, and simply falls pointlessly on deaf ears. The premise presents us with an otherworldly being, simply referred to as “the Orb”, being sent to Earth to be observed from afar. Having the power to take on the forms of other living things through interacting and resonating with them via “simulation”, it would later be known as “Fushi” (meaning “immortal”), and the series follows its journey of meeting and interacting with people as well as its developing sense of humanity along the way. The very first episode of To Your Eternity by itself is essentially a prologue, and honestly, it’s not bad by itself. It was simple, distilled, and straightforward enough to be able to embody and transmit its intended themes and messages and foster endearing character interactions and emotions within a very short amount of time in what I consider to be a self-contained narrative. The premiere’s capability to generate sympathy and empathy as well as to raise the interest of the audience did well enough to cover for any drawbacks it did have. No matter how many times one looks at it, Episode 1 could’ve and should’ve been a standalone OVA by all means, and from there, viewers would’ve been presented with the opportunity to come up with their own interpretations of it and what may come afterwards. I believe that would be an ideal way to present this unique premise. That would not be the case, sadly. It was all downhill from there, instead. What started out fairly well became something else I could no longer recognize as its former self, whether it was intentional or not. One of the biggest drawbacks of To Your Eternity is how it utilizes the method of emotional manipulation. Its choice of usage is of the typical monotonous variety: it introduces characters and superficially fleshes them out for the sheer sake of literally sending them to the slaughterhouse. Each time a new character is presented to us, the show takes the liberty in its attempts to get us attached to them. It’s apparently easy to get baited by this because of how cliché and easy it is to chew on, despite how painfully repetitive it gets. The series consistently fails to give us any genuine and deeper incentive for us to care about them. It’s trying to make us feel strong emotions for them, but for what purpose? Is it to gratify how important they are in nurturing and developing Fushi, directly or indirectly? Is it because they’re supposedly well-written characters by themselves, besides being given next to nothing remotely noteworthy? Is it to pound home the notion that Fushi is literally carrying on their memories or “legacy”? If it’s any of those, the show doesn’t seem to transmit the intentions well. To Your Eternity’s formula is like this: introduce Fushi to a new character, get them attached to each other, add some trauma or tragedy, Fushi regresses only to bounce back at the last moment, add more tragedy on the tail end for the sake of his “simulation”, then rinse and repeat. There’s no innovation and creativity to be found here, more like one’s humdrum daily routine of getting up to go to work or school every day with no variation or detour within. The repetitive execution of this series is like a newborn baby deer, clumsy in its emotional beats and inserted humor, the latter of which I found especially annoying. The comedy in the series almost always manages to be obstructive, awkward, and unfunny, especially when it’s inserted right alongside the more tense segments. For example, one of the main characters, March, is informed that she is going to be sacrificed as part of a ritual to appease a deity figure. As the segment attempts to switch to a more serious tone with even a somber soundtrack playing in the background, we then see March displayed in a visually comical manner as she whines and cries about it while hitting someone in Looney Tunes style. I can’t tell you how much that evaporates the intended atmosphere of that moment when the series is trying to be something mature. Another good example would be involving Gugu, yet another recurring character set up for incoming disaster. We are given his backstory as to why he wears a mask and why he’s so isolated, which is supposed to give a sense of depth to his role. The show then presents a silly juxtaposition where he literally goes gaga for a girl named Rean in typical cringy romantic comedy fashion. What am I supposed to get out of this ridiculous tone shifts? Forced empathy? Humor? Or both? None of the above, in all honesty. I’m not sure how I can even begin to start feeling for a character when a series commits tone-deaf implementations like this. To Your Eternity seems hell bent on wanting to throw excessive shock value and put characters through copious amounts of needless drama and suffering, and it gets repetitive and predictable very quickly. Every time it does so comes of as far more exploitative than genuine. There’s no subtlety to be found within the hamfisted loads of theatrics and reinforced notions of torturing characters one after another. Whoever Fushi befriends during his journey is bound for suffering in one way or another, and almost all the time it ends with their demise. Emotional manipulation by itself isn’t necessarily bad, but how it’s utilized can beget many issues. When used the right way by pairing it up with profound messages and efficient thematic presentations, it can turn out extremely powerful and well-earned. What To Your Eternity does here, on the other hand, is essentially akin to taking farmed or factory-raised animals, feeding and fattening them up purely for slaughter, and then bluntly telling us as viewers to feel sad for them, as it presents their meat as an entree for us to eat it. Wouldn’t this feel awkward, especially when the series commits it repeatedly in a seemingly apathetic manner? Why not resort to other more efficient ways to elicit emotions regarding these characters, instead of just these silly cases of “misery porn”? This sort of presentation is something I cannot consider as sentimental and grounded, and it befuddles me as to how anyone can get up in the feels watching such disjointed and discombobulated sequences like that. Because of how badly this show utilizes emotional manipulation I couldn’t feel anything remotely close to being sad. I chuckled and laughed a few times at the comical inane displays. I honestly feel like this choice and formula of writing would’ve worked out fine in a fantasy novel instead, not in anime or manga form. The pacing of the story is very inconsistent. It moves at a sluggish pace with short bursts, including an oddly implemented timeskip. The segments are prolonged to extend the mindless suffering as well as forcing us to stay longer with characters that are only there to be set up for disaster. For me, personally, the longer duration served to increase my sense of irritation, as I personally find most of the cast extremely uninteresting and annoying. Plot conveniences and impracticalities are perhaps the most glaring issues with To Your Eternity. There’s so many of them that it’s extremely hard to ignore their constant obstruction even if one attempts to turn a blind eye to all of them. It’s amusing how many there are and how hard it is to choose one to poke fun at. But the most straightforward cases involve Fushi himself. For example, Fushi is said to take the form of living things he’s became attached to, but somehow he’s also able to manifest…..food? Weapons? Anything non-living with a tangible form that he recognizes? Without any particular repercussions? Whatever explanation the series attempts to give to us regarding this is more or less a cheap way out. I’m not asking for any immediate and complete breakdown, but without any decent answer, we’re forced to roll with whatever is pulled out of that magic hat. The way Fushi’s abilities are handled for the sake of the plot is also quite deplorable. When he needs them the most, they conveniently become useless, and when the stakes are no longer high anymore, usually due to someone close to him already at or through death’s door, they become effective again. It feels like as Fushi is like a curse to anyone whom he meets due to these rigged displays. Another case of hilarious plot convenience is how Gugu manages to defeat an enemy singledhandedly by just...blasting it to bits with a single fire-breath. Yes, an enemy that Fushi is outright defeated by prior to Gugu coming to the rescue. It’s hard to take anything from the show seriously when this kind of silly plotting alongside the awful tone shifts are constantly recurring. Can such a silly presentation like this here be equaled out by something deep and profound like compelling themes and worldbuilding? Yes, but we don’t have any of that here whatsoever. One more example: how is it that literally everyone’s reaction to Fushi being a shapeshifting immortal is so deadpan and half-assed? No realistic reaction whatsoever. It’s almost like they be seeing abnormal and supernatural things on a regular basis. None of the characters act rationally at all, they only move in accordance to what the story demands. Speaking of worldbuilding, there’s a need to touch upon the biggest elephant in the room: To Your Eternity’s disgraceful case of an identity crisis. To put it simply, this show doesn’t frigging know if it wants to be more so a battle shounen or a fantasy drama. Fushi was apparently placed upon the world and assigned to save and defend it from unknown invaders. This poor thing with literally no initial emotions or incentive was essentially dropped in the middle of nowhere and given a child’s tool set, with his mystical Darth Sith-looking creator (also the narrator) saying “here, fix this crap, while I observe from afar”. What the hell was that? That’s supposed to be part of good storybuilding? Yoshitoki Oima’s kind of writing works more for steady-paced episodes full of well-earned drama, not randomly implemented shounen plotting, tropes, and action, the latter looking visually underwhelming, anyways. The implementation of the mysterious Nokker entities as the enemy is so jarring and boring at the same time. They serve no good purpose other than to randomly show up and contribute more to the show’s silly theatrics. Why implement the idea of needing to save Earth from these random aliens? How is this supposed to have contribution to Fushi’s story? The constant recurring implementation of conflict takes us out of the chances of slowly building the world itself from the ground up, especially like exploring the details of the settings themselves. All that nonsense with “saving the world” could’ve been completely omitted and the story would’ve been far better off. As the show randomly fumbles with its multiple personality disorder, Fushi’s character growth is continually hindered and rendered inconsistent; in fact, the timeskip I mentioned earlier served to completely omit the visual presentation of seeing him grow through the years with a group of people he considered as something akin to family. The intent of the story was to center on showing Fushi’s development and yet we as an audience are denied seeing any satisfying highlights of such. As if To Your Eternity wasn’t already lacking in many areas already, the second half is even more diabolical in terms of writing and what ultimately had me firmly putting my foot down on it. The series then resorts to some of the most blatantly offensive and forced edgy context I’ve ever seen in quite some time. Fushi is forced onto some prison island and into some ridiculous gladiator tournament; what’s even worse is that an old acquaintance named Hayase comes after him. To add salt to the wound, Fushi outright loses to her despite the latter being a normal human being. Why is this obnoxious character supposed to be relevant? Her obsession and motives behind pursuing Fushi are hilariously shallow and contrived. The show had the gall to make Hayase one of the edgiest and unlikable characters around; hell she even makes Sugou’s case in Sword Art Online look far better and that says a lot, considering at least the latter had some actual prior buildup before going psycho himself. That’s not the same case for this deplorable fiend in Hayase here. What was the point of needing to implement this atrocity? How is all of this supposed to be building Fushi’s character? If anything, it actually made him look immensely pathetic, especially when all the sudden he wants to be a pacifist because he thinks he “killed people” simply because he got involved with their lives. While he may be right, the way he addresses and approaches this realization is too impractical and contrived to feel relatable and understandable. Watching that whole second half had me continually more baffled at how this is somehow from the same person behind A Silent Voice. While the very last episode does seem to manage to make a few amends, the damage from everything in between has already been dealt and is too immense to bear. The characters I’ve already touched upon a small handful of times already, and other than Fushi, even the featured support cast are nothing particularly remarkable at all. They’re just easily appealing one-dimensional character archetypes shallowly written as mere fuel for Fushi’s progression. March is your typical annoying and overly vocal child spouting dreams about wanting to be the ideal mother. Gugu’s characterization is riddled by the ungainly clichés of being treated as something foreign and monstrous and being part of the good old cliché of “rich meets poor and they fall in love”. His romance with Rean was like watching a comedian trying to do a stand-up session with the most cringe jokes possible. Tonari had a semi-decent segment, from being selfish to becoming more compassionate and considerate; however, even with her cheaply inserted backstory, she and her friends have no weight to their character and hence nearly zero reason for me to care. It’s even worse when the demise of her friends is something that’s supposed to be sad, but came off as comical, instead, due to how awful looking it was. Fushi himself is supposed to be the perfect character for a coming-of-age story to be experience the best kinds of development and growth throughout his journey, but the copious amounts of bad plotting, inane drama, and laughable attempts at empathy seems to regularly tamper with this. As a result, I didn’t particularly like how inconsistent it ended up being in the end. Lastly, I need to get to the visuals and the audio. The soundtracks are quite fine by themselves, maintaining a decent sense of atmosphere, but they seem lukewarm to me, so I can’t say they really contribute anything notable enough in terming of viewing experience. The opening theme in particular was honestly quite nice by itself, but nothing particularly memorable or remarkable to me; honestly, I don’t even think its upbeat tempo really befits the series, anyway. But oh geezus, the visuals. What the hell happened? To anyone thinking Brain’s Base is gonna give consistently solid aesthetic quality, please lower your expectations. While it doesn’t start off looking too bad, To Your Eternity’s animation is mostly unpolished and lacking in constant details. There’s many unnecessary jump cuts that take away from the more impactful scenes. The second half in particular, is just an absolute disaster; untimely production issues, overworking and burnout by the animation staff resulted in countless derp-looking sequences, including janky CGI, messy-looking character designs, backgrounds with no notable sense of depth or dimension. As much as the voice actors did all they can to make the scenes look good, they can only do so much. As if you can’t already tell, I didn’t enjoy this trip at all after the first episode. My enjoyment levels continually dropped with each episode as the series became more and more redundant and predictable. There was still notable incentive for me to continue watching, but I can’t say I got much positive, if at all. I previously stated that I got annoyed with nearly every one of the characters, but the one I hated most was, to nobody’s surprise, the inserted antagonist Hayase. I’m not gonna lie when I say I nearly threw up when I saw her try to sexually assault Fushi and do that...grotesque tongue licking. That was just revolting. Again, why in the god damn hell is something like this supposed to be necessary? What was Yoshitoki thinking when she was writing this part? Perhaps I’ll never know, but it again pains me to know that this sort of abysmal writing came from her of all people. To sum it up, To Your Eternity is a show that wasted so much potential. It baits you with the promise of a touching and mature story about an empty shell growing and becoming human, but instead presents to you a childish incomprehensible amalgamation of loose parts. Riddled with weakly written characters, badly directed scenes, horrendous production quality, abysmal storywriting, squandered progression, and a tragic identity crisis, all it does is try to make you cry and weep for characters whom you shouldn’t give a damn about in the first place. If only the story was able to change its prioritizations just even a little bit, I think it would’ve fared a lot better off. Instead, we got one of the worst fantasy shows I’ve ever seen, and all because it didn’t know what it truly wanted to be.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jun 18, 2021
SSSS.Dynazenon
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings
The entirety of the time I watched the SSSS series, both Gridman and Dynazenon, one big question kept bugging me: what ever has happened to the likes of Studio Trigger and that sense of creative freedom?
SSSS Dynazenon is yet another tokusatsu edition via the courtesy of the tag team of Akira Amemiya and Keiichi Hasegawa, the latter of whom is well known for his work on the 1990s Gridman The Hyper Agent series from which the SSSS series is derived from. As one might suspect right away, Dynazenon is connected to the SSSS Gridman anime from 2018, unsurprisingly enough. Much like its predecessor, Dynazenon is ... essentially a reboot of the classic Gridman franchise, catering to a modernized audience with stylish art and more befitting themes, while still appealing with the sense of nostalgic tokusatsu entertainment. However, in its endeavors to recreate and stay faithful to the original essence of Gridman, Ultraman, and other tokusatsu/kaijuu series in general, Dynazenon is still riddled by the very overbearing qualm that Gridman was also held back by: the ability to stand out for itself, like many previous Trigger anime did (or at least try to). I understand that it’s not absolutely necessary to live up to the reputation of Studio Trigger and its go-to style, but when the series is a whole is grounded as essentially modernized “adaptations” of a much older franchise, the ability to get creative is significantly compromised early on, if not completely. The story starts out with a high school boy named Yomogi randomly running into a mysterious man by the name of Gauma, who claims to be a “Kaijuu User”. Not long after, the city is suddenly under attack by an enormous surreal monster, and the stranger summoned the giant mecha known as Dynazenon to fight. Yomogi, his classmate and love interest Yume, a local shut-in named Koyomi and his cousin Chise are sucked into the conflict and must team up, super sentai style, to fight against the kaijuu attacks and stop whatever (or whomever) is responsible for them. Truth being told, the story is extremely generic at heart, and I’m not sure there was enough weight to balance that out. The narrative structure of Dynazenon is very similar to that of Gridman for the most part, for nearly every single episode. It’s essentially rinse-repeat: first half of mundane dabbling through the main cast’s daily lives and activities; second half comes with a monster-of-the-week being summoned by the likes of Team Kaijuu Eugenicists and launching its assault, with the last several minutes involving Team Dynazenon taking down said entity. There’s probably no need for that much specifications, but the fact still remains: even with some variations in between, nearly every episode’s pattern is quite repetitive and predictable. “Show don’t tell” scenes are flaunted like decorations. Randomy tossed terms and cheesy names are dangled around to put on a facade of uniqueness in personality. Fabricated sensations of dread and tension in otherwise silent awkward segments are used to justify the extended drainage of airing time. Typical philosophical mumble jumble like “these monsters feel emotions, too” and “you desire to fight them more than protecting” are tossed in to make the narrative seem more deep and complex than it really is. Perhaps much of this wasn’t intentional, but it seemed to me that the plot felt too structurally simplistic to properly bear the weight of whatever subtlety or nuances the story may have attempted to utilize. There’s no genuine hooks, no explorative themes or topics, not a single concept or idea utilized in an interesting way to make the buildup and payoffs worthwhile. Every episode we are given some exploration into the recurring characters’ livelihoods, as well as some of their backgrounds, aka Dynazenon’s “slice of life” segments. The minimalist method of attempting to flesh out the cast members is commendable and the subtleties in the supposedly “organic” interactions between them is nice by itself. However, the characters themselves aren’t quite particularly complex, profound, or remarkable by any means; much like the plot itself, the cast is quite facile for the most part. It wouldn’t have been a necessarily bad thing, but the lack of overall depth of the cast doesn’t help or balance much when the rinse-repeat format itself becomes tiresome until the last couple of episodes, where the show then decides to shovel in an “eleventh-hour” run-of-the-mill plot twist to make the excuse for an obligatory heart-pumping “final boss” battle and evocative wrap-up of sorts. This would be cool for the most novice of viewers, but after one has seen the same sort of theatrics over and over in other similar shows (albeit usually without the same visual flashiness), it gets quite tedious. It’s even more conspicuous when one is aware of many of the plot holes not being properly addressed or even set up properly for foreshadowing. Like that of its predecessor, Dynazenon’s plot problems really stem from its overbearing reliance on being faithful to the original source material, thus causing them to lack the strong sense of innovation and novelty that would’ve otherwise be more appealing to the masses. Not even the sense of self-awareness was close to enough to fill in the gaps. Amidst the number of fundamental misgivings, Dynazenon undeniably has fared very well in terms of animation and sound directing. The animation scenes look really smooth and brilliant, and the sound design is nice and intricate. The shot framing and dynamic camera work help to make the fight scenes more exciting and immersive. The sound design gives off a raw and authentic vibe, from the crumbling of the ground beneath the massive kaijuu to the mechanical sounds of the transformations to the visceral trading of blows between giant hero and giant monster. Not every part is filled with action, of course, but even the audio details are still there, like the clamoring of the public masses to even the minute sounds like someone randomly tapping on their handheld devices. Every now and then, the show tosses in classic soundtracks from the original Ultraman franchise to further hamfist the sense of nostalgia. The voice acting switches between mundane and expressive, the latter instance being rather amusing. The numerous jump/smash cuts are intentionally used to scroll through the non-action portions of the episodes to depict the angsty of youth. Often at times, though, they can feel jarring and disconnecting especially if one wants to be given more reason to care about the cast. The art design is nice but quite average in comparison to most of Trigger’s previous works. At the very least, the impressive aesthetic composition has made the series quite watchable and visually appealing in spite of the lackluster storyboarding. The characters of Dynazenon, as mentioned before, are quite unremarkable, and don’t have a whole lot to really stand out for themselves. The entirety cast are a walking bunch of archetypes that don’t have many notable traits for themselves. Yomogi is your typical high school age male protagonist; his mentality is pure and righteous, he wavers every now and then but always manage to pull the most amusing of shounen-like sequences. Literally in one episode he pulls something akin to Simon The Digger and manages to break everyone out of an genjutsu rather easily. Gauma is that enigmatic loud and brash figure, established as an eventual plot device put on strings to connect to the underlying mystery and/or conflict. Koyomi is that awkward nerdy shut-in adult, though remotely relatable to a degree, with obvious social issues and is often blatantly displayed as pathetic and almost always getting the short end of the stick with his daily life. The aforementioned’s cousin Chise is that happy-go-lucky girl with a random and briefly inserted background of solitude that was never really touched upon more than one. She only gets more highlighted upon randomly befriending a friendly kaijuu, but the narrative misses out on the chance to even slightly flesh her out. Yume is also quite an archetype, but she at least gets more of a decent background check involving her past. Her inner conflict involving her deceased older sister gave a sense of genuine value to her complexity to where I was actually able to care for a character more than the rest. Additionally, her usually quiet stoic nature was complementary to the added background context, and while her little character arc wasn’t as substantial as I’d like it to be, it amounted to somewhat enough at the end to have her development be the most acknowledged, if not the only one. I admittedly wasn’t particularly a fan of her romantic relationship with Yomogi, though, on the other hand, as I felt it may have somewhat adulterated much of that progression. The group Team Eugenicists are practically akin to a spinoff of Team Rocket from the Pokemon series, albeit with no consistent intentions or schemes. They amounted to being bombastic anarchistic figures want to use kaijuu to “free” the world, yet they themselves are chill people who seemed fine with the current society as it is. Their motives are straightforward and blatant; they advocate the whole “take over the world” idea, but it amounted to minimal value at the end of the day. They only exist for the sake of the SSS series always needing some obligatory half-baked villainous group. If the story itself wasn’t so fundamentally weak, perhaps this level of characterization would’ve been forgivable due to the former balancing things out. I wouldn’t say I didn’t enjoy Dynazenon at all, but it was a very inconsistent experience. The first impressions for me weren’t so bad, but I didn’t find myself particularly hyped at any point in time while watching. Due to the repetitive tone shifts of Dynazenon, it was such an unsettling feeling of moving back and forth. Sitting through the first halves of each episode wasn’t all that easy, and often at times my attention drifted. Even the action-filled portions, as eye catching and raw as they were, don’t feel consistently enticing and exciting, especially for a very seasoned viewer like myself. Some segments had me chuckling a bit, and others had me rolling my eyes. Being dealt with such a mixed experience, I found the value of enjoyment hard to put enough account for in the hindsight of things. I couldn’t find myself getting behind any of the characters or their motives and/or backstories, with the exception of Yume for reasons stated earlier. Dynazenon may play a huge part of what is now Studio Trigger’s prized ongoing cashcow in the SSSS franchise, but aside from the flashy aesthetics and clumsy attempts to look like something profound and organic, it never really went anywhere in the end. It simply meandered around pointlessly and never tries to make a name for itself. Riddled by jarring plot problems and an inability to address or set them up for later, it ended up as just another sakuga-filled display full of heart and spirit, but not much tact or ingenuity, created specifically for the tokusatsu nostalgia, very much like how Gridman was. Hopefully, one day….one day….Studio Trigger can truly “save anime” again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Apr 3, 2021 Not Recommended
Horimiya had the potential to be a truly great series, but it immensely squandered it.
I genuinely wanted to like everything about it from the story to its characters to its gorgeous aesthetics and visual directing. I truly desired to see this show as something deep, dynamic, wholesome, and metaphorical. I wanted to believe this was a series that can boast and fulfill its unique takes and subversions of the typical romcom genre. But as both an adaptation and an anime in general, Horimiya just simply failed to take care of the basic fundamentals. The story initally starts out fairly strong with the hooking premise of a ... guy and a girl seemingly on opposite ends of the social spectrum. Kyouko Hori is the apex popular girl, the idol of the classroom, and a magnet for rumors and hearsay; energetic, outgoing, hardworking, and sometimes bad-tempered, she is the established tsundere female protagonist. Izumi Miyamura is the antisocial guy, the mellow and gloomy individual who’s hard to approach and have a proper conversation with. By chance, the two main protagonists discover each other’s secrets and soon develop a very close relationship as a result of them promising to keep those secrets to each other. This sort of setup isn’t that unusual, when you consider Toradora and KareKano’s existence. Except that in this case, Hori and Izumi’s secrets aren’t exactly something intriguing or anything worth hiding; Hori is just essentially like a mom figure within her household and is usually calm and non-abusive, while Izumi, when not in school, is practically a kind and very sociable bishounen figure who casually wear ear piercings and displays tattoos like it’s the most normal thing in the world. These are not things I can see worth covering up, as it doesn’t really make the two characters or their relationship particularly interesting and innovative as they could’ve been. Rather, these facets feels more like easy baiting and a dull excuse as a catalyst to start their romantic development. Nothing interesting story-wise really develops that encompasses those “secrets” of theirs, and their close friends and associates would eventually find out naturally, anyways, as the two’s relationship become more apparent and noticeable to others. Now here’s the most problematic part of Horimiya: the pacing. The god damn awful and discombobulated pacing. At first, the series would seem alright in terms of getting the audience intrigued by the bright-looking cast and how they interact; at around the halfway point, unfortunately, the narrative format quickly becomes repetitive and tiresome. Nearly every episode feels like a mashup of separate segments without a coherent overlying narrative, and only every now and then detours back to the primary storyline regarding the main couple. As a result, we get copious amounts of awkward jump cuts and really jarring siegeways between segments and episodes. The tone becomes inconsistent due to too many shifts and swings, to the point where the overall story can feel tone-deaf, especially with the long pauses between character dialogue. Without any orderly fashion, the development in the series actually feels both rushed and dragged, and any drama segments or silly comedic gags feels so contrived, redundant, and stale, failing to even contributing to building anything for the cast, either. Chunks of the narrative are compressed and/or cut in an attempt to shove an entire 100-140 chapters worth of storytelling from the source material into a mere 12-13 episodes. The main couple’s progression is cut down and feels inorganic, while the supporting cast’s own sidestories are almost completely ignored and reduced down to practically mere confetti that amounts of almost nothing significant other than letting us know that Hori and Miya aren’t the only god damn humans in the series. It’s so dumbfounding how the major points were placed as well. A third of the way in, we already have immense romantic feelings and a confession. Three episodes later, the two have intercourse. Yes, indeed, barely just over halfway through, the two have already taken their relationship that far, with nothing substantial or heavy enough developed prior. By the end of the series, only 1 cour long, we already have a marriage proposal and high school graduation. The anime just simply skipped all the way to the endgame, which isn’t surprising at all considering the reputation of CloverWorks, a studio well known for the wrong reasons when it comes to source material adaptation and story-pacing direction. I also think the writer may have just ran out of ideas at some point and just tossed in random run-of-the-mill gags you’d see in literally hundreds or thousands of other romantic comedy series. In terms of the characters, Horimiya’s cast of characters aren’t very impressive overall. While they may be initially come off as endearing, loveable characters, not much is truly fleshed out enough to really make a statement. Kyouko and Izumi’s characteristics, as mentioned before, turn out to be something not particularly fascinating or subversive. One thing I want to note: I found Kyouko’s masochist side rather perplexing and unnecessary. While I can understand it’s due to her being tired of being treated nicely due to her non-abusive nature, this dumb fetish often places her romantic relationship with Izumi in a really bad light, making it come off as toxic and abusive. While it’s funny initially, there’s obviously no point to it in terms of achieving the story’s initial objective, and it doesn’t add any positive element to the romance, either; in short, it’s akin to pointless fanservice. On top of that, Izumi’s own background (especially regarding him constantly seeing an image of his past other self) and established connections with other characters don’t seem to amount to enough, due to the story’s compression. As a result, Izumi’s backstory felt like something too conveniently placed to make him seem more compelling as someone who was almost completely antisocial due to some conveniently implemented backstory. In a multi-cour season, this would be better handled and developed to make Izumi more genuinely endearing as a main character, even if his background setup is too typical. The rest of the cast genuinely seemed far more interesting in comparison, though not exactly anything groundbreaking or innovative, either. For one example, Yuki Yoshikawa is that “happy-go-lucky” girl who is almost always bubbly and easy to get along with, yet hides a more melancholy side of her that tries to hide negative emotions and feelings as much as possible. Such a character like that could’ve gotten much more expansion upon, as her characteristics make her interesting when it comes to her addressing her own romantic affections. Another example is Sakura Kouno; she is a hardworking and responsible student council member but struggles with her own self-confidence and self-worth. The two aforementioned supporting characters seem to genuinely have something more substantial and deep than the main couple in terms of “secrets” and a reason to have their own facades, as well as their own relationships with other members of the cast. Unfortunately, the anime merely glosses over their respective stories, finishing them within half an episode, leaving them and other non-main characters underdeveloped as mere abstractions in the background, often never showing up even once for a good amount of episodes, as the narrative exclusively caters to the main protagonist duo. Due to the anime’s inability to allow the story to explore all the recurring characters as much as possible, the latter all come off as archetypal caricatures. If there’s one thing I can’t really complain about regarding Horimiya, it’s the visual aesthetics. The animation implements a lot of visual metaphors quite nicely, especially in terms of characterizing Izumi’s mental transition in the opening theme visuals, from being initially dark, gloomy, and lonely, to being bright, lively, and blissful. Lots of colored shifting shadows and camera angle shots were able to accurately portray the mood and the inner emotions of the characters. The character designs are also very nice and look almost exactly like how they do in the manga. Aside from the occasional derpy deformed looks during the comedic segments and awkward standstills and pauses due to bad jump cuts, the visual department is quite fine. As for the sound department, it’s pretty typical. The OST isn’t exactly something to love, but at the very least it tries to properly convey and encompass the tone or emotions, even if the segments themselves don’t have enough weight to them at all. The voice-acting is also above-average; the voice actors put in notable effort though perhaps not enough in certain scenes (which is understandable due to how awkward it can feel with cutting corners); sadly though, that’s doesn’t amount to quite enough. As much as I initially enjoyed the show and actually defended its rapid disorientated pacing at one point early on, my experience with Horimiya went awry real quick. While I found much entertainment and amusement when the show is on its comedic segments despite the latter being essentially noncontributory, I often find myself really confused and taken back when trying to follow the romantic and dramatic developments in the series. When a show like this clearly doesn’t know if it wants to be more like a 4-koma episodic format or a more straightforward shounen romcom narrative, I can’t help but felt like I’ve been constantly misled, especially by moments, like Yuki and Sakura’s side stories, that were supposed to be far, far more evocative than how they were handled in anime form. In some of the more cringe moments, especially regarding Hori’s masochist side, while I may laugh a little bit, at the same time, I can’t help but wonder: what the actual f--- was the point of putting that? I don’t even want to start with the pacing Horimiya chose. The excruciating amount of jump cuts get irritating and obstructive, and don’t allow me to thoroughly take in the preceding segments, forcing me to adjust to each following one rightaway. I essentially was unable to get into a proper mood every time due to the random tone shifts, leaving me frustrated and disappointed each time an episode ends. By the time the series finally ended, I was left feeling like I was cheated out of what would’ve been a wholesome and fulfilling experience. In the end, Horimiya immensely faltered as both an anime and an adaptation due to the series’ inability to maintain something coherent and consistent with its story and cast. Considering the notable effort poured into its production, especially with the audiovisuals, it feels like yet another wasted effort by CloverWorks. As someone who has admittedly read the manga of this series, I can’t really suggest reading the latter, either, but I will say that it obviously at least handles the in-between stuff much better than whatever this tragic display of an adaptation did.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Dec 26, 2020
Kamisama ni Natta Hi
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
Jun Maeda is practically a broken record at this point. It’s honestly a tragedy that the aforementioned quote quite accurately defines the repeat criminal offenses of the all-too-familiar and infamous writer, whom also co-founded the visual novel studio known as KEY. Having previously created and put much of his work into previous popular titles like Kanon, Clannad, Little Busters, Angel Beats, and Charlotte, Maeda unveiled yet another product of his continually recycled method named Kamisama Ni Natta Hi (also known as The Day I Became A God), promptly ... declaring that it would be one of the most heartbreaking anime series of all time. Considering the kind of reputation, for better or worse, that Maeda has had in the past, it’s no surprise that there would be a large number of people who would become curious about another similar-looking series. Unfortunately, the result of this new project was just a perplexing and tiresome disarray of poorly handled tropes and cliches with one of the most ponderous final stretches I’ve seen from the anime medium, quite contrary to what the overconfident Maeda had previously promised. Instead of a wonderful display of utilizing and combining emotions, drama, friendship, and other associated themes, Kamisama Ni Natta Hi was a literal debacle due to sticking to a redundant and repetitive formula that Maeda has continued to implement adamantly. When considering how the same recipe has had a lot of success for some of his previous series in the past, one may wonder: what in the world happened here? To start things off, Kamisama’s story takes place in an unspecified rural region of Japan, and centers around a high school teenager named Yota Narukami, who encounters a strange and peculiar young girl named Hina Sato with an annoying surname complex and a preference to be referred to as Odin. She claims to be a god with omniscience and declares that the world will end in 30 days. Right from the get-go, the story already starts out in an inane and predictable way. Aptly noticing that Yota and his family have names related to gods as well, HIna continually follows him around and is also conveniently welcomed by Yota’s parents into his residence, thus becoming regularly involved with Yota and his friends’ daily livelihood. It really bewilders me as to how she’s allowed to do this and go about as she pleases, even from strictly fictional standards. For about 7-8 episodes, the series is centered around Yota and Hina going around solving other people’s issues, which includes that of his friends and family. The whimsical random and ludicrous ventures ranged from participating in a mahjong tourney to filming a movie to playing a baseball game (Maeda and KEY sure have a thing for baseball, huh?). As dumb as they come, these episodic segments are meant to develop the characters and their relationships for a final dramatic stretch; however, with how each problem or issue is approached and effortlessly solved with Hina’s “god powers”, and how every “character-of-the-week” conveniently becomes a friend, or suddenly has more trust and faith in Yota, feels quite cheap and doesn’t pertain much to any overlying narrative structure at all. As a result, the segments come off as pointless filler and don’t really add much, if at all, to the plot. Jun Maeda usually starts out his works with a very lighthearted and comedic first half, and when it comes to comedy, there will inevitably be a lot of subjectivity depending on the type of comedy used, so it’s understandable why many people would hate him for this habit. That being said, I think many people can agree when I say that the comedy here in Kamisama is not only dreadful, but also detrimental to the story itself. It’s bad enough that the comedy comes off more irritating, noisy, and unproductive, but the comedic segments themselves take too much of the spotlight within the episodes than any genuine character work that does occur. Comedy is supposed to highlight the development of friendship, not block it out entirely. Time and time again, these overplayed farces continually obstruct any attempts for more down-to-earth or simplistic straightforward approaches to actually progressing important story elements that would’ve been essential in terms of prepping the cast and the story for when the most dramatic stretch comes around. Instead, the series is consequently left with no substantial footing, the characters are not fleshed out to make them endearing or memorable, and the plot comes off overly stagnant and unprepared by the time that “emotional” segment unfolds. In a narrative where consistency and buildup are absolutely essential, 8 whole episodes were completely wasted. In all honesty, though, if all of the series was simply consisting just these folly moments of Hina and Yota playing helpers for other people, perhaps it would’ve fared better; even if it doesn’t turn out complete or necessarily good, it probably wouldn’t have fallen hard as it actually would later on. Another thing to point out is that there was a recurring bit regarding Yota wanting Hina to help him woe his childhood friend Kyoko Izanami (whom is also aptly named after a god). It was a somewhat regular and rather entertaining gag, but to me, it honestly felt like an actual legit story element at the time. While it could’ve been quite overbearing, there was an opportunity for the series to go off the beaten path and establish what would’ve been a very interesting case of a love triangle. Instead, Maeda put it to the side and simply went with the case of Yota and Kyoko’s friendship improving. It doesn’t help that opportunities like that are shafted by the episode limit and Maeda’s stubbornness to stick to the same old method. While the majority of the first half was a mess, episode 5 did have at least one actually good segment regarding Kyoko. In fact, I’d even go out and say that it could’ve been watched as sort of a standalone presentation. Sure, like with the other episodes, the setup was pretty cheap and rushed, but there was actually genuine emotion there, and it was without a doubt probably the best thing the show ever got. From there, it was a really good opening to further develop Kyoko with future episodes, and considering the type of character she is, her being likely an important point in the story wasn’t out of the question at the time. Perhaps it’s just me having a soft spot for characters like her, but nevertheless, I felt like this was a severely missed opportunity for Maeda to perhaps try something different, instead of then just casually tossing Kyoko’s role to the side to just her being a mere supporting character of the “nakama” boat. By episode 9 was where the “real drama and emotions” in Kamisama were supposed to begin. Prior to this, there were small segments throughout the previous eight episodes that were hinting to a big reveal, but the way they were delivered felt so jarring and overly serious that it’s hard to take them seriously even at just face value. As for the actual final segment itself, not only did it leave me so perplexed, but also completely disappointed and displeased by how uncreative it was. Hina was, of course, not really a god and is actually afflicted with a fictional terminal disease. Yes, a made-up severe illness, conveniently set up by Maeda in an attempt to tug on the heartstrings and try to make the audience get emotional. This kind of writing nowadays is way too outdated, and there was no weight to the dramatic moments due to lack of any decent buildup prior to it. Furthermore, her omniscience ability is based off some silly and convoluted sci-fi foolery where said context was keeping her alive. Yota and Hina also suddenly having apparent romantic feelings for each other plays up more on the overdramatic context. With the way Hina and Yota were interacting for the entirety of the show, this just didn’t add up. At this point, this recurring process of utilizing plot, romance, and drama-orientated narratives and combining them with supernatural and/or sci-fi elements has grown quite tiresome. Yes, people, it’s literally the same old Maeda formula again: a comedic first half, a romantic middle segment, and a dramatic final stretch. The biggest reason it didn’t work here at all was because he wasted too much time highlighting the comedic horseplay instead of having the lighthearted segments actually add sufficient context to the story, the characters, and/or even the very setting itself. Coupled with missed opportunities and disjointed, hamfisted character interactions, Kamisama ended up as one big excruciating and clumsy stumble to the finish line. The fact that it ends with a very convenient sort of conclusion with no sense of payoff or satisfaction doesn’t sit well with me, either, and it hurts to know that many people will easily get suckered into such flimsy wrap-ups like that. With most of the production being handled by P.A. Works, a studio usually under much scrutiny, due to their association with drama writers like Jun Maeda and Mari Okada, and known for its high-quality artwork, recurring slice of life / drama elements, and collection of mostly anime-original shows, which are honestly hard to come by nowadays, one can expect Kamisama to look really good in terms of audiovisual department. The artwork looks fairly nice all around, using very bright color tones and border lines to illuminate the rural backdrops and attempt to represent the story’s initially lighthearted atmosphere. At times, though, the colors and lightings may get too bright and seem very out of place in some scenes, even in a setting where sunlight is in full effect. The character designs are fine but nothing particularly special to really go into detail about. There are well-placed subtleties and points of symbolism throughout the series, but they honestly would’ve amounted to so much more if there was better writing involved. While the backgrounds do look nice at first glance, they often seem too plain and uninteresting for the first place, and lack the liveliness to give the viewers a more immersive experience. The soundtracks are really good for the most part and do help set the appropriate mood whenever needed, but aside from a few theme songs sung by Nagi Yanagi (who also did the opening themes for the Oregairu series), none of them are particularly memorable. As for the voice acting, I won’t say it’s bad, but the majority of the dialogue, especially during the more emotional parts feel really forced or even half-hearted. I’m not really surprised since I can imagine even the seiyuus finding it hard to truly get emotionally invested into it to say their lines with the way the show took its course. The character department for the most part is quite abysmal and void, due to the aforementioned issues regarding Maeda’s formula. Nearly every single notable character is quite plain and don’t really get any genuine sense of development. There’s nothing to really make them seem important or momentous to the series. While they do have distinct personalities, the characterization is very black and white. I found Hina Sato absolutely annoying and detrimental to the show. She pretty much forces herself upon everyone else and expects them to look up to and praise her for her abilities. Yes, her abilities did help people, but with the way her character is, just going around contributing to society in some way just doesn’t really cut it. Her comical segments involving Yota and the others are just awfully cringe, and are highlighted much more than necessary. The fact that she’s the center of nearly all the comedic segments makes the experience even worse, and she herself doesn’t actually get much meaningful development, if at all, unless you wanna count the whole forced romance parts. Yota himself is basically your typical selfless male protagonist who is conveniently a friend (and chick) magnet, and rigged to be Hina’s savior and hero despite the story starting out with him having feelings for someone else. Otherwise, he would be merely an insignificant component. The only character, as I mentioned before, that I personally did like and saw a faint glimmer in, was Kyoko Izanami. From whatever background the series did provide, and whether or not people will care about that episode 5 or not, she was someone that I thought truly had the best opportunity for actual growth compared to literally everyone else in the series, due to her introvert personality and how she became as such in the first place, even if she was not a main character. With the way episode 5 went, it gave me more reason to believe so, and it’s quite tragic that Maeda didn’t consider other possibilities, so her focused segment simply became another broken toy tossed aside and thus ends up coming off as overly mawkish and cheap. Because of numerous misdemeanors like this, we are left with a very overall poor showcasing in terms of character work, something that this show should've prioritized more than anything else. In terms of enjoyment value, I can say that for the most part, it was ruined a lot by the comedic segments. Sometimes I may get some laughs and crack some jokes here and there early on, but as the series wore on, the experience became quite tiresome and laborious. Many times I really wanted to skip through the comedic segments knowing that they’re likely not contributing anything important to the story, anyways, plus they’re just...simply not funny to me. Other than some of the soundtracks as well as the segments involving Kyoko, I couldn’t really find much more value in terms of pure enjoyment. Having been exposed to the Maeda formula several times before and being rarely ever impressed by it, I found myself basically kinda going through the motions for the most part. It got even worse when it came down to the “big reveals” and the “real drama” parts. Episode 9 in particular had me besides myself because of how lacking, superficial, and fabricated the “emotional” parts felt. By the end of the trip, I was left in a mixed bag of emotions, not knowing whether or not I should feel extremely mad or sad at how discombobulated this whole trip went. In the end, Kamisama Ni Natta Hi is yet another failed product by Jun Maeda since the likes of Charlotte, and arguably his worst one yet. It really bothers me as to why the man himself insists on using such an outdated method of writing drama in this current era of the anime medium, as this show has been nothing much more than a disgrace to it. After this mess, I honestly would implore him personally to take a step back for a while from the anime industry to rethink things and perhaps try something new. I don’t want this vicious cycle continuing any further. Maeda is no longer the acclaimed writer he used to be. Times have changed, and its time for him to make a full renovation as well as new ventures, instead of wasting time continually manufacturing sappy soap operas like this one. As for this show, I honestly cannot recommend this to even any die-hard Jun Maeda / KEY fan out there unless they’re that easily manipulated emotionally. There’s far better options out there than this forgettable P.A. Works by-product.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Dec 24, 2020
Akudama Drive
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Spoiler
Akudama Drive is one of those easily captivating and enticing sci-fi action flick series. Lots of flashing aesthetics, bombastic action, sheer madness, ludicrous characters, and a cool-looking hi-tech environment. With all of this in one package, being created and written by none other than Kazutaka Kodaka, the creator of the Danganronpa franchise, well as being influenced by classic films like Pulp Fiction, Blade Runner, and The Ghost in the Shell, it’s not surprising that many people would instantly be hooked on it and praise it so much.
But the truth is, Akudama Drive is akin to a bunch of discombobulated parts tossed into a blender in ... unruly fashion, or quite literally, a runaway train bound for wreckage. What was working out so well early on as a very promising presentation from the otherwise hectic year of 2020 simply unraveled down the stretch. So then you ask: what exactly went wrong? To start off, Akudama Drive is set in a futuristic Japan, specifically the regions of Kansai and Kanto, previously ravaged by war and conflict. Its initial appearance comes off as a very urbanized and splendid-looking state-of-the-art utopia, but underlying that mask is something else entirely that clearly defines this show’s setting as a dystopia filled with underlying criminal activity. Highly skilled and/or dangerous criminals are labeled as “Akudama” to be noted separately from normal civilians, while the Executioners are the law enforcers meant to handle and oppose them. For the most part during the series, there is very little groundwork regarding any proper approach to exploring the dystopic world itself, and any exposition covered is usually via regularly applied silly-looking televised cartoon skits, which actually do a fairly decent job of explaining the history. Otherwise, everything is pretty much at surface-level, as the majority of the concepts and themes within the show are underdeveloped and unsubstantial. The recurring subject of moral ambiguity, especially regarding the Akudama and the Executioners, keeps coming up every chance it gets. It’s obvious to see and recognize they’re there, but there’s not enoutgh deeper context to properly support them and make them significant enough to tie them with the main characters, even with subtleties here and there. The direction of the story starts off fairly optimistic with a very well-paced progression as a consistently entertaining ride filled with a whole lot of blustering horseplay and shameless implementation of the “rule of cool”. A normal unnamed teenage girl is hilariously dragged along into a grand scheme along with a randomly gathered group of Akudama and given instructions to work together to “go against the system” and complete tasks along the way, with the promise of getting a huge fortune. Being initially uninvolved and unwilling to participate, the girl, aptly entitled as “Swindler” in ironic fashion, is forced along with the gang into the chaos. Every now and then, she vocalizes in how ridiculous or dangerous on the decisions made or actions taken. Coupled with the multi-colored composition of the different personalities in the Akudama gang, and it honestly made for a rather nonsensical yet self-aware wild ride. For a good amount of the first half, it was honestly going fairly well in the right direction despite the surface-level context and choice for a nameless narrative (meaning none of the characters in the series are given actual names). The second half of the series was when things start to unravel. The pacing starts to get rather sluggish as the story starts to accumulate more and more details regarding the settings itself, the mood of the story starts to shift to an abnormally serious one, and not in a pleasant fashion. The main characters are killed off, one by one, without so much as a consistent sense of impact. I will not deny that the narrative likely intended on killing off a number of the recurring cast members in the first place, but the way it did just that felt so….senseless. Practically like a version 2.0 of Akame Ga Kill. Gone was the sense of self-awareness that gave the series its identity. Gone were the chances to properly flesh out, develop, and/or realize the captivating main cast, not even so much as a sliver of some sort of backstory for any of them. Gone was the silly fun of the grand heist and now replaced with some overly conceited and unpleasant sense of anxiety and tension. The tonal shift may supposedly befit the show’s dystopic background, but there’s not much established beforehand to make the transition all that much smoother, and it comes off as jarring and obstructive. Sure, the themes are still very much expressed, but never properly explored, and by this point in the show, it becomes really hard to just take things at face value anymore. As the series wound down to the final episodes, we are provided with rather copious amounts of grating plot twists and revelations, ranging from human experiments to immortality to quantum physics. Even then, these revealed plot elements don’t seem like they amount to much beyond just a desperate attempt to come up with a conclusion to end the madness. There was always a very slight foreboding tone throughout the series, in all fairness, but again, there wasn’t enough there in terms of the premises’ foundations to amount to nearly enough. It’s as if the series has underwent a major identity crisis and upheaval, leading to a rather tedious and frustrating trudge to the finish line. In terms of the audiovisuals, Akudama Drive at least does shine the brightest in that department. Colorful looking urban backgrounds coupled with varying color tones, brightness, and saturation to really highlight the vivid illustrations and atmosphere of the dystopian world. The combinations of 2D and 3D graphics make for really nice presentations, and even the action & fight scenes also have really nice consistent choreography. There’s also an extremely nice touch to the aesthetic experience with once-per-episode scene transitions, where the background art for the next segment would slam together piece by piece to replace the previous ones. The soundtracks and theme songs befit the somewhat dual nature of the settings, with the opening theme representing the bright and energetic outer parts of the city, while the ending theme may be symbolizing the more chill yet somewhat pessimistic and foreboding side, especially revolving around the main cast. The voice acting in particular was quite solid, albeit on occasions the dialogue may feel forced or hurried, though overall still a consistent performance, as the seiyuus did their best to bring out the personalities of the recurring cast members. By all means, the production value managed to provide grade-A art, which is by all means worthy of praise considering the infamous history of Studio Pierrot. I’ll have to admit right now that the interpretation regarding the character department can be rather subjective here. To me, while the recurring characters are really nice in terms of how they’re very well characterized to the point where we at least know what kind of people they are, the lack of deeper context in the series composition strikes again here. There isn’t much character work or development done in the series at all, and perhaps there was no need due to the nameless narrative being implemented. However, with nothing else to really give them more dimension, it’s really hard to find much to care about them and their objectives. As a result, their initially appealing traits can quickly grow dull. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen these kinds of characters in other series written far, far better. Sure, they were entertaining and all, but they came off as nothing more than a particularly rowdy group. I will admit, though, that the short-lived brotherly bonds between the Hoodlum and the Brawler guy was perhaps THE most wholesome thing I’ve seen from the show. As for the Swindler’s case of character development in the latter half of the series, I found it very unimpressive. It felt like more of a convenient case of instant gratification for the mainstream viewers to immediately be smitten by the Swindler’s heel-turn, from a stereotypical protagonist complacent about her unintended involvement, to a headstrong and resolved, selfless heroine. Yes, it’s development for sure, as it comes off from her eventually being unable to determine what’s really right or wrong and wanting to take matters into her own hands. However, it still felt too abrupt, untimely, and perhaps a bit obsolete; I would honestly say it should’ve been given more focus and time. While some people may insist that her development was subtle and actually happened along the way, it’ll still go back the problem to her not getting much of a background along with the other Akudama members. Perhaps if the whole nameless narrative thing wasn’t in play, the character department would’ve had far better results. In terms of my enjoyment level, I initially did enjoy Akudama Drive to a certain degree early on for its “dumb fun” and bombastic sequences, though I wasn’t really sold on a whole lot due to everything being given mostly at face value. The aesthetic experience was of course really nice throughout the series, especially during the well animated fight scenes. It was when the second half came along and reared its ugly head that my pleasure turned into bafflement. I was not sure whether I should continue turning my brain off or actually start thinking about whatever plot points were thrown at me. It was admittedly an infuriating sequence for me during that dreadful final stretch, trying to figure out what in the world did the show want to accomplish in the end beyond just mere schlock entertainment. Akudama Drive flew out the gates with blades of glory, only to later on fall hard and flat on its face. With its lack of fleshed out context and deeper characterization to an otherwise gorgeous-looking world, it only does best as popcorn entertainment. If you’re the kind who is willing to roll with anything and everything regardless as long as you’re entertained, feel free to watch it, as I would still recommend it for those who want nothing but entertainment and can still appreciate the characters for who they are; I would still warn about the second half, of course, where even just pure enjoyment would get compromised by the incoming convolutions and silly twists that ruined the potential for an underrated modern classic.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 28, 2020
The God of High School
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Spilled Paint.
Two simple yet effective words that perfectly describe The God of High School, the ultimate travesty from Summer 2020 and yet another defective product via the courtesy of Crunchyroll. With their recently established “strategic” partnership, Crunchyroll and Webtoon took full advantage of the pandemic of the year 2020 to collaborate and present their lineup of products of “original animated content” known as “Crunchyroll Originals”. With the second coming of a webtoon adaptation, The God of High School, they’ve managed to fool tens of thousands of people all over the world into thinking this is one of the best action fantasy series to start ... off the new decade of anime. Just like its webtoon sibling Tower of God (otherwise known as Kami no Tou), it became popular enough to be adapted for the sole sake of being Crunchyroll’s summertime gravy train, and with the help of studio MAPPA, it pressed for “style over substance” to wow and mesmerize the audience into thinking quantity is more important than quality. In terms of plot and worldbuilding, God of High School is an absolute mumble-jumble of loosely tossed-in parts. The story starts off looking like a “dumb fun” setup of a mixed martial arts “high school” tournament, where the winner will be granted a single wish as the ultimate prize. Tournament arcs in anime are the ultimate easy-to-make selling points, so on top of that, Crunchyroll and Webtoon also shamelessly slap their self-promoting logos all over the tournament itself, even though it doesn’t even really make much sense to do so, so it just looks silly onscreen in a bad way. The MMA setup then quickly morphs into a superpower free-for-all, cause superpowers also sell well. The power system in this series, known as charyeok, literally meaning “borrowed power”, is inserted into the plot with barely a damn shred of helpful exposition or background context; lacking any sort of tangible foundation, it’s literally a shitshow of randomly inserted abilities and powerups whipped out left and right for the sake of getting oohs and aahs from the viewers. The choice of pacing in the series is infuriatingly rapid and unruly. The staff apparently chose to mash or omit whole truckloads of chapters within single episodes for the sole sake of “getting to the good parts”. All it does is add to the chaos, as the scenes shift back and forth between the tournament and the underlying conflict in an unruly fashion; sure this may appeal to many people, but there’s no sense of organization or sophistication for enough, if any, of the showcased content to make sense. New characters keep showing up at random or in the masses, void of any sense of depth, purpose, creativity, or novelty. They are just simply there to make the main characters look good when defeating or assisting them, and are written off or ignored when no longer needed. The show tries to give empathic appeal to them via brief instances of “flashback jutsu” in half-hearted attempts to manipulate the audience into relating or feeling for them. Any motivation or backstory is simply glazed over, if not just completely cut out altogether. The story tries to have mystery elements to add suspense, but it’s hollow and predictable. It just serves to make whatever plot there is look more compelling and engaging in nature. To sum it up, everyone wants to challenge “God”. The whole tourney itself is controlled by an undercover organization whom wants to use it to gain a “Key” to reach “God”. They’re opposed by a cult group who wants to use that same “Key” to world domination. Yet we’re not given any helpful background context to explain the whole history. Then there’s also the typical jackass one-dimensional villain with a bland excuse of a background and motivation to be “super-bad”. I personally HATE these sort of villains in particular. They’re simply there to get on your nerves, flaunt around their ego without any sense of metaphorical or philosophical significance, and ultimately make the main protagonists look good when they fight and finally beat them. They have no actual depth character-wise and their purpose is superficial just like any other side character, cause once the plot is done with them, they’re disposed of like litter. There is no sense of coherence or order in the story. It’s a bunch of raw ideas and references dumped into one big pot without any consideration to follow a specific recipe step by step. Instead of an organized well thought-out story with great quirks, the narrative direction is akin to a pool of chaos. An incomprehensible collection of abstractions, it’s like an unholy crossover of a hundred different TV shows mashed together in discord. Grotesque and terrifying, it’s like an abomination of an entity taken right out of the universe of Cthulhu Mythos. Nothing but nonstop, mindless, soulless conflict and fights with no charm or quirk to speak of their own. Going back to the characters in general, they’re nothing of originality. They’re typical, generic, bland, and rehashed as part of a continually looped presentation of mediocre shounen tropes. The main cast is extremely dreary in particular. Jin Mori is your typical happy-go-lucky main protagonist who would always get the biggest upgrades and plot conveniences and keeps saying he wants to fight strong people, with nothing really going for him on an empathic level besides his ties to his grandpa...not like I haven’t seen something like that before. Han Daewi is your typical loner in the secondary main character role. His initial motivation to fight for his ill and dying friend, while initially promising, was not well thought-out or executed, and instead the show does a quickie fix for him with the regurgitated and cheap “friendship” clause. Yu Mira has that ubquitious character role where the inner conflict comes from family-related issues, which can be often get too conceited and grating in general. Her character work is simply glossed over within one episode and wasn’t given enough exposition and empathy to really be worth caring about on an emotional level. Jegal Taek is the bland-ass main villain mentioned earlier; he is ultimately inserted just to quickly set up your typical final battle to make Jin and co. look good, and he has absolutely no redeeming factors backing up his ego-filled composition. As for the rest of the other characters, they are merely plot devices to pull and yank the disoderly narrative along in its hasty tempo and also make the main characters look good, only adding to the chaos. God of High School is supposedly praised by many for its amazing looking animation quality, which is obviously the primary selling point. However, it’s not all that’s cracked up to be. One half of the time, the animation looks smooth and impressive with great camerawork and utilized calligraphy/ink style drawings. The other half of the time counterbalances most of the positives when the camera panning and rotating becomes redundant and overused. During many of the fights, characters are tweened lazily and sloppily, with seemingly a good amount of frames missing in a bunch of parts, resulting in awful-looking choreography and motion inconsistency. The animation also seems to lack enough impact frames to really sell the authenticity of the battles, which make nearly every “body blow” look comical instead of painful. In short, the animation quality is only slightly above average compared to your usual shounen series. The character designs have to be one of the silliest looking things I’ve ever seen in anime. Everyone who can fight has red noses and red earlobes, and some of them have their noses elongated. Why such an impractical design? Why do they need to look like Rudolph? Or even Pinocchio? Are they all sick with the flu or something? Why couldn’t they stick with a normal looking design like in the games based off this series? I can understand the fidelity to the character design in the source material, but it goes to show that the creator apparently didn’t think things through with their ideas on even basic standpoints. The soundtracks themselves are your typical battle shounen music, some good, some passable. The OP theme “Contradiction” is literally ear-rape, and my only good suggestion for listening to something like this is for maybe a workout session or as a form of Chinese-style torture. The ED theme “WIN” is notably better and gives a really nice and chill summer vibe to settle down the viewers from the chaotic scenes of each episode, but it’s better as a standalone soundtrack. The sound effects attempt to be fancy especially during certain “special moves”, but they’re nothing that special, and in fact, they feel out of place at times quite often, especially during parts when physical impacts are shown. As for the overall voice acting, it felt very stiff, unmotivated, and tone-dead; it’s like the voice actors are reluctantly giving out their lines in an apathetic manner, knowing how badly adapted this show is. I wouldn’t say I didn’t totally enjoy it at first. I initially wanted to embrace the series as “dumb fun” MMA series where the term “God” was just a metaphor and it’d be all about breaking down different types of martial arts with a little bit of hax here and there. It was not the case, unfortunately. When the series drastically turned onto its head, my enjoyment level grew less and less, even when I try to turn my brain off. It gradually went from rolling along leniently with the schlock setups to hurting my head trying to follow and comprehend what the actual hell is going on. It quickly became a huge mental endeavor just to really get myself to up to date with each week’s episode. I like action, but not mindless, soulless, emotionless, purposeless conflict like what God of High School committed. And oh yea, this is very subjective, but one more thing: I HATED the comedy. "Chibi-fied" comedic skits don't equal good tonal shifts; it's so obnoxious, sudden and forced that it's literally a walking bag of cringe. In the end, God of High School was one of the worst shows to come out of 2020. It had nothing to show for itself nor anything in general worth its weight in gold. Rather than sticking to simplicity and charm with compelling and inspiring presentations, it lacks any sort of substance, flavor, or genuine beauty and winds up as a head-scratching failed product brand. With practically no redeemable factors from this show other than a few great looking animated parts, this show is one I absolutely cannot recommend to even the hardcore action fans or novices. I will suggest to you to look elsewhere for a much more sophisticated anime, and steer VERY clear from the likes of those damned “Crunchyroll Originals”.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Mar 28, 2020 Not Recommended
As a spin-off series and game adaptation, Magia Record had so much weight on its shoulders from the popularity and appraisal of the original parent story of Madoka Magica, and unfortunately it could neither do anything to carry through that pressure nor be a good enough anime series in general.
I consider myself a fan of Studio SHAFT and the original Madoka Magica show, so when the adaptation of what was apparently a spinoff app game of the aforementioned series, I was really looking forward to having that sense of nostalgia. I even kept my expectations in check knowing that the new upcoming spin-off was never ... gonna be anything close to the original, and at the very least it could try to be its own thing, its own identity. But unfortunately that did not turn out to be the case. STORY: To start off, I want to really note how odd and weakly constructed the story format is. The show starts off with our main character Iroha Tamaki apparently searching for her little sister, which by itself sparks enough interest to follow. From that point on, the plot goes on rather fluctuated pacing, swinging from fast to slow at random without much discern between the minor and major details of the plot, barely making enough, if any, effort to even explore them. The format, at least to me, feels more like a series of rinse-and-repeat drills with every few episodes where we’re given our “Uwasa of the Week” and/or introduced to new characters. In a mystery series or any sort of episodic story format, this would work out fine...except it isn’t any of such. Instead, the script for the most part felt more like a CGDCGT (“cute girls doing cute girl things”) type. The primary protagonist, Iroha, meets up with secondary protagonist, which is Yachiyo Nanami in this case, and go out to find and investigate the mysteries of the Uwasa and Kamihama City, and accompany and befriend other fellow magical girls along the way. In a world that was thematically constructed for the intent of a darker ambiance, this just doesn’t feel right. Heavy dramatic scenes ensue, the girls find and fight the Uwasa, the chances of sacrifice and high stakes are all but skipped to allegedly establish an underlying darker conflict involving the main antagonistic group. It’s more like watching the magical girls basically undertaking boss raids and stuff. The drama is then resolved, the girls are seemingly okay and safe, the atmosphere is light-hearted and there’s no proper connection or siegeway to the next segment of conflict. There’s nothing to close to enough to really connect or put together deeper themes like selfless desires, endless suffering, etc. Not only does this cycle quickly grow redundant and predictable, it hinders and ruins the intended darker tonal consistency of this Madoka Magica universe. The story also seems to have issues trying to handle and develop an annoying surplus of characters, and as a result, nearly all of them are merely shallow archetypal gimmicks...I’m not even sure they’re qualified to be even called actual characters. The worldbuilding and exposition is rather disjointed. One would obviously need to have watched the original series prior to checking out this show, and I dunno what person with common sense would do otherwise. Even with the knowledge from the original series, though, trekking through many of the introduced plot elements here isn’t exactly intriguing, just excruciatingly confusing and baffling in a bad way. New information is mentioned but never explored or explained. The show tries to forcefully hide the clues instead of being subtle with the gradual answers and revelations in an effort to look smart. As a result, visual cues feel vague and don’t answer enough, thus coming off as annoying or even pretentious. It’s like trying to add chocolate sprinkles to a slice of stale storebrand bread instead of a whole gorgeous-looking birthday cake. Remember, extra stuff to a story like visual cues and symbolism are supposed to be nice accessories or toppings, not hindering liabilities or unnecessary flavors. Doesn’t it really suck to know that one would have to check out the wiki databases for the game source material just to get the answers and/or other important details that the anime decided to gloss over? That’s honestly not a good sign for most game adaptations, especially that of a spin-off game. The mystery element at its core would seem rather promising if it actually had more focus on solving or investigating as opposed to having to take character detours. Even when the explanations do come, it’s too obvious and something we should already know right from the start. Nothing really feels dangerous or with high stakes up until the very end, and even then, it doesn’t feel like anything particularly serious whatsoever. This is where we really miss the likes of Gen Urobutchi, the mad lad responsible for the tragic, twisted, and merciless themes of not only the OG Madoka Magica, but the likes of Psycho Pass and Fate/Zero as well. CHARACTERS: Due to the frail structure of the story, the characters become arguably the weakest point in the series. Not only are they’re practically one-dimensional (two-dimensional) with barely any much depth or context with them to make us care...there’s just too many of them. I’d rather not divulge into each and every one of them, in all honesty. The OG Madoka Magica actually worked due to having a small set of characters, giving the show more time to explore their respective backgrounds and personalities as well as the visual ques associated with them. As a result, they’re actually a multi-layered cast, despite what many people might believe otherwise. With the case of Magia Record, that is completely not the case. I should at least bring up the two primary protagonists here. Iroha Tamaki doesn’t have much going for her in terms of background despite the whole thing about finding her younger sister. She’s supposed to play the “neutral control”, the innocent selfless main character, but her views constantly fluctuate throughout the series, and not in a progressive manner to be called character development. Yachiyo Nanami is supposed to be this Homura-like aloof persona trying to stop something dangerous from happening to the world. Time and time again, the plot was given the chance to properly give us insight into her ambitions and motives, and her possible ties with the antagonistic figures. But when it does, it seems to keep stopping halfway with the exposition, yet it keeps trying to keep Yachiyo relevant somehow while putting her to the side a bit too often. I mean, they keep showing her a lot in the ending visuals. All the other characters barely have much going for them besides their generic personalities as side characters. All these characters showing off their single-handed gimmicks is basically the show pulling countless shameless plugs of promoting the gacha games. Flashbacks are presented in order to provide answers but the heavy reliance of merely “answering” with vague hints only end up clogging the script instead of giving the cast more structure. As mentioned before, it ends up as nothing but a whole bunch of uninspiring “characters”. AUDIOVISUALS: The animation and sounds are the lone bright spots in the show in the most parts, but they’re pretty much taken for granted by now. Instead of the weird and curious-looking buildings and backgrounds from the OG’s setting of Mitakihara City, we are given actual realistic-looking buildings, roads, and landmarks. That’s pretty neat and all, except it doesn’t do anything to add to any sort of theme and identity (assuming the show actually had a definite one). The magical girl transformations from episode 3 were nothing but “sakuga”, they looked pretty, dazzling, everything synonymous of beauty and charm. Yes, it’s cool and all. But it's merely one collective scene out of the entirety. The voice acting is just fine as well as the overall soundtracks, but they’re nothing particularly impressive. There’s not enough from the audiovisuals to make it really stand out in particular compared to other shows that display similar amounts of audiovisual quality. I know I might be holding too high standards considering the accomplishments of the original story too much, but it’s something I can’t really ignore. PERSONAL ENJOYMENT: I wanted to like this show merely for its association with the original parent story. I needed something from the franchise to kill my impatience of waiting for a possible sequel to the Rebellion movie. I desired for something that badly at the time. Maybe I should’ve been more patient, though. The first episode did positive things like play some nostaglic tracks from the original show as well as go through a monologue breaking down the core elements of the Madoka Magica world. After that, everything just collectively degrade in terms of script and character progression. I found myself perplexed, impatient, and confused after each episode, just waiting for that one nasty twist or untimely death to turn the show on its head. And the show had its chances, but failed to partake in going the “Urobutcher” direction, and thus I finish an episode asking questions, contemplating what could’ve happened instead, and having to, annoyingly enough, look up stuff or ask the more knowledgeable fanbases of the game about what was missing or what was hidden from me deliberately. It grew to be a pain in the ass. Did I really have to go through all this trouble just to get any answers, as opposed to letting the show present it by itself? What the actual hell. I’m supposed to be enjoying my SHAFT trip, not come out of every episode rubbing my forehead in frustration. I feel genuinely betrayed. It also makes me wonder...wouldn’t this be a bit better off if it was actually given more than just 13 episodes to work with and properly pace and explain everything? I’m at a loss for words here. OVERALL: Simply put, Magia Record tried to ride off the popularity and settings of the original Madoka Magica, but it failed to recreate the tonal consistency of the latter as well as being unable to establish its own identity, having instead to rely on game source material and basically milk the franchise. Even if you’re a Madoka Magica fan like me, this is an associated series that I honestly can’t recommend to you. You’re better off rewatching the original instead of partaking in what has been a practically disappointing husk of a spin-off. Since when did spin-off series ever have high success rates, anyway, though? Or better yet, go watch (or rewatch) 3-Gatsu No Lion or the Monogatari series instead. It'll save you more time. Granted, there IS an upcoming season 2 that can possibly redeem the prequel's untidy results, but the damage here has already been committed. You've disappointed me here, SHAFT. I'm truly taken aback.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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