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Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!, or Characters Make Comedies Good, Not Only Jokes.

“Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!”, or, as it is primarily known in English-speaking countries, “KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!” is yet another seasonal “LN-about-video-game-world” adaptation. Instead of being gritty and edgy (looking at you, Grimgar) or focusing on overly-the-top OP characters (SAO, Mondaiji), it is a nice and light-hearted comedy about a guy trapped in a fantasy world and his friends and their adventure. If you think that it isn’t original, I won’t say anything: it is definitely not something unique.

Why is it bad? It uses the trapped-in-MMO ... formula again. Why is it good? It uses the trapped-in-MMO formula again. However, if after reading these words you decide to leave, I’ll recommend you to stay: KonoSuba is a nice show to spend a couple of evenings on, and for a variety of reasons.

Let’s start with the storyline of the show, shall we? Our protagonist dies in a completely stupid way and gets reborn in a MMO-like world, where he should defeat an almighty Devil King and become a hero. So cliché. Our hero meets several girls during his adventure and forms a party to farm those mobs and gold. The story isn't the most important part of the show though, but jokes are. They are constantly poking fun of MMORPG tropes (grind, useless skills) and are genuinely funny for experienced players. Even if you aren’t a huge fan of MMOs, you’ll find the humor nice anyway, so don’t worry about it.

The problem with this anime is that it falls into the same pit where other comedies tend to fall to as well: jokes stop being as fun as they were before. After episode 4 or 5 they aren’t that hilarious anymore. They reach the peak of fun right in the middle of the show, but then they become not worse, but… dryer, I guess? Can’t say that is a good thing, but it isn’t really bad, to be honest, since KonoSuba still manages to remain good over the whole course.

And what saves the show and makes it actually good are the characters. The characters are the catalyst of enjoyment in this show, and are the thing that differs KonoSuba from other game-like adaptations with generic af heroes. They have nice designs, which is important in this kind of anime, they are well done overall and, of course, they are genuinely fun. A brainless goddess, an EKUSUPLOSIONNNNNN archwizard, a masochistic knight, a succubi, your average otaku with a little bit cynical look at life and many more adventurers on their way. While being cliché, they have great interactions between themselves, which are truly fun to watch, and this is great. Chemistry between characters is one of the most important things in adventure anime series, and I’m glad to see that KonoSuba succeeded in this category.

“Another nice aspect of this show is its art. I refuse to believe, but DEEN actually have made a really good-looking show. No jokes. They have finally found a way to make really beautiful anime series” – that’s what I wrote in my preview about the art in KonoSuba. Unfortunately, I’m taking my words back. While the first half of the show is pretty good in terms of art, the second gives us our missed DEEN quality back. The character designs are nice, the graphics itself are not nextgen, but actually beautiful and nice, and that applies to both halves of the show. Animation is crisp and tasty… until episode 6-7 where the lack of budget clearly shows with screwed faces, badly drawn animations and more. Sound, though, isn't anything to write home about: it doesn't stick out, yet it isn't bad, and OP is pretty decent.

But lack of good art doesn’t necessarily make KonoSuba bad. It is a nice show to watch, to be honest, which actually tries to bring something new into videogame-LN-adaptations genre and succeeds. KonoSuba is one of the main contenders for comedy of the season or even AOTS. You like MMOs? Watch KonoSuba. You like SAO-like shows? Watch KonoSuba. You want to have a good time? Watch KonoSuba.

You won’t regret it.

EDIT: Fucked up with the studio name. Sorry, my dear J.C.Staff.

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo: The Masterfully Crafted Cringefest

Sakurasou is one of the most hyped romance anime series made in recent times. A lot of people think that it is one of the best shows ever made, and the amount of 10’s in the review section is overwhelming. However, while this show is certainly above average in several aspects, Sakurasou isn’t even close to being something which deserves all those Masterpiece-ratings, and for a variety of reasons, such as bad writing, shallow characters and cringe-inducing, awful drama, which completely stomped my happy thoughts about this ... show after the first cour.

Let’s start with some good things.

**START OF GOOD**

I see people praising this show’s art a lot, and it certainly is very good. I liked the character designs: the characters were distinguishable and pretty unique in their appearances and were drawn pretty nicely. The background were alright, the animation was fluid and crispy. JC Staff continues to impress me with their art.

The sound was decent, too. Nice OPs, nice EDs. It is nothing to write home about, but the soundtrack does its job well, it nicely accompanies the action on the screen. Nevertheless, it failed to impress me as a standalone piece of music, it’s not one of those OSTs which I can listen to without context.

**END OF GOOD**

Because of the next paragraphs I’m going to become hated by a lot of people, I’m sure.

The show serves nice as a comedy, however it fails in a category which is supposed to be main here - romance. Romance is one of the worst parts of this show: it’s unbelievable, it’s cringy, it’s just poorly written. It’s SO bad that you care about the romance of the side-characters more than about the mains'. And that’s not even the worst part about Sakurasou.

The author knows how to write decent comedies, but when he dwells into the drama category, he ultimately fails. I’m going to be honest with you and myself: I enjoyed the first half of Sakurasou. It is genuinely one of the funniest shows I’ve ever watched, and only because of it I can’t say that Sakurasou is plain bad. It shines in the beginning, only to be consumed by the black matter of unbelievably bad drama in the end.

The amount of melodrama is about the same as you would find in your typical show for teen girls. Something bad happens unexpectedly, which affects everyone, everything suddenly goes to ashes, the main characters decide to save something valuable for them, one of the characters makes a speech, everyone cries, mains win. And while sometimes it certainly works, unfortunately, Sakurasou itself fails to execute this trope somewhat originally. It just pulls this trick out of the blue and leaves you with a constant situation of you having a palm on your face. Furthermore, when the writer REALLY had a chance to execute a drama properly, he screws up again. Several times.

The characters are not THAT bad though, however they are zero-and-a-half-dimensional, especially mains. The protagonist-kun just screams «I’M AN AVERAGE JAPANESE STUDENT», the main girl is just meh as a whole, also we have an English bitch, a hikki, a gigolo, an alien girl and a light tsundere, who actually is the most entertaining character in the whole series. They aren’t that bad-written, but they are certainly nothing deep.

I tried to enjoy this show. I honestly tried. Yet, the lack of good writing and the bullshit drama ruined Sakurasou for me.

I assume that if you are reading this review you have already read the original manga and 3rei. Spoilers for them ahead. Be careful.

Fate/kaleid liner PRISMA*ILLYA, or Heaven's Feel 2.0.

Starting as a light-hearted mahou shoujo spinoff of Fate/stay night, over the course of more than 6 years Prisma Illya (Prillya) became a pretty dark and edgy story in the best traditions of the original VN. While some series' authors don't understand what to do with their edginess and try to build a complex plot in which they get confused very fast, Prillya 3rei just uses some already working formulas (if not cliche) to craft an ... interesting, engaging and captivating story to make you eager for new chapter every month. And being somewhat unoriginal isn't a bad thing in this case. Not at all.

The story continues right after the ending of 2wei!: after Miyu gets transported into the parallel world, Illya and co. follow her there to save her from her kidnappers. While the story itself isn't that great, it's nonetheless good and provides us a lot of answers for the questions we had since the original. What are the class cards? Who created them? Who the hell is Miyu? Why is Kirei working at a mapo tofu stand? The pacing is neat, the manga uses its 30-page-per-chapter format perfectly to engage the reader. And it succeeds. While the story has a lot of twists, which can be somewhat predictable, it doesn't deny the fact that it is nicely crafted and written.

The characters are mainly from returning cast from 2wei!: Illya, Kuro, Bazett and other pals are here. They are what makes this manga interesting to read. A lot of characters share their personalities with their FSN/FHA counterparts, and it's really cool. The new characters didn't have time to be properly developed yet though.

Art is crisp as ever. The character designs are nice and well-done and the fights are depicted really well. I don't have a lot of things to say about it.

I'm not gonna lie: I am a huge fan of Nasuverse and FSN in particular. And 3rei is one of the best additions to this multiverse. It has its amount of interesting things, yet it lacks in originality.

TL;DR:
+interesting story
+great cast
+very good art
+Nasuverse
-resembles HF a lot
-lacks in originality

8.5/10

Sometimes when you want to relax and read some manga which does not require any of your grey matter's work, harem-battle manga definitely helps. They usually don't have a super-twisted plot, but they compensate for it with a great amount of fanservice, ecchi, chuuni and fights. MANY fights. While Trinity Seven certainly tries to be different from other 1000+ similar titles, it doesn't mean it actually becomes good. However it is unique to a certain amount to speak about this manga.

The plot is simple as bread and butter: blah-blah-blah world destruction blah-blah-blah the chosen one blah the magic school. Our "chosen one", Arata, has the ... potential to wreck the whole planet and thus named the Magic King Candidate. So, you are a Magic King and you are at a magic school. What to do? OH, HELL YEAH, TIME TO BUILD A HAREM!

The harem is actually nice. Titular Trinity Seven are all sexy girls who "like" our main character. They are... pretty sexy, yeah. The characters are not deep, nor shallow, but they fulfill they purpose well. And their purpose is to make Arata shine.

Oh, yeah, Arata. He is not dense, he is a f-ing pervertw who enjoys trolling the girls. Hell, he even has the undressing magic! Arata is the main source of enjoyment in the series: his interactions with the cast are genuinely funny, especially those with our lovely sensei. And his soulmate, headmaster, too. They are great. Characters - that is what make Trinity Seven not shine, but certainly differ from anime and manga about sexy harems. Arata is the guy who deserves the harem.

To conclude:

Pros:
+ Arata and headmaster
+ Character interaction
+ Some good fanservice
+-Fine art
+-Characters are pretty cliche
- Story is very unoriginal

6/10

Let me say it straight: I'm reviewing only the first part of the show, since it is a split cour. Everything written here applies only to S1. Also, I'm a huge fan of the original VN and Nasuverse as a whole. I guess, the review definitely has some bias.

Sometimes, a show needs exposition, because otherwise it is impossible to tell a complete and logical story. The exposition is needed to set up the characters, the stage and the events leading to the main part of the series. The first cour of Fate/Zero is such a case: it is just an infodump containing everything necessary to ... understand the plot of the second half.

The problem with such shows is that you need to make them interesting to watch. And Fate/Zero spectacularly fails in this regard, offering pointless, long and dragged dialogues (for people who have read the visual novel Fate/stay night, like me), atrocious pacing, fillers in a 1-cour series and somewhat unique, but shallow and one-dimensional characters.

The main premise of the story is simple: 7 mages and their 7 servants are battling for an ephemeral prize: The Holy Grail, an omnipotent device which can grant a wish for the winner. The premise itself is definitely interesting; the main problem is its execution. Let me say it straight: it's awful. There is very and very little plot progression over the course of the series. It tries to intrigue the viewer in the first couple of episodes (if you manage to bear that 40-minutes infodump in the first episode), but after that we are left with 11 episodes of pure, unspoiled, forgive me, Lord, Glasslip. I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's what it is: NOTHING happens-. Occasional dialogues about the eternal don't count.

I have a small chart, which can show you the structure of the show:

Episode - what happens
1 - infodump
2-9 - talking and a couple of fights
10 - A GODDAMN FILLER
11-12 - talking.

This pretty much summarizes everything what happened in the first cour in terms of story. Don't get me wrong: I adore dialogue driven shows like Monogatari and Tatami Galaxy. Hell, I even enjoyed Heaven's Feel route of novel af. Fate/Zero tries to pull the same trick with its pacing and dialogue-driveness, but it falls short. The dialogues are plain and generic. Not to mention that sometimes they suffer from bad writing and induce cringe.

However we are starting to forget what was the purpose of the first cour. Introducing the characters. I must say that Fate/Zero doesn't perform well in this regard, too. The characters, while having their unique traits, are simply shallow and not interesting. New characters lack in depth, old characters became worse. Saber is a highlight of the show, however her character is more of a whiny 14-year-old. Yes, she is stoic, but her ideals are completely idiotic. She is much more well-written in FSN, but here she, again, lacks in depth. Gilgamesh is an arrogant prick, as always, but he is even more unlikable in Zero than in FSN. Kiritsugu is your average edgy protagonist, no more, no less. Other masters and servants are either generic and plain (Kayneth, Tokiomi), or are severely underdeveloped (Kirei, Kariya, Waver). Looking forward to the S2.

But I must say that the production level of the show is simply amazing. The graphics are stunning, and the art is faithful to original Takeuchi designs. Music by Kajiura is amazing, too. No complaints on this part, however it is not enough to cover the faults of other aspects of the show.

Overall, Fate/Zero S1 wasted its potential to become a great exposition for truly glorious events and actually is a series of pointless and boring dialogues with some occasional fights. The heaviest disappointment I've had yet.

+Production quality
+Sound and music
+Nasuverse is always welcome
-Atrocious pacing
-Shallow characters
-Dragged dialogues
-Fillers, goddammit

3.5/10

I'm going to make it short. This special episode is an alternative version of epilogue of episode 25 in FSN [UBW] (Good Ending in UBW route of the VN) and must be seen AFTER episode 25 of UBW. There is nothing really to speak on, but if you really like Saber, this is a must-watch. However, unlike ep25, this ending doesn't bring any new additional scenes, it just faithfully adapts Good End from the VN. If you wanted to see it animated, go and watch it.

Overall, this special is a good fan-servicey special for Saber fans and a decent snack for all HF ... waiters. And it gives us hope that we can actually see Sparks Liner High and Normal End from Heaven's Feel animated, when HF gets released on BD.

Since it doesn't bring anything new and I'm not that much fan of Saber and the Good End itself (True End feels much more logical), I rate it 5/10, but it's not to be taken seriously.