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Hear ye! Hear ye! With utmost reverence, I do reveal unto thee the anime of the season once again! Our hero hast persevered against the melancholy brought about by thy fair lady Eris, been wedded to his fanciful elven bride, and even made ends on an abundant abode to protect his ever-growing clan. What adventures shall await our valiant hero in chapters untold? Await with bated breath for another enchanting season to uncover the sagas yet untold!

On a serious note, this season of Mushoku Tensei doesn’t have the same hook that previous ones had. He’s not depressed with erectile dysfunction, he’s not on a journey ... to get back to the central continent, and with the ending of the last plot point, the first 3 episodes of this season feel like something ripped straight out of season 1 pt. 1. However, don’t let that fool you into thinking that this season of Mushoku Tensei is some sort of slouch, I’m willing to bet that this season will be ranked in the 8.5-8.7 range at the end of it all.

What makes me so brazen on that assessment? A couple of things. Firstly, the quality sol stuff from last season is here and it’s arguably more impactful. Unlike last season, where the sol stuff focused primarily on establishing new characters, this season focuses on building complex developments with the characters we already have. This is best seen through the Elinalise and Sylphy connection; more connections with increasingly important characters are to come as the season goes on.

But what if you watch Mushoku Tensei for the action and adventure? You’ve been starving since season 1 as this series has been doing its best Sousou no Frieren impression. Well don’t fear, it’s going to be back in full swing! I won’t spoil anything (the op does enough of that), just know that turning point 3 and the next 5-6 episodes that follow will be absolutely amazing from your guy’s perspective, arguably being the overall peak of the series, so don’t lose faith from just the first 4-5 episodes.

As for the production, the animation is still high quality: the jumpscare in episode 1 and the duel in episode 2 serve as evidence of that. The op and ed are also amazing, although not intertwined with every episode anymore, albeit for good reason, and the background music still pops in that “Mushoku Tensei-esque” way.

Overall, this season of Mushoku Tensei will be something special. There’s truly something here for everyone, the sol fans, the action and adventure fans, and everyone else in between. As long as the animators and production committee stays the course and doesn’t fuck anything up, this will be a season to remember. So with that, I encourage you to hop on this ride before it leaves the station, because trust me, it won’t slow down from here on out.


Thank you for reading.

About 7 months ago, I added an anime called “Solo Leveling” to my Plan to Watch list on a complete whim. I had no idea what the anime was supposed to be about or what a manhwa was, let alone the extent to which Solo Leveling is praised in that space, yet I still had expectations for this season, purely based on the hype and anticipation that friends displayed for this series. Through 12 episodes, I can gladly say that Solo Leveling would’ve lived up to those expectations… had I still been 13 years old and still believed that SAO was the greatest thing ever ... created. In reality, this season is a wish-fulfillment power fantasy devoid of strong characters and story beats, which makes it only enjoyable as a hack & slash, turn-your-brain-off type of action series.

Without the context of the remainder of the season, the intro to Solo Leveling actually isn’t bad, in fact, I’d even describe it as around average. Sung’s characterization as the weakest hunter of all time is interesting, albeit not nuanced since nearly every character in the story drills this fact into the viewer’s skull, with all the tact that a jackhammer has when it destroys a sidewalk. The double dungeon arc is a great introduction to the series, and the intro continues to be good up until the end of the first dungeon that Sung tackles alone, which is probably my favorite moment of this season. However, things go downhill fast, and the series shows a myriad of cracks in this promising facade.

Let’s start with the problems surrounding Sung. I mentioned that the intro, the first 4 episodes, does a pretty good job of introducing Sung’s weaknesses and having him move past them in the subway dungeon. This works well enough with the video game difficulty system that the series has outlined, as through grinding the menial tasks he has been assigned is a reasonably plausible method to beat enemies on the lowest rank. However, the plausibility of that is completely shat on in the next 3 episodes, where Sung: defeats a D-rank boss, defeats a C-rank boss, defeats a C-rank player, and defeats a S-rank enemy. Needless to say, the pacing of Sung’s ascension in the power system is dogshit, especially because he didn’t really struggle through any of the fights (except the last one but I’ll get to that). At the end of the season, he’s around low A-rank, which kinda devalues the relatively short amount of time he spent as the weakest hunter, as in twice that runtime, he’s now in the upper echelon of the power scale, but I digress.

Another problem is the concept of struggling in this anime. After the intro, Sung has a handful of fights where victory isn’t a foregone conclusion. These fights are usually signified by giving Sung a “teleportation stone”, which allows him to retreat from the battle if things happen to get hairy. These fights will start, and Sung will get his ass kicked by something. Sung will realize this and try to retreat, but oh no! The teleportation stone has fumbled out of my hands! I must win the fight to stay alive now! Spoiler alert, Sung always finds a way to win, which is perfectly fine, but I just wish they gave these situations a bit of nuance. Maybe don’t give Sung a teleportation stone every time, if you know he isn’t going to use it until the fight is over. Or maybe, have Sung use a certain strategy or technique to win, because usually, he just decides to try harder or something and proceeds to kick his enemy’s ass.

At the end of it all, this all points back to the fact that Solo Leveling is a blatant self-insert, wish fulfillment, power fantasy. Sung is not a character, he is just a cardboard cutout that the audience is meant to project upon— somebody that the audience wants to be. He doesn’t have any discernible character traits other than the fact that he used to be weak, and now he is strong. This is why he starts off as a typical Korean guy, before becoming 6 feet tall, getting jacked, and gaining some sort of aura that simultaneously drops the panties of any girl within a 12-mile radius, while allowing him to intimidate any man weaker than him into submission. The entire role of Sung is to be a self-insert character operating on the “rule of cool”; this underlies a lot of issues I listed above. You can’t have your self-insert character be a weak E or D rank for too long, because your audience doesn’t want to be weak. You can’t have Sung retreat from dangerous battles, as the audience doesn’t want him to run away. I shouldn’t have to say this, but having your main character, the complete focal point of your series, be a thinly veiled audience surrogate is not the way to make a story deeper than a puddle during a drought.

And trust me, even if you wanted to forget the extent that Solo Leveling props Sung as the greatest thing since sliced bread, you can’t, because the side “characters” constantly remind you of how great he is, like they are maintaining a Sung Jin-Woo cult, to a greater extent than what these same characters said when they were referring to him as the weakest hunter ever. In the same vein that Little Red Riding Hood analyzed her grandmother’s appearance, these side characters do the exact same thing. “Is it just me, or does Sung look a little stronger”, or some variant of that is presented 4 times an episode to reaffirm just how cool our main character is.

As for the side characters themselves, there is little to no point in mentioning any of them by name, as by and large, very few of them matter outside of their relationship with Sung. The biggest offender of this is Sung’s sister, who, I shit you not, doesn’t have a role in this season other than making small talk with him that reminds the audience how cool he is. An extension of this is Jinho, whose entire role is just to bankroll Sung’s guild. Of course, there are a couple of characters that are deeper than that, such as Mr. Kim, but they are so few and far between while also not being developed enough to be considered strong characters that it doesn’t save the sinking ship that is Solo Leveling’s side characters.

As I said earlier, this show operates pretty heavily on a perceived “rule of cool", and what is cool to 13-year-olds? Edginess! Solo Leveling shows off this edge through Sung’s schizophrenic episodes of… something related to the system (there is not a lot of continuity there). This causes some people to label Solo Leveling as a pseudo-psychological anime, albeit with the same psychological prowess as a fucking BuzzFeed quiz. Sung will hear some voices in his head or something, say some ridiculously edgy quote ripped straight from r/iam12andthisisdeep, and proceed to gain some inexplicable power boost that allows him to massacre whoever he is fighting against. The extent of edginess isn’t compelling to me, and since this doesn’t make Sung any more of a character than he already is, it just kinda furthers my lack of interest in Sung or the story as a whole.

Ok so the bad is the fact that the characters of Solo Leveling are shallow, the way Sung progresses the leveling system actively cheapens it, and the show is constantly conflicting with the idea of making a self-insert character struggle. But what’s good? Well, the story is decent in some situations, mainly the intro, but as a whole, it just serves as a vessel to get Sung to do something cool, whether that be in or outside of a dungeon. The story also foreshadows a lot of future events and characters that I am sure will become more important in later seasons, but I’ll get back to that. Also, the animation and music are pretty strong; I’d say well above the standard of your average Shounen battle romp. With all of the action that happens in this season, it allows Solo Leveling to be enjoyable as a turn-your-brain-off type of action anime. At least, most of the time, when the horrid pacing isn’t fucking it up.

As I said, Solo Leveling’s story heavily foreshadows future events, locations, and important characters. I would say that foreshadowing makes up roughly 1.5 episodes worth of the total season’s screen time. Now, on paper, foreshadowing is a necessary element of making any anime good. It’s perfectly fine to spend a lot of time establishing key aspects of future events. However, foreshadowing in Solo Leveling absolutely tanks the series’ pacing. Solo Leveling operates at an extremely slow pace, especially when you consider it is supposed to be a fast-paced action anime. It almost feels like the story is dragging along in many circumstances. This is the worst in some fight scenes, where the content of the fight scene will be cut with the story surrounding Jeju island or something, breaking the momentum of the fight scene while decreasing the value of whatever foreshadowing is taking place. Finally, almost none of the content foreshadowed this season was relevant this season, so as an anime-only viewer who only has knowledge of season 1, this foreshadowing does nothing for me and acts as an active detriment to the content of the season.

Overall, should you watch Solo Leveling? If you’re above the age of 13, I’d say no. With no strong characters and a story that is nothing to write home about, there is not much here outside of the combat, Sung’s journey through the leveling system, and Sung as a self-insert character. However, the combat is plagued with pacing issues, Sung’s progression through the leveling system follows less what would make sense from a story perspective and more what would be cool to the audience, and while Sung embodies many of the generic isekai self-insert tropes, he doesn’t embrace them like something like Eminence in Shadow, which by being self-aware, allows its self-insert character to satirize the genre. Instead, by being completely serious, it falls more into the vein of SAO and other bad generic isekai. Because of all of these faults, there is not a lot here for anybody, aside from children, people who can just turn their brains off and enjoy, and manhwa readers. That is very disappointing, as I had real expectations for this season, and I’m honestly a bit upset with how much I dislike this anime. Hopefully, future seasons will rectify this to some extent, so Solo Leveling is something truly worth watching.

Thank you for reading.

Over the past 12 weeks, I have spent a combined 4 hours of my fleeting time on this planet watching Chained Soldier, and through 12 episodes, all I can say is that my experience was only slightly better than taking the SAT, getting a colonoscopy, or having a physical done by an old man. This series just feels forgettable; in the depressing way where it isn’t laughably bad enough to be remembered, but it’s nowhere near good enough to be remembered either. This series is just another redundant entry into the bloated ecchi ___ genre, that blank being an amalgamation of different story beats that ... try to add more substance to the main plot of watching the main character be lusted after by beautiful women.

Kill la Kill is an ecchi anime that does this well; Its overall story is equal parts gripping and ridiculous enough to keep the audience engaged. Unfortunately for Chained Soldier, its story beats aren't strong enough to accomplish this. Chained Soldier goes for this weird Solo Leveling rip-off angle by establishing Mato: this mysterious shadow realm-esque location linked to Japan somehow. Unfortunately, Mato is hilariously underdeveloped as a setting.

As viewers, we only really know 3 things about Mato: one, that people can just wind up there somehow through a “Mato Mishap”, two, that there are peaches that grow down there that give superpowers, and three, the place is packed with monsters that the “Anti-Demon Corp” fights. This is absolutely everything that the plot operates on, so whenever Mato is treated as a “desolate wasteland” that impacts our characters or drives the plot, said character development or story beat usually is underwhelming, due to the sheer shallowness of the Mato. In addition, there is non-Mato-based character development, but it’s so bog standard that it isn’t even worth mentioning.

Mushoku Tensei is an ecchi anime that has very strong characters; Eris, Roxy, Cliff, and Sylphie, among others, are developed enough so that if the author decided to make a story featuring any of them as the protagonist, it would still have the impact of the main quest. Chained Soldier doesn’t even get close to doing that, as the characters are some of the most generic, trope-built characters anime has to offer.

For example, Yuuki is a black-haired self-insert mc whose key character traits are that he gets nervous around women and he has a generic “good boy” sense of duty. Kyouka is a generic tough leader who spends 90% of her dialogue saying leader shit, and 10% of her dialogue questioning Yuuki’s kinks. Shushu is a “teasing girl” who is really horny. Himari is a tsundere that initially doesn’t like men, but is now horny for our main character for…reasons. Nei is actually the only character that I have somewhat positive feelings for, only because she is a sweet distraction from the rest of the character cast. (Also I’m really happy she is not lewded in the story, as I really didn’t feel like making 20% of this review an explanation on why that isn’t ok.)

Keep in mind, those characters who might seem shallow are the “MAIN” characters of this story. The side characters are even more shallow; Tenka is just horny, albeit forcefully, and Azuma’s only memorable character trait is that strikes a Jojo pose to freeze time. I shouldn’t have to tell you that a character roster this bland and generic isn’t a recipe for success in any anime.

“So what if the characters and story are generic and non-compelling, at least we have the animation and fan service!” You might say that, however, unlike something like High School DXD, which looks good enough to be compelling as an action or fan service anime, Chained Soldier accomplishes neither. In fact, it looks like shit. Mato is this wasteland with a charcoal-esque ground and a reddish-purple sky. If that doesn’t sound visually appealing to you, too damn bad, it's the backdrop of every single fight that this show has to offer. Speaking of the fights, they aren’t animated well at all. Character movements often look chunky and cumbersome, like they deserve more frames to be fluid. Of course, that’s when the characters actually are in motion; this series uses a lot of animation tricks to avoid doing that as much as possible, i.e, sword slashes coming out of a charging character instead of animating them actually swinging their sword, and panning the camera instead of moving the character on a jump slash or something.

The art style of this show is just visually unappealing at times. Honestly, High School DXD, which was released 12 years ago, looks better in every capacity. The lighting is often strange whenever we are outside of the reddish-purple skies of Mato. Impactful moments are often defined with a chain flying across the screen, but these chains are so far outside of the show’s art style that they are jarring whenever they appear. And then the CGI, oh god the CGI. You see, all of the Shuuki, those monsters I mentioned earlier, are made through horrid CGI. Whenever they move, it is incredibly jarring, and it honestly fucks with any non-CGI aspect of the scene. This is even more disappointing for the more impactful Shuuki, who are imbued with special powers, thus having a different appearance, yet they have the exact same CGI movement patterns. Finally, the Shuuki don’t look good either; the basic ones look like Temple Run gorillas and the more advanced ones just look bad.

So… Chained Soldier is an ecchi “action” anime that fails to establish any sort of compelling story or characters. The show doesn’t look good either: the animation of the fights is bad, and due to the shitty art style, the ecchi fanservice isn’t fulfilling, and even if it was, it isn’t appealing enough to save the rest of the story. So, what does Chained Soldier do well? Well, other than not lewding Nei, not much. The biggest praise I can give this series is that it isn’t offensively bad in any department. Everything is mid to bad, but nothing is appealing, terrible, or anger-inducing. The only problem with this is that in the long run, Chained Soldier will just be forgettable. Hell, I’ve already started. I needed the MAL page for this series to criticize its characters, before referencing it, I only knew the names of two characters out of the entire story. I doubt I’ll be able to name a character in 2 months; in 11, I’ll completely forget that this series exists. And that right there, is a damn shame, because, on paper, this was something that could’ve been at least memorable.


Thank you for reading.

Second chances are typically so rare in the entertainment industry. This is only natural considering that creative writers are always bidding for the favor of the audience, so massive flops generally turn into IP suicide as audiences are quick to fuck off to the next big thing. However, a rare second chance is precisely why you and I are watching the third season of Shield Hero, and at the end of it all, I can genuinely say that this series thoroughly squandered this opportunity to correct the absolute stinker of the second season.

I’m not even going to pretend that this season is downright ... terrible, in fact, it's actually best described as being just another run-of-the-mill anime in the fantasy genre; a claim that becomes practically damning when you consider that the aforementioned genre is thoroughly oversaturated with anime just like this. You see, this season of Shield Hero primarily focuses on establishing and developing more characters and story elements to be cashed in later on in the series, which is usually a good thing for any anime trying to develop into a higher-quality work. However, in the case of this season of Shield Hero, both the character and story development is ok at best and frankly, shitty at worst.

A small aspect of this is Naofumi, a protagonist who apparently needs little to no character development this season, as he already received all of the development he needed in the first season. This is a fairly annoying trend surrounding the 4 characters from Naofumi’s party that you actually care about. The character development that Naofumi receives essentially turns him into a Christ figure who wants to “free the slaves” and give “prosperity to the entire kingdom” through the exponential growth of his commune for his slaves, friends, and subordinates. This endeavor causes Naofumi to lose a decent amount of impactful screen time: when does receive some, it at times walks back upon the abrasive personality traits that defined him in the first 2 seasons, sort of diluting what made him unique when compared to the standard fantasy protagonists. However, I don’t believe that this hurts this season that much; Naofumi is still the clear bright spot in this series, admittedly dimmed by the shit around him.

Unfortunately, the commune’s new inhabitants don’t really do much for the story. Sadeena and Syne seemingly have some promise, but they spent the majority of the season just chilling around the village, adding flavor text occasionally to remind the audience that they still exist, so they can have a triumphant moment when they eventually land a hit on the raid boss at the end of the season. Additionally, there are also some other recurring demi-human inhabitants that just exist as stock characters for scenes that show the progress that Naofumi’s commune is making.

The only members of the commune that are of any significant narrative importance are Fohl and Atla: demi-humans with “high potential” or something like that makes them stronger and worth training. They do get a small bit of backstory explaining how they were abandoned, which is appreciated, but it would be even more appreciated if their development was more complete. I’ll take what I can get, but this unveils one of the bigger issues with Naofumi’s commune: with such a big character cast (and more characters being introduced throughout the story), these new characters just never had a chance to have any sort of significant development in a fast-paced 12 episode anime. This naturally calls the “fast pace” into question, as it's possible that we could’ve seen some high-quality character development without it, but I digress.

A running theme with the arcs that comprise this season is that all of them sound really interesting on paper, but in reality, they are usually not fully realized, or if they are, it's done in such a way that just screams asspull. For example, the tournament arc was a major aspect of the season’s promotional art, which gave me the inkling that it would be an impactful part of the season. 2 episodes and 1.5 out of 5 meaningful fights later, and I’m left with mild disappointment as I realize this arc was just a poor excuse to establish a group of side characters who are not nearly as impactful to the story as they were made out to be. Another example of the latter is the “Zombie Dragon Arc” where the entire setup for the eventual battle only occurs because Naofumi and all of his subordinates decided to turn off their brains for an afternoon, allowing Mega-Charizard X to wreak havoc.

That description doesn’t nearly do this arc the appropriate justice, as it may have been the dumbest thing I’ve seen throughout this entire anime, which is saying a lot. These arcs range from disappointing to downright stupid, but honestly, they were probably the two arcs I enjoyed the most this season, despite their numerous fuck ups. The arcs concerning the Cardinal Heroes however were completely non-offensive and borderline irredeemable.

This season, the Cardinal Heroes finally receive their long-awaited character developments that elevate them from essentially being clones of each other with slightly different personalities established through their past experiences. The result? A heinous waste of potential and the destruction of all three of them as potentially nuanced and competent characters on the level of Naofumi. First is Motoyasu, who doesn’t actually receive a large extent of character development, instead getting over his Malty-caused funk through the prospect of one day marrying Filo before he mysteriously fucks off from the plot in any meaningful way until its time to fight the Phoenix. Turning Motoyasu into a glorified gag character when he deserves actual character development is an… interesting choice, but I won’t knock it because we have two more Cardinal Heroes to evaluate.

Next, we have Ren, who somehow gets tricked by Malty who preys on his deepest insecurities to manipulate him. Influenced by this, he dons a stupid new antihero getup related to those insecurities and starts attacking people for money. Eventually, he runs into Naofumi and friends, who try to convince him to join their cause. After denying this offer, he gets beat up by a woman who deeply cares about him as established in earlier seasons, receives a bit of character development through a short backstory, and officially joins Naofumi’s team.

Then we have Itsuki, who somehow gets tricked by Malty who preys on his deepest insecurities to manipulate him. Influenced by this, he dons a stupid new antihero getup related to those insecurities and starts attacking people for money. Eventually, he runs into Naofumi and friends, who try to convince him to join their cause. After denying this offer, he gets beat up by a woman who deeply cares about him as established in earlier seasons, receives a bit of character development through a short backstory, and officially joins Naofumi’s team.

If you didn’t notice, those are literally the exact same paragraphs with Itsuki and Ren switched out. I don’t think I have to tell us this, but repeating the exact same character arcs for two very similar characters isn’t a good idea, as it cheapens both characters’ developments while being pretty boring to watch from a viewer's perspective. Overall, the handling of the Cardinal Heroes has an overtly negative impact on the series as a whole. It thoroughly squanders the potential for them to become thoroughly interesting characters. It cheapens Malty as a manipulator, as her success with the other Cardinal Heroes can only be explained by every character besides her being a dog who gets tricked by you holding the ball behind your back, or her having some sort of psychic powers to force you to do whatever she says. Finally, it makes Cardinal Heroes less realistic as people, as each of their insecurities is so over-exaggerated that they genuinely feel like caricatures of the characters that they are actually supposed to be.

Not to mention, these arcs weren’t well written in terms of entertainment, so they also served as some of the most nonsensically boring moments of the show, which isn’t necessarily conducive to a good anime, especially when you consider that it takes up half the season’s screen time. Granted, I will give Itsuki’s sequence credit, as it did give some decent character development to Rishia, a character that sorely needed it. However, overall, the attempted development of the Cardinal Heroes is really the worst aspect of this season, and when you consider that the above complaints all concern different aspects of the season that I consider to be mid to bad, it really calls into question what exactly does this season do right.

For all of the hating that I have done in this review, I can’t deny that all of the aspects pertaining to production were done extremely well. The animation and slightly new art style perfectly fit the anime, the soundtrack, op, and ed were really good, and there were no delays (a fairly impressive achievement in this age of anime). Still, this season of Shield Hero doesn’t reach the peaks necessary to escape the valley created by the second season. While it does have some bright spots, particularly in Rishia’s and Atla’s character development, those are outweighed by the sheer amount of shit it does wrong. It fails to provide meaningful character development to so many deserving characters, in part due to poor pacing. It fails to be competent story-wise, as many of the arcs are nonsensical or boring and monotonous. Finally, The character development provided to the Cardinal Heroes backfires in a way that almost ruins the 4 characters that had the most potential to become actually interesting. At the end of the day, although I almost exclusively spoke negatively about this anime, there were aspects of it that I did enjoy. However, this did not allow it to be comparable to the first season: something that was absolutely mandatory for it to be considered a reversal of the second season’s mistakes. Maybe one day, we’ll get a season that will finally be a return to form, so that the Shield Hero can rise again.



Thank you for reading, and someone please find me some less corny lines to end my reviews with.

Through 3 episodes, Frieren appears to be a unique masterpiece in storytelling and worldbuilding, a bright spot in the middling fantasy genre, and one of the leading anime of the season, no, anime of the year candidates; I do not recommend it to 70% of anime fans.

Don’t get me wrong, this show is absolutely amazing at pretty much every aspect of being an anime, and through 3 episodes, I literally can’t find a single gripe that I have about this series. However, I can easily see how the average anime fan would find the series “boring” or “uninteresting”. Frieren isn’t a flashy series: it ... primarily deals with character development, symbolism, and storytelling. There are few fight scenes, a whole lot of dialogue, not a lot of effort spent on comedy and a general lack of the “fantasy tropes” that people expect from the genre. However, if you have seen a lot of bland fantasy anime and are looking for a change, or perhaps you have a somewhat nuanced view or sense of appreciation for higher-level stories, Frieren will be nothing short of an amazing experience for you.

Frieren isn’t an anime that you would celebrate in the group chat “DUDE that episode was sooooooo hype”. It’s more of something that you would write a thesis paper for in English class. Our story follows Frieren: an Elven girl who seeks to understand the human perspective of life: one foreign to her as her long lifespan doesn’t allow her to see the value in most human endeavors. The only deep connection she has to anything is to her 3 friends and the adventures they went on together. When the friend she has the deepest connection to dies off, she is willed to reconnect with the other friends before they die off; collecting apprentices from each of them as she looks to retrace that adventure she took for granted. Any doubts that I had about this premise on paper were quickly washed away by the masterclass of storytelling.

The story is primarily told through flashbacks rich in symbols of Frieren’s previous adventures that develop our characters and give them a general sense of direction, followed by an actual storyline acting on these flashbacks. The flashbacks are all succinct enough to remain interesting without feeling long-winded, and each and every flashback has a clear story purpose: whether that be as clear characterization or setting up Chekhov's guns for later. These Chekhov's guns are used perfectly in a way that guarantees you an “oh, *that’s* what that was for” moment every episode. Both of these positive aspects of the use of flashbacks are commonly botched in other anime in the genre, making Frieren just that much more impactful.

*Lightning round of praises*

The story is amazingly emotional, yet nuanced as it tackles heavier-than-normal topics for the genre with a degree of tact. It doesn’t try to be overtly shocking with big *gasp* moments or overtly emotional with moments that make you want to bawl your eyes out, instead, it maintains a constant level of impact on the viewer: a factor lost on some anime that have a degree of variance to their impact.

The characters are deep to the extent simply not found in most fantasy anime. The original party interacts with each other in a way that makes their friendship feel genuine: almost in a Konosuba-esque manner. The new party has fluid dynamics that can even foster a bit of comedy that never detracts from the actual story.

The animation is high quality without being overly showy or bombastic: almost in a way that reminds me of the first season of Mushoku Tensei (minus the cool bread-tearing scenes)

The op is yet another Yoasobi op with depressing ass lyrics atop an upbeat score. It admittedly took me a long time to warm up to it, but by episode 4 I recognized that it was amazing.

Frieren does the Oshi No Ko thing of having a long-ass first episode(granted this one was split into 4 episodes but I digress). This helps the viewer get into the more convoluted premise more easily, and honestly, this should become common practice for anime of this nature.

If any of this sounds appealing to you, I suggest you check out Frieren. I personally see the series as a fantastic representation of what a true higher-level fantasy anime should really be like. However, I do recognize that for some, it simply doesn’t have that traditional anime impact that you need to enjoy a series. That’s perfectly okay, but just know you're probably missing out on something truly great.

Thanks for reading, let's have more Frieren-like fantasy and less vending machine isekai.

Imagine this scenario. You get home after a long day of work and doordash some orange chicken from your local Chinese restaurant. When you receive your food, you realize that your little to-go container doesn’t have orange chicken in it; hell, it doesn’t even have Chinese food in it. You stare down 3 tacos, chips and queso, and a fucking canned horchata from a Mexican restaurant you’ve never heard of. You have more questions than answers, especially since both restaurants can’t do anything about it and Doordash is offering you an insulting 6.90 in credit off of your 25-dollar meal as a pittance. With no ... other options, you eat that meal, and it’s damn good, about as good as that orange chicken you were supposed to have. You’re able to go to sleep that night in a fairly positive mood, although you still kind of yearn for that orange chicken. Just like in Mushoku Tensei season 2, sometimes, you don’t get what you want, but somehow, you wind up more than satisfied with the result.

For those walking into Mushoku Tensei season 2 expecting a continuation of the adventure story from season 1, you're about to open up your damn tacos because this season almost completely hinges on character development. You see, Rudy is depressed now; I would be too if my girlfriend of 5 years ghosted me right after we had sex for the first time. But this isn’t your typical anime depression where the main character talks to a guy that helps him get over whatever is afflicting him in one episode, no, no, no, this shit lasts for most of the season. The extent of his depression fluctuates; he bottoms out with his suicide attempt in episode 3 and he “peaks” in episode 12, but between those periods, there is seldom a moment where he just constantly improves. The essential theme behind it is that two good things can not happen in a row. Every high this man gets is immediately contrasted with a low: he’ll be depressed, then he’ll get some good news that is immediately followed by disappointment to shut down any feelings of joy that he might’ve had.

The decision to give Rudy erectile dysfunction is so symbolic that it would make your high school english teacher fucking swoon. Giving a perpetually horny character the inability to be horny while contrasting his erectile dysfunction with his mental dysfunction is just *chef's kiss* absolutely genius storytelling. His erectile dysfunction also serves as the last bastion of his depression in the latter parts of the story, and when it is cured via a 7 episode “will they, won't they” romance with perennial childhood friend Sylphy, it winds up hitting way harder than it has any business doing. Actually, referring to the romance as “will they, won’t they” misrepresents it a tad; the ball was always in Sylphy’s court as she could’ve revealed herself to Rudeus at any time, so it’s really a “will she, won’t she” romance if you will. The constant edging that comes with this part of the story can come off as drawn out to some audiences, but for me, Sylphy’s character development and intrapersonal conflicts throughout the season made that never happen.

This season helps maintain the continuity of Mushoku Tensei using odd amounts of realism or attention to detail to excel in ways other anime do not. The beginning segments with Sara and Counter Arrow were oddly realistic in the way they showed the cautious social improvements a depressed person attempts to make; this realism got turned up to 11 when they showed a sudden downward spiral with plenty of self-destruction. Most anime don’t use depression as a catalyst for character development; if they do, the depression is short-lived and resolved linearly. As stated above, neither of these happen in Mushoku Tensei season 2. The conversation with Nanahoshi is a glorified 20-minute info dump: an info dump that I was on the edge of my seat to consume. I generally dislike info dumps of this magnitude, but the sheer impact of the information being dumped and the extracurriculars with Sylphy during the conversation kept it interesting. Or hell, even the way they characterize side characters. There are 12 characters either introduced or re-established and expanded on this season, and none of them feel like a waste of time that won’t be utilized as the series goes on; characters like Sara have fulfilled their duty to the plot and won’t appear for much later feel like their arcs are completed: they don’t need extra development to make them feel like quality. Side characters that received incomplete characterization, such as Zanoba and Cliff, were set up to be reused in the latter parts of the story. On paper, this seems like a fairly simple decision to make that clears a pretty low bar of establishing your side characters to a great extent before you make them do important things in the plot, but you’d be surprised. Many anime skip this simple step that honestly gives out pure brownie points to viewers who consume the entire series.
Time to address the elephants in the room.

The second season of the Mushoku Tensei is arguably more polarizing than the first season. No, no, no, I’m not referring to polarization between the people that think Mushoku Tensei is fucking disgusting and the people who ignore those possibility disgusting elements to enjoy a nuanced narrative, I’m referring to polarization between people that liked the first season of Mushoku Tensei but can’t decide if the second season is amazing or dogshit. From the recommended tag, the 10/10 rating, or just the content of this review, you probably can ascertain my position on the matter, so I’m going to make an effort to defend it.

“The animation is worse and they clearly didn’t put in enough effort/ the production quality sucks!!”

Congratulations. You have officially downgraded from a Ferrari to a Ferrari that has driven 4 miles outside of the dealership. The animation is slightly worse in some spots and slightly less detailed than before in others. It’s not that noticeable, and I could only see it being jarring to viewers watching side by side with content from the first season. This is simply a consequence of Mushoku Tensei season 2’s existence. Season 1 was in production for 3 years; season 2 only had a year and a half. For a season that is mostly conversation, it makes sense that in half the time, the animation would be worse. The combat scenes of this season, although few and far between, are still detailed to the same extent as the first season, so I have a reasonable level of trust that the second cour will be better in this regard. Still, this isn't that big of a deal and it shouldn’t heavily impact your enjoyment of the series, if at all.

“ The adaptation sucks because this quote from volume 7, page 46, paragraph 4, sentence 3 wasn’t said by Rudeus in episode 3!!”

This goes beyond Mushoku Tensei. In general, people need to realize that completely faithful adaptations are so rare because most series just don’t have time for that shit. If everything from volumes 7-9 was fully adapted, this season would’ve been 15-16 episodes long. Cuts have to be made and as long as they don’t comprise the story or pacing of the series, I have no problem with them.

“Why is Rudeus regressing/why did he relapse back into depression? He needs to get over it!!”

Aw yes, how dare the anime character you're trying to self-project upon have characteristics of a real person. You see, real people often don’t improve linearly. They regress, they fail, they self-destruct. This happens to a greater extent if that person has mental health issues, which, surprise surprise, Rudeus does. I honestly don’t understand how the realism of a character can be a negative point for a viewer.

“Where is my op with the cool backgrounds behind it? *Sigh* Another issue courtesy of lazy production!!”

First of all, the op works like that for the first 5 episodes, fuck you. Second of all, Ranoa is one place, and the content that played in the background for these ops mainly showcased the new environment in which the characters found themselves. With no new environments, upwards of 11 minutes of background content for the same city would’ve been repetitive, so the decision to make a traditional op is logical. It probably will be back for the second cour anyway.

“The Ranoa arc is boring sol garbage that had me disinterested from the jump!!”

Honestly, I can’t really argue with that one, and this is where I’m going to conclude. Although the beginning of the season is standard, if not a little dampened Mushoku Tensei, Ranoa is a glorified sol arc. There’s little action, a whole lot of conversation, and the majority of the arc hinges on Rudy and Sylphy’s relationship. If you don’t have the patience to sit through “will they, won’t they” romances, if you hate slice of life, or if the only reason you enjoyed the first season was the action, you’ll probably dislike this season. Coming in blind to this season, I expected something similar to the first season, the end result wasn’t that, but I still enjoyed it to a great extent. Historically speaking, the first cour of Mushoku Tensei seasons serves as a setup for the season cour to excel. Let’s hope that’s the same with this season.


Thank You for Reading

Imagine if someone asked ChatGPT to create a mad-libs script based on Kakegurui, Classroom of the Elite, and No Game No Life, and then they presented that script to their local anime club. Each episode's worth of prompts is filled in by different people, and none of these people can communicate with each other in any way; reading the previous sections to see what was going on is completely optional. After a plot is created, one guy creates characters based on the advice from a slightly shitter chatbot service that is trained on Mal’s top 100 most popular anime list. After this, the members of ... the club get together and recite the script, and having had their fun with it, they throw it away at the end of the day. Suddenly, a worker for the Wednesday morning garbage discovers this script, and promptly submits it for a local essay contest, where the winner gets their story published. He figures that he will never win because this story is nonsensical at best, but through sheer happenstance, he is declared the winner. The rest is history. The series was relatively popular despite being critically slammed, so it spawned a light novel, a manga series, and an anime. The garbage man became rich and married a supermodel, and since he gave a bit of credit to our lowly anime club, they all became rich and got all of the women that they could ever want. Everyone lived happily ever after… Now luckily for you, there’s no need to imagine this absurd scenario because Liar Liar exists!

Obviously, that introductory paragraph is a lie, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if some part of that was true; in fact, it probably serves as a better explanation for some of the shit that happens in this anime than any other explanation the author could've given me. Liar Liar is the most confusingly ass series I have ever had the displeasure of consuming. It makes so many narrative, character, world-building, and production mistakes in such a short amount of time that it honestly is impressive. The question we are going to attempt to answer today is as follows. Is the author of Liar Liar actually incompetent at writing any sort of narrative story, or did his own or his editor’s greed lead them to make the most generic anime possible in a genre that thrives on creativity?

Fortunately, the myriad of mistakes that this series makes doesn’t necessarily begin with the premise. Granted, the premise is pretty generic: the “transfer student into elite school” trope has been done to death, but this isn’t necessarily a move that damns the series. Now having generic ass characters in a “psychological” anime, a genre predicated on well-made characters in a mentally engaging narrative, is a much more puzzling move that serves as the first major error that this series makes. You see, almost every character in Liar Liar is either a worse version of a better character in a better anime or can be described with a single adjective or noun.

Hiroto, our main character, is just a standard generic self-insert protagonist. He doesn’t have any discernible character traits other than the standard “I want to be successful,” “I want to protect my friends,” and “women fluster me.” From the introduction, you wouldn’t think this as he came off as a cocky, early SAO Kirito-level asshole, but after that scene and the maybe 6 others that happen throughout the story to lesser extents, he says some shit like “Oh golly, I hope that lie was believable”. This robs him of his only distinct character trait and turns him into Ryouta from Kakegurui, or just any other isekai protagonist from a series that has a title that's like a sentence long. Now if this was action anime, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but this show fancies itself as a thought-provoking “psychological” anime, a genre where main characters are typically charismatic or intelligent enough to make the shit they pull believable. Considering Hiroto’s character traits, he doesn’t live up to that in the slightest.

Noa gets the honor of being the most developed character in this series, granted, that might be an award she gets by default considering that she is the only developed character in this series, but I digress. She is introduced as a watered-down Kushida from Classroom of the Elite: an overly friendly and popular girl that is revealed to be an asshole that wants to see everyone suffer. After she is defeated by our main character, she becomes a fawning fan girl for him as she sheds all the personality that she had up until that point. Now this is borderline misogynistic and patriarchal writing, but that’s beside the point. Having our best character effectively eliminated from the story halfway through means that we have to rely on Hiroto’s generic ass to carry the story, a situation that definitely isn’t ideal.

Fortunately for Himeji and Sarasa, they don’t have to worry about their character development being struck down in the middle of the series as they never received any in the first place. The former is just your standard kind maid: almost identical to Rem from Re: Zero. The latter is just a tsundere: almost identical to… any tsundere in any anime ever. In practice, these girls aren’t bad characters, in fact, they are definitely the best characters in the series. But the issue remains; neither of these characters can stand by themselves. They’re both solely attached to Hiroto, and since Hiroto is such a bland character, any romantic subplot comes off as vapid at best.

You might have picked up on this by now, but this anime has aspects of a harem romcom despite also masquerading as a big-brained psychological anime. Now to Liar Liar’s credit, only maybe 8 percent of each episode is dedicated to romcom bullshit, but the presence of it at all damages the anime. All of the comedy is romantically charged, and, wouldn’t you know, it’s some of the most generic rom-com comedy I’ve ever seen. I don’t think it made me chuckle even a single time, and if it did, it certainly wasn’t worth massacring all of the female characters to do so. Oh, and to the surprise of nobody, the romance is completely dead and teeters on SAO levels of trash.

At this point, you might be questioning how I can call Liar Liar a psychological anime even though it lacks the strong characters that make psychological anime actually good. And yes, you are completely right. It isn’t a psychological anime, but its narrative likes to pretend it is, well, at least sometimes. The question governing this section is as follows. Was Liar Liar originally intended to be a visual novel or was always supposed to be an anime?

There are only a handful of anime that can shove 8 minutes of info dumps or typical conversation down my throat and still be entertaining. Unfortunately, Liar Liar is not one of them. These info dumps, mostly unnecessarily in-depth game, situation, or side character descriptions, are probably some of the most boring and inconsequential sequences in anime. They happen almost every episode and they definitely don’t have the substance to be 8 minutes long, it’s more like they stretch 3 or so minutes worth of content into 8-minute intervals for some reason. Oh, and since our characters are so bland and everyone in the room has to be fully involved in every conversation like a visual novel, the discourse becomes simply groan-inducing as it genuinely seems like each character is an AI chatbot trained on what archetype that the character is supposed to be. What’s worse is that there is almost nothing happening on screen whenever these sequences take place, maybe just some lazy animations or DVD logo-esque camera panning around the screen. If this was dubbed, I honestly could close my eyes and listen to this shit like an audiobook and I wouldn’t lose any of the impact of the story.

However, even with bland characters and a mandatory 8-minute info dump every episode, a couple of good games and a good narrative surrounding them could make this series watchable to some extent. Sadly, we don’t even get that.

You see, Liar Liar considers itself a “strategy game” anime, yet its games may be the worst thing I’ve ever seen in media. Yes, media. Not just anime, I’ve seen better games in books, movies, American tv shows, fucking gameshows, it is completely asinine. Liar Liar’s games are so bad because they are all fairly simple while being described as the convoluted things on planet Earth. This is where our 8-minute info dumps come in. I've seen this series provide an 8-minute tutorial for a card game where the objective is as simple as getting more cards than your opponent. It’s almost like if I had 5 minutes to teach you how to play chess, so I try to teach you the Sicilian defense instead of just telling you what the pieces do. Occasionally, there is a complicated game, but it’s almost always explained rather poorly in a way where you don’t really know what’s going on until it’s happening. This is a problem considering cheating is a major part of this story and at times, you have absolutely no idea if the main character is cheating his ass off or if he’s just abusing an aspect of the game. This is to such an extent that the main character actually has to remind the audience that he’s cheating so they know what the hell is going on in the story.

The extent of cheating cheapens the main character’s accomplishments. When your main character wins all of these “psychological” battles with the help of a nameless company that can cheat in any way that the author fancies, it doesn’t really feel like he’s doing anything special. It’s almost like watching a streamer kick ass at Call of Duty with aimbot. This is where that asshole arrogance displayed in the intro could’ve come into play, as watching our main character relentlessly taunt those around him while cheating his ass off sounds at least somewhat interesting, but we get generic main character number 11037 who everyone adores. This also cheapens the admiration he receives because it is all ill-gotten, but he will not receive any punishment for that because this is simply not that type of anime.

The worst offender of cheating has to be the author. Like a game of tag on the playground, everything in this story from the characters to the games to the narrative surrounding them is subject to change at any moment, for no previously defined reason whatsoever. This is best personified by the skill system: a simple perk system in which a player can assign 3 before a game. Instead of previously defining the skills so they can be wielded like Chekhov's guns, they stay hidden like a Chekhov’s Assassin's Creed hidden blade: in reality, they function as get-out-of-jail-free cards for whatever outcome the author wants. This leads to asspullitude that I have never before seen in fiction. There's a sequence in this series where in the 8-minute info dump, the author establishes that there is no way to tie a game, before introducing a card called Trojan Horse that allows for that exact thing to happen. Our main character is about to lose a game? Surprise surprise, he equipped a card called pinch hitter, which means that he didn’t lose, his partner did. Liar Liar’s skills are also explained right after they are used like magic attacks in generic isekai (this is the worst in the final arc where everyone throws out abilities like there is no tomorrow); this is a comparison I don’t wanna have to make in a supposedly psychological anime.

Yes, I’m bringing back the psychological anime comparisons, but this is where shit gets a bit confusing. You see, when Liar Liar gives you an 8-minute info dump and tries to pretend like the main character just did a genius move by using his aimbot, it genuinely can seem like it’s trying to be a psychological anime. However, when the author just makes shit up or tramples on basic, anime, or his own logic, it doesn’t really make sense in the context of everything else. By the way, the author also asspulls explicitly with no sort of underlying reason. At times, It’s almost like he sets up the next arc, but he needs a decent reason for that to happen so he just makes up some bullshit and hopes that the audience goes along with it.

“I need a reason for Himeji and Hiroto to fight, so let me invent an evil app that would blow up Himeji’s phone and get her expelled if they don’t fight each other.”

“I need a reason for Noa and Hiroto to fight, so let me give Noa instant transmission and allow her to sprint behind Himeji in heels and take her hostage, tying her hands behind her back with one hand and a rope. Then, if Hiroto wants her back, he must play me.”

In the final arc, the author just flat out gives up on trying to keep it the least bit subtle, so he just allows the rules to be bent and broken for 4 episodes straight, in a way that makes you question what the hell you’re actually watching. This, and other examples like it, obviously doesn’t make any sense, but the author shoves this down our throats and expects us to go along with it. It’s almost like the author doesn’t respect us as viewers, so he thinks he can pull anything at any time and the viewers would still eat it up. It almost follows the same principle of how children's shows are so haphazard in plot because, at the end of the day, the kids don’t care about plot inconsistencies. Story-wise, this is horrible and it actively undermines those bullshit 8-minute info dumps that you have to sit through.

To continue to beat this dead horse, I’m going to have to talk about the production. The “famous” studio Geek Toys really does a suboptimal job here. The only compliment I have for them is the way that they drew background characters. Making them literally two-dimensional Paper Mario style was a nice touch. Otherwise, the character design of the 3D characters is generic and lacks personality. Conversational scenes are lazily animated. Action scenes are lazily animated with an abundance of beams and particle effects to keep them “interesting”. Animations such as sword slashes or running are reused in a single episode to an extent where it is kinda obvious that the production team focused on one animation for the week, so they decided to make it as detailed as possible and reuse it 10 times in an episode. On top of the myriad of mistakes this series makes, this certainly doesn’t help its case.


Let's try to answer some of the questions asked throughout this review.

Is the author of Liar Liar actually incompetent at writing any sort of narrative story, or did his own or his editor’s greed lead them to make the most generic anime possible in a genre that thrives on creativity?

Probably both; the author shows incompetency with the inconsistencies in the plot, but he also makes everything else in this story laughably generic, so I wouldn’t put it past him.

Was Liar Liar originally intended to be a visual novel or was always supposed to be an anime?

I would say anime, but considering the audiobook-ass sections of info dumps and the inherent need to let every character chime in during them, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the former was true.

Does the author actually believe that all of his viewers are under the age of 8?

I honestly couldn’t tell you, that’s up to you to decide.


Overall, should you watch Liar Liar? Probably not. It’s either laughably generic, unfathomably boring, or actively not taking itself seriously with the level of asspullitude it attempts. It wouldn’t say that Liar Liar is a part of any genre; sure, it tries to be a psychological strategy game anime with aspects of romantic comedy, but never really commits to embodying any one of these genres. Any attempts it does make are struck down by it being generic or by the author’s incompetence. The only reason I could see anyone watching Liar Liar is because its own ineptitude was kind of interesting at times. Interesting in the way that a dumpster fire is interesting to passersby, but hey, at least that’s something.

Thank you for reading and for the love of god don’t give this series a second season.

Look, I like zombies as much as the next guy, but their recent portrayal in modern television has left a lot to be desired. The American market is oversaturated with long-running series that often fail to retain viewers as their content becomes more vapid throughout the series. On the other hand, zombie anime are typically too edgy or too horny for my tastes (looking at you Highschool of Dead). Both American and Japanese zombie tv shows have an inherent issue with sticking to tropes: (mobile combat scenes, searching for survivors, looking for a cure, establishing a base, etc.). This coupled with the oversaturation of the ... genre can turn off many viewers, including me. So when I heard that the flagship new ip for this season was a zombie anime, I was admittedly… skeptical to say the least.

Most of the main characters in the zombie genre are “everymen”: normal people who do normal things with their life. Naturally, a zombie apocalypse is not a realistic premise, so to make the audience relate to the main characters, the author makes their lives as ordinary as possible. This characterization is typically not relevant past the pilot as the main characters adopt roles more geared to the premise of the series. Zom 100 is the first series I’ve seen bank so hard into that everyman perspective, so much so that it is literally the main character's defining characteristic.

Akira is just an overworked dude who has been working a shitty job for the past three years. His job is so shitty that when a global extinction event is happening, he is absolutely thrilled because that means that he won’t have to go to work anymore. He spends the first couple minutes of the apocalypse with a big ass smile on his face; the production made it feel like an inmate celebrating his newfound freedom instead of a guy running away from a horde of Zombies. Instead of looking for supplies, new shelter, or other survivors, he spends his first day off bumming it on the couch, day drinking while watching tv. He only ventures into the outside world for the first time to make a beer run after he runs out. His second adventure is to save a friend who’s up to his ass in zombies so he can have a drinking buddy. The point is, Akira is the most impulsive and most carefree main character I’ve seen in recent history. This has such a big impact, especially in a genre that takes itself so seriously. If he were to meet main characters from other zombie anime, they would probably call him an idiot, and he’d probably be perfectly fine with that. In fact, something like that happens as early as the second episode.

Our deuteragonist: Shizuka, appears to be as close to a generic zombie anime main character as you get. Concocting survival plans, analyzing risk factors, the whole nine. After that last paragraph, you’d probably think I would be pounding sand over that, but it’s actually shaping to make an interesting dynamic with Akira. Their future dynamic is best demonstrated by the names of their lists. Akira’s list is called “100 things I want to do before becoming a zombie”, while Shizuka’s list is called “100 things to do to avoid becoming a zombie”. Akira treats becoming a Zombie as an inevitability while Shizuka does not. You don’t need a degree in literature to understand that these characters will play off of each other as the series progresses; as they slowly gain aspects of each other’s philosophies while staying true to their primary objectives.

The animation and music here just add to the carefree vibe Akira gives off. A zombie apocalypse is generally considered to be a pretty depressing event, but the production team animates it with bright popping colors that almost make it look like a happy experience, especially contrasted to the gloomy and dark colors used to showcase Akira at his job. The op and ed also support this by being inherently upbeat and joyful songs.

Overall, Zom 100 looks to be the most interesting new ip in a season jam-packed with sequels. It’s amazing what can happen if you go against the norm in a genre that is plagued with originality issues. Even though I expect Zom 100 to adopt those tired zombie tropes in the future, I trust that it will maintain the level of nuance it operates with now.

Thank you for reading. Let's hold a prayer circle to hope this doesn’t turn into Highschool of the Dead 2.

If you were to tell me that I would be reviewing a second season for Horimiya after the conclusion of the first, I would’ve probably laughed in your face, but here we are.

A string of wacky adaptations that condensed the series from a 500+ chapter web novel to a 122-chapter manga and further to a 13-episode anime resulted in a finished product that had cut out a large majority of the series’ content. This cutting of content is actually done well; especially in the anime where no major story beats were cut in a somehow conclusive story. Nearly 60% of the manga’s content was ... cut from the anime: almost all of it was pure, unadulterated, school-days slice-of-life content that would waste the runtime dedicated to the more nuanced and mature story. That’s where Horimiya: The Missing Pieces comes in.

The Missing Pieces is the perfect title for this season, in more ways than one. Sure, it is picking up the “missing pieces” that the first season of the anime didn’t adapt, but it is also “missing pieces” from that first season. The slice-of-life content is loosely put together and the individual short stories rarely relate to each other. The length of Miyamura’s hair is the only way for a viewer to tell whether a given episode happens while Miyamura and Hori are dating. Even though every character in the series is present, all of the character development happened last season, leaving little for this one. It’s a grab bag of Horimiya content that almost feels like the creators ran the first season through an AI and told it to make another 13-episode season based on it. Hell, even the OP and ED are worse than what the first season had to offer. I can go on and on with various misgivings and nitpicks about this series, but through 3 episodes, I can’t help but say that I’m enjoying myself.

Most of the “issues” that this season has are just byproducts of its existence. Of course, the story and character development is going to be worse, we’ve already seen all the series has to offer in those departments. I don’t typically care for slice-of-life anime, especially ones that reuse the typical school-days tropes, but for some reason, it works well here. Maybe it’s just that the characters have more mature and nuanced personalities that lend themselves better to the type of series that Horimiya wants to be, but for once, I’m actually kind of excited to see how the cast handles the inevitable culture/sports festival or fireworks episode. That’s right! I’m excited for the most overused trope in sol anime because good characters are behind it. It’s Kaguya-sama all over again.

The Missing Pieces will only amount to being a Horimiya lite because of its lack of story and overall, it’s less impactful to both the viewers and the genre. However, it’s still enjoyable for fans of Horimiya. Naturally, if you didn’t like the original series, you’ll probably hate this, but that’s beside the point. This right here is shaping up to be a fun anime. It’s exciting to see what the cast can do when they are thrown together with no objective that needs to be completed. It’s not that well put together. It’s not that impactful. It’s not that nuanced compared to the original series, but god damn is it enjoyable as all hell. And assuming they don’t mess the adaptation up from here on out, it’ll stay that way.

Thank you for reading, and here’s to hoping that we somehow get a complete version of Horimiya that splices together both seasons in narrative order.

“I have absolutely no interest in idols or the culture surrounding them. Frankly, I find the concept of grown-ass men (and to a lesser extent women), idolizing girls as young as 15 to be… strange at best and utterly creepy at worst. The only reason I picked up Oshi No Ko is because Aka Akasaka wrote it; the author that just happened to write Kaguya-sama, my favorite overall series. Despite the name behind it, I admittedly still had my prejudices.“

That is how I introduced my preliminary review; an admittedly vapid work where I sung my praises about Oshi No Ko by sucking off the first ... episode in ways previously thought impossible by scientists. That review somehow got away with mentioning the second and third episodes for a total of 29 words: about 5% of the entire review. What you may see as shameless pandering to an internet-breaking episode in an effort to drum up updoots on the internet, (in hindsight, it probably comes off like that, although it wasn’t intentional) I see it as an accurate portrayal of the general consensus of the series through the first 3 episodes.

You cannot deny the quality of the first episode without blatantly hating. It serves as the perfect hook to the series by building up a faux premise that is subsequently destroyed by a Madoka Magica-level plot twist. This destroys any type of preconceptions that the viewer had before the series and even during the episode, while also getting the viewer hyped for what’s to come next. The decision to make the first episode 80 minutes long as opposed to making the 4 episodes of normal length also benefits the hook as some viewers may have dropped the series during the first 3 episodes before the actual premise was revealed. However, the second and third episodes were just traditional set-up episodes that were nowhere near first in terms of impact or scope. As the third episode ended, when the hype of the first episode had begun to subside, some people, including me, were beginning to wonder “Would this shit fall off”? In hindsight, I can laugh at this. I tried so hard not to like this series between my preconceptions of the idol genre at the beginning and my skepticism towards the series through the third episode. But here I am, writing a 10/10 review and preaching to the masses that Oshi No Ko is the FUCKING ANIME OF THE SEASON.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me dispel a misconception about Oshi No Ko. This shit is not an idol anime. It’s not an acting anime, or a mystery anime, or even a romance anime. This series is a damn near exposé that reveals the good, bad and the ugly of the Japanese entertainment industry. That statement is a bit fictitious as the “good” is shown to be what we, the audience, get to see. That perfect smile, the flashy performances, the love confessions, all of the stuff we consider to be the “good” parts of the entertainment industry mask the “bad”: the lies, the suffering, and the depression. The “ugly”: terrible situations that make news and garner support and sympathy on social media before fading into obscurity as all news does. It doesn’t appear an obsessive amount in the series, but it keeps the audience on their toes because, at any moment, shit can hit the fan. This premise works so well because of its novelty to the genre and because it affects characters that the audience is quick to empathize with. Oshi No Ko deals with real problems that really happen to real people, and as a result of that, it handles those problems with a large amount of realism that permeates into every aspect of the story: especially the characters A large amount of realism helps the characters be more relatable, which in turn makes the audience more likely to empathize with the characters, which allows the aforementioned concept to flourish.

Most anime develop their characters with tragic backstories or extraordinary experiences to garner sympathy or excitement for the character moving forward. The only problem with this is that most of these developments are completely unrelatable for the audience. The audience is unlikely to relate to having their family killed by demons or being sold into slavery at a young age. The audience is less likely to empathize with or enjoy unrelatable characters. This isn’t a problem in most story-driven series as the objective there is to create a character that the audience can sympathize with, not empathize with. This is perfectly fine because, in many of these stories, the audience only needs to feel bad for the character; they don’t have to understand or relate to what they are feeling. However, in character-based stories like Oshi No Ko, it’s much more important to make the audience sympathize and empathize with the characters through relatability founded in realism. In an effort to make relatable characters, stories must also make sure that they don’t outright pander to the audience with characters whose sole objective is for the audience to project upon them. The characters of Oshi No Ko perfectly straddle that line in a way that makes the audience empathize with their problems and root for their successes to a far greater extent than what is common in the genre.

A childhood phenom that fell off as she matured who is hungry for her next opportunity to get back into the limelight while perpetually writhing in the cynicism and despair that comes with the possibility that reviving her career may be impossible. A theater performer driven by feelings of uselessness and ineptitude that cause her to overact in a way that ruins her big break and causes an abundance of heinous discourse to befall her. A content creator who aged out of her dream due to familial obligations. Upon first glance, the relatability of some of these side characters may seem minuscule at best. However, upon a closer look, you can see that the side character archetypes in Oshi No Ko underlie some of the basic human fears that threaten self-actualization. The fear of falling off, the fear of not living up to other's expectations, the fear of aging out of the things you love to do, it’s all here and is probably the most relatable aspect of the series.

Now, for the past two paragraphs, I pretty much exclusively talked about how relatable the characters in this series are and how that makes them easy to empathize with. However, throw that shit out the window for Aqua and Ruby as they both fail into the former category of characters in story-driven series, rather than the latter category of series like Oshi No Ko.
(You might be able to explain this because they are reincarnations that aren’t from the present day, but I digress.)

This doesn’t affect Aqua as he’s probably the best character in the series. He’s really similar to a Light Yagami or a Lelouch VI Britannia: a genius who masterminds the plot to accomplish their extreme goal. The reason why he is a genius is actually a little better explained than Light or Lelouch; He was a doctor in his previous life, so he’s naturally intelligent and he uses the experiences he gained in his previous life to make deductions as Aqua. Unlike the two aforementioned characters, he actually hides his genius well through his acting. I’m not implying that Aqua is a better character than Light or Lelouch; it would be silly to say that after just 11 episodes. But I will say that Aqua invokes the same feeling that Lelouch and Light invoke in the audience, and at the very least, he deserves a spot at their proverbial roundtable.

As for Ruby, she heads the B plot while Aqua heads the A plot. However, the A plot takes priority up until the final episodes. The B plot is intermittently developed along with the A plot, and it’s actually Aqua’s motivation for some of the stuff he does throughout the series, but it’s to a far lesser extent than the A plot. Even when the B plot does get screen time as the primary focus, it mainly focuses on Kana and later Mem-Cho. Because of this, Ruby is a far less developed character than Aqua. (This is actually one of my only complaints about the series.) She’s not a bad character, her backstory is actually pretty moving, she just clearly lacks the development that Aqua gets. I expect this to change in later seasons, but as of right now, Oshi No Ko’s B plot is less impactful than the A plot by a decent margin.

There has been a recent trend in the anime industry where production quality just keeps improving; Bocchi the Rock and Chainsaw Man were last year’s proof of that. Oshi No Ko follows that trend of improvement by having way better direction, animation, and music than is necessary for the genre. The quality of direction can easily be shown by the decision to make the first episode 80 minutes long, or how each episode ends with an impactful moment to hype the audience instead of a cliffhanger. The animation quality can be seen literally everywhere, but it’s most impactful when it involves a character’s eyes, especially Aqua’s dark star eyes. And for the music, the Op and Ed are my personal choices for the best in their respective categories for the season. I understand that music is subjective, but if you do a lyric analysis, you can understand that both Op and Ed correlate to the story to a much greater extent than in other series. Not to mention that both of them slap.

In conclusion, Oshi No Ko is the FUCKING ANIME OF THE SEASON. The first episode hits like a Mac Truck, ushering in a unique and novel premise. This premise is supported by realistic characters that deal with realistic problems, which makes them relatable. This allows the audience to easily empathize with them. The main characters are excellent, well, Aqua is excellent, Ruby isn’t fully developed yet, and that’s why I’m off to the manga to find that coveted Ruby development.

Thank you for reading and fuck HiDive.