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This is genuinely the most pathetic new mainstream anime I've seen. Solo Leveling shows no ambition, no effort and no emotion. Even if considered among the big range of slop power fantasy it is one of the blandest of guilty pleasures one can have. There is no skill in terms of writing here, therefore it is critical to have a thorough look at Solo Leveling's animation and how it handles its role as said power fantasy. Those are its only values and even here it is overhyped and lacking.

Everything here is made to revolve around our great Sung lil-bitch. Structure of the story and the ... 'characters' are here to highlight how cool the mc is and to react to how cool he is, that is their whole goal. Every female is made to start lusting over Sung except for his family, which is also here to show that he is cool and cares about his family, beside that they react (as the rest of npcs do) to his epic aura. Story in here follows roughly this structure:
Sung 'needs to get stronger' (we will get back to it)
He goes to grind, which goes effortlessly
He encounters a boss which is strong enough to warrant a longer fight, but still never had a chance to beat him.
Throughout or at the end of those steps there are many npcs to react to his awesomeness
Repeat 7 times
Finish it with a super boss which trashes npcs, but ends up destroyed like the rest

The worst part about this awful story is how easily it could have been improved. Why Sung lil-bitch needs to get stronger? To get money for his sister and find a way to save his mother. Why isn't there a time limit to this? His mother can just lay in bed for the next 10 years and his sister was doing fine even without the money. All they had to do was having his mother get so ill that she would die in two months or something and have it destroy her body. Same with the sister, just have her in heavy debt and maybe forced to work some side job that is dangerous and hinders her school life. Those are the smallest, easiest to implement changes and already you have some urgency, drama and tension which don't exist in this show as of now. Sung himself could have been also easily improved. Show hints at his moral fall but does nothing with it. Dude casually murders someone because in the state of panic a frightened npc attacks him. There are moments when he lacks empathy and comments on it, why isn't it expanded into something meaningful? Instead he is just cool, edgy and always wins. That is what I mean by the lack of ambition, the power fantasy aspect is just MC STRONG with no creativity or ability.

The fact that this show doesn't seem to realize how much it sucks is very frustrating. Anime genuinely tries to have me worried about the moron npcs like they are people or something. Oh no, will the sniffa lady designed to be in love with lil-bitch die on the first real mission I see her on? Oh no will those heroic fighters get wiped out (repeat 6 times)? Same with the mc. The funniest shit is how they try to build tension for every unlosable fight. I loved for example the epic music for the 1st episode fight between a summon and random bear, truly an epic face off. Even the premise of the show is abandoned. I know it is called Solo Leveling, but instead of just having grind from games they could have brough some fun gaming strategies. Never have I seen Sung go 'this fight looks tough let me buff myself, setup some traps and creativly use some skills/equipment' its always just SMASH or SLASH.

Enough about obvious flaws, let's talk visuals.
Solo Leveling is widely considered pretty which is true, it is also important to note that second season has a much better production quality than the first one. On the other hand one hears so much about said quality that you might expect something revolutionary like a consistent peak animation, I'm here to say that that is not the case. Before we focus on the fights it is important to acknowledge that we don't always have said fights and outside of them anime decreases in quality. Its not awful, it is just standard, sometimes lighting will be pretty cool tho. In the fights by far VFX are the best, some elemental spells look beautiful. Lightning, particles, etc. are cool and movement made slick. Fights have quite a few animation highlights to the point that sometimes we even get some decent choreography. It happens quite rarely (most prominent in the 6th episode). It is quite a high accomplishments for a slop anime, but it is important to remember than it has been done better before. Most disappointing were the backgrounds which at least sometimes existed in fights, but beside that weren't doing anything too impressive. You can see what I mean in the 12th episode. We change the fight to those controversial floating lines which always when executed correctly exists to highlight good background animation, but here said background is either non existent or gray and boring, with not much of anything going on.
Talking about the climactic fight it was the biggest disappointment of Solo Leveling. 60% was just slapping each other, there was the aforementioned fumble with lines and the rest was also just vfx line attacks followed by damage, it looked cool, but was weaker than most of the other big fights of this series.
Whole scale of the action sequences can't be handled by the anime. All the time we have big team fights and with so many individuals we often get to see a lot of poor cgi, which extends to cars as well.

To wrap it up, yes fights look good, but not good enough to carry this disaster on its own. That is why you can only enjoy this show if you can get entertainment from its super boring form of a classic power fantasy. You may say I'm nitpicking, but you have to realise that if all you have is animation than that is the level of scrutiny you are going to get. I genuinely believe that instead of watching this hit piece of shit you should invest 10 minutes of your life on research and you will easily find a truly good anime that has good animation and/or good power fantasy.

The best argument for watching this anime is the fact that there is nothing even close to being like it. At the first glance this may look like one of those stories about science persevering over zealous fanatics and faith, which is of course stupid and for dumb people, but upon closer inspection Orb is thankfully much more than such a shallow tale of perseverance. The real goal of Orb is to gather on your screen a collection of people with distinctly different opinions and show you how they clash and influence each other, if you are bored by long winded debates this isn't the ... show for you.

Now that you know what to expect to be good let me quickly pivot to the things you wouldn't expect to be good here, but is. Anime quite obviously has a limited budget, Madhouse won't put into Orb the same amount of resources as it might into Friren. With that in mind it is surprising to discover how beautiful this show is. Night sky is like a painting, occasionally an inspiring scene will hit you and throughout the anime there are wonderful highlights of high quality animation. The rare action that happens in Orb always look great. On the other hand if you pay attention you will notice cut corners, I particularly despised the awfully generic architecture. It is somewhat shocking how well this show can look, but don't go in expecting constant quality. As for the sound, score is quite good, it hit when it had to, but its not an ost that will stick with you. Voice acting on the other hand was great. Everyone felt distinct and the acting in the climactic moments was great.

Now returning to the soul of Orb, the story. Show is theoretically about astronomy, but in reality said topic is just a vehicle for the ambitious amount of ideas author wanted to explore. I won't be summarizing those topics here, instead I will tell you why they are impressive and why you should watch Orb. Said topics can be divided into two camps, perseverance and worldview.
Perseverance here isn't your typical anime struggle of a young teenager in his fight against a bad guy, here you will witness several generations of people united in their fight against censorship. People who for the sake of inspiration, hope, ambition and love decide to sacrifice everything to become a stepping stone toward saving an idea from destruction or even making this idea widely available. Here is the first reason why the cast is big and diverse. You see a web of characters as a collection of efforts, some against said idea many with different opinions on how it should be used, all contributing towards the history of just one idea, it is some beautiful stuff.
Worldview is a vide word, which is appropriate, as Orb decides to spend a ton of time on a big range of concepts from multiple angles. The main themes are centered around religion, society and moral convictions. I find it honestly fascinating how in depth religion is explored in this work, to the point where sometimes even theology is a big part of discussion. It's so rare to have a respectful and thoughtful coverage of said topic from so many angles. Every type of person needed takes part in the topic from zealous, scholarly and cynical believer to an atheist and religious Ted Kaczynski. That's just religion, and I didn't even mention every perspective that is involved in this topic. Here is the second reason why the cast is big and diverse. Because a large part of Orb is a series of debates, which to be sincere needs a lot of opinions to be represented. Beside those reasons its not like those characters are bad. What is impressive is the fact that so many of them were so good, had a real arc and were great to watch.

Despite this incredible complexity Orb isn't perfect and has two flaws that annoyed me.

Starting with the minor one. For the sake of those debates characters sometimes feel quite unrealistic. Some of the points made are with the knowledge of the our times, which is a wild prediction from characters perspective, which they take for granted. Those characters will immediately understand the weight of new inventions or the developing events, I wouldn't mind if it happened only few times, but it is a constant for this show. Some of the opinions held also feel like a stretch. To get an athiest for those discussions someone's uncle just says 'there is no evidence God exist' a very modern statement which I wouldn't buy living in a fifteenth century.

Now for the big problem. Anime dangerously meanders about whether it wants to be a somewhat historical fiction, or just fiction. As a Pole, stupidity of Orb was quite easy to spot. Show apparently takes place in Poland, but it might have just as well take place in the country of Zantrum or any other made up place. There is nothing culturally Polish about this Poland, even in the background. Apparently Poland was notorious for the Polish inquisition, had a nomadic tribe settle in Poland and convert to christianity and had an astetic of a medival isekai country with awful looking ahistorical costumes/armor. If this lack of detail was only in relation to Poland and in a less intellectual show it wouldn't have mattered, but here it is actively harmful. We have all of those discussions why church has to reform and maybe stop burning heretics for heliocentrism while ignoring the fact that:
a) witch hunts on such a scale stopped a long time before the time of this anime and
b) they were mostly in western europe while Poland was known for its religious tolerance
To show how ridiculous this anime is let's look at Copernicus. A famous heliocentric astronomer living in those times in Poland was a candidate for a bishop, printed his works whitout problems and dedicated his famous 'On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres' to a pope. Show happens during reformation when Copernicus lived, but has its dates changed to before he is born. So it's fiction you might say, but then why have real events, such as reformation and real places like Poland? Anime actively discredits itself and puts no effort in history, but still attempts being historical. So why it is harmful? The historical phrases thrown around to an ignorant ear make this anime seem historical and after convincing a viewer that it is it spread a big load of misinformation about history and makes my country look like a land of saveges. It is so tragic that such an ambitious story was only interested in the phonetic aesthetics of Polish language and nothing else.

To summarize this show is an impressive and beautiful debate room surrounded by historical fallacies. Be aware of the fact that it's full of fiction and you will be able to safely listen about many facinating topics, while witnessing a unique, generational story.

If you liked the first season you will most likely enjoy the second one, if you didn't you won't. This may sound a bit simplistic, but despite changing direction and focusing on a side quest the fundamental premise of this show remains the same. Whenever I discuss this anime there is a major issue that decides if someone likes it or not, is the anime too pretentious/preachy? If those aspects of Oshi no Ko never bothered you than I hope reading this may at least explain to you why there are those who despise this seemingly universally liked anime.

It is often fine for a show ... to be pretentious, so what makes people annoyed by it mad? Oshi no Ko is the strangest combination of documentary and a show. Author wants not only to educate you about show business, but also to reveal all of the dirt that surrounds it. Serious issues are brought up, certain ones condemned in a clear way. Because of this there needs to be a lot of exposition, some forced. Pacing must be occasionally sacrificed, plot abandoned. So we have this educational, serious side which meshes with it being a show. Oshi no Ko is comedic and bombastic, characters wacky, plot exaggerated. Aqua is a super edgelord, with some ridiculous revenge story. Show constantly tired to overhype everything about acting to the point of parody. Some see this combination as the best of both worlds, but I mostly felt the negatives. This wacky, edgy show seems to have a religious mission to preach the good word while trying to maintain having a plot which counters its goals and takes time away from this preaching, making the documentary often feeling half assed, the issues rushed and manhandled. It feels insulting when anime and all its characters are screaming at me to take them seriously and than I get to see an edgelord and his team play out one of the more 'anime' plots I've seen.

To be fair second season lessened many of those issues by turning away from the main plot, this move highlighted Aqua. If you like him its a fine move, but I would suspect people who find Oshi no Ko pretentious don't (including me). Theater arc in itself is longer than it ought to be by the previously mentioned fact that anime has to both be a show and a documentary. Another reason why we are spending a long time on this arc is to also witness the massive overselling and overhyping of acting in theater. Again the duality. It is fine to be over the top, but it just didn't glue well for me with being educational and preachy. I do appreciate the fact that the hit manga being adapted into a play is an awful slop. Quite a realistic touch, intentional or not. Beside the basic education and symbolically touching some issues in the industry first arc focuses on developing the protagonist with his two love interests which leads into characters.

Aqua is a super serious, annoying edgelord. Theoretically he has PTSD which should be compelling and interesting, but it feels like just being there to make him more edgy. He has to 'suffer' to act, same as his great predecessor, Sasuke, he has to get better to kill his target. Manipulator but also aware of his wrong actions and completely ready to sink into the filth of the showbiz. Let me tell you, if this wasn't a flawed documentary I would most likely enjoy this duality a whole lot more, but it is and I dislike it. By bringing up real flaws in our modern world and making the protagonist a part of the problem, he stops being like an anime super master manipulator, but feels to me like a scumbag and I don't like that in a serious critique, it feels hypocritical. Anime tries to address this issue. Towards the end of the season this aspect of Aquas character is shown as a flaw that he should abandon. If the anime was serious about trying to bring good change that would be a great direction for his character. Redemption, maybe followed up by trying to help people in the industry and really focus in on some message... but no. This is a show so plot demands that we get back to the ridiculous revenge story, anime straight up tells us that this reflective Aqua is temporary. He will go back to his wacky mission and his manipulative edgy tendencies are spreading to yet another character. Will this anime commit to its revenge story wholeheartedly? I doubt it. We will most likely return to the template from the first season, following this ridiculous plot while engaging with more sensetive issues. Author will narrate by some of those wacky characters how the industry is evil and whatever, after which those same character will engage in the similar tactics to achieve their cartoonish goals. Oshi no Ko will continue to demand being taken seriously while being the same anime as those 'less' serious shows... anyway.

Theater arc is focused on advancing Aqua's relationships and skill, in the second one we are shown how he would act if he was a normal human being. As I said, seemingly a momentary change, but at least he has some development. I found Akane as a nice representation of this anime. On one hand a walking mishandeling of the issue of suicide, with the feelings of indebtedness towards Aqua and the aura of being a 'serious' character, but also with a wacky anime psycho side to her. Perfect clash of pretentious topics and the showiness of this anime. Beside the nature of her character her goal is the advancment of her relationship with Aqua and seeing Arima at her best. Said Arima is the most enjoyable person here. Quirky, but not over the top, she works the best in this story and her journey to become a little selfish was cute. Outside of the main focus is Ruby which didn't get much love in this season. Most of the shake up with her character is setting up next season so it doesn't make sense to talk about her much in this review.

I couldn't give a damn about other characters, but let it be known that everyone here has amazing voice acting. Of course often it was very outlandish and contributed to my previously stated problems, but the quality of acting itself was great. While I am in the positives it is important to mention that this show still looks great. Art style is memorable, animation good. Passion was put into many creative sequences. Direction was nice and so was the music. The over the top nature of the animation led to some wacky scenes and my previous complaints. Side note, goofy manga panels in the theater were quite unintentionally funny, being unintentionally funny is something that decreased in this season. By moving away from cringe plot and serious topics, there was less room for funny fumbles. They still happened, but in this season when something failed it often wasn't as funny.

Oshi no Ko is in my eyes a pretentious mishandeling of its intentions, that instead of being captivating, mysterious, emotional and educational felt preachy, annoying, insensitive and quite wacky. First season gave the vibe of self importance despite mishandeling serious topics while being a silly, edgy show. The second season temporarily shifted weaknesses of this work. We are exploring theater which leads to smaller amount of sensitive issues to cover that Oshi no Ko can screw up, but on the other hand we are on a overly long side quest that without the constant education should be half as long and focuses on our cast of characters which are of questionable likeability to some (me). This is a positive trade off in my eyes, but last episodes convinced me that even if my main problems with the first season were being slightly addressed/lessened, it is a temporary effect of being momentarily away from the main plot. I want to enjoy this ironically as a wacky failure, but author's arrogant belief of self importance imprinted into this show is impeeding even that kind of enjoyment.

Abstract art pieces, advanced visual storytelling, inspired direction and enormous creative energy wasn't what I expected going into Elusive Samurai, but here we are. The sheer quality of artistry put on screen here is even more puzzling when taking into account how simple this story is. The whole plot of the anime works only because it was skillfully elevated with great care and passion.

First it is important to note that between those amazing highlights there is a whole bunch of normal anime and this normal anime looks great as well. Art Style is of course enjoyed depending on taste, but you can be certain that ... this isn't a generic looking random show, but bright colorful and energetic one. Even the character designs while fitting with the historic period, are often bonkers and enjoyable. There was a lot of effort put into animation from more mundane/comidic moments to epic fights. Those fights are helped by great choreography full of fluid movement and direction. The biggest strength of the Elusive Samurai shows in the fact that where others would have stopped at having great fights Elusive Samurai decides to show in a creative way more about characters. Sometimes a great sense of hearing will be represented by a gorgeous sequence, characters backstory will have a different style representing his feelings, emotions as a whole might be shown visually, a display of overwhelming power will become an otherworldy spiritual experience. With great direction and good focus a sense of disorientation in character will be skillfully portrayed. As I said the whole show isn't like that, but a lot is which is great to witness and used in a way that makes this competent, but simple story much more engaging. Quickly talking about sound, voice acting is very good but ost, while hitting during the highlights, was pretty unnoticeable. An unfortunate detail important to bring up, in the last few episodes the wonderful visual quality decreases drastically.

I talk a lot about simplicity because it is true. Motivations are flat and many of the characters feel one note, but that doesn't mean everyone is like this. The whole plot is focused on the asymmetrical conflict of protagonist vs antagonist. Tokiyuki (good guy) has very engaging chellange of turning from a carefree, kind child into a responsible, charismatic leader while Takauji (bad guy) is a great execution of a simple, evil antagonist. His presence, power and attitude make him great to watch and the violence he is capable of give him a scary aura. Lesser antagonists are also mostly fun. Often very over the top, but in one example even given a small arc making me excited for the future of the rest of them. So yes story isn't anything special, but it's competent enough to be made special by the artistry surrounding it.

Now time for the bigger problem. This show is a comedy that tries its hand at mixing itself with tragedy and serious violence. Again comedy is subjective (I enjoyed it), but sometimes the jump from funnies to drama felt too jarring, it felt like a less skilled Gintama. Now it wasn't the worst attempt at doing something like that I saw, sometimes they do it well, but for someone unaccustomed to this approach bad mixing of tones can be a deal breaker. Either way be ready for a wacky show that tries to be serious from time to time.

To summarize I love abstract art enough to almost disregard all of the flaws in here, maybe despite them you will love it too.

Second season of Jujutsu Kaisen is truly astounding. It's incredible creative vision and ambition are only matched by disappointment coming from failures in achieving its enormous goals. To truly express my feelings about such a complicated piece of media I will have to go into spoiler teritory, but for now, until stated otherwise, I will avoid going in depth and assume you only watched the first season.

So should you continue watching Jujutsu after its long introduction you had to go through that is the first season? It is hard to say as the continuation of this story is very... let's say uneven in its strenghts. ... To help you decide let me start with what I enjoyed the most which is the combination of courage and passion put into this anime by a team of some of the very best artists in the industry. Despite massive challenges (that I will disscus in a bit) this show includes one of the most stunning and creatively impressive tv animation highlights I've seen in a long time, with incredible directing too. The team of very strong and different animators make this season of Jujutsu a compilation of many different styles and approaches animation can take, the scale of which is rarely seen. Sometimes a whole episode will be keeping a quality worthy of being shown in cinema.

Music was very fun with wide array of styles reaching some very jazzy places that I enjoyed greatly. Voice actors as always give their all in this series with many impressive performances throughout the show.

Story wise author shows some of his best moments with the first arc and many creative ideas throughout the rest of the season, but unfortunately here is where I will start complaining, with all of the ambition in mind it is obvious to me that plot is the weakest part of this show.

Lack of development for the many important characters is the most annoying problem. Even in the main trio only Itadori got sufficient level of development for me to care at least a little bit. Characters that are with us since a long time are still being neglected while new ones are being intruduced. Thanks to this problem author turns to a classic move of fleshing out a character right before his/her death, which I always hate to see, especially when they do it by having a long flashback. Antagonists are a very mixed bag. Sure Sukuna is great and I liked Mahito, but people like Toji or Geto are totally wasted which I will discuss in the spoiler section.

Fights are mostly badly written. There are few very notable exceptions, but mostly we are putting an established character against some random while the narrator is boring me to death with expositon about said random dude and his power. Rearly do we put two known, major and developed characters against eachother and sometimes when we do it turnes out to be badly handeld (I will get to it later). This is very annoying when some of the biggest fights in this climactic arc are between someone we know and some new or uninteresting dude. Many of those fights feel like being here mostly for show with not much being achived.

Power system is convoluted, and thanks to the aforementioned narrator we often are just informed of what everyone can do taking out any mystery about some of those uninteresting opponents. Conveluted system also gives the author an opportunity to often get his characters out of tough and interesting decisisons like with Gojo who ended up breaking a rule to his ability just because he is that good.

I don't really get what this series is trying to tell me. With no strong theme and lackluster plot, story of Jujutsu is just not very appealing to me.

Now let's talk about the production problems and tight timelines, resulting inconsistency in quality can either be very annoying or fascinating depending on you. Sure it is sad that those amazing artists didn't get to achive their vision thanks to corporate greed, with many frankly ugly moments in the series, but it is very impressive to see what they managed to achive after getting to know a little about what kind of problems they had to face. I would love to see a documentary about how we even managed to get what we did.

Should you watch season two? I would say most likely, but if you have problems along the way take a similar approach as one would in museum. This show made history and history while important doesn't have to be always pretty.

Now time to get into detail with my more important problems, first one is with Geto and the bad structure of this whole story.

If you, like me after watching Jujutsu zero assumed that Geto is dead and surely the one in the first season must be an imposter than chances are that the first half of this season will be very frustrating and will fail in many of the goals it is trying to accomplish. In the whole prequel arc I didn't care at all about Geto, problem which would be easly fixed by placing said arc at the begging of the story. This would also make Jujutsu zero a much better story. Unfortunately while the first arc impressed me the most it wasn't free of flaws as the fall of Geto himself felt very rushed and didn't convince me at all. Toji also feels wasted, with his only contributions being a power up for Gojo and a push towards evil for a dead soon to be antagonist.

Let's talk more about Toji and Megumi. Their fight was one of the biggest let downs of this season. We basically got nothing out of our protagonist who didn't even realize he was fighting his father. How do you screw this up?! This by all means shoud have been one of the best moments in this series. While we are talking about the big characters Kugisaki and Nanami turned out to have practically no arcs at all. Sure Nanami had his epic anime rage against some random, but I don't care. Nanami got basically abandoned by the author in favor of developing Itadori, which I despise as a decision. To be honest woman in this show have always been disappointing either being just a variation of your typical smirki personality or underdeveloped and forgettable like the blue haired Gojo fangirl. While we talk about Gojo I also have to say that I really don't get the hype about the most prideful and unchanging character in this series, but that is me just ranting at this point.

I haven't even talked about the many abandoned plot points. That will either be forgotten or reintroduced in the distant future, making me wonder why set things up like politics in the Zenin clan in the first season or other things like that when we barly even touched the subject.

I hope that if you enjoyed Jujutsu Kaisen you won't come to my home and murder me in sleep as I've seen some very devoted fans of this show. Enjoy your show, know that I enjoyed it as well and have a great time.

This anime is a piece of horrendous shit, I mean it, a giant turd that stinks so much you could get sick, so if you can, stay away from it. The only and I mean ONLY instance in which you could CONSIDER watching this is if you played the original game, despite not playing myself I still think it isn't worth it even if you did.

Story takes place in a sci-fi fictional world with heavy focus on politics. Our protagonist lives in a desolate, impoverished military dictatorship which independence is being threatened by imperialistic superpower whose leaders are plotting on how to annex their smaller ... neighbor. Our main character, Lavi, decides to join the military. Despite being a rookie it quickly turns out that she is op compared to other soldiers, for those and other reasons she quickly catches attention of nations elites and is sent on a mission to inflirtrate a hostile empire. Premise is quite interesting, with politics, intrigue, espionage, vast world, large cast of characters and even mechs, unfortunately this show fails at all of those aspects dramatically.

To show to you the quality of writing in this show I thought it best to summarize the first episode.
Our protagonist is on a escort mission delivering some cargo, she is in a helmet covering her face and not speaking for some reason. After 5 minutes of walking and exposition they come across a village nearby that is being attacked by some monsters, its time for a side mission during the escort mission. We have some action (more on that later) and its time to survey the village. It turns out Lavi is talking with side characters as they are repling to her, but we don't hear her which is very awkward. After a while we see that there is an even bigger monster, oh no! Thankfully our mc is able to get rid of him, but during the fight she loses her helmet to reveal that *drum roll* she is a girl... no way! And now she talks and will never wear a helmet again, yes thats right all of this was for an epic reveal that this small soldier with slender figure is in fact a female. We get to the capital and start to explore it, during the tour random npcs start to beg our characters to help out with their problems, but they aren't interested in another side mission. Some more exposition of things characters should know and than out of nowhere some Rogan guy pulls over with his squad and starts talking with Lavi about her grandfather and how he was a hero and now there is a huge crowd behind him chanting his name so he decides to make a warmongering speach about how he is going to start a revolution and thats the episode. First episode is literally protagonist being harassed by random missions and events. This represents the average quality of episodes in this series, but don't worry it can get much worse (clown episode).

Let's talk about the plot. As you could see in my example, plot convenience happens and it does so very often. Everyone randomly stumbles upon each other/knows where to go. End is predictably rushed and I wasn't happy about it.
While there are slow moments, from time to time writers will just introduce new things in a rapid fire pace. They do so mainly with sudden new plot threads you need to care about and when it introduces another batch of characters. The huge amount of storylines leads to most if not all of them being underdeveloped, same goes for characters. As late as in tenth episode we are introduced to another very important place for Lavi's full with new people and no matter how much anime wants me to care I never will. Our hero is a very boring protagonist. She is a model soldier with no charisma or interesting personality. Instead writers went with the "cool silent type" except she isn't cool. Later on she has to confront her legacy which is a bit interesting, with her starting to care about the well being of everyone and turning more into generic type of a protector.

In political shows it is important for the viewer to care about the politicians as a characters and have interest in the fictional world, unfortunately we only get to know two of the many more of those politicians. Maybe you will care about them, but I never did and even a fancy hair colour didn't manage to change that. There are no cool intrigues to be honest. They didn't even manage to pull off a mystery in a political show, when someone gets assassinated it is immediately obvious who did it. As for the world, while being very big and detailed could be considered as a benefit it turned out to be too vast. Authors had to bombard me with exposition to explain as much as possible about everything even tho many of the details turned out to be irrelevant to the story.

Ok, but what about all of the spy stuff? It's bad, obviously. For the infiltration arc let's call it, anime enters episodic format. Every episode is basically a side quest ranging from boring to an awful clown episode. I could make a rant about how goofy and stupid that episode was, but let's just move on to the overall problem... everyone is stupid.

To be clear that isn't exclusive to only infiltration arc, stupid moments are quite common and I will show some examples in the most non-spoilery way possible.
Government decided to send some military instructors as spies without any spy training. Inflirating a foreign country Lavi uses her real name to soldier of a hostile government. While being pursued Lavi's team decides to take a break and they decide to just start chilling making a campfire... this whole mission was carried out terribly. Not to stay with main characters I will tell one more example that kept infuriating me. The palace in the capital, where all the leaders are, is completely empty and with almost no security. Countless times someone just walks in wearing a random uniform and gets to do whatever they want.

With all of those negatives is production quality good? Can we see at least some cool action? You should know the answer by now. Fights are bad and stiff. There is a lot of cgi which doesn't blend well with 2d. Visually speaking the only interesting part are all of the various cities, other than that it is very bland.

To conclude, this anime is a hot pile of garbage with no redeeming qualities. I hope it will be the worst thing I watch this year.

Summertime Render is an incredible journey full of mystery, drama, action and twists. For this journey alone it is worth giving a watch, unfortunately however the disappointing ending holds it back from being truly great.

Beginning is quite simple Ushio, childhood friend of our protagonist Shinpei dies, leading him to return home for her funeral. It turns out that Ushio's death wasn't as simple as he thought and we have on our hands a compelling supernatural mystery. Anime quickly establishes that our protagonist can loop in time when he dies, which is a hook of the story. The concept of this power combined with the mystery ... and supernatural enemies of Shinpei is the strongest point of Summer Time. What's more it expands and twists every one of those aspects. Shinpei's power gets fleshed out, expanded and given rules that make it interesting. Plot is full of surprising reveals and fun twists. Enemies aren't only scary looking and strong, but they are also smart. Show quickly turns into information warfare with both sides fighting for information about the other and utilizing it to their advantage. Everyone is rational, but not omnipotent. They make believable mistakes from time to time. Most importantly of all decisions have consequences.

This clever approach from characters extends to action. Powers are used creatively and everyone uses what they can to win. Anime establishes rules and ideas for the powers and sticks to them in a fight making them more interesting. With smart, powerful opponents victories for the good guys are satisfying, which may be surprising. How are the writers keeping fights engaging with Shinpei's ability to time loop? By creating good limitations and rules for it, thanks to that failure in combat results with negative consequences that matter.

Animation for this show is chaotic. Sometimes you really get that low budget feel, but from time to time Summertime will surprise you with an amazing sequence that will leave you on the edge of your seat. A lot of effort went into character expressions. Intense faces in tense moments and a display of anger or anguish in dramatic moments. This additional touch is adding a lot to the characters when it matters.

Now to the characters. While this story may seem small in scale at the beginning the cast of characters is surprisingly big and diverse. Many colourful personalities, engaging figures and badasses make it a joy to follow their journey. In terms of character growth most of it we see in the rise of combat abilities or relationship progress. You won't see someone changing in a major way or overcome their character flaws in a big way which is a shame. Voice acting is really good and while we talk about audio ost was also pretty good. As I mentioned before villains are smart, they are also cool, strong and so on, but unfortunately they lack in complexity. One antagonist is a child and the other might as well be one with the childish motivations he has.

Now to the bigger problems. Time loops mean that this anime meddles with time travel and makes time paradoxes along the way. Even worse, at the end it undermines some of the decisions and consequences of the story. If you hate time travel like I do it will be a big problem.

Other then plot conveniences which show up from time to time, the other major issue lies in the last episodes. To avoid spoilers let's say that I don't like the weird location of the finale and I don't think concept behind it is a good idea. Final fight is super slow and has to constantly explain why/what is happening (plus animation is mid).

To sum it up, watch Summertime Render for the journey, it is worth it and may be good enough for you to not mind its conclusion which doesn't live up to the hype.

Lycoris Recoil is and anime that is prioritizing action and characters over a story and while there is nothing wrong with this approach, it still requires at least a bearable story which won't distract us with its flaws.

Let's start with what this series does best which is characters, main cast is good. Colourful personalities and good interactions are the biggest strength of this anime. Antagonists while having flaws which I will discuss later, are made to challenge the ideas and motivations of our protagonist. We also see some growth in the side characters which was satisfying.

High quality of production makes this show even nicer ... to watch. Animation is pretty soundtrack was ok and scenes of action had good choreography. Unfortunately while speaking about action it is important to bring up plot armour, which is big in this anime. As we are dealing with shootouts the aim in them depends on what story is demanding. If someone has to escape or live then its a series of misses, even if skilled shooters are involved. We need to get rid of cannon fodder? Then every shot lands. This is a big problem for me. Not only it is obvious what the authors are doing, pulling me out of the fight, but it also sucks all of the stakes out of the fight.

Now to the main complaint, the story. Whole plot is depending on antagonists with stupid/generic motivations and on the most brain dead mob in the history of anime. The things that happen in the last episodes made me suffer a headache. We also need to deal with a hole lot of plot convenience in this show. At one point protagonists literally forgot about the main antagonist. Even worse Lycoris Recoil has an accidental strong pro censorship message. With how stupid the masses are and how quickly they descend into chaos in face of truth you start to think that it's better to keep those sheep in the dark. The fact that show presents undercover secret organization so simplistically is hurtful.

To sum it up Lycoris Recoil presents you with great characters and nice, mindless action. Whether you will enjoy it or not depends greatly on how much weak plot can bother you. If like me you get bothered by those types of stories, don't watch it. Otherwise feel free to try it out, characters might make it worth it.

RWBY: Ice Queendom is the weirdest adaptation I ever saw. Imagine if Naruto was nothing but introduction and then non stop filler. At this point it isn't an adaptation, but more of a RWBY inspired anime. So is this fanfiction any good? Well to start off this anime is clearly made for those who watched the original RWBY with skipped content and rushed relationships which makes it a lot worse if you are going into it blind.

Introduction is more of a rundown of events and feels rushed as anime wants to get as fast as possible to the dream arc. RWBY is introducing concepts and ... characters that while making sense for the original story are completely unnecessary for new content making things needlessly complicated. At the same time in those first three episodes we don't get enough from the characters to establish their strong commitment to each other that will be so important later on.

Original content of Ice Queendom is quite bizarre to say the least. Storyline is constructed to explore strong links between the characters, but those strong links weren't really established in the first place so we have to just accept them. Another problem is the fact that it obviously feels like a side quest. With none of the established antagonists it is easy to figure out that beside relationship nothing else is progressing in the actual story. We know that everyone is going to be ok and we don't care about the drama between them. Plot that should have been a side story in a far future is taking the center stage which is hurting this adaptation. And why are we doing this side story? To explore wacky ideas writers put in. As we are dealing with a dream anything is possible: cool character designs, interesting concepts, strange society, game like mechanics, plot conveniences and disregard for reality. This weird dream world in itself is a very cool idea which unfortunately is being undermined by its place in the story.

Comparison between Ice Queendom and the original also doesn't work out in the animes favor. Voice acting while ok by itself is nowhere near the original one, music is much less memorable and action while sometimes good is mostly mediocre. Animation quality is surprising as you would expect anime from Shaft to have top quality, instead RWBY often felt cheap with only select few moments having a spark of brilliance.

RWBY is a piece of fanservice/fanfiction which can be appreciated by the fans, but can't hold up as a standalone story and as such watching it without knowing anything about RWBY will be at best confusing and at worst a waste of time.

Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is basically a setup for an epic but inconsequential final fight, with competent but unremarkable and simple story. This story however undermines the plot of the main series and leaves stupid, unnecessary questions that lay unanswered.

Plotline is as generic as it gets: a protagonist which wants to save his loved one from a curse and antagonists which believes that might makes right and weaklings should worship him as a god. The only strength of this story is Yuuta's development. Our protagonist starts out as a shy, scared and bullied boy which gains confidence and friends throughout the runtime. Nothing original, but execution ... is good enough to make it somewhat compelling.

Maybe it's me, but i found relationship between Yuuta and Rika very weird. I know that falling in love with someone at a young age is a popular trope in Japan, but it still weirded me out enough to never take this relationship seriously.

Protagonists strength is also a problem, he basically can one shot the main antagonist of both the movie and the main series undermining Getou's threat as a villain. Yuuta's absence is also unexplained in the anime. I had to google if there was a reason at all and it is there, mappa just doesn't care to put it in their work.

Talking about unexplained, fate of Getou after the movie is also totally cut out from the anime. With how he ended up in this movie you would expect something referencing his past in the anime but nope.

Another thing about this movie is that it is a terrible idea for a prequel.
Yuuta much like Itadori is new to the Jujutsu high school and so movie has to often stop and explain how things work to its protagonist. It would be fine if it wasn't the second time we have to hear those explanations.
Not only pacing of this movie suffers from constant explaining but there is also no tension as we know who survives and don't feel anything when characters get into tough spot. We know they are gonna be ok so who cares if it looks like they are about to die.

Let's talk about the finally which suffers from the same issue. The scale of what is happening is enormous. Basically if villains win its the end of the world, what does it mean? It means that they won't win. We know that Tokyo, Kyoto and jujutsu high school survive this movie so antagonists have to fail from the start. It is a fundamental failure in concept which should have stakes at a much smaller scale. to be compelling. It is also funny how unresolved the final fight in the cities is. Movie doesn't even bother to show a resolution to a duel between two of the strongest humans out there.
Final fight between Yuuta and Getou is also unsatisfying as our protagonist is op and far stronger then the antagonist.

I should also say that this movie has a lot of cringe humor which made me feel like a weirdo for watching it in a cinema.

Technically zero is much better then plot wise.
Mappa put all of their hearts into making a spectacle and they succeeded.
Their high quality of animation features a lot of movement and crazy fight scenes with camera panning around to showcase crazy choreography (which sometimes feels like it defies gravity). Outside the fights some of the more simple scenes looked nice as well, with simple walking in the corridor feeling good.

Sound effects were always on point whether it was a fight scene or sounds of footsteps. I had some mixed feelings about the soundtrack. While the quality and variety was very good I felt like it sometimes was inappropriately intense for what was going on. I also have to say that iconic voice of Shinji from Evangelion worked really well for the protagonist and i enjoyed the performance of the voice actors as a whole.

Jujutsu Kaisen 0 is a mixed bag of amazing animation, mediocre personal story and overall bad plotline.