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Dec 28, 2023
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.
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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 hoped 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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 25, 2023
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
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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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Sep 29, 2022
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
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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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 24, 2022
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
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to watch. Animation is pretty soundtrack was ok and scenes of action had good choreography. Unfortunately while speaking about action it is important to mention about 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 massive 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 main characters literally forgot about the main antagonist. Even worse Lycoris Recoil has a 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 bad plot can bother you. If like me you get bothered by
bad plot, don't watch it, otherwise feel free to try it out.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 18, 2022
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
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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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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May 26, 2022
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
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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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Apr 28, 2022
At Wit headquarters:
- Yo I just had this crazy idea for a movie! Bubbles plus parkour! What do you think?
- Yeah thats great I had been working on a nice cute girl design.
- We can also add some nice music! They liked that in Vivy.
And so the whole team puts their heart and a lot of passion into this project, making crazy visuals, scenes and score only to realize at a half way point:
- Shouldn't we make some kind of plot for this?
Your enjoyment of Bubble is gonna depend on how much you can ignore a lack of story or real characters for the sake
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of beautiful eye candy.
This movie doesn't really have a story, everything serves as a setup for some crazy next scene they envisioned in Wit which is why there is a strong feeling of randomness while watching Bubble. We need a cool parkour scene? Let's introduce some randoms which kidnap one of the characters for views. We want crazy cosmic bubbles? Let's just make some bubble portal in the middle of Tokyo which leads to some other dimension or something.
This ideology extends to characters.
Authors introduce million characters because they had nice designs for them and wanted more people in parkours, which means they don't develop any of them making them into some kind of stereotype for a character. We also have our main characters:
Cute girl and of course Cool dude.
Cute girl learns how to speak. On the other hand Cool dude was for 5 seconds an Edgy dude before becoming a Cool dude so there is something. Cute girl and Cool dude become friends and I think fall in love.
That's about it.
Visually this is incredible. Beautiful landscapes of flooded Tokyo, weird gravity, all the different bubbles make gorgeous scenery with something interesting always on screen. Artwork is elevating this movie into a spectacle which is enriched with a feel of mystery by the mesmerising soundtrack. Direction of parkour sequences and the animation in them make it all engaging despite action having no stakes at all. Unfortunately some of the moves they do are so outrageously impossible it takes me out of the scene.
It is a shame that they don't have any good writers in the studio because this could have been a masterpiece.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 22, 2021
Repost of my deleted review
The World's Finest Assassin is your typical power fantasy isekai. What separates this one from the rest? Cool mc and I guess more of a focus on horny characters. Stuff like mc's harem of mindless zombies, that this anime pretends are characters, which are trying to convince our protagonist to sleep with them, his mother being very interested in his genitalia, Lugh having a problem with his build up desires, his dad checking his 'growth' as an assassin by examining his naked body (which later he copies by doing the same thing with one of his waifus) and so on...
Many will
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claim that this show is different from your usual isekai because of the interesting mc and all of the cool assassination stuff, but it really isn't as good as it may seem to some. Lugh's arc boils down to changing from a mindless calculated killer to a calculated killer who murders only bad guys and creates a harem. Is there something more to that? Not really. Did his limited growth was determined by some sort of interesting conflict and/or challenge to his ideas? He just got reincarnated and talked it out a bit with his father. What is even more frustrating is the fact that author had a good setup for a meaningful choice which would be tough either way for our protagonist, but he instead decided to turn down this opportunity and replaced it with revelation of half incest.
Are there any cool assassinations were he has to make some preparations, infiltrate his targets estate or face some interesting problem? Well fortunately for our assassin he was apparently a master of cosmetics in his spare time before he died so now he can create an empire in this industry thanks to which he can easily get whatever information he needs. When he does have to do the deed he can just pull out his op magical weapons and kill his target undetected from distance and even if he would get into close combat he is still op... Also it is funny how hard this adaptation is trying to create drama. They were so desperate that they made a running scene emotional which failed even further with how bad the dialogue is in this series.
Of course the biggest problem with Lugh is how overpowered he and his harem are. Not only he starts his life with some of the most op skills/powers in this new world, but he also apparently can create whatever he wants like a super magical sniper rifle or a fucking cannon... a modern cannon. Why can he do that? As it turns out one of the most important informations for any modern assassin is to memorize values of melting point, gravity and atomic weight of any material,with this knowledge and one of his op skills he can create whatever he wants.
So what about other characters? Well there are three waifus in the harem of our brave assassin. Each one of them mindlessly serve and worship him while also trying to convince him into having sex with them. What makes it even weirder is the fact that he decided to adopt one of them as his sister. We don't get to see Lugh's relations with Dia (main love interest) instead time skipping most of the bonding they had at the beginning of their relationship and thus we don't really care about her or understand why Lugh cares about her, making romance in this anime bad as well. Then we have new parents of our protagonist with his father being just a stoic teacher and mother as an infantile comic relief who is always looking after Lugh while also trying to get into his pants. There is also the goddess which is basically a boring version of the mother.
Soundtrack for this anime is very forgettable but serviceable at the same time (although opening is really nice). Animation and action are fine but fights often have a problem with lack of tension which is typical for op protagonists. Some battles are just to show of how our waifus fight like when random bandits show up to be beaten by Tarte and establish that she is now powerful as well. Scenes like that could very much be cut out and no one would notice. Also I need to warn you that while cgi in this anime is pretty rare/not noticeable when there is a lot of it it is really bad.
In terms of the plot other then some slight development of characters, few meaningless assassinations and a bit of boring training we get nothing. There is a goal with some time restraint involved but this idea is only beginning to be explored and we have to wait for a sequel to see it develop more.
So The World's Finest Assassin presents to you a basic power fantasy with some fan service and assassin theme that maybe is appealing if you are looking for some simple, mindless fun. Waifus are pretty with a lot to look at, protagonist acts cool while being op, baddies are being killed and when rape is brought up anime takes a more serious and appropriate tone (although the fact of rape being in there in the first place can be enough to discourage you from watching),.
To be honest with you if it wasn't an isekai I might have given it a 4/10. The problem is that with how much isekai we are getting I need something more than a badly executed slight variation on an idea I've watched a thousand times.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 21, 2021
Takt Op. Destiny was one of the most disappointing shows in 2021. Ambitious project involving cooperation between two of the most beloved studios in the anime industry (Mappa and Madhouse) turned out to be a simple eye candy with no substance or depth in it... Probably most regretful thing about it all is how much potential this story has in it:
Musical themes, awesome waifus, complex story and lore, interesting characters, great action.
Unfortunately authors fall short to deliver high quality writing to back this premise up and instead we get:
Failed musical themes, hollow waifus, bad story with inconsequential lore, blank or awful characters, meaningless action with
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confusing combat system.
Takt Op. Destiny is placed in a post apocalyptic world where earth was showered by mysterious magic stones, first ones were harmless with some mysterious power in them, but then came the EVIL STONES. It looks like bad stones spawned evil monsters known as D2's which hate music for some reason. When humanity was on the brink of collapse Magicarts and Conductors showed up (show never explained how they were created btw), which had the power of GOOD STONES and managed to save United States and presumably rest of the world (idk this show doesn't care about other countries). Now D2's are coming back and we need to live in a dystopian reality where merciless government prevents us from listening to music... because apparently in the year 2047 they have no headphones. If this sounds like a convoluted premise don't worry, it isn't important for most of the series.
Visually Takt op. is a colorful assault on your eyes.
This anime tries to look great and distinctive while failing at both with a third of the environments consists of deserts, which gets boring fast. They also somehow managed to make fights that feel like they had a lot of effort put into them while looking mediocre at best.
Music and sound of this anime are pretty good, matching circumstances and with nice feel to it. This alone would be good enough for most other animes but not in this instance. As a show with music as its main theme, Takt op. hardly does enough to develop this idea.
Story is centered around a musician, with characters born from music in a world without music, but it is important how authors miss opportunities to elevate their ideas further while also giving them some meaning.
The most important idea of this show (conductor musicart relationship) is bad.
Musicart is basically a female transformed by the power of music, after which she becomes a weapon to fight D2's. Conductors on the other hand are made up of normal human males which use musicarts as tools while enhancing their abilities (I don't know if there is a story reason behind those genders being assigned to those roles, as musicarts are more numerous and with more interesting designs I suspect it is simply to make more waifus). How do conductors use musicarts? By waving their sticks around. This is a problems and a missed opportunity, why leave music out of combat? First thing that comes to mind is to have conductors use instruments which would give them something interesting to do instead of sitting in the back with their sticks while doing nothing. This whole stick thing relegates music in action to just being a soundtrack.
Second problem is with inconsistency of this relationship. We are told that conductors are there to boost musicart's abilities, but... when Takt (mc) uses his conductor stick his magicart sometimes does a different somewhat stronger kind of attack and sometimes she doesn't and sometimes she does strong attacks without Takt and his stick movements.We also have a bunch of magicarts running around without conductors while fighting with high efficiency even beating musicarts which are supported by conductors. We are told how this should work, but see something completely different which ends up making everything confusing and makes outcomes of fights unpredictable in a very bad way. This also raises a question "are conductors even necessary?"
Someone might say that we have a good example of how conductor can be useful as a commander in the back who can observe the entire situation, but musicarts aren't dumber than humans... if all you need is a commander then just make few teams of musicarts with one commanding the rest. In this situation not only such a musicart can defend herself and won't need protection, but also when fight gets heated she can attack as well
So in combat musical themes are undeveloped and the whole 'no music' problem is so bad that authors had to literally delete the existence of headphones. How about characters?
We have Takt an introverted person with a tragic background, he is also an unlikeable and uncaring psychopath who needs to play on piano so much that he will do it even if someone will be put in the risk of death because of him, while also making himself completely responsible for a lot of destroyed property. He tries to write music from time to time, but this thread goes nowhere..
Then we have Cosette or Destiny later on who becomes Takt's Musicart (why she transforms into a musicart? never explained). She probably had most potential in our main trio for being somewhat interesting, but then anime turned her into basically a robot which over time is becoming slightly interesting. But it is cool because this robot of a character is here to be cute! Look, she just accidentally blew up our house! Look, she came out through window instead of using the door! Look, she loves sweets!!! Isn't that cute?!
And then there is Anna with no character development, she is here just to care for our protagonists and scold them from time to time. Anime is also hinting her romantic interest in Takt (with whom she has sibling like relationship) at 11th episode out of nowhere... so that's something I guess.
Are those characters an embodiment of musical animes? You decide. So what about character development that we do have?
Takt goes from piano psycho to piano maniac who now cares about some people. Destiny becomes somewhat human while also getting recognized as a person. Thats it. Plus this growth isn't even executed that nicely, you would think that someone would at least try to challenge Takt's love for music but no. They even made an antagonist who hates music and created an opportunity for some meaningful conflict, this would require good writing tho...
You also need to know that this anime loves to waste your time making artificial problems for a while only to forget about them when action is about to kick in (they literally had started episode with few minutes of examining their destroyed car which then magically repairs itself when they abruptly have to get to the place of action) or sending protagonists on a series of side quests(New Orleans).
Anime as a whole seriously slows down at least two times which is very puzzling taking into consideration how much it later speeds up in last episodes. The end of this story is rushed to say the least. We have two finale antagonists, where we know almost nothing about the first one and didn't know that the second one existed at all until the 11th episode. I mean how can you take things so slowly if you are planning to make such a convoluted and complex finale? There is also the third antagonist that I didn't mention which shows up before the climax and let me tell you he is one of the most insulting characters I've seen in a while.
This moron has so many issues that I decided to write an entire spoiler rant at the end of this review, if you don't feel like reading it all you need to know is that he is basically a very annoying, psycho version of Thanos with even dumber idea of how to use his power to change the world that is of course rightfully his.
It is worth mention how convenient this show is for its plot. Characters randomly and without reason find each other all the time and Destiny sometimes will feel where Takt is but not when he is following her and so on.
If after all of this you still want to watch at least the first episode let me spoil it for you. It also nicely encompases what happenes in a typical episode of this anime when there is some action.
Intro starts saying that 'not too long ago' there was a post apocalyptic event of which anime shows no signs in landscape (maybe I'm overly interpreting how catastrophic this event was). Than there is a lot of talking about stones from sky and their 'mysterious powers' musicarts and conductors apparently use powers of those stones. Then came the black stones and with them D2's, but fortunately humanity had conductors as well as their magicarts (according to what we see in this into in those days both conductors and magicarts where able to fly.). Afterwards they saved humanity from D2's. If you finished this series there is a large chance that you forgot about all of this, which just shows how unimportant this sequence is.
Okay we passed the intro, first episode at a second watch is a really confusing experience which I will try to recreate here.
So you start watching and apparently Takt and destiny decided to lure a single D2 into the city while endangering civilians instead of killing it in the wilderness. They do it with a piano that just sits there in public, in a perfect condition, where some random kiddo can press one key and doom this whole town. What is even stranger, Destiny was fighting this one D2 outside the city without being transformed. So they actually started fighting D2 outside, but then Takt was like screw this shit I'm out and went to play piano? WHAT!? And then Takt teleports on top of the roof and we have a fight. After the fight it turns out that to kill D2's you have to destroy a stone in their chest which after this episode will never be shown again or have any importance at all. We get some bad attempt at comedy, which is followed by dialogue with Destiny, who scolds her 'maestro' leading to a back and forth between them. She also says something about tuning her adjustment when they will reach New York, which is never brought up again. After that comes Anna to scold Takt, apparently they were shopping and then we somehow got into this situation. WHAT!? Later on we are also shown that Takt (as I guess 'special' conductor) can sense D2's which in few episodes will be forgotten. This level of confusion and bad writing will be consistent throughout this whole series (in episodes without much filler) with always somewhat similar dynamics between characters as seen here.
Takt Op. Destiny is a bad anime at almost every level and at best passable in terms of action scenes if you are willing to accept that for the sake of those fights you can watch it, I just have to warn you that it isn't a battle anime full of those fights.
Now it is time for my SPOILER RANT about Schindler.
Schindler is one of the worst and laziest anime antagonists i have seen in a while...
Obviously he is one of those boring psychos full of ego who believes that music is stupid and world doesn't need it (because why not) and that he is the only one fit to RULE THIS WORLD. One of his most ridiculous ideas is to kill of all the poor people because USA doesn't have enough resources to
sustain them so he uses power of his musicart to control D2's and kill all those pesky peasants.
If authors made him at least a tiny bit smarter Schindler would come up with a much better idea of using Hell (his magicart) to draw D2's far away from human settlements reclaiming a lot of usa, making room for more farmland and getting support of the people in Schindler's future takeover of the government. Instead he is losing more lands to D2's making his future realm weaker, getting rid of even more limited recources they have and creating a refugee crisis that affects all leftover prosperous lands left in america, how those actions helped our antagonist in his goals? Of course Schindler is just a puppet, but to be a puppet while doing something so stupid irritates me greatly.
It is also dumb how they made Hell ignore Schindler's orders which breaks rules of this world. She herself said that musicart bound to a conductor can't ignore his will. Sure it is possible that she lied, but it would imply that it is hard to check this information, which it isn't. All you have to do is to give an order to your Musicart. With how easy it is to check it, knowledge if Conductors can control magicarts fully or not should be widespread.
Takt first goes from only thinking about his music composition, to then having a totally different mindset where he's motivated and committed to fighting Schindler. And then after Schindler is at his mercy Takt just doesn't really care.
Also if you think that sticks are useful than watch 10th episode.
Lenny is using his stick, Takt is using his stick through half of the fight, Sagan just stands there. Who wins? Sagan... sticks don't matter.
I could go much deeper in this review, but it would require more time then was spent into writing this anime.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Nov 30, 2021
Gintama is to date the best Shounen series I have ever seen but its beginning isn't as brilliant or flawless as many of Gintama's zealous fans believe.
Gintama follows Gintoki and his crew of outcasts in their daily routine of trying to make ends meet with a main overarching story in the background, all of it presented in episodic structure with longer arcs from time to time. This is why while being a Shounen Gintama often feels like a slice of life kind of series with slow development of the overall story and while it may sound like something you wouldn't want to watch it works
...
perfectly for this series.
Other main feature of Gintama is of course its comedy which as a person who doesn't enjoys anime comedy while having trouble understanding many of the references show throws around I still enjoyed with about 70% of the jokes making me laugh, even tho this may seem like a low percentage, jokes that didn't make me laugh never were cringe worthy enough to make me regret watching this anime.
In contradiction to the jokes of which enjoyment depends on your taste i can assure you that Gintama masterfully incorporates them into the story and in even more impressive manner author can change atmosphere into something completely different.
While humor is good Gintama is first and foremost about characters for me. An episodic character making an appearance for only one arc can have more depth or impact than protagonists of other not so bad animes. Gintoki being one of the best protagonists ever written is a perfect example of effort and planning author put into Gintama. Despite being a protagonist we see Gintoki's character not from his perspective but mainly from the eyes of other people which works perfectly with his mysterious background that is being slowly revealed to us. While Gintama is great at characters with enormous variety of different personalities it has some problems with its villains that I will mention later.
Gintama of course being an 2006 anime is not on the pinnacle of animation or technical innovation which isn't too disturbing except in some instances when they use cgi. In the music department it also isn't anything too special. Tracks are good and they fit with what is presented but after a hundred episodes realisation of how few tracks they really have is starting to kick in.
The biggest problem of Gintama is with redemption. Every big villain if not redeemed at the last second at least needs to tell you his side of the story. Shinsengumi Crisis, aging cubes, blacksmiths, spider... Everytime it goes the same way: bad guy does something horrific like murder or creating a weapon of mass destruction for stupid reason, we have a showdown, after a tough fight antagonist is beaten and then... pause! Show stops and villain goes into 'let me tell you my story' mode or someone does it for him, after that we get a redemption and the cycle repeats. I really hate it and started to get tired by it.
To conclude Gintama is a great show and you should give it a try but don't go in expecting flawless masterpiece.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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