Back to VVayfarer's Profile VVayfarer's Profile

If you thought Natsuki Subaru is dumb, you clearly haven't seen Tokyo Revengers.

As a disclaimer, this isn't so much a review as it is just me complaining about parts of the show that I found silly.

So, the MC has the ability to travel 12 years to the past. He can't redo past events more than once, but he can use knowledge he gains in the future to change events that happened during the last 12 years.

With this in mind, the MC is given one job: to prevent a friend from getting stabbed to death on a specific day.
He knows the day it happens, he ... knows the place, and he knows more-or-less why it happens.

So, how does he go about achieving this objective?

I assumed he would do one of the following:

- buy a cut-resistant shirt for the friend
- call an ambulance in advance so that they'll arrive right before the stabbing happens
- warn the friend, saying something like "I overheard some shady-looking guys talking how they're gonna stab you on day X, watch out"

So what does the MC do?
None of the above.

Instead, the MC offers to serve as the friend's bodyguard, without giving any context for this offer.
Understandably, the friend is creeped out and shoots the idea down. Points for trying I guess.

After that, the MC proceeds to do nothing. Apparently the bodyguard plan was the only solution he could come up with.
In his mind, the concepts of "an ambulance", "a first-aid kit", "a cut-resistant shirt" and so forth do not seem to exist.
As you might expect, this lack of common sense ends up making things exponentially more difficult for him.

And that's just the beginning.
From here, things go from frustrating to ridiculous.

You see, on the day of the stabbing, the MC manages to overhear the bad guys talking about how they're right about to stab the friend.
Like literally, one of the bullies takes out a knife, and with a crazy smile, says "okay, I'm gonna go stab the guy now".

So surely the MC is now going to call the police and an ambulance, right?
Because he literally heard a group of gangsters talking about stabbing his friend, right?

Nope. Instead he just stands there gawking.
Then the guys notice him.
There's a 10 meter distance between the MC and the bad guys, so he could run away if he wanted to. But he doesn't even try.
Instead he simply continues to stand there until one of the bad guys grabs him.
Then they tie him up.

That's right.
The MC literally finds the murderer, but he neither runs, nor calls the police, nor does anything you would expect a reasonable 26-year-old to do.
He just stops functioning.

And even after someone comes by and saves him, he decides to lie down on the ground doing nothing for a couple more minutes,
crying about how powerless he is.

As a result, the friend ends up getting stabbed after all.

Let's get the facts straight:

- The MC had all the time in the world to figure out a way to prevent the incident from happening.
- He was lucky and found the murderer right before the incident happened.
- He had a phone on him, so he could've called the police, an ambulance, anything.

But no. That would've been too easy... I guess?

Okay, okay.
So that was pretty frustrating to watch, but I got through it somehow.
The story is actually pretty entertaining for the most part, so even though some parts do test my patience, it really isn't that bad overall.

Or so I thought.

Then I saw episode 21.

Again, we have a friend who's about to get stabbed.
Again, the MC fails to inform the authorities in advance and to keep a first-aid kit nearby.
Again, the MC, for some inexplicable reason, fails to warn the friend about someone "probably" planning to stab them.

Apparently, these ideas are too outlandish for the MC to even conceive of, never mind contemplate.

Now, this time the MC has additional info. Namely, he happens to know that the stabbing happens within the context of two gangs fighting against each other. And he knows that guy A and guy B are going to be near the victim when the stabbing happens, because guy B is the murderer, and guy A murders guy B after guy B murders the victim.
This means that even if the MC ends up losing sight of the victim, he can assume that, as long as he stays near guy A or guy B at all times, the victim will show up eventually.

Fast forward to the day of the stabbing.

A fight between two gangs ensues.
Guy A and guy B move away from the group to fight one other.
So, based on the info we have, it seems pretty obvious that the victim is about to appear near them, and that the stabbing is about to take place.

So what does the MC do?
Does he move closer to those guy A and guy B, as you'd expect?

Of course not.

He just watches them from afar, while thinking to himself "where's the victim?? I need to get to the victim!!"

Yes. It appears that the idea of "staying close to the guys you know will be near the victim around the time of the stabbing" is simply too advanced of a concept, too much of a 4D chess move, for the MC to conceive of.

Well, that's fine. It's not a crime to be dumb.
(Or so I told myself, while desperately fighting against my urge to strangle the MC.)

Anyway, long story short, as usual, despite the MC's "best efforts", the victim ends up getting stabbed.

Okay, so surely, surely the MC will call an ambulance now, right?
I mean he traveled to the past to save this guy from dying on this day, right?
And now he's seen the guy get stabbed, so no reason not to call an ambulance anymore, right?

Wrong.
Of course he doesn't call an ambulance.

Why, you ask?
Well, the MC thought the stab wound wasn't too serious, because the victim kept moving after he got stabbed.

Okay.

So the MC knows the victim is "fated" to die on this day, and he sees the victim get stabbed... yet he kind of assumes that the victim is going to be just fine.

Yeah. That's our MC right there.

Fast forward a minute, and all of a sudden the victim starts bleeding heavily and falls down on his knees.
Turns out he wasn't fine.

Okay.
So, does the MC now finally decide to call an ambulance?

No. (Someone else does, though.)

Does he instead hurry over to the victim, to help control the bleeding by appling pressure on the wound, like you're supposed to?
No.

So, what does he do?

He stands there.
Doing nothing.

After a while, the victim stands up, and says "I won't die...".
And the MC is taken aback, and says: "That's a lie... That wound is clearly fatal...!"

At this point I started to feel a headache kicking in.

The victim suffered a stab to the left side of his lower back.
Frankly, the wound didn't look fatal.

A quick literature search suggests mortality rates of around 5%~10% for deep penetrating trauma to the lower abdomen.
The victim was a (highly) fit young man, and the incident happened in Shibuya, in the middle of Tokyo, one of the most technologically advanced urban areas in the world, very likely within a kilometer from the nearest hospital (judging by a Google Maps search; although the incident happened in 2005, given that the population density of Tokyo hasn't changed much since then, I assume the hospital density would have been similar back then).
No matter how you look at it, given proper first aid and medical care, he should've been entirely salvable.

Yet the MC was 100% convinced that the guy was a goner, and so he decided that it would be logical to just stand there doing nothing while watching the man die, even though the MC literally traveled 12 years to the past solely in order to prevent this very outcome from happening.

Yeah.

At this point, I had to convince myself that the repeated time leaps had taken a toll on the MC's brain, which is why he wasn't able to formulate coherent thoughts.
This new head-canon allowed me to maintain my suspension of disbelief, which was otherwise on the verge of total collapse.

Unfortunately the next scene would test my patience even further.
And while I won't spoil what happens, after the stabbing, suffice to say, the scene takes a turn from ridiculous to pure circus.
For the next few minutes I could barely see the screen anymore, as my body involuntarily maintained a state of prolonged facepalm.

Episode 21 was the most stressful, most headache-inducing, and at the same time the most unintentionally hilarious anime episode I've seen in a long time. Thankfully the MC appears to recover from his time travel-induced brain damage over the following episodes, leading to considerably less frustration.

All in all, the show is entertaining. It's about time travel, and was clearly inspired by Re:Zero, and with that recipe there's only so much that could go wrong. Just don't expect the MC to possess functional mental circuitry, so you won't be too disappointed when you find out that he doesn't.

If an anime, say, depicts the death of a character, if you don't know who that character is, and how they ended up where they did, chances are, you won't care.

The same applies to, say, two characters getting married, or a character finding out that a family member they thought was dead was actually alive. And so on. The emotional impact of a scene hinges on how much the viewer knows about the events that lead to said scene. If the viewer knows nothing... then, chances are, they will feel nothing.

This is the problem with Frozen Bonds. Buildup is essential for emotional impact. Frozen ... Bonds has no buildup, and that's why it has no emotional impact.

We don't know why the great spirits (and, apparently, the rest of the world) want to eliminate Emilia. We don't know why Puck cares about her. We don't even know what the great spirits, or Puck, or Emilia, are. We know literally nothing about anything that's happening. So why should the viewer care?

As much as I would like to root for Puck, who's fighting against (supposedly) the entirety of the world to protect Emilia, which is certainly a badass / touching thing to do on a conceptual level... it's really hard to care when you have no clue why this conflict is even happening. For all the viewer knows, Emilia could actually be a puppet with a fake personality whose very existence will eventually destroy the world, and Puck could simply be simping for her for reasons that no could empathize with. The writer gives no indications in either direction. So, unless you already love Emilia and Puck, it's really hard to care.

There's another issue caused by lack of buildup: we don't know how powerful Puck and Emilia are relative to their enemies. Which is unfortunate, because, if Puck was depicted as being weaker than, say, the other great spirits, then him challenging the others would be interesting purely by virtue of this imbalance in powers. After all, people like to root for the underdog. Seeing a weaker party emerge victorious in a conflict is often exciting simply because it's an unexpected result (though of course, in fiction, this is only true when the plot is bound by realism). But as far as the viewer can tell, Puck has the ability to destroy the world, which means that him challenging the rest of the world is literally just him flexing his powers. Which isn't very badass at all; it's just another character flaunting the powers that the writer arbitrarily decided to bestow upon them.

On a final note, it's easy to notice that the basic premise in Frozen Bonds is strikingly similar to that of one of the more famous arcs in a certain popular, long-running anime series. The comparison makes Frozen Bonds all the more disappointing; it shows just how powerful this type of plot can be when executed correctly. Frozen Bonds tried to simplify the plot to the bare minimum, which, of course, doesn't work, because you can't have emotional impact without proper buildup. The end result is underwhelming at best.

Older reviews from 2020 have criticized low animation quality in this season. The fault lies entirely with the reviewers themselves, though. I noticed these very same issues myself as well, and so, naturally, decided to wait for the Blu-Ray version before watching. The result? All visual hiccups had been fixed in the final release, as expected. The quality in the BD version is absolutely flawless. So, as a general piece of advice, if you value visual quality, always wait for the BD release before watching an anime. It's well worth it.

I'll preface my review by noting that I personally found S3 underwhelming. I was never ... too impressed with the League of Villains in the first place―they all seemed unoriginal, juvenile and one-dimensional―and All for One wasn't much of an improvement. That's why I didn't expect much from S4, either.

Turns out, it's now my favorite season of MHA to date.

In contrast to previous seasons, this one introduced an actual badass as the central antagonist. And not only is he a badass; he actually has an interesting, intellectually satisfying end goal. At that point I was sold. I like badass villains and intellectual villains, and he was a bit of both. I had thought MHA was a synonym for "an entertaining series with mediocre antagonists", but this season proved me wrong.

The directing is excellent. The season features some of the best battle sequences in the series up to this point, some of which reminded me of Hunter x Hunter (2011), combining perfect build-up with perfect timing and rhythm. The shots, cuts and effects are all on point. The music fits perfectly with the flow of the animation. Anime directing doesn't get any better than this.

The plot is simple as always. However, the antagonists really shine here. Both the central villain and some side villains all have great backstories. This season features one of the most emotional backstories in the series to date.

Overall, I found the season a blast from start to finish. I highly recommend it to those who are on the fence after watching S3. Chances are, it's not going to disappoint.

I liked the first part of season 2 because it finally added a formidable antagonist to the show; namely, Roswaal.

He was the first villain to be fully aware of Subaru's ability. And better yet, he seemed more than happy to abuse the hell out of it to achieve his goals.

Naturally, I expected their conflict to spiral into cat-and-mouse mind games, involving situations where e.g. Subaru would get within an inch of saving the Sanctuary, only to be cornered by Roswaal killing Otto or doing something equally dramatic, forcing him to reset all over again. Roswaal was a natural enemy to Subaru―I was genuinely ... interested in seeing how Subaru would go about defeating this type of adversary.

But as it turns out, Roswaal is all bark and no bite. No matter how bad things would get, he would never attempt to force Subaru to reset. He literally did nothing new in this season.

All loose ends are tied up in the most unimaginative, low-effort ways possible. Otto, Ram and Subaru use BS superpowers to beat Garfiel. Garfiel teams up with Subaru, and beats Elsa and Maylie with... raw strength, I guess. Finally, Roswaal realizes that he's fucked, so he summons the rabbits... but they, too, end up being easily defeated with basic magic attacks.

In these 12 episodes there's nothing even resembling so much as a hint of tension. Everything proceeds through a path of least resistance. There are no surprises. And what's worse, the dialogue is even more cliche and long-winded than in previous seasons. By the end of it all, we still have no clue why the Sanctuary was relevant to begin with, or why the trials had to be passed to break the barrier. It's all fluff and no substance.

To top it all off, the animation is below average. It hardly even uses any special effects anymore; a far cry from the consistent quality of S1. And while the OST is as fantastic as ever, the season literally has no entertaining scenes; not even the finest musical masterpiece could turn garbage into gold, so all the great new compositions by Suehiro Kenichiro end up going to waste.

Fans will no doubt love this part despite its rather obvious faults. But if you're like me, and you mainly watch the show because you enjoy seeing Subaru find ingenious ways to break out of hopeless situations via a deadly process of trial and error... well, there's literally nothing to see here.

Another season of Re:Zero shenanigans. If you want to see our beloved MC, Natsuki Subaru, burst out in tears over and over for no particular reason, rest assured, for you have come to the right place. Or perhaps you are interested in seeing him attract an increasingly formidable army of beautiful females with his ever-mysterious harem MC powers? Either way, the second season has you covered.

On a serious note, the writing is becoming increasingly predictable at this point, but it's still fun to see how the trial-and-error segments involving Return by Death play out. If you dislike the generic harem antics or the constant focus ... on Subaru's / Emilia's psychological immaturity, the anime can, in some parts, feel like a chore to get through―I personally decided to fast-forward through the more redundant dialogue, skimming through the subtitles, in order to eliminate this source of frustration.

While the story has never been lauded for being particularly logical or intelligent, the second season relies much more on coincidence (luck) and 'magical' plot devices (deus ex machina) to get the story to progress than the first one did. In fact, it does this often enough to make the writing seem somewhat lazy at times. That said, I don't feel this distracts significantly from the more entertaining aspects of the story.

As usual, >90% of character interactions occur between our beloved MC and a random attractive female. In around 50% of these cases, the female in question wants in his pants for reasons beyond our comprehension―just as we have grown to expect from this totally-not-a-harem show.

Finally, while the animation may not be as impressive as in the first season, the directing and the OST are still top-notch.

This manga is an adaptation of a highly acclaimed VN (a type of text-heavy game) by the same name. I recommend playing the VN before reading this or touching anything else in the Fate franchise, as none of the derivatives/adaptations come close to the original in terms of depth, detail, realism and presentation.

The manga is similar to the anime adaptations in that it covers everything in a highly superficial manner. For someone unfamiliar with the source, the plot will likely appear illogical, arbitrary and shallow, as little to no reasoning is given for why the characters act the way they do and no insight is ... provided on how events outside of the MC's view unfold, how the magic system works and what would have happened if the MC had made different choices. As a result of the poor presentation, the manga reads like a below-average shōnen series.

That said, it can be a semi-entertaining read if you're already familiar with the story, much like a 'climax inference' in a Danganronpa game. And although it ruins the flow, seeing the events get mixed up can be funny if you know how they were actually supposed to happen.

All in all, the manga is mildly entertaining. I feel it's not (even nearly) as entertaining as simply re-reading the VN, but the format has its merits.

Kimetsu no Yaiba features pretty art and an interesting setting, but that's about it.

The main characters feel lifeless and shallow. They have no dreams, and their interactions are awkward at best. Imagine a group of weird-but-uninteresting people who don't really like each other but who are forced to work together as a team. That's the dynamic you can expect from the characters in Demon Slayer.

The side characters are even worse. Many of them don't seem real at all. I don't think the author cared about them, as zero effort seems to have been put into developing their thought processes, value systems or worldviews. They ... come off as if they're playing a role; everything about them seems artificial.

The comedy feels cartoony. If you find characters slipping on banana peels funny, I believe you might enjoy the humor in this show.

The story feels uninspired. It's a repetition of 1) the party meets a new oni and decides to defeat it because it's evil 2) the oni turns out to be strong 3) the party defeats the oni with 30% strategy + 70% deus ex machina 4) as the oni is about to die, we see a flashback of its tragic (very cliche) lifestory 5) we learn a bit more about the main villain / a possible cure for the sister 6) rinse and repeat.

The main villain (or what seems to be the main villain) is powerful, but not very intimidating, interesting or badass in any way or form. The same applies to minor villains. This was a letdown for me, as I really enjoy deep, well-written villains, often more so than well-written heroes. For reference, I personally like the central antagonists in FSN (the 2004 game version) Ace of the Diamond, One Piece, Code Geass, the Trails games, Metal Gear games, etc.

The music is good, but I really think the studio should hire a new sound director. Every now and then his choice of BGM doesn't seem to fit the mood at all (e.g. he might have an epic, beautiful track play during a very mundane scene), which felt mildly distracting.

Conclusion: the anime has some minimal entertainment value if you're willing to ignore its faults. I doubt I'll watch the sequel.

Breakdown:

Story: 3/10
Characters: 3/10
Music: 5/10
Art: 6/10
Enjoyment: 4/10
Overall: 4/10

Tldr: if you care at all about story, I suggest playing the original game from 2004. If you're not interested in VNs, I recommend skipping the anime anyway. Let me explain.

In the VN, you are often presented with life-or-death choices, where choosing the wrong one results in a unique type of bad end. Sometimes this just means a brutal death, other times a funny death, and still other times the result isn’t death, but something much more disturbing, or something completely bizarre. Most importantly, they all reassure the player that none of the characters has any plot armor whatsoever and will easily die if you ... misread the situation. In the anime, this element is (understandably) omitted. As a result, what would’ve been a gripping tale of survival under extreme circumstances is turned into a simplified shōnen anime where you know the protagonists will always win in the end. It trivializes the story.

And, of course, as with all adaptations, much of the character development and world-building is simply left out due to time-constraints. Thanks to this, the depth and maturity of the original is lost. Again, the result is a basic shōnen. And I do like well-written shōnen, but this isn’t it, either.

The story in the original is good, as in life-changingly good. It certainly isn’t perfect, but on the whole, it's the best I've ever seen in any form of entertainment. I would highly suggest giving it a try, at least until the first few life-or-death choices. There are better anime out there, but the VN is, in my opinion, the absolute best of its kind.

I'll try to be brief, since this anime doesn't deserve a thorough review.

I prefer the first season, as there, the author did not attempt to exceed their capacity until the last few episodes. Here, the story is "serious" from the beginning, making any and all issues glaringly obvious.

Firstly, the characters are designed in an irrational way and often behave inconsistently. This both reduces the effectiveness of intentional humor, as well as interferes with "serious" story developments (or let's just call them 'non-comedic' since you can't take anything seriously in this anime).

Secondly, special skills and other plot devices are explained with pseudoscience, which is ... pure torture, as I love science and 'realistic' sci-fi and hate pseudoscience with equal passion. It would be better if the author had just pulled the 'magic' card without trying too hard to explain the mechanism behind any ability or drug or whatever, since they obviously lack basic education on how things work in the real world.

If you liked the final episodes of the first season more than those preceding them, you may very well enjoy this season even more. If not, you may want to steer clear to avoid wasting time like I did.

Please, do yourself a favor and avoid watching this anime. Even if you have zero interest in VNs (I was like that), just forget about the series, since you might someday change your mind.

The original is a masterpiece. I personally gave it a 10/10 in vndb; the story is among the best I've ever seen in any medium. The anime, on the other hand, is nothing special; you'll run into entertainment of similar value everywhere. It's barely worth 6/10.

I was introduced to Umineko through the anime. I had watched (and liked) Higurashi and had never read VNs before, so the idea of doing so ... here never even crossed my mind. I was amazingly lucky, though, as after the first 9 or 10 eps I decided to try the VN for no real reason (I wanted to check whether it had a certain type of gameplay - it didn't). I found the visuals ridiculous, but I soon realized that the execution of the story was far, FAR better than in the anime. Once I had gotten used to the graphics, I was hooked.

The tldr reason for why the anime shouldn't exist: it leaves out tons of detail and butchers the emotional content of the rest of the story with its ridiculous pace. Calling this mediocre series "Umineko no naku koro ni" is pure blasphemy.