Back to Wolfiesmal's Profile Wolfiesmal's Profile

This series is an amazingly warmhearted read. If you just want a romcom to smile at and feel good about this is a great option. It obviously focuses on a blind girl and delinquent but it has a decently sized secondary line of characters and it spends time making each of them feel more realized and it is still below 50 chapters.

The one thing I'm not happy about is that it seems as though all but 2 of the characters introduced for longer than a brief mention appear to fall in love with the main character. Luckily the main character is completely straightforward about who ... he likes and isn't oblivious to everything around him to play up the harem angle but I've seen so many dumb harem shows/manga that the "mc is the greatest person to ever walk the earth and everyone wants his babies" troupe has long since made me groan in frustration whenever it appears.

Also there is a scene where someone with social anxiety is in disagreement with a blind person about their disability and it would have been nice if it had acknowledged that not all disabilities are ones people can tell by looking at a person even if the person with social anxiety was clearly wrong about blind people. Other than that though they do a great job at showing how there can be many things that make people be perceived negatively in society from having special needs because you are visually impaired/old/anxious or just not fitting in because you look scary or are an unusual sexuality.

This series is way more than just fluff even though it will make you smile reading it. So if you want to feel good but also understand a bit more about perspective shifts and societal bias and see how it pairs up against good-natured straightforwardness then this is a fantastic read.

Given that it is a gritty fantasy military special officer show it feels a lot like Full Metal Alchemist, or at least I'm strongly reminded about FMA when I watch this show. But here is the thing, Fairy Gone is incredibly boring. Entire episodes are devoted to talking (and not important conversations that move the plot forward or teach us cool stuff about the world just people rehashing things we already know) and minor threats that were clearly never going to become a big deal. If you came here looking for more FMA keep searching, and if you haven't seen FMA then for the love ... of god watch that instead. I'd only suggest watching Fairy Gone if you absolutely love the genre and have seen everything else that isn't terrible.

It's not a bad show just very boring. Also I'm not a fan of the animation style but I didn't find it offensive either. Overall the show is just bland. 5/10

Slight spoilers to follow that spoil nothing if you've ever watched a pointless anime romcom to follow:
This show is hilarious and it really brings the happy feels but in 12 episodes they make 0.5% progress towards maybe eventually dating one day. After 12 episodes they still can't even text each other or ask each other to spend time with them. The sad thing is this show would be a 10/10 if they just started dating and continued the exact same goofy power struggles but the frustration of the fact that nothing moves forward at all really cuts back on my ability to enjoy the show.

If ... you are okay with a romcom where nothing happens you should absolutely watch this, or if you just really want a short feelgood romcom then go right ahead. But if you are coming here wanting any kind of actual plot development you've come to the wrong place. It is a shame because I really enjoyed the show a lot.

Spoiler free section: The character development and world building is some of the best I've ever seen but the writing is lazy. If you enjoy rpg games this show is a must watch. 8/10 because the lazy writing really takes away from the enjoyment of the world and characters. I've only seen the first few episodes but if the lazy writing continues the show may fall apart later.

Spoiler section (for the first half of the show):
I love the way Raphtalia does literally everything. She is a very accurate depiction of an abuse victim with the way she shows her traumas and devotes herself to the ... first person since her parents died that treats her with anything close to affection. Also her genuine joy at eating food and getting to do childish things like play with a ball warms my heart.

I also love the main character and the way he rapidly adapts from trusting easy target to cynical survivor mode and then begins to learn how to open his heart again. This is very rapid and accurate character growth that all occurs in the first 4 episodes where many shows waste entire seasons with characters running in circle to grow even a little bit. It is very refreshing to escape from that stagnation.

Additionally the world the mc gets sent to looks beautiful, like he is actually living in a phantasy star game or your favorite medieval rpg of choice. The town, economy, and armor shop feel very realistic and well thought out.

I'm also really happy that while the other 3 heroes appear to be 1 note douchebags after the first episode it turns out that they are actually not complete assholes. In fact 2 out of the 3 are downright ok dudes and the spear hero seems to be learning from the fact that he got manipulated and might decide to pay back the mc for how he treated him instead of doubling down on the douchebag factor.

But unfortunately the show has a clear idea of where it wants to go to make these really satisfying emotional payoffs happen and uses extremely lazy writing to get there. For example:
1) When the mc is being framed for sexual assault he could have easily proven his accuser was lying because she gave away his armor and the dude she gave it to was literally wearing it to the trial. He could have said "hey ask the blacksmith I bought it from, she stole from me and if she'll steal from me then why wouldn't she lie about me as well." But the show wanted him to become bitter and cynical so he doesn't defend himself at all or even mention the obvious evidence in the room.
2) The duel is stupidly forced. If he loses he has to give up his slave but if he wins he gets absolutely nothing. No one would agree to such one sided terms. And when he declines the king forces him to do it because "owning a slave is morally despicable". Well IT IS YOUR KINGDOM, YOU WERE THE ONE TO MAKE THE LAWS, YOU LEGALIZED SLAVERY! If the king hates slavery so much why isn't he doing anything about it? How can he leave it legal and force people to accept duels over a law he made??? The show clearly just wants the duel to happen so it doesn't matter that there is no reason for it to happen. And it wouldn't even have been hard to write in a good reason like the mc bought a slave from a different kingdom and the current kingdom respects their laws because of a treaty but frowns on slavery or the spear hero could have made the mc an offer for something he wanted bad enough to risk Raphtalia like kicking the traitor out of his party or even making her work for the mc if he wins.
3) Low level monsters shouldn't do anything against the spear hero at this point. The mc is able to have these creatures biting on him 24/7 and do no damage and the spear hero had the mc's chainmail earlier so presumably he either still has that or better armor by now, plus he has leveled up a ton and was easily killing the monsters used against him in the first episode so they shouldn't hurt him in any way and yet they appear very effective on him.
4) How the hell is the traitor secretly the princess?!?? The mc walked around with her in town for the entire first episode almost and went to several shops with her. How the hell does no one in the capital city recognize or react in any way to the freaking princess??? Revealing that she has been the king's daughter the entire time is complete bs and just makes me angry.
5) Overall if the king hates the shield hero so much to the point that he plots against him multiple times why the hell did they even bother to summon him in the first place? It doesn't make sense that they summoned him to prevent some other kingdom from getting him because they think he is useless so why would they care if he ends up with a different kingdom and the whole summoning the shield hero just to plot against him and make the king's daughter look better reasoning is retarded. She could just as easily have gotten into the party she wanted by joining it from the beginning, no one was turned away, or by revealing that she was royalty. There was absolutely no reason to plot against the shield hero.

Currently I love the show for the character interactions and world but I have a bad feeling that as the show continues the terrible writing will snowball until it reaches the level where I can no longer enjoy the show. Or maybe now that the early developments are out of the way things will be less forced from now on and have more of a natural flow. Right now I give this show an 8/10 but it would be a 10/10 if they fixed the writing.

Episodes 5 and 6 were kind of a strange tone shift in tone from being seriously betrayed and screwed over at every turn to a dumb race between the shield and spear heroes. It just felt really out of place after they were just having a serious duel with real stakes to having a race where the princess sets goofy traps to try to bring glory to the spear hero by letting him... win a bird race??? Just felt strange and dumb compared to the previous episode with him trying to take away the shield hero's only companion.

Spoiler free section: This story is absolutely fantastic. I picked it up after reading the description thinking it would be a goofy story about Dracula waking up after sleeping for hundreds of years and goofing off in a high school run by his servant Frankenstein who now has to cover up his total lack of tech knowledge and while it did have some great humor in it the story was mostly about the main character making friends and enjoying spending time with them. But then it became clear the story was actually a serious action series when the main character starts protecting his friends from ... supernatural elements. It reminds me of the anime Blood+ if the main character was as powerful as someone from Overlord (A god basically). This is a fantastic read, especially if you like series about the bonds of friendship without the plot armor powerups whenever real danger happens or just like vampire stories.

Spoiler section: This show was great all the way through but it dropped the ball at the ending. The last arc was admittedly a little weak but what really made it feel lacking was the page long apology the author put on the last page. You did your best and released hundreds of chapters of a fantastic series on a regular basis but when you go out acknowledging the haters it just feels like you aren't confident in your own work and that made me feel bad as well.

Serious spoiler section (last chapter): I was also disappointed with the way the series ended. There were a lot of plot points that never got resolved. With the vampire queen dead who is going to carry on her bloodline and inherit her abilities? (For that matter did they all die? We never see the aftermath of the missiles other than the dissipating blood magic) Did the main character ever acknowledge her feelings? The Werewolf lord had a red haired half human daughter that was supposedly killed by the humans yet hundreds of years later the main character is friends with a red haired human child that has super human strength, did the daughter live or have a child before she died? We never find out. Also the last chapter never shows the fallout of his human friends finding out he was a vampire, the adventures they had their memories erased about, and dealing with his death. Also several love triangles are hinted at over hundreds of chapters so it is incredibly disappointing that we never find out if any of those pan out. All in all the last chapter only felt half finished and is really my only complaint about the series.

9/10 should read

Spoiler free section: The writing in this show is terrible and the author is clearly a hack. The characters are totally unrealistic and only behave in evil ways so they can have the maximum shock value. The characters in this show were clearly designed by a 12 year old edgelord and behave to be as edgy as possible with no regard for their setting or personalities. Skip this show. If you want to see a well written mmo anime watch Log Horizon or The King's Avatar.

Spoiler section (not just for season 1 but some things from the following seasons as well):
The main character is a ... normal person with a boring job and no known desires to kill or torture any real people or game characters. He is the last remaining member of what was once the greatest guild in a dead mmorpg that is being shut down. He finds himself transported into another world as his game character with his guild's base and npc characters brought to life and turned into actual living and free thinking beings. At this point I loved the show, amazing setting and world building and as these characters are at max power they are all basically gods in this world (although it takes them a little while to realize that) and it is incredibly fun to see what they will do with that power.

But then things quickly go downhill. In the first interaction he has with the new world he finds himself in he decides to save a village but not resurrect the people that died in the attack before he arrived even though it is easily within his power and if he wanted he could also erase the memories of the people that died and those that saw them die so no one would know he had this power. He could make a huge difference in the lives of these innocent people but instead chooses not to for no reason other than that he doesn't feel like it. That just isn't a good enough reason. So many cool things could have come from that, maybe those memories could come back at some point/be discovered by an enemy that captures someone from the village in the future, ect. A lot of cool things could have developed from this moment but instead nothing happens just to demonstrate how uncaring the main character is. This isn't a show ruiner but it was the first red flag.

Later he accompanies an adventuring group. A group of friends that band together and go on adventures just like the friends he used to have and lost and misses dearly. This new group is all killed after the adventure and he leaves them dead. Once again he can easily revive the dead and erase memories. He has the power to stop something in the past that traumatized him from occurring again but he chooses not to. (I'm told in the light novel he looked down on the party but in the anime he was friendly enough with them so the adaptations clearly differ and it is wrong to say that he should act the same way in every adaptation even if the events play out differently. The author also agrees because the actions he takes in the anime differ in places from the actions he takes in the light novels so this is clearly not a 1:1 translation of the light novel). Someone that has lost all their friends they used to adventure with and explore a world of mystery together with should see this happening and think "I have the power of a God now and this will never happen again" and bring those dead adventurers back to life. But he doesn't. They remind him of something he lost so his reactions should either be to protect them so he can feel like he protected his friends memories or he should feel like they are a pale imitation of his relationship with his friends and get angry at them for the perceived mockery of that bond. But instead he just shrugs it off. This is the moment the show was ruined for me. I've played a dying mmorpg and lost all my friends one by one. I am a borderline sociopath so I don't give a crap about most of what happens around me. But I would spit in the face of God if it would bring back even a small part of the fun times I used to have adventuring with my friends. The way this character behaves does not fit himself or his personality at all and that is why this show is terrible.

Yes he is a sociopath so he feels no emotions but allow me to phrase it like this: If you see a random object of no use to you lying around do you break that object? Just because you don't care about something doesn't mean you have a desire to destroy and get enjoyment from it. Some people just throw away paper plates when they are done with them and don't crush them up for the thrill of crushing something just because they can. Now imagine that paper plate was a plastic plate and had a picture on it that reminded you of something special to you. It would make a lot more sense for you to clean that plate and keep it when you were done instead of snapping it in half just because you're so cool and edgy. Not caring about something isn't the same as wanting to destroy everything. This author clearly thinks being a sociopath is cool and dark and that honestly isn't the case. Mental illnesses are not cool no matter what the media wants you to think. This is just another failing on the part of the author to display anything accurately. Not his characters, not mmorpg players, and not sociopaths. Everything is just how he wants it to be to satisfy his desire to show us evil characters acting like shitheads.

At the finale of season 1 the main character needs to fight against a npc guild member under mind control (The only challenge these characters have in this world is against each other because they are the only beings even close to the power level of the main character). And you get all excited because you finally get to see a serious fight using their mmorpg spells, items, and abilities. And how does the main character win the fight? He uses cash shop items that are stupidly overpowered and break the mechanics of the game. Do you know what real mmorpg players/gamers in general hate? God damn microtransactions that break their game. Selling game breaking items/xp to make money off the corpse of your game is sickening to anyone that actually loves the game and wants to have fun in it. No real mmo player would be like "oh boy gotta show off those cash shop items in my anime and have them be the main mechanics in how this fight is won". It's terrible.

Many other things continue to happen in later seasons as well. For example:

Even if you want to argue that those earlier adventurer group he watched die should have been left for dead because he didn't care about them the same way he cared about his actual friends/guild members one npc of his guild saved a human woman in need. The person that created this npc once saved the main character in the exact same way. Is the main character touched by these actions reminding him of his cherished friend he lost that once saved his life? Nope. He instead tortures the npc, dragging him in front of him and joking about having the girl killed before bringing the girl in and ordering the npc to kill her to prove his loyalty. That is not the actions the main character should have taken based on his background and personality. Once again the author clearly only cares about making him as edgy and cool as possible. It is dumb and written terribly.

Even if you want to argue that him threatening an npc is in character you can't because he previously revived the npc he had to fight at the end of season 1 and showed great concern for her. So not only do his actions not make sense based on his personality and backstory they also don't make sense based on the things he has previously done in the show. The author is clearly a terrible hack.

Later on a village of lizardmen are attacked, they all band together and the main character sees use in keeping them alive but he still kills a bunch of the village leaders who have the strongest abilities just to prove how edgy and cool he is even though this directly goes against the reason why he decided to recruit the lizardmen in the first place.

After that his base gets invaded by adventurers looking to loot the place and he personally kills a group of them that have bonds of friendship so strong all of them agree to band together and try to hold him off so a young female member of their party can escape. As you should expect none of this reminds him of his lost friends that he cherishes so deeply. He cares nothing for their teamwork and personally kills them all, except for the girl they let escape. He orders one of the npcs to kill her instead. (In the light novel she is kept alive and tortured).

All this show does is make you care for characters by showing off how much fun and adventure they have together and how strong their bonds of friendship are before torturing and killing them to show how cool and edgy the main character is. It's a terrible show and I can't suggest skipping it strongly enough.

Non spoiler section: This show starts out ok but quickly it becomes clear it is just another mmo anime cash grab and the makers don't actually know much about mmos and the bad writing/plot holes become obnoxious. I suggest giving it a pass.

Spoilers: The characters are actually interesting if not the most original and there are actually some complicated relationships going on and not just your typical every girl is in love with the main character because he is the greatest player of all time story. But sadly other than the characters not being complete trash and the game world looking fun to play in ... everything else is dumb.

In an mmo levels matter because otherwise people wouldn't bother to train at all and what would be the point of having levels to begin with? In this mmo a new player with almost no leveling can take on one of the best guilds in the game single handedly. That's just a terrible lack of understanding how mmos work. Also a bunch of other things like players can make their own bases wherever they want and yet we only ever see one base and if that were a mechanic the game world would be completely overrun with bases. A ring can fall off during combat and will remain on the floor for 11 years and get ported over to a new version of the game for the same player to find because no one else ever went into that area and picked it up or the data that it was there was ever lost because a system reset happened or anything(which would have had to happen at least once when the game was ported to the new system it is running on).

Then things get totally laughable when it turns out that the special skills in game are usable in real life. How the hell do you expect me to believe that because you played a vr game people can now freeze time, change the past, summon magical elementals that shoot out fire, and all kinds of other crap???? At least give some kind of explanation like the powers are all physically manifested and because such a small population of the world can use those powers a method to unlock them was hidden as a secret government project in a super popular mmo to expose as large a population as possible to it. But instead they are just like "yea the game makes you magic irl" with no explanation behind it or fake science talk.

Overall a very superficial show and just not worth watching but not particularly painful to watch either.

Spoiler free section: The show starts out good but falls apart midway and becomes really dumb. I'd pass on it as it doesn't offer anything to make it worth watching and if it ever gets a season 2 it will probably be an atrocity.

Spoilers: Man does this show start out really surprisingly good for the genre (Isekai Echie). The main character is an antisocial mmorpg expert and he gets sent to a game world. That has been done a million times now but the way he covers up his inability to deal with people by putting on a demon lord persona is very funny at ... times so that offers a new twist. The reason he gets called to another world is because of a synchronized summoning spell gone wrong by the two female leads: A silent and more reserved loli cat girl (who dresses way more revealingly than fits with her character type) and a bubbly happy go lucky elf character with a very curvy body and no sense of personal space.

The characters compliment each other well and the friendship they form is very enjoyable and their antics are genuinely funny because the show takes a worn out out genre in a few new directions. Hell even the backstories for the female leads are well done and make you feel genuine emotion for their positions.

Holy hell does this show get hype quickly when an army attacks and one of the female leads is almost assassinated. It is very satisfying to see a "Demon Lord" go beast mode and wreck an army before saving his girl. At this point I would have given the show an 8/10 overall but the rest of the show is entirely downhill.

There were several warning signs that this could happen from the start, such as the main character despite being a regular mmo player clearly has abilities that are way beyond anything a player character should have in a game. Things like the ability to reflect all magic thanks to an enchanted ring that was given only to the first player to beat a difficult boss. No mmorpg would ever give out such a stupidly op ability because it completely breaks the game and makes that character impossible to be damaged by anyone in the game that plays a mage. Stupidly unbalanced. And his dps (damage per second) is so stupidly over the top there is no way a game would allow a character to level up to the point where they could kill 100 boss monsters with a single spell. That's just dumb. It would have been way more satisfying (and better written) if the main character simply had an ability that would reflect the first magic spell cast at him after he cast his reflect ability and it had a cooldown after it was activated so that way mages wouldn't instantly lose against him and he would have a reasonable advantage that he worked hard to obtain. And it would have been way more incredible to show him actually fight against 100 boss monsters and beat them with skill as opposed to just using a single spell so stupidly powerful no game would ever allow players to use.

I could overlook the not overly obnoxious flaws from the first few episodes however the show has to put the main character in crisis to add suspense and they wrote him to be as powerful as God so they can only do this in two ways: 1 - making him incredibly retarded, and 2 - sloppy writing.

1 - He is clearly aware how powerful he is and yet he repeatedly lets his two female companions that both have people hunting them go around on their own without him and every time they almost get killed or get abducted. His only weakness is that there are two girls and he can't be in two places at the same time so for fucks sake just ask them both to stay together when you go on quests or out around town. Instead he goes on quests with one of them and the other in a town miles away will almost get her head ripped off or he'll hear bounties have been placed on one and let her wander around in the shopping district and be surprised when someone tries to kidnap her. Absolutely retarded.

2 - At one point all of the characters are walking together and one of them gets kidnapped because she literally, with the main character directly in front of her decides to follow a different person and wonder where the main character went and he has no idea where she went because she followed someone else in a different direction despite being easily able to have called out to him and at least let him know she was following this other character. She literally just followed her kidnapper away without a word to anyone or wondering why they were walking in a different direction.

After stuff like that starts happening the show becomes a wreck. A low level mage (compared to the main character) casts a spell on one of the girls suffocating her directly in front of the main character that can kill 100 boss level monsters with a single spell and he just starts angrily talking to the guy before getting into a fight with him and letting it take way longer than required to stop his girl from choking. He could have immediately cast a single spell that would have either killed the enemy mage or cause him incredible pain/to pass out if he didn't want to kill him and instead he let some random assclown choke his girl with magic right in front of him for a bit. If you care for these girls and have the power of a god why the hell don't you protect them more?!? Where is the fury and indignation that some shit mage just started choking a girl you care for?!? Why aren't you casting a spell that will turn him into a crater so big it shakes the city or frying him to near death with a lightning bolt like the divine judgement of an enraged god?!?

By the time it gets to the episode where the only way to save one of the girls is to give her "the shocker" (yes the two in the pink one in the stink fingering gesture people used to think was funny in second grade) the show had become such a trainwreck it was borderline unwatchable imo and I tend to have a higher tolerance for garbage than most people.

The show just really drops the ball after a decent enough setup and it really bothers me because in the first few episodes the characters were so good together and the jokes were funny. I still give it a 6/10 overall because of how good it started out but the end half of the show is closer to a 3/10.

There are people that will hate this series by default because they don't agree with the brother-sister genre entirely but I have to say this manga does an amazing job showing everything the genre has to offer. The point isn't that she's his sister, the point is that she is the closest person in the world to him. He falls in love with her because they share all the same interests and look out for each other and because he can't imagine being with anyone else.

It isn't something you have to want a relationship with your own sister to enjoy, it is simply a love ... story between two incredibly close people and the whole forbidden aspect of the relationship just adds some tension to spice things up.

The important thing to remember is that fantasy is by definition not reality and the inability to distinguish between the two means you are literally insane. So if you can't enjoy a heartfelt story about two people that fall in love and have to sneak around because you are projecting yourself and your own sister onto them then you actually have a mental problem. If you dislike this story because of the characters themselves and not the genre that is fine but I'm sick of people having an instant "oh that makes me want to puke" reaction to everything that comes out of a specific genre because they want to show off what a mature and healthy person they are (that can't differentiate a fictional manga from reality).

Anyways onto the story itself: I don't want to spoil anything so I won't touch on specifics but it is full of moments that made me laugh, warmed my heart, and was just a fantastic read so far. I'm a sucker for love stories but this is one of the best I've seen. Also unlike a hundred billion other romance series this relationship actually has seen some progress in the 17 chapters that are currently available so it doesn't look like a complete waste of time for readers that might want to pick it up and see something actually progress and not just the same recycled jokes for hundreds of chapters.

This is it! The king returns! The first season of this show was amazing walking the fine line between highschool romcom and action adventure about an out of place child soldier turned teenage mercenary. It did a great job juxtaposing the two sides of that coin as the main character's mission was to protect a highschool girl and it required him to blend into regular highschool life so both the action adventure and slice of life comedy felt natural. The second season of this show dropped the ball with dumb things like the same bad guy coming back to life 3 times until he was ... a brain in a jar futurama style barking commands to underlings that had to be retconned into the show just to have it make sense how he could have anyone that would listen to him and allow him to still be a threat after getting blown up twice. Then the third season went full retard and only focused on slice of life comedy and all the action adventure stuff was dumb shit like the main character releasing nerve gas into the school on accident and didn't touch on any of the amazing mercenary missions or plot progression.

But now, 10 years later we have a season 4 and it is as good as that magical first season! Balance has been restored to the universe and we have mercenary missions with non-immortal badguys that have an insane upper hand making the good guys the extreme underdogs in every situation that only survive because of their amazing skills and even then every battle they win (which doesn't always happen) is won by the skin of their teeth and they pay a high price for it. This is it! The tension, the drama, the amazing technical military execution of battle plans, the giant killer robots; everything that made season 1 amazing! And it still has the interpersonal relations and highschool setting without an army of people in mascot costumes with automatic weapons.

I am so glad we finally have a sequel that lives up to the first season. If you are new to Full Metal Panic I suggest watching all of season 1, maybe skimming season 2, completely skipping season 3, and then picking up here.

10/10