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Jul 17, 2021
Spoiler free review!
TL;DR:
An intriguing and well-rounded mystery story with unique storytelling that will certainly get better with rewatches to recognise plenty of subtle, foreshadowing details towards a great twist. Runner for anime and OP of the year for me.
Odd Taxi (OT) may draw the same sort of crowd that has recently watched and enjoyed shows like Beastars and BNA. The comparison is unavoidable almost purely because of the animal inspired characters, although the comparison is quite shallow once you start watching. Odd Taxi stands out from the rest by how grounded it is in reality, with detailed and fleshed-out cityscapes, characters with relatable
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flaws, and an engaging mystery with many crime drama elements seen in other great works of the genre.
It has a fairly unique, hyper-realistic style of dialogue that has already been compared many times to Tarantino films. One of the clearest comparisons I could point out is the addition of very casual and personal conversations that may not add to the plot or the mystery at all but flesh out characters nicely and make them more, in one way or another, human. Take, for example, a small scene in the first episode with the main character Odokawa and his doctor talking about music and Bruce Springsteen that never fails to make me smile. As well as the dialogue and clear pop culture references, the non-linear storytelling and the great twist at the end are also reminiscent of the director.
There are also a few smaller “B-mysteries” set up in the first episode, including a scene with Odokawa sitting seemingly alone in his apartment, starting to talk to someone or something in his closet that is perfectly silent and hidden in the dark. While it doesn’t have much focus in most episodes, it’s always in the back of your mind as something peculiar about the main character that we may be slightly suspicious about, partly because partly due to a shot in the opening dedicated to reminding you. The conclusion to this B-mystery even loosely ties into the main plot and the twist at the end, which is quite satisfying to see it all come full circle.
There are quite a lot of characters in Odd Taxi who are all given their own spotlight and very personal stories which are all interconnected with a few other characters, and then tied all together nicely by the end of the series. Not every character is likable, and that’s perfectly fine since they’re not all trying to be, but each one is given reason and motivation for their part in the overall mystery plot, making each character their own puzzle piece of the bigger picture. Some stand-out characters are a porcupine gangster who speaks almost entirely in rap, a failing stand-up comedy duo with a lot of tension between them, and a young hippo who is obsessed with being viral and popular online, a feeling which I’m sure many can relate to, even if we haven’t gone to quite the same lengths that he does.
The opening is one of the best, if not THE best, of its season, both the song and the animation. It will be a top contender for best of the year for me. The song (also called Odd Taxi) is a collaboration by Skirt and PUNPEE, and I can only hope they will release more music together. It’s so relaxed and I think it captures the casual tone of the series perfectly. The animation is incredibly cute and is in more of a hand-drawn, almost crayon art style, with a lot of boiling around the outer lines and visible streaks in the colouring. The shot of Odokawa trying his hardest to clean bird poop off his taxi windscreen is super charming. There is a lot of hidden meaning in a lot of shots in the opening, specifically about each character as they show up on screen, such as the hippo character’s head inflating as he gets more attention on his phone and social media.
Despite all the praise I can give it, OT seems to have slipped under a lot of people’s radars, possibly because some people view an anime about a walrus cab driver as a little “odd”, pardon the pun. I can’t recommend Odd Taxi to enough people, since it deserves so much more recognition than it’s gotten so far for its uniqueness alone, never mind the art, music, and captivating mystery story.
WATCH ODD TAXI!
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Feb 15, 2021
TL;DR
Has some interesting characters and concepts, very nice animation but has such a strong sexual tone that can feel unnecessary and off-putting.
Just so you’re aware, I’ve not read any of the source material for this anime and I’ve come into watching with no prior knowledge. This review will contain very light spoilers of what happens in the first few episodes.
Mushoku Tensei has a lot of positive aspects going for it and elements that keep me watching each week.
Not many isekais I’ve seen have the MC literally being reborn as an infant, rather than being transported to another world as themselves, an avatar in a
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game, or transforming into a slime or spider or other creature. So it’s interesting to see Rudeus learn about the new world, language and magic very naturally as he grows up, although he does still have his older consciousness and memories of his past life. He’s also very naturally gifted with magic (of course) so he’s still special and somewhat overpowered, compared to other characters.
I appreciate that he wants to attempt to live a better life than his last life because he feels he wasted it. He reflects on what’s happened to him before and reconsiders what he’s doing in his current life. There are some jokes that are only possible because we’re observing an adult consciousness in a child’s body, which are usually quite funny.
A large part of his character is that he’s a pervert that was obsessed with porn and full of dirty thoughts. This is maybe pushed just a little too far, at least for me, as he shows serious sexual interest in girls around his young reincarnated age, even to the point of almost undressing an unconscious 9-year-old. The idea of his pervy personality could be shown in so many different ways, even with just inappropriate thoughts that he doesn’t act on, but this makes me pretty uncomfortable.
The supporting characters are mostly quite interesting and have striking, colourful designs. They’re all very distinct from each other and none of them are specifically unlikable. Their personalities all contrast the main character in different ways which make for a wide variety of interactions between the characters. Ghislaine is a favourite of mine, I love her personality and her eagerness to learn new things.
The animation has been amazing at times, water spells look fantastic and Ghislaine's rescue scene gave me goosebumps. There aren’t too many “exciting” scenes that have animation like this, but even in the slower conversation scenes the quality is great, lighting is particularly strong.
Aside from the main character’s personality, there is a strong sexual undertone that I even debate calling an undertone. While I’m sure a lot of it’s audience enjoys this, I’ve personally seen a lot of praise for this anime while barely seeing any mention of this. For example, on multiple occasions we hear the parents having sex in another room, one night of which the MC as a child spies on his teenage magic teacher masturbating outside his parent’s room, later on he buys an aphrodisiac potion with the intent of using it on a child, the examples go on. I’m not a total prude for sexual content, but it’s not what I want to watch an anime like this for. I appreciate some of it is important to the story or character relations to some extent, such as Paul cheating on his wife and sleeping with their maid, or Paul and Ghislaine having a history with each other. But for my tastes, an awful lot of these moments are unnecessary or uncomfortable, such as the aforementioned undressing of an unconscious child. I try my best to enjoy the rest of the series and not let these moments spoil my experience.
There aren’t many unique things about this series so far other than its more adult tone. The new fantasy world is so far nothing special since we’ve seen fairly basic magic, elves, and animal people. I am going to continue watching (and probably the second season that’s already announced) so I hope it will develop a lot from here.
In conclusion, I’ve been enjoying Mushoku Tensei for the most part, since there are a lot of pros that outweigh the one major con. If a more adult, sexual isekai sounds like it will fit your interests then it might be perfect for you. Otherwise, if you’re not a huge fan of that aspect like me and can look past it, it’s a decently solid, nice-looking isekai with some standard fantasy elements and entertaining characters, which is just what you’re looking for sometimes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Feb 5, 2021
I was purely drawn to watch Steins;Gate because of the amount of love and praise it's already received. I didn't really know anything about the plot or characters as I was going in, so was it worth simply following the hype train for one of the best rated series on this site?
In short, yes it's been more than worth it. In long, well... I do have a little more to say.
I'll be keeping my review pretty vague and ** spoiler-free ** so people reading this can go into it with roughly the same outset I had.
The first half of the season is very slow,
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not too slow to a fault, but to the point where I was wondering why this sort of show was getting such immense praise and is a lot of people's favourite. It's very heavily focused on gradually and sensibly introducing characters and character relationships which could have easily been rushed through in a shorter series. Many of the early episodes are structured to focus on one character and their main motivations so the audience can understand how each and every character feels about and bounces off each other to create a lot of very real and personal relationships between them.
However, it becomes clear as you progress further into the series that everything you've seen so far is important to understand what happens past the series' turning point, around episode 12. From here the pace of the show picks up a lot and provides goals that are heavily related to what's already occurred in the first half. It was around this turning point that I admitted I was hooked and regretted doubting the series earlier on. As I mentioned I went into this series fairly blind and didn't expect the time-loop aspect, but I feel like this series handles the concept better than other anime with similar mechanics that shall not be named.
The main character, whichever name you'd rather call him by (I'll call him Okabe), is fantastic to watch. While some of his eccentricities may seem strange or annoying within the first few episodes, his mad scientist persona really grew on me, especially when he uses it as a cover for a lot of his more natural emotions or other characters mimic it to cheer him up. The acting (from the Japanese VA, I'll likely watch the dub on a rewatch) is so enjoyable, in either serious emotional scenes in which Okabe is filled with dread, despair and self-blame, or hammy mad scientist moments and attempted cool guy Enlglish. That goes for other characters too, I don't think a single one is performed at all badly. The OST is always very fitting for the scene, be it fairly quiet and mysterious for a more serious scene in the lab compared to something casual and light-hearted for a pleasant scene in Akihabara. None of the music distracts from the scene and only adds to the intended atmosphere.
It's still not a perfect anime, although that may just be my rating system because I find it hard to rate anything as really perfect. As a sci-fi mystery story, specifically involving time-travel, there's always the potential for plot holes and questions that go unanswered, sometimes to a frustrating degree. None of these moments completely ruin the story by any means but it's down to you as an audience member how much you want to question character actions or let those unanswered wonders bother you.
Part of me thinks that episode 22 could have been a heart-breaking ending if it had ended there, though I'm not complaining about how it continued and the alternate ending episode we got. Both endings work great, just for different tones and tastes.
In the end, I enjoyed this anime an awful lot, however, it took me quite a while to come to that conclusion due to the slower pace. While I did enjoy every episode to some degree I was still left questioning where all the praise comes from until I saw it for myself in the fascinating story, character relationships, and relatable emotions. I even enjoyed the gradually built romance, which I'm usually not a huge fan of. I'd definitely be recommending it to my friends and others after a small warning about the slower beginning, but it's all worth the build-up.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jan 29, 2021
By far the best Pokemon series to date! This is my first written review and will have some mild spoilers of what pokemon the main characters catch, if you care about that!
I realise that Pokemon as a series is one of those that can be quite difficult to get into if you're not hugely into Pokemon as a concept. Some people (like myself) have grown up with pokemon as a big part of their childhood and no matter what the series is like, if it's to do with pokemon, we'll love it. So understandably this series may not appeal to people who don't know an
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awful lot about the series already. However, I would argue this is one of the most accessible pokemon series of them all, largely due to the Pokemon Go game parallels. I am incredibly biased towards loving anything pokemon, so understand that going into my opinion.
Some may find the main cast formula change to the two male main protagonists to be either a positive or a negative depending on how you liked the larger main casts in the previous series. Everyone is familiar with Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu, but Gou is the character for newer pokemon fans or pokemon go players to see themselves in since his goal is similar to a casual pokemon Go player, catch everything you find. While Ash wants to battle to be considered the best, Gou wants to catch and collect every pokemon he sees, ideally without much resistance or battle, to eventually work his way up to catch Mew.
When I first heard of this concept I wasn't sure what to think but seeing it in action has confirmed that it was the right direction to go in for some freshness in this 2 decade long series. There are quite a few elements that have made this particular pokemon series feel like something new and not just a repeat of an old formula.
Because Gou looks for and catches so many different pokemon, each episode highlights brand new pokemon, giving us the sort of variety we need when there's almost 900 pokemon. Gou has the option to pick from his huge selection of caught pokemon for help to solve a problem, either a battle or physical help, such as using an Alolan Exeggcutor to get down out of a huge tree.
There's also the matter of Team Rocket, who are always one of my favourite elements of the show. Instead of catching their own pokemon, they summon a Team Rocket Gatcha machine from a delivery Pelipper, which they slot Meowth's forehead coin into and use just like a capsule machine to give them random Rocket trained pokemon with notes on their movesets included in the pokeballs. This means we see so many different combinations of pokemon battling, including different moves and typings each episode. It's a lot more refreshing than seeing thunderbolts every episode but that still has its fair share of screen time.
In comparison to every other pokemon series title, Pokemon 2019 isn't set in one specific current region. In this case, Ash and Go work for a research labratory in Kanto as a home base and make journeys (oh hey!) to every current pokemon region. This gives us pokemon and characters from every anime and game so far, such as an episode based in Sinnoh episode for a swimming race with an Empoleon and Croagunk, to then going to an episode in Johto looking into Ho-oh sightings.
All of these features make me greatly look forward to every new episode because I can never tell what the episode will be based on that week. I may be repeating the same words a lot but I simply love the variety in this.
The opening theme is amazingly catchy and is one of the only few that remixes the same song for different versions of the intro. I still think the first version was the best one but none of them are bad. (This is the japanese intro, not the biggest fan of the dub intro).
There is a clear case of what I call "secondary mascot syndrome", in that there are a lot of pokemon that are being pushed as a main focus above the one and only OG mascot, Pikachu. In later episodes there is a big focus on the Ash/Lucario and Gou/Cinderace pairing mostly for a lot of cool blue/red contrast imagery. After Go's Scorbunny evolves he soon gets a Sobble which takes up the position of small cute starter out it's pokeball a lot of the time. The main female character, Koharu, who plays a much more minor part than main female characters of the past, of course had to get an Eevee because there's been so much focus on Eevee as an equivalent to Pikachu in so many areas of Pokemon. All while Pikachu fades into the background and rarely does much outside of a move or two in some episodes.
I'm not necessarily saying that's a bad thing because as I've said I appreciate the variety and no doubt people are sick of seeing Pikachu in the spotlight. I just wish there was more of a balance since it's so obvious to see the push for more mascot pokemon.
Another ever so small complaint I'd mention is that the amount of variety also has its drawbacks. Specifically, that when the main characters catch super cool and powerful pokemon, such as Ash's Gengar and Dragonite, and Gou's Heracross and Flygon among many others, don't get seen as much as we'd wish since they're not always with Ash and Gou on their Journeys.
I do wish Ash's ranked competition battles happened more often since they're the closest thing Ash has to stakes and we can see his strong pokemon shine. The battles themselves are usually great and fairly engaging, they're just not that frequent.
I suppose the main reason I can't rate this a perfect 10 despite all my praise and general pokemon love, is that at its core it's still a usual pokemon show. The characters don't have much development or growth moments, there are fairly low stakes most of the time and there's a lot of playful, slice-of-life filler episodes. Not that these are totally bad points, of course, it just doesn't get much deeper than surface level with Pokemon.
TL;DR
In summary, I love this series to bits and believe it's the most varied and interesting Pokemon series to date. I think it's worth even casual pokemon fans diving into some episodes and enjoy some light-hearted Pokemon fun. This is the direction the Pokemon series has needed to go in for a long time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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