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As someone who loathes hyper-competitiveness, I can't really bring myself to enjoy this anime. I honestly did want to like Uma Musume, but I just can't do it. The artstyle, the animation, the music, the voice acting, the character designs, they all range from good to great, and some parts in the anime remain enjoyable enough to watch despite everything else.

However, when the entire premise of the anime (and almost everything around it) revolves around competition and the need to win and not much else, I just lose interest in it. For the most part, it doesn't even seem like there's much reason behind their ... obsessive need to win and compete except the boring 'I'm gonna be the best.' Even the friendships in Uma Musume revolve almost entirely around competition and rivalry. Oh they'll say 'I wanna make others happy,' but at the end of the day it all still comes back down to needing to run and win races in order to do it. Why can't it be about them having fun first and foremost, perhaps even outside of racing? Why does everybody usually treat eachother, friends or not, like rivals to be defeated? Why does every character, in nearly every scene, have this pervasive need to improve their running like it's a life-or-death situation? I would've liked Uma Musume so much more if the characters had more to their lives and personalities than just constant training/racing. If it had some more lighthearted slice-of-life moments to flesh out its characters and alleviate that serious/intense tone around its racing.

On top of that, other criticisms I have with Uma Musume is that the pacing could've been better, and that there are a few too many characters overall. This results in many of those characters being unable to really have enough screen time and character development - at least within just 13 episodes. Thus, I find it a bit hard to really care much for most of them.

To be sure, Uma Musume is definitely not awful, because it certainly does have good aspects and ideas, and it deserves a few points for that at the least. However, overall, I still didn't enjoy it that much, and that's why I ultimately gave it this score.

Urara Meirochou is... Fine. It's mediocre, but not really the bad kind. That's about the best I can describe this series. It wasn't bad at all, but I didn't really think it was amazing or even good either. It was fun enough as a series to just pass the time with, without it actually feeling like a waste. But it also didn't really leave much of an impact on me.

The characters are enjoyable to watch, though I think they can be a bit too annoyingly quirky and cheesy sometimes. The art is pretty good, and the sound design is decent. Barely anything I can really ... complain about in these aspects.

The thing I liked the most about this series is the premise of its story. Urara that can divine information by lending powers from gods/spirits that do not want to be seen. Interesting to say the least, and I definitely wanted to see more.

But here we have one of its problems; aside from a few select scenes hinting at 'something', we don't really get much of anything. I think this series was meant to set up the world and the backgrounds and motivations of the characters. This series does a good enough job in that aspect. But without the thought of a second season, Urara Meirochou has to stand on its own... In which case my mediocre opinion of it is solidified even more.

I also think that Urara Meirochou is a bit confused as to what it wants to be. Does it want to be a chill and happy slice-of-life/moe anime, or does it want to a be a fantasy-esque anime filled with mysteries and excitement? But I see it trying to juggle both of them too much at the same time... Causing it to fall a little flat as a whole.

All in all though, I'm willing to give Urara Meirochou the benefit of the doubt and rate it a decent 6 out of 10.

For a long time, I've never seen School Days, and have wondered why so many reviews were bashing the main character so much... But now that I have seen it, I really have to agree with those reviews: Makoto is a prick, and he single-handedly destroyed my enjoyment of School Days.

But before I continue bashing Makoto, let's get a few things straight. First off, it's true that most of the story has a lot of potential to be enjoyable if it was tweaked in some areas. I personally also like the yandere trope, which added a little enjoyment for me I guess. It's also ... true that Makoto is just an inexperienced male teenager dealing with hormones and girls, which can be understandably difficult. The girls aren't completely innocent either and do make mistakes here and there as well. Add to all this that School Days can be considered a psychological anime that delves into what cheating could do to humans and even into the topic of sociopaths. However, none of that excuses Makoto from being THIS despicable.

Makoto constantly switches between a plethora of girls like they're simple toys he could just play with whenever he wants. His attitude and consideration towards the feelings of others goes way beyond just simple 'not picking up on hints', and straight into what seems like 'being willfully ignorant and selfish'. Makoto is also an enormous horndog that thinks of nothing else except trying to get into a girl's pants. Then there's also the few scenes where he tries to force himself upon a girl, only being stopped at the very last moment when the creepiness has already fully set in. Oh but the list doesn't stop here. He's also in a near-constant state of lying and/or denial, on top of always blaming others and never once standing up for anyone except himself. Finally, whenever another character was in trouble in some way or another, Makoto almost always takes a sort of 'wait and see' approach and barely puts in any effort himself.

School Days in and of itself is fine and even enjoyable for the most part, especially considering it came out in 2007. So I'll praise it for that if nothing else, and bump the overall rating up to a 3. But I really can't give it any more, because Makoto just ruined what could've been a pretty decent anime for me. He's a liar, a cheat, a coward, a sexual deviant and overall just a horribly selfish person. He had so many opportunities to make things better, but he let all of them slip in favor of getting his groin wet. Enjoyment was far to be found for me because Makoto brought me nothing but hatred and disgust, [slight spoiler: to the point where I was literally cheering when he finally got what he deserved at the end.] But this final feeling of relief still doesn't warrant a positive rating in my opinion, especially considering everything that went before it and how horrible it all felt. In short, Makoto has definitely made my list of top 5 most hated anime characters.

After watching this anime, I was left scratching my head and wondering what the hell I had just watched and why I had spent my time watching it. First off, the little girls were portrayed pretty sexually, and very much like love interests to the much older main protagonist. I'm really not against putting 'little girl' characters in an anime, I'm a huge fan of Amaama to Inazuma for example. But sexualizing them like they seem to do in this anime is just in bad taste.

Anyway, back to the rest of the anime. Which isn't much to be honest. Even the Shogi aspect of Ryuuou ... no Oshigoto is really uninteresting. I compare it to Saki as an example, which has a similar concept but has Mahjong as its center theme. It's not a perfect anime by any means, but that anime at least had me interested in the Mahjong aspect... And that's coming from someone who doesn't understand much of anything about Mahjong. Saki was just such silly fun, that it managed to keep my attention to the over-the-top animation, the silly banter and the (at least semi-)interesting characters. But here in Ryuuou no Oshigoto there's just nothing. It's just two people sitting across from eachother, a few clicking sounds from the pawns hitting the board, and that's it. There's barely even any good banter or animation quality during the matches. The few scenes that did seem like there was some effort was put in, felt a little more cringy and weird than anything else to be honest. To me every Shogi match seemed like watching paint dry.

To top it off, the characters were not exactly adding much of anything either. There were some who managed to be at least a little interesting, like Kiyotaki Keika as one example, but that's about it. The main protagonist in particular is just one of the most boring characters to watch, and the loli's surrounding him seem to serve no purpose other than love interests and 'oh look at me being a child prodigy'.

In short, I can honestly say that the sheer mediocrity of Ryuuou no Oshigoto actually manages to be quite horrible. The characters, the animation quality, the storyline, the Shogi itself... It all feels like, well, stale bread or something. Yeah it's edible, but it's almost digustingly bland.

Well, this is one hell of a disappointing anime. Hajimete no Gal could have been so much more, but instead it decided to go for low-effort sex jokes all around. I was so interested in what could be happening between Yukana and Yunichi (a Gal girl and your average loser high school student), but it was ruined by pretty much everything in this anime except for the sound- and animation quality.

I thought this anime was about dating a 'Gal Girl', but Yukana seems almost as inoccent and nice as a puppy most of the time. Which isn't bad in and of itself, in fact it ... can be really cute, but it kinda ruins the anime's idea of dating a 'Gal Girl'. In addition to that, the main character is so cringy that it makes a lot of real life high school kids seem like absolute Chads in comparison. But the characters that are even worse are his group of 'friends', who constantly bully him and make it seem like their genitalia have completely replaced their personalities. The group consists of the great No-Presence Man, an actual pedophile, and Cringelord McDouchenozzle. There's also the other 2 girls 'fighting' for Yunichi's hand as well of course, but they don't have anything interesting going on about them. Nene is pretty annoying usually, and basically plays off of nothing but the 'girl next door' shtick all the time. Yui is the most ok of them all, but even she eventually gets pretty annoying when there's only 1 or 2 interesting things about her and nothing else.

If Hajimete no Gal focused more on the relationship between the main protagonists and didn't constantly interrupt it... If it could actually manage to be funny every once in a while... If the characters had an actual personality instead of being broken records repeating the same stuff all the time... And most importantly, if it didn't shove cringy- and over-the-top sexual imagery in your face every 5 minutes! Well, then Hajimete no Gal might actually be an interesting anime to watch. But right now? It's nothing but characters constantly fighting and bickering back and forth, with lame sex-jokes inbetween every scene, and a light sprinkle of mediocre relationship stuff between Yukana and Yunichi. Overall, Hajimete no Gal is kind of a waste of time in my opinion.

Ishuzoku Reviewers is... Alright, I guess. Don't expect anything spectacular. If you're looking to get your rocks off, you'd be better off just going to hentai. If you're looking for a good anime to watch, there are many more options that are so much better.

Music, voice acting, art and animation are all pretty amazing. If I were to rate this anime purely off of those I'd give it a 8 out of 10 for sure. But those things on their own don't get your anime very far to be honest.

The story and overall premise of Ishuzoku Reviewers is where it all goes bad. ... It's just waaay too shallow and uneventful to be any fun. All the protagonists ever do during all 12 episodes is visit brothels... Like, there's literally nothing else going on here. I can understand this from a certain angle seeing as the entire premise of the series is to visit brothels. But then there's barely anything happening within- and around those brothels either. Well, apart from the H-scenes with 'convenient' camera angles. The only thing even remotely interesting are the admittedly fun 'did you know's' about a few fantasy races.

As an anime, Ishuzoku Reviewers could only stretch the ecchi as far as they could, but were ultimately unable to show much of anything at all. So it lacks the real lewd scenes to qualify as a hentai, and lacks too much story and depth to qualify as an interesting anime. Which leaves us at this result, a series that couldn't really satisfy you either as an anime or as a hentai.

I can see so much potential, but because the awkward position it's in and because it never fully satisfied me either way, I have to give Ishuzoku Reviewers a 6 out of 10. It's an alright time sink, and I guess it can be entertaining enough in some aspects... But it leaves way too much to be desired. I believe you could spend your time better elsewhere no matter what you were looking to get from it.

Black Clover is an anime that is as painfully generic and boring as an anime can get. It's filled with nothing but cliches, walking stereotypes they call characters, tons of inconsistencies and overall just a lot of generic/boring moments.

You could compare Black Clover a lot to Fairy Tail I guess, what with the theme of magic and a lot of the characters and themes looking like they took inspiration from eachother... But Fairy Tail just did everything so much better. Sure, Fairy Tail did quite a few things wrong as well, and it had plenty of episodes/storylines that were simply abysmal. But it's as if ... Black Clover took all the worst parts of shounen anime and blended it together. The story has too many moments where it just doesn't make sense, and all of the characters are nothing but a single character trait made manifest. That's not even saying anything about the hyper-annoying main character Asta... Who is like if you picked the worst parts of Naruto and Natsu, and blended them together with the screaming of a 100 Dragonball Z episodes.

I tried to sit through more episodes, to give this anime more of a chance... But I just couldn't do it. It was just so hard to keep my attention/focus on this anime that I found myself straight up skipping through some episodes because I was just so tired of it all.

On top of all that, of the 23-ish minutes we get per episode, only 13 or so minutes (at best) is spent on actual new content. The rest of it is all the OP, the ED, intermissions and a whole lot of flashbacks/reminiscing of what happened in previous episodes (or sometimes even a few moments ago in the same episode!!!).

The only 'good' things I see in Black Clover are its sound, its art and the general idea behind its story/world. In the case of the sound and the art, they're not particularly spectacular, but at least they're watchable and not that bad. In the case of the worldbuilding/story, they're all very interesting concepts - with a magic-based society, grimoires, and a main protagonist who recieves a power so unlike everything else... But ALL of it is just handled and executed so, SO very badly.

I give Black Clover the best rating I can possibly give it... A 3 out 10.

Wow, what a ride this anime was. In short, my recommendation is to just watch AKB0048. It's amazing.

Art and Sound [9/10]
Both top-notch. They can sometimes feel like they could be better in some ways (though I wouldn't be able to tell you why), but overall they manage to be very amazing in AKB0048. The moments where the characters appear 'on stage' are especially spectaculair.

Story and Characters [7/10]
As for the characters and story, these are also really enjoyable to watch. However, it's here where I can spot one of the few flaws I see with AKB0048. There's a little bit too much 'training arcs' for ... my liking. It feels like the character development is given way too much priority, which leaves me feeling like the actual story is moving too slow. In addition to this, I think they could inject a lot more scenes where the characters just engage in simple, funny and cute goofing around. I feel like there's way too much seriousness and brooding, and while they certainly have their place here (especially in an anime like this), it could also very much do with a lot more light-hearted moments to highlight their cute and heartwarming aspects and really show them like idols even more. But even though I'm pointing out these things, I still think the story and characters are good enough to be enjoyable.

Enjoyment/Overall [8/10]
Overall, I very much enjoyed AKB0048, and I'm certainly planning to watch the sequel too. Episode 13 was definitely the highlight of this anime for me. I was planning to give this anime a 7, but man, that episode gave me enough chills to boost it to an 8 all on its own. Anyway, despite the overabundance of 'training arcs' and seriousness, and the sometimes slow-feeling story, I would certainly recommend others to give this anime a try.

Overall, Centaur is a pretty good Anime to just sit through and enjoy. It did bring more slice of life (and a bit of humor) to the table more than anything else, but I totally don't mind that since I'm a fan of it. But if you don't like slice of life, or if you expected/wanted something entirely else from Centaur no Nayami then I can understand it might not be your thing.

Anyway, the slice of life that is there is pretty entertaining. Not absolutely great or incredibly noteworthy, but definitely fun at the very least. For me, it didn't feel like a chore to ... sit through at all: it gave me a few laughs and interesting concepts to keep myself busy with. The quality of the art and the sound was decent as well.

The biggest drawback to Centaur no Nayami, at least in my opinion, is that it feels like so many potential subjects, storylines and character developments were wasted. Centaur no Nayami introduces your typical world filled with animal-/monster-human hybrids. The world seems much more like that of 'Demi-chan wa Kataritai' than most others. But where it kinda disappoints me is that Centaur no Nayami introduces a whole lot, but then does nothing with it later on. An example is that there's a storyline of racism, which they always hint at, but apart from one episode delving a little deeper into it, we get nothing else. Another example are the snake people, always explained as 'mysterious' and 'secretive'... They even start something in 1 episode which I won't spoil. But despite there being a snake girl character introduced into the school that the protagonists attend - Sassassul Quetzalcoatl - they don't explore these concepts much further at all. Which is a shame, since I really liked that character and even the snake people in general.

It comes down to this with me: They should have either A) focused on the slice of life and humor parts full-on and not tease us with all kinds of concepts they won't delve into, or B) they should have just explored the things they introduced much further.

Overall, it really is a pretty fun watch, if only just for the slice of life elements and a bit of the humor... But it could have been so much more, especially with all the concepts we get teased with. It gets a 7 from me, certainly pretty enjoyable to watch, but also leaving much to be desired afterwards.

Story 7/10
The story does have a strong NGNL feel to it, but it also feels rather rushed and as if it wasted quite some potential. The movie may go for almost 2 hours, but you see almost nothing of all the other races. You see flashes and glances of some of them, but nothing really concrete, and even those glances are usually not for very long. The real focus of this movie lies on humanity's struggle for survival... and for what it's worth, what is shown is pretty enjoyable for the most part.

Art 10/10
Simply stunning. As usual, NGNL is a feast to the eyes. ... It has the usual artstyle you'd expect from NGNL - as seen in the series as well - and while I could understand if some of this style may not be your thing, I promise you that you'll still enjoy other parts of the art. It does use a bit of a darker tones for some scenes compared to the original series, but it's still the same style overall.

Sound 10/10
As with the art, the sound is great as well. The sound effects have amazing impact, and the music makes you feel more strongly along with most of the scenes. I can't really think of any suggestions to improve this.

Character 6/10
Like the story, the characters feel rather rushed. They practically just pop into being, and are barely explained. Their character developments also feel like they speed from one step to the next just a bit too fast. The main characters even look like exact copies of the main characters from the NGNL series, which isn't really that believable and makes them feel more like them instead of their own separate selves. While the characters aren't horrible overall, I would have preferred more attention spent on them.

Enjoyment 7/10
The art and the sound are the main spectacles here. This doesn't mean the rest is bad though, just not as amazing as you might expect. I also have a personal gripe with one of the aspects of the story, though telling that would be a spoiler. Overall, the movie was a good watch, but that aspect of the story as well as the rushed story and characters left kind of a bitter aftertaste for me. That's why I'm giving No Game No Life Zero a 7 out of 10: enjoyable, but leaving a bit to be desired afterwards.