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Aug 23, 2017
Classroom of the Elite...is...interesting to say the least. I'm rating it fairly high but it could easily go up or down. That's one of the reasons I'm enjoying this show, it isn't really clear what's going to happen and that is a nice feeling!
Is the MC a good guy about to get a harem or a secret sociopath? Honestly either outcome is possible and I have my own feelings.
Story: 7/10
Some reviews have downplayed this show as yet another wasted potential, but that seems a little unfair because we have yet to see most of the plot or the reveal which is SURE to
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come. The setting is interesting, however I agree with others, it is unrealistic and trivial. I mean rich kids in a school competing doesn't really seem like a lot of stakes, but the show manages to convince you it is somehow. Already lines are being drawn and it is clear multiple students are aiming for the top and going to use any means necessary. We have gotten to know mainly the Class D characters and most of the plot is their struggles, including being targeted by higher classes. The plot could be really interesting or turn out really lame but I've been enjoying the mystery as it isn't clear where it is going and I've enjoyed seeing the intellectual battles between students including entrapment so far!
Characters: 8/10 [spoilers]
A lot of the Class D students are incredibly stupid and lazy. I assume this was done to create early conflict. The kids came and thought they'd have it easy here, spent all their money in the first month, and goofed off in class, but then had a rude awakening and the teacher mocks them for it. I agree, these kids deserved it and it is weak writing. However, after the first couple episodes under the surface there are a lot of intriguing characters developing. It seems almost every character has secret motivations, including the teachers. Already we've seen two characters seemingly reversed, yanked out of comfortable stereotypes into dangerous hidden sides. Some, if not the majority, may be sociopaths. On the surface it may seem like the MC is your typical nice guy but I really don't think it'll go down that way. I suspect the show is planning a reversal where the people you liked turn out to be not so nice and vice versa. It has already happened once with the bubbly girl. This MC though...definitely not your run of the mill guy. For one he keeps pulling out remarkable skills and is very astute, helping others out, yet claims to not care about anything. You start to realize he knows a lot and can manipulate people at will including his supposed friends. Something weird is going on with him behind those dead eyes. He gives me the chills and Episodes 5 pretty much confirms he has his own dark agenda--whatever that is. We'll see!
Art & Sound: 5/10
The animation is ok and serves its purpose. It doesn't seem particularly impressive though and often lacks attention to detail except in the key scenes.
Excited to see where this one goes! I'm following it every week!
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Aug 23, 2017
Berserk, (the original 1997) when I first watched it, quickly became one of my favorite anime. I loved the characters, I loved Guts, and even though it broke my heart and seemed excessively brutal, I loved the ending.
Summary: I looked forward to a continuation of this anime for a long time but was disappointed. If you watch this, just consider it a weird spin-off because it has lost nearly everything that made me enjoy the original. And I know it is biased to judge a sequel off the original, but I can't help it, this new installment was just that disappointing to me...
Story: 3/10
What
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story? This is probably the lowest I've ever rated a story. Guts is searching for Casca and wants to kill his demon-ex-friend, she's wandering randomly around acting like a child. Supernatural stuff keeps happening since he's marked and killing tons of random bystanders. He gets trailed by some random side characters for a while that either admire or hate him, but the story is literally just: "look, Guts is a badass and defeating all this shit that keeps being thrown at him!"
Art: 6/10
This show uses 3D scenes and lot of CGI assists. So you get these awkwardly smooth rotation shots like in Kingdom. I didn't hate it but it does take some getting used too. The action scenes are incredibly brutal and badass though. Fun to watch.
Sound: 5/10
I'm rating this as mediocre but I don't remember the sound much. It was ok I guess.
Character: 3/10
Guts is guts at least. Mad and on a rampage. He's a brutal killing machine so they preserved that part of his character. All other characters have pretty much vanished or are sidelined though. Casca has reverted to a childlike state and wandered off, constantly in danger and a nuisance. I hoped to see her progress but not this season. She remained a broken disappointed shell of the original character and yet another example of a strong female lead destroyed by something like rape. Granted, it was with a demon, and no doubt traumatic, but childlike reversion is just an over-the-top emotional slap in the face to people that liked her character. She is literally only there to justify Guts' brutal rampage. If she wasn't there he would honestly look like a criminal and a jackass most of the time. All side characters are fairly 2D this season as well. Even guts is 2D. So you basically just have this static cast moving around bumping into each other and never changing much. Maybe they expect to have several seasons? Regardless it is a bad start.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Aug 23, 2017
This show really surprised me. I can honestly say this is up there in my top 5 at least and I've watched well over one-hundred anime shows.
Summary: In my opinion, this is the finest sci-fi anime I've ever watched, and it manages to have excellent characters, development, and a story that keeps you guessing to boot!
Story: 10/10
I really don't want to say much here because one of the reasons I enjoyed this anime so much was that I couldn't guess the plot exactly. It kept me guessing until the end. The anime starts off as a happy quirky anime that could almost be a
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bizarre slice of life following a socially awkward wannabe mad-scientist. You keep meeting interesting characters. Their jokes and interaction are hilarious. This is one of the few shows I would recommend the funimation dub if you are english because they did such a phenomenal job translating the jokes and dialogue. It is hilarious and on-point! If you don't like quirky happy anime, just stick with it, the show takes a dark unexpected dive mid-season and then it is a wild ride of emotions and guessing until the end.
As you've probably heard, the main subject is time-travel and the perspective on it is well-developed and the science interesting as well. If you are a scientist like me and love sci-fi, you have probably been disappointed with the anime sci-fi genre. It really is bad and the science is treated as a magical box or brushed over. Not in this show! You'll see flaws in the director's knowledge, but they did a great job as far as anime are concerned really trying to talk out the details as the characters go through their journey of excitement, discovery, despair, etc. Really phenomenal second half of the season. The one thing you might be disappointed in is the ending. But I really can't say why that might be. I want to keep from spoiling how things develop for you new viewers! :)
Art: 8/10
The art really is not that special. There are very few intense action scenes, as I said previously it is animated like a Slice of Life anime, but somehow I just found it incredibly endearing. The way the characters use quirkiness and expressiveness, gestures, poses, etc. It really works well and adds a perfect accent to the comedy parts of the anime. And the intro sequence is unique and interesting.
Sound: 8/10
I like the intro sequence and sound a lot. It really sets the tone. The voice-acting is also superb, in both the funimation dub and the original. The funimation crew made an excellent english dub that I highly recommend if you struggle with subbed. It is very well done and on-point, translating the jokes and the humor perhaps even better then the original for me.
Character: 10/10
I rarely give 10/10 for character development because anime typically is bad at it. They are short and episodic. It's hard to do well. But the character development here is incredible. Nearly every character you really meet is developed and fully 3D by the end. (not counting background like when they are out walking). the main cast of lab characters especially so. I loved seeing Okabe crack, break, and grow when the action goes down and Cristina (not her real name, you'll see) is one of my favorite female characters in anime. She's strong, smart, and well-balanced. Okabe is one of my favorite male characters too.
I can't really go into more detail without major spoilers as the plot is not easy to guess or stereotypical. (besides maybe the very ending but I did like how it was done) The plot and characters and the development/pacing is just really good in the second half and the humor is really good in the first half. The rare combination of good elements brought it up to an extremely rare "10/10" for me.
Please watch! This anime is really great! :D
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Aug 23, 2017
It seems like this anime really polarized the community and reviews here. I discovered it late myself and watched it through in one sitting and I found it very enjoyable. It is not without its flaws though.
Summary: 8/10
Cross Ange is a brutal emotional anime in many ways. You will not like the characters in the beginning, in fact I hated most of them, but this is because you are viewing broken characters that are trying to cope in the aftermath of being rejected by society. The beginning is intriguing and full of emotional lurches. It can be hard to stick with it but I'd
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say give it a chance. There are redeeming elements and it does go somewhere interesting.
Story: 5/10
TBH the story wasn't anything to write home about. The antagonist was opaque and not well-developed. A standard "hate this guy" sort of character. The anime is full of plot holes as well imho and I found myself wishing things were better developed. However, I still enjoyed it. As someone who loves science I found the technology and societies kind of interesting. You have multiple examples of attempts of "utopia" and get to see the flaws of each one. Including one without a currency at all. An underlying theme of the anime is that people are selfish and thus a perfect society is impossible. And that even in utopia people want to find racism and something to hate. Also that meeting people's needs does not make them better people or happy as the "contented" population soon shows its ugly colors in the face of something new or different. These themes though simple were interesting to me and thus I don't list the story as "bad" even though it had its issues.
Characters: 8/10
Damn these characters. xD I hated a lot of them for a long time. They are mean to each other, petty, and the heroine isn't any better for a long time. Some people felt they were 2D. Maybe many were, but to me they seemed to have a realistic depth absent in many other anime. And for a lot of them you got to learn more about their past, see what made them the way they were, and see a kind of hope and redemption begin to kindle in them. That said, they were frustratingly slow and dense at times. That doesn't necessary make them bad characters though, many real humans I know are just like this. In the end I found myself appreciating a lot of the characters and thinking of them as very real people which caused me to rate the characters highly. I also loved the main protagonist which is a pretty strong female lead as far as anime go. She's very stubborn and badass and even in the end when she learns to accept friendships and help she never leans heavily on others. This was pretty refreshing from the norm.
That said, if you are looking for perfect realism and a diverse cast you won't find it. The story mainly centers around women that have been outcast from society and they are dealing with many issues, not always in a healthy way. There are maybe 2 important men and only one has any sort of development (and not a lot). That said the male character did show some nice development but it was mainly relational. He was extremely stereotypical in the beginning. As for the women: much better. Some break, some become badass, some actually grow a little bit of heart in the end. But the development of most of the characters is not happy or necessarily realistic nor are they completely finished healing in the end. They are just...broken people. Which I kind of liked and the anime certainly tried hard in this aspect. Most anime don't do nearly so well and the characters never emerge from their respective stereoptypes. Where it may be lacking is "realistic development" you get to learn a depth for many characters but not all of them change appreciably or realistically due the the adrenaline pace of the show. The changes, if they occur, are generally under stress and sudden and through use of emotional plot devices.
Art: 6/10
I didn't notice it until hindsight but many ppl said this was lazy animation. The CGI is pretty obvious and the motion animation can be a bit choppy. That said, I've watched anime for a long time and I didn't find it too jarring. It was ok, but certainly nothing special. This is probably the place to mention the excessive fanservice. I get it, this is what makes anime sell, but it was kind of jarring in this show. To suddenly see common tropes like the one guy tripping and falling onto the MC's crotch like 10 times throughout the show. For a show that was staying emotional and dark for a lot of the duration the sudden comedic tropes seemed out of place and bad. Like a director ordered in more fanservice or something to make sure the thing would sell. The lesbian scenes are also not very realistic and more to show some skin then anything else. It could have been a lot better done.
Sound: 10/10
omg the soundtrack! This is really the best aspect of this show in my opinion. They picked nice music and paired it well with the animation and fight scenes. And the music was very beautiful, I found myself humming along. The voices, harmony, and string instruments were a nice touch to the general pop sounds in many anime.
So, in summary, I liked this show a lot. Mainly for the unique mix of adrenaline action, good pairing of music, somewhat deeper characters then you often get full of flaws but developed and changing as it progresses, and a main female lead I really liked that stayed strong throughout and really grew as a character into someone the others respected and liked. You may or may not like what she becomes as she does have a brutal and arrogant streak but I liked her. All the characters were this way having good and bad aspects. It is part of what made me believe in them as characters.
Things the show could have done better: Working on the plot more to make a more believable outside world, better coherency, developing the antagonist more as he was incredibly 2D and you learned very little about him, making the few male characters a bit less stereotypical with more development, removing the comedic fanservice tropes entirely (they could have had it but made it less stereotypical and it would have served a nice purpose rather then as a distraction), not relying so heavily on really emotional themes like rape and racism to push the plot along or control who the viewers dislike. Don't get me wrong, those themes added a nice darkness but there could have been better ways of accomplishing what they wanted that weren't so forced.
In the end though, the show still left me with a great feeling. Flawed certainly, and certainly not close to "the best", but better then most of the anime I've watched to date, and I've watched hundreds.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 14, 2017
When I watched this anime I was struck by how much the plot resembles a dating simulator. I did not find the plot profound like some reviewers here, though it was cute and at times very well done for a short anime.
Here is what I felt made the show unique:
It is a harem anime but unlike I lot of them the main character is not two-timing any girls and he actually picks one for each arc. You will see 4 (technically 5 in the chibi skits at the end) girls get pursued by Haruka and each only one at a time. You get
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to learn about each girl and the pattern is that Haruka is kind and helps them overcome some problem or trauma and after that they get into a relationship and have sex.
That's basically the plot and though on occasion the sex seems to accentuate the story a bit (like Akira) it felt a bit out of place and rushed and more for fanservice. The one case where the sex affects the story a LOT is in the last two arcs where Haruka starts to realize he is attracted to his sister--more on that later.
The situations each girl is in and some of the problems he helps them through are unique and some of them, like akira, I found particularly heart-touching. After coming to the conclusion of each arc with each girl it appears to reset to a sort of "save point" in the story prior giving Haruka a chance to make a different choice and learn about a different girl. This is why I said it resembles a dating simulator animated. I thought this was rather clever and enjoyed it more then the typical harem style.
Story: 5/10
There isn't a lot of character development because there isn't a lot of episodes devoted to each girl but I was satisfied with the way I got to learn about each person and watch them both change as they interacted with Haruka. They originally, as is often the case, start as somewhat cliched character stereotypes but you get to see them be developed more and feel a greater depth behind each character then is often the case, especially in short anime.
Character Development: 6/10
The art was very pretty. I found the style very appealing and the music choices accentuated the animation well. I watched subtitled so I can't say much about the voice-actors not speaking native Japanese myself.
Art: 8/10
So...on the incest:
The last girl is Haruka's sister Sora, as pretty much everyone should know from any review on here.
It was an interesting final story that added some dimension to them but, unlike a lot of viewers I didn't find it particularly profound and it made me more worried for them. A lot of viewers loved the idea of forbidden love and said this anime was great for raising questions and challenging society. I tend to think they are wrong, but not because society says so. There are some really good reasons why I didn't think the anime developed this as well as they could have. Just raising a touchy subject and simplifying it doesn't make the anime "great". (my thoughts here will be long so skip if you want)
The anime is trying to make the viewer think about societal pressures and if they are arbitrary. If Haruka loves his sister is a sexual relationship ok? How much is? Is loving someone enough to justify resisting society on this issue? It tries very hard to set this up as a situation where Haruka feels powerless in the face of feelings and society is coming between them. But...the anime robs the situation of its complexity by failing to emphasize the choices each character makes and the possible forms of love. And thus makes a fundamental mistake about the nature of it. It also robs the situation of its potential problems by presenting a "happily ever after" choice. Basically Sora and Haruka can move away and go incognito and that's that.
First off, "lust" is not "love", something many people have difficulty recognizing the difference between. I can want to have sex with someone but not love them and want to spend my life with them. Basing a relationship solely on sexual attraction is asking to fail. Similarly, you don't need sexuality to have a good relationship. What matters is the growing intimacy between two people and how they grow to understand and look out for each other. This is what holds relationships together and should be looked for primarily when thinking about making a long-term relationship choice. Sex is the worst glue for a relationship ever, and yet the sister, Sora only seems happy with a physical relationship with her brother? And angry when he is kind and does things for her, makes time for her, but doesn't have sex with her and kiss her? It seems an arbitrary scenario.
When it comes down to it, there are way more choices involved here then the anime makes you think. Being sexually attracted to someone is not love as we can clearly see Haruka could have chosen any of the girls (and does in other arcs). Love is usually not a powerful emotion that you are doomed to follow but fundamentally has choices and complexity.
But the anime doesn't explore this open avenue at all. it basically just shows Haruka realizing he is sexually attracted to his sister after seeing her masturbating and jumping straight to "move to another city and live our life together to escape persecution and our family". Despite the fact that it is clear Sora is not the only person he is attracted too. What Haruka wants is a relationship with his sister. When that is threatened (mainly by Sora's own feelings but also by the potential breakup of them by family members after their parents death) he chooses her. But I don't see why the siblings couldn't insist to their relatives they stay together and expressed that love in a non-sexual way. It felt like a forced plot device. Heck, they could have even continued to live together. It made sense because his sister has health problems and he could keep taking care of her. But the anime made it this "all or nothing" sort of scenario.
Beyond this, I think the focus on physical relationship actually has a very high chance of hurting or destroying their relationship in the long run. Imagine how awkward it will be if this is not a happily ever after story and later one of them wants to explore other relationships again? By making this choice they are setting themselves up for an awkward estrangement in the future made all the more awkward by the fact that they are siblings. Once they've chosen to have sex and be involved in this way, they can never go back to the innocent love of "just being siblings". If something happens and they break up they will be unable to be there for each other in the same way due to this past, losing forever the chance to support each other as just sister/brother. This is made even sadder by the fact that their parents are dead and they have no other family they are close too. At this time after the loss of their parents they both need close family and romantic relationships. They will be healthier with both imho. And it is sad to me to see them rolled into one with the future possibility that they could lose both. I would have loved to see this developed or even considered but it isn't.
TL;DR: I think the anime made the characters seem powerless and two-dimensional by making it seem like they "had no choice" and were "victims" when they really had all the choices. It is a classic "depowering" under the guise of "romance" and something I really don't like seeing. They also failed to address the complex issues of these choices such as the fact that by choosing a sexual relationship the siblings are most likely sacrificing their relationship ever being innocent love again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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