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When it comes to power fantasy in anime, it has historically been dominated by two genres. The isekai and the shounen. Nowadays, the landscape is a bit different. Isekai is a dead genre mainly consisting of completely unwatchable sludge and resurrected corpses of once good shows. Shounen went through what I would describe as a little renaissance a few years back and so it's in a much better place than isekai, with several shows that I would consider to be watchable and a few I might even call good. Sadly, that happened a few years ago, and they are already driving it into the fucking ... ground. That being said, it should be obvious that there is this huge niche that nobody is really tapping into. And that is what Solo leveling managed to capitalize on.

There are many criticisms others have leveled at this show. The supporting cast is severely underdeveloped, the worldbuilding is lazy at best, the plot is nonexistent, the constant asspuls the MC pulls are less than ideal, the CGI ants and soldiers, while not as tragic as something like Overlord, are still really distracting and both the opening and ending are absolute ass. All of those things are true, but I have been so starved for a decent power fantasy that I am more than willing to forgive that as long as it nails that one part, which it thankfully does. This is obviously helped by the fact that the show doesn't just copy SAO, which, for a show with video game elements, is a rare treat indeed. In fact, Solo leveling manages to avoid quite a lot of anime tropes having a very different feel from most of its competitors, mainly due to the source material being a Korean manhwa. There were in fact several things that I wanted to praise as original, only to find out that they are very generic tropes in the Korean hunter/gate/whatever they call it now genre of manhwa, but since Solo leveling is the first one to get a mainstream anime adaptation, I guess it gets to call dibs. Considering the difficulties Korean authors face when trying to get their works adapted into anime, I doubt we will see more shows like it, but on the off chance that we do, I predict that Solo leveling will become the next SAO, with every future hunter show getting compared to Solo leveling.

A few years ago, David production were working on a new shounen title called Fire force. Long story short, it was a decent watch dragged down to mediocrity by one major flaw, the fanservice. The show couldn't resist shoving tits and ass right in your face every few minutes, even in the most inopportune of times, like the middle of a fight. It honestly amazes me just how much damage this decision managed to do. It's a damn shame, since the rest of Fire force was solid, but this single decision managed to change my rating from very good to above average. So how is ... any of this relevant? Well, imagine Fire force with mediocre fights, completely fucked pacing, constant changes in tone resulting in massive whiplash and plot contrivances through the roof. That show is called Undead unluck. I get that they were stuck adapting subpar material, but there really isn't an excuse for repeating the mistakes of the past. That being said, there are some good things that I should mention. I like the way Andy fights. Even with a very generic superpower, he manages to use it in a very original, although sometimes very nonsensical, way. The art is also decent. There are some very good scenes, but it's really inconsistent, so there are quite a few stinkers as well. They stopped using the meme 'bruh' sound effects in fights, so at least something has been learned from Fire force. Yeah, as you can see, I am running low on praise here. The silver lining is simply way too thin to rescue the show this time. I know that this is a very short review but there honestly isn't much to be said. Even if we were to ignore the aforementioned problems, the core of Undead unluck is a dime a dozen shonen slop that you have seen a thousand times already. In ten or twenty years, shows like this will probably be mass produced by AI and I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference.

“'What do you want?'
'I want...
I want a chance to do it all again. To do it... right.' Tears showed in the Old Man's eyes. 'How ever did it go so wrong, Temple? I had so many advantages. So many opportunities. All squandered. All slipped away like sand through a glass. So many disappointments...'
'Most of them you brought on yourself'
'Of course.' Cosca gave a ragged sigh. 'But they're the ones that hurt the worst.”
― Joe Abercrombie, Red Country

Think about the biggest mistake you ever made, your biggest regret that you can never fix no matter how hard you try, the one fuckup that completely derailed your ... entire life and profoundly affected you as a person. Now imagine how your life would be if you could strike it from history. Just how much would you give for this second chance? Would you really succeed, or would you once again fail? And would you be the same person afterward? Erased isn't about any of this. It's really just a murder mystery about a guy using the power of plot contrivance to travel back in time and save a girl from a serial killer. That's it. Yet for some reason, it gets constantly praised as if it was some sort of deep philosophical drama that it simply isn't.

The first four episodes of Erased are absolutely excellent... or so they tell me. Yeah, I don't really get what everyone likes about them. The first episode is your standard introduction spiced up by several completely retarded decisions our hero makes, and the second episode was OK I guess. The third episode is where the show implodes. You see, that is when I figured out who the murderer was. Yeah, this early. It honestly amazes me just how obvious the whole thing is. This is in part because the show absolutely refuses to give you any decent suspect. The ones we get either couldn't have done it or they get cleared two minutes after introduction. There are no red herrings, no false leads, no misdirection, nothing. It's a mystery show in name only.

While I don't think that the first four episodes were anything special, I understand where most people are coming from, since the rest of the show is absolutely atrocious. First we get a short return to the future. This entire section was set in motion by the already mentioned retarded decision from episode one and because of that, the entire section makes absolutely no sense. This isn't helped by the fact that all the characters are acting in a completely nonsensical manner and constantly come up with these bizarre conclusions as to what is going on. Back in the past, things aren't looking much better. If you somehow haven't figured out who the killer is, the show pretty much spells it out for you in episode seven. But even after that, they still continue to treat it as this big mystery, and it's honestly just painful to watch. Then they once again straight up tell you who it is in episode nine and the fucking idiot MC still doesn't get it. What the fuck? What the hell is wrong with this show? Even after all of that, they still try to go with this big reveal in episode ten. Does the author have absolutely no self awareness? YOU CAN'T HAVE A BIG REVEAL IF I ALREADY KNOW WHO THE KILLER IS SINCE EPISODE THREE AND YOU ALREADY TOLD ME WHO IT IS NOT ONCE BUT TWICE! Holy shit I am mad just thinking about it. Did I forget to mention something? Ah, yes, the romance subplot. You know, the one between a thirty-year-old man and a ten-year-old girl. On second thoughts, let's not talk about that.

And now for the characters. This will be quick since there aren't any. The show only has a few meat puppets constantly acting completely nonsensically to progress the plot. The only ones even worth talking about would be the MC, the girl and the killer (no joke, I don't remember their names). The MC may be the most mentally deficient character I have ever seen. He gets outsmarted by a ten-year-old kid. I know that the dumb MC has become a meme, but this guy really takes the crown. The girl is the show's designated pain pig. She can't go for five minutes without something horrible happening to her, and you are supposed to feel for her because of that. As you can imagine, this doesn't work and comes of as a lazy attempt at getting sympathy. And last but not least, we have the killer. The best I can say about him is that even the show's biggest shills all agree that this guy sucks.

There are many other smaller complaints I have with this show (children = adults but small, the final fight, the entire ending sequence, the girls' mother...) but there is one thing about this show that I want to praise. The presentation. The animation quality is overall very high and the soundtrack is decent. The opening personally didn't sit well with me, but I can see why people like it. Sadly, even here it's not all flowers and sunshine. Firstly, they really like to give the suspects glowing red sharingan eyes, and it just looks terrible. And secondly, they really like to frame scenes with this old 35mm film reel effect. It was alright when they first used it, but they spammed it like crazy, and it gets old fast. Overall, the presentation is the only thing that saved Erased from getting a big, fat one from me.

Jin-Roh is a movie best known for its art design. The beautifully animated shootout scenes have made their way into many a YouTube edit and the iconic armor design has laid the foundation for the modern 'technofascist' aesthetic. You can see it referenced in countless works, with the most obvious examples being Killzone and the modern Wolfenstein games. The design has been so influential that it has completely overshadowed the rest of the movie. I have personally recommended Jin-Roh to several of my friends and while none of them had ever heard about it, most of them recognized the armor. This, combined with the very ... common memes, has led to a shift in perception, where most people online have absolutely no idea what the movie is about. From the way people talk about it, you would think the movie was called "Right wing death squad: Fuck commies and jannies. Sneed edition." and while I also wish for a movie like that, this simply isn't it. Jin-Roh is a bleak look at a man struggling with PTSD, looking for life that he can never have who finds himself in the middle of a power struggle between government agencies in the destabilized post-occupation Japan. It's more of an anti-war movie than an action flick, so you should set your expectations accordingly.

That being said, the slow-burn pacing still managed to hold my attention thanks to the absolutely amazing story and characters. The story starts simple but picks up in complexity after a plot twist in the middle, followed by another one at the very end. I don't want to spoil anything, but you can rest assured that you won't see either of them coming your first time through. As for the characters, there aren't that many of them, but they are well-developed. It's honestly hard for me to morally judge their actions, which speaks volumes about their depth. And last but not least, we have the action scenes. They are absolutely great, thanks in no small part to the absolutely phenomenal production value. The guns look, sound and feel extremely powerful, and the panzer cops slowly walking towards the enemy through shallow water is very intimidating. There is something raw to the action and I really, really like it.

Now before I wrap this up, there are two things that need to be mentioned. Firstly, the whole package is extremely dark and depressing. Now, if you are like me, you might see this as a good thing, but I also know that some people are really put off by this, so I wanted it to be mentioned. And secondly there is the whole Red riding hood thing. I get what they were going for, and I still think that they mostly succeeded, but man, they could have handled it much better. As it is now, they are about as subtle as an explosion, constantly beating you over the head with it. This also leads to some really awkward dialogue because of the constant 'muh wolves' getting inserted into every conversation. This is my only real gripe with the story. It does lead to some really cool scenes and, as I said, I think that it mostly works, but there are some real stinkers.

Hellsing is like the textbook definition of style over substance. It doesn't even attempt to bore you with a story, deep characters or any of the other boring stuff. You are here to watch the coolest, most edgy shit you have ever seen and that it very much delivers. Or at least it did a quarter of a century ago. You see, all of these style over substance shows suffer from the exact same problem, one generations cool and edgy is another one's safe and cringy, and so they all age like milk. Hellsing does hold up better than most, but what can I say? ... Twenty years is a lot of time. The hardest hit would be the animation, betraying its age after a single glance, which for a show like this is a death sentence. It's a shame because I can still see the remains of what made this show so beloved (the first transformation scene was absolutely dope) and I am self-critical enough to know that if I had seen the show when it first came out I would think it to be the greatest shit ever created. But I haven't, so I don't. Even so, I originally wanted to give Hellsing a mildly positive score (probably a six), but then came the second half. Long story short, the second half completely lost me and by the time they introduced the big bad I just wanted it to be over. I get that they ran out of material to adapt, but that doesn't make it any less boring.

Dororo starts out promising. The story of a silent monster slayer followed by a comedic relief sidekick isn't exactly groundbreaking, but when done well, it can work. Hyakkimaru, in particular, had a lot of potential for growth, both as a character and as a fighter, thanks to the whole body part gimmick. And while I am usually not a fan of comedic side characters, Dororo is likable enough, or to be more precise, he doesn't make me want to kill myself, unlike the kid from Claymore, so that is a definitive plus. The presentation does leave a lot to be desired, both in terms of ... animation and especially music (the first opening is absolutely atrocious), but it gets the job done well enough and there is nothing that I would call an outright eyesore. The demon designs aren't exactly great either (Wow, an animal/insect but big, never seen that one before) but it's not a dealbreaker. In all honesty, while this show never had the potential to be a perfect ten out of ten, I can see how things could come together for a solid seven or maybe even eight. Thankfully, you don't have to take my word for it, since the first few episodes are very good. Sadly, the show quickly starts to lose steam and begins to suffer from two major issues. The episodic approach, and the Tahoumaru substory.

The episodic approach starts out well enough, but it quickly reaches its limit and fails to evolve into anything noteworthy. As a result, pretty much the entire show consists of one or two episodes long arcs, filled with one-note characters and ending in a battle with the villain of the week. None of these segments lead to anything even mildly interesting, and they have absolutely no lasting impact on either of our main heroes. This is in part because Hyakkimaru simply doesn't have a character (at least until the very last arc). He is the stereotypical 'greatest swordsman who has ever lived' and that's pretty much it for him. They tried to give him something with him having to adapt to his new body parts, but this gets almost immediately dropped. On the fighting side, things aren't much better. As already stated, Hyakkimaru starts of as the greatest guy ever and ends the show in the exact same place. What is even more bewildering is the fact that the story already had two built in ways for Hyakkimaru to grow. You can either have him get stronger as he regains his body and unlocks new moves, or you can have him get weaker as he can no longer rely on his sci-fi prosthetics to carry him through combat and any damage he takes on his real body will be permanent. For some reason, they decided to do neither and so him regaining his lost body is completely irrelevant. As for Dororo, there is little to say. The story fundamentally isn't about her, so she cannot progress anywhere and her looking for a new family is phoned in at best. She does get a backstory, but it's trying so hard to make you feel sad that it comes of as funny.

And now we get to the Tahoumaru substory, also known as the demon plot canyon. The basic premise of Dororo is simple: 'A Greedy lord summons a bunch of demons and gives them the body of his firstborn son in exchange for protecting his realm. The son survived because each demon can't devour more than one of his body parts.' This show really doesn't know how to handle the demons and so it defaults to making shit up as the story progresses, with no consistency or regard to how these changes will affect the story as a whole. This results in even the shows' most basic premise making absolutely zero sense. If I had to rewrite the premise with the knowledge I have now, it would look something like this: 'A Greedy lord summons a bunch of demons who were already there and gives them the body of his firstborn son, even though he could have given them literally anything else (the lives/bodies of his enemies included). In exchange, most of these demons fucked off somewhere else and some straight up decided to terrorize the lord's lands. Thanks to this, the land now prospers. The son survived because each demon can't devour more than one of his body parts except for the times they can.' Since the Tahoumaru arc is all about entangling this mystery, it suffers greatly. This isn't helped by the fact that everyone involved is a cardboard cutout with nothing redeeming about them. And then we get to the whole 'The deal was broken' part of the story. Just like anything else related to the demons, the deal made with them is also really poorly defined and constantly changes. And so we get scenes upon scenes of characters discussing the deal and constantly coming up with new, contradictory ways the deal works. Here are some from the top of my head: The deal is off because Hyakkimaru broke it. The deal is off because Tahoumaru broke it. The deal is not off but Tahoumaru may cancel it at any point if he so wishes. The deal is off, but it will be back if they kill Hyakkimaru. The deal was never on in the first place. The deal is still on, but it will be broken some day. This gets so bad that even Daigo, the guy who made the deal, straight up says that he has no idea how the deal he made works. What were the terms and conditions on the fucking thing? I could go on, but I think you get the picture. The story makes absolutely zero sense. Now that might sound pretty bad, but don't worry, the second half of the show is much, much worse.

Prepare yourself, because I am about to drop the most difficult moral conundrum ever conceived. Are you ready? Well, ready or not, here I come. Is killing demons bad? If you answered no, then congratulations, you have a brain. It would not be an overstatement to say that Dororo may be one of the most black and white stories out there. Hyakkimaru good, demons bad. For some reason, the second half of the season keeps on insisting that this is a morally gray situation with no clear good or bad guys. The show constantly beats you over the head with this ridiculous idea that demons killing random people is actually really good and that Hyakkimaru doesn't actually have any claim to his own body. Who the fuck wrote this? They even go with the 'Whose blood do you have on those swords' cliché two separate times and both of them completely flop. This isn't helped by the fact that they ran out of clichés to base their characters on and so the last few arcs consist purely of demon worshiping murderers whose only calling in life is killing innocent people. The presentation also takes a massive hit. I hope you like stills because that's what you're getting. And on the rare occasion a scene actually gets animated, it looks absolutely atrocious. And to finish the whole mess, the ending is so mindbogglingly retarded I think it gave me brain damage. When Hyakkimaru says the ol reliable 'You and I are the same', I nearly dropped the show right there. The only reason I finished the show was so I could write this review.

With the change of studio also came a change of direction and I really don't like it. The changes are overwhelmingly bad and some downright bizarre. Of course, what they were trying to accomplish with these changes became apparent almost immediately. They tried to turn Goblin slayer into a much less edgy, more generic and family friendly fantasy without realizing that those qualities were what made the first season good.

The first and most obvious change would be in the artstyle. Most of the character went through a completely unnecessary redesign. I don't think that a single character looks better, most are about on par and ... there are some real stinkers. By far the worst would be the Lizardman. His body looks fine, but what the hell did they do to his face? He looks like he got run ower by a road roller. Some of these changes even have unwanted character implications. Case in point, why the hell is Goblin slayers' armor so fucked up? In the first season, the armor had clearly seen some heavy use, but it was still in good shape. Does the preparation autist no longer care about his gear or what? The voice acting went through a similar change and, once again, some are more affected than others. Keep in mind that these are the same people who voiced the first season, so this clearly is a direction problem. The worst offender would be the Witch. In the first season she comes off as the femme fatale seductress, but now, because of her design getting severely nerfed and her voice actress completely toning it down, she comes of as mentally retarded since ... she ... still ... speaks ... slowly ... like ... this. The rest of the show doesn't fare better. The brutal violence and gore has been severely toned down and many of the edgier effects (like the famous glowing eye) don't get used nearly as often and when they do, they are nowhere near as cool as they used to be. The soundtrack is similarly disappointing. Both the opening and ending are complete ass. I am honestly shocked that Mili produced a song this boring. The rest of the soundtrack is fine and there were a few tracks I would consider to be above average, so it's not as bad as the rest of the presentation, but man, the opening really stings.

So what about the story? The second season continues with the episodic approach, covering three separate arcs. The first arc is about helping some newbies. In all honesty, this arc had some potential. Goblin slayer helping people (albeit indirectly) was a thing in the first season, so him taking a more hands-on approach could have worked. The wizard boy having a connection to the party and becoming a new member of the cast could have worked. Sadly, it doesn't. The Wizard boy is way too annoying and up his own ass to take him seriously. His connection also never gets revealed to him and fundamentally leads nowhere. The arc ends with some goblin slaying as is the tradition, and then the newbies fuck off to bother someone else. In short, this arc had some potential but it doesn't go anywhere with it. The other two arcs cover an elven wedding and a missing princess. Both of them are complete waste of time with little redeeming about them.

Another problem with season two would be the world in general. In the original, goblins were a weak but cunning race that mostly just killed farmers and beginner adventurers. The silver adventurers didn't fight them, not because they couldn't handle it, but because they simply didn't give a fuck. Goblin slayer wasn't some big shot adventurer who overwhelmed everything he fought with raw stats. He was in fact quite weak when compared to people of similar rank, and he mostly got by simply because he had his preparation down to a fetish-like level, and he fundamentally knew what he was doing. It wasn't exactly competence porn, but it was close. This, combined with the occasional thinking outside the box, made him really fun to watch. He also had his "Florida man too angry to die" moments, but there were relatively few of them and they were very much the exception. He was an intelligent but mentally broken /pol/tard who knows goblin on farmer crime statistics by heart and can't help himself but think about goblins every waking hour of his life. Now, even the first season wasn't exactly blameless here and the conga line of women who can't wait to get it on with a mentally deranged creep was a bit awkward at best. The second season pretty much completely gives up on this premise.

The goblins are now a nation-destroying threat that everyone ignores because they don't like being alive, I guess. This is by far the worst in the third arc when a princess gets abducted by goblins, and they hand this job to Goblin slayer. They try to explain why the army can't interfere (although very poorly), but it's not like they can't hire some higher-ranked adventurers. I mean, it's not like the king himself is a super ultra legendary turbo knight megalodon 3000, who could solo the entire thing in a minute or anything like that. What a shame. Goblin slayer has also gone through some changes. No longer the cunning professional, he has turned into the one stat checker to rule them all, putting old Aatrox and Sion to shame. Even the studio realized that this simply wasn't going to work, and so they attempted to give him some 200 IQ moments, but they were lacking at best and completely nonsensical at worst. I mean, I am not exactly a font of practical knowledge, but even I know that drinking alcohol to get warm during a blizzard would not only not make you warm, but seriously speed up your death. How that scene made it into the show is beyond me, but I guess it might be in character for the new Goblin slayer, since he had a personality change as well. No longer the anime version of Doomguy (or that chaos dude from Final Fantasy), the new goblin slayer could be described as a mentally unstable boy with a dark past from Tumbler. Of course, the ladies love this new version of him even more than the old one, with Sword maiden pretty much throwing herself on her knees and begging him to fuck her. It's bewildering.

In short, the second season of Goblin slayer has abandoned its own premise and did away with most of the more "problematic" parts of the story in order to appeal to a wider audience. This resulted in the season turning into a gray fantasy sludge with its only distinguishing feature being the name of a once beloved franchise. Not recommended.

If you could go two or three years back in time and ask me what I think about the future of shonen my answer would probably be pretty excited. Ufotable had their hands full working on demon slayer, MAPPA managed to get their hands on both Chainsaw man and Jigokuraku, completeing the "dark trio". There was fire force, JoJo, Dr Stone, Black Clover and many others. To put it bluntly, it was an exciting time. Sadly, most of these projects didn't exactly turn out all that well. Chainsaw man came out to a lukewarm reception in the west but massively underperformed in Japan and the ... less is said about Jigokuraku the better. I think we can safely say that the whole "dark trio" was a complete flop. JoJo was stuck adapting by far the most hated part in the entire series and the Netflix release managed to kill even the small amount of hype the season had. The Black Clover movie was OK I guess. Dr Stone and Fire force exist, although who still watches them is a mystery to me. Even demon slayer managed to finally shit the bed with the Swordsmith Village arc. All of this, combined with the fact that I am simply getting too old for this shit resulted in me getting really tired of shonen. With all of that in mind, you can probably imagine that my expectations for the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen were quite high. Afterall, this would surely be the show that would break me out of my apathy and reignite my love of the genre. There is absolutely no way MAPPA would disappoint me three times in a row, is there? Well, it's a bit complicated.

The second season starts with the Gojo's Past/Hidden Inventory arc (no idea why they decided to rename it). Because all of the second season's hype was centered around Shibuya, I expected it to be the boring setup we had to go through before things really kicked off, yet I was pleasantly surprised by how good this arc was. Young Gojo is great as always, Geto was surprisingly well written, Dio steals the show as always and, most importantly, team 7 is nowhere to be seen. Even the artstyle change worked much better than I anticipated. Because of how good the first arc was, I have blissfully little to say about it. It's a solid piece of shonen and it was fun to watch.

Now with the first arc out of the way, we can finally get to the real meat of the second season, the Shibuya Incident Arc. This was supposed to be the arc to outshine everything that came before and everything that will come after. The hype was immense. The arc started strong with two big introductory fights setting up the arc. After that is done, the pacing takes a big hit. It feels like they tried to stretch the material far too much, and so we ended up with some filler in the middle. There are still some good scenes, but they are besprinkled indeed with much boredom. Case in point, you have the absolutely stellar scene where Nanami beats up the blonde twink, yet the rest of the episode leaves much to be desired. The pacing only gets better once the disaster curses and more importantly Sukuna make their entrance. Sadly, before we are even done with the pacing, another much more serious problem emerges from the woodwork. The production.

It's not exactly a secret that the production of this show was a complete clusterfuck. With staff quitting left and right, we had the rare opportunity to se a company completely implode in real time. Talking about the situation is obviously a bit difficult since most of the sources are in a language I can't speak, and they can't really be verified since NDA is a thing, so before I even get into it, I want to make it clear that you should take everything I am about to say with a huge dose of salt. I also want to make it clear that I don't blame the production staff for any of the problems. If my personal interest in corporate court cases has taught me anything, it is that assigning blame in the corporate sphere may be one of the most fruitless tasks ever conceived and even if that weren't the case, I highly doubt that these guys are high enough on the totem pole to make these decisions. So how did it all go wrong? After the success of the first season, Toho decided to greenlight the second season and gave MAPPA a full year for production. If that seems like a reasonable timeframe to you, that's because it is, but MAPPA decided to piss away half of the time by allocating the JJK staff to work on Chainsaw man (that show really turned out to be the gift that keeps on giving) instead of letting them take the head start. Half a year after schedule, the production could finally start, but after a while they run into another problem. MAPPA had poured a subsential amount of money into their new movie named Maboroshi and there was absolutely no way they were going to make the deadline. Because of that, they once again reassigned a sizable portion of the JJK staff to fix that mess. Sadly, I couldn't find a single source stating when exactly this reassignment happened, so I have absolutely no idea how much time was wasted on that shit but if I had to take a guess, I would say a lot. On a side note, the movie absolutely bombed. Because of this whole debacle, the staff are overworked and completely overwhelmed with impossible deadlines. This causes many of them, including some big names, to start publicly complaining about the whole situation. After all of this shit, combined with several delay requests being denied, many members of the staff threaten to walkout after episode seventeen. The walkout does happen, although at a much smaller scale than previously anticipated. And that's pretty much it.

Now that I have explained the background, I can finally get to how all of this shit affected the show. To put it bluntly, the animation is incredibly inconsistent. It is painfully obvious that the animators were forced to choose which episodes to actually complete and which ones to leave half-baked. This results in a show that can look absolutely great in one episode and utterly atrocious in the next one. This leads to some characters getting absolutely shafted since they have their big moments in these episodes. I really want to stress just how much of a drop in quality there is. The first episode of the Dagon fight looks like it was animated in PowerPoint. The first episode of the Mahito fight is mostly spent on characters slowly walking and standing in place. Both the Dagon and especially the Mahito fight get much, much better, but the first episodes were simply unacceptable. On the other hand, there are episodes where you honestly can't tell that there was any production trouble at all, like the now famous Fraudkuna vs Jogoat. And then there is the already mentioned episode seventeen, which gives us the fight between Sukuna and Mahoraga. This fight serves as a perfect microcosm for the Shibuya arc as a whole. Its hype as fuck, with great action and many memorable scenes like the domain expansion or the Mahoraga chadwalk. It is also blatantly unfinished, with layers upon layers of effects failing to hide it, and at points completely incomprehensible. The direction was also a complete mess, with Mahoraga constantly switching size between scenes. There is also a completely misplaced scene with Yuji in the first half and the ending blasting fucking specialz over a guy having a meltdown has to be one of the most unintentionally funny scenes that I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot of these. I still cannot believe that they aired it in this state. The worst part about this whole thing is that I can clearly see a great episode hidden underneath all of these problems. The domain expansion was still cool as shit with Mahoraga reaching with his arm towards Sukuna, but then I unpause it and Mahoraga moves at like five fps. I mean on some deep emotional monkey brain level, I still very much enjoyed the episode, but I try to make these reviews as objective as possible and when using any sort of objective metric the episode (as well as the entire arc) doesn't fare well.

The second season had the potential to absolutely mog the first one and cement its place as the undisputed peak of the whole series. Sadly, if I had to describe it now, I would call it the first season's savant cousin that still manages to completely blow it out of the water in some aspects but as a whole, leaves a lot to be desired. I have absolutely no idea what rating I should give this mess so I am gonna pull a game journalist and give it a 7/10. Afterall, I think I outlined my problems with the show rather well, and I hope you understand where I am coming from. The score isn't exactly all that important. In fact, as of writing this review, this season has got an aggregate score of 9/10 (8.92 to be exact), which I hope we can all agree is a completely absurd rating, but I guess normies gonna normie.

Another show that got hyped into the stratosphere. This time, the big secret is a classic trick that all creatives consider at some point called "put your best foot forward". Even if the rest of your work is completely worthless, as long as the beginning can hold people, your success becomes almost guaranteed (sunken cost fallacy and all that). I am a bit ashamed of myself, but even I am not immune to this trick and so, after finishing this mess, I can safely say that ZOM 100 is a very strong contender for the worst show that I have actually finished. It's a bit ... depressing that there are so many better shows out there, yet I spent my time watching a turd, hoping against hope that it will get better. It doesnt.

As I already stated, the first episode of this show is absolutely phenomenal. It's one of those rare things that everyone agrees with and nobody feels the need to contest. A story about a guy getting exploited by an uncaring company that most people today can very much relate to. The zombie apocalypse can be seen as a metaphor for him finally growing a spine (or not, I don't have a literature degree) and the episode ends with him finally standing up to his boss and moving on with his life. It's a very self-contained story and while you have probably seen this exact premise many times over the years, the beautiful animation elevates it to a new height. Much has been said about the great animation, use of colour and direction, yet the contrarian in me wants to disagree. While the first episode is certainly technically impressive, its not like I haven't seen all of this before. Look, I am not telling you that the first episode is bad or that you shouldn't like it or anything like that, but people really need to stop acting like it's the second coming when it's just a good looking episode. That's it, nothing more and nothing less. Either way, the first episode is great and if it was just a one and done deal, it would be a strong contender for the best short of the year. Sadly, the rest of the show exists.

The second episode immediately runs into a bit of a problem. The story is done. Akira grew a spine and moved on. What else is he supposed to do now? Well, the answer they came up with is random shit. Akira writes down a list of things he wants to do and that's what the story is about. As you can probably imagine, a story about a guy trying to live his best life doesnt exactly gel with a post-apocalyptic world where people struggle to survive. Not that our hero has to struggle for anything, everything just gets handed to him with the world twisting around his whims. This, combined with the unbelievable amount of plot armor Akira has really stretched my suspension of disbelief. Seriously, this guy has more plot armor than Gotrek and Felix combined and the show doesnt even attempt to hide it. Akira rushes into danger like he knows that he is in a fictional work and so he just flaunts his immortality over us. And as if that wasn't bad enough, you might have already noticed another problem with this setup. It is obviously unsustainable. After a few days there will be only a few survivors left. Well, worry not because there is a solution, the entire world is stuck in stasis. You know how in shitty RPG games, all NPC quest givers are stuck at one point in time until you finally accept their guest so they can shut the fuck up and stop bothering you? That's pretty much the entire show in a nutshell. Pretty much every single episode has something that makes no sense with how much time has passed. By far, the best and most egregious example of this would be episode four. By that point, the apocalypse has been going on for at least a week when our heroes come across a group of survivors. These people haven't eaten, slept, moved or even just closed the fucking door to their hideout in a week. Then they actually start to speak and they act like the outbreak started an hour ago. Does the author not understand how linear time works or what? Was this show written by Doctor Manhattan?

And now for the plot itself. To put it bluntly, the episodic approach really doesn't work and after the first few episodes, it becomes painfully obvious that the author didn't know what to do with it. Most of the episodes manage to be both inconsequential and boring at the same time. The show also manages to feel bloated with characters and plotlines that lead absolutely nowhere (the whole hostess bar last stand) which for a show this short, is an impressive feat. And when they completely ran out of material, they decided to retread the first episode. Plagiarizing your own work is another tried and tested trick mainly used by shitty shonen, but those shows at least have the decency to wait a year or two so you don't immediately catch on to what they are doing. ZOM 100 doesnt even pretend to give a shit and just puts it out there, zero fucks given. The retread is not only an infinitely worse version of the story, it also shits all over the first episode's conclusion, since Akira walks back on his decision and immediately rejoins his exploitative boss at the first chance he gets. I would call it a character assassination, but for that, Akira would need to be an actual character.

So, what are we left with? A whole bunch of shock value and 'cool' moments. The shocking moments aren't really shocking, since you can see them from a mile away and the main cast is immortal, so you already know who is going to die. The reaction Akira has to many of these moments is also completely baffling. Akira acts completely indifferent to the deaths of people around him and forgets about them in a few minutes. Once again, episode four would be the best example of this. Akira emotionally connected with a girl, only for her to get murdered right in front of him. Not even a minute later, you can see him crying with joy because he found the TV he always wanted. It makes him look like a complete sociopath, which I don't think was the author's intention. The action/'cool' moments don't fare much better. They really try to paint Akira as this Gigachad Thundercock, the greatest guy to have ever lived. Not only does this severely undercut the whole point of the first episode, it is also completely laughable, since he is only allowed to adopt this personality during action scenes. Most of the shit Akira pulls in this mode is so nonsensical that it feels like it was written by a three year old. The best example of this would be his motorcycle skills. For a guy with absolutely no prior experience, Akira performs stunts that would put Luke Glanton and Evel Knievel to shame.

Another problem ZOM 100 suffers from is the good old teleporting zombies. The zombies are always exactly wherever the plot needs them to be without a second thought about how they got there or why they weren't there ten seconds ago and when they are no longer needed they will just disappear without a trace. This mostly happens when the show wants to have a slower moment. It's like Akira triggered a cutscene and so all the mobs around him despawned. Take the aquarium episode. When they first enter, there are no zombies, then they go out for a few minutes and when they return there are zombies now and I am not just talking about the ones coming behind them. Then they fight the boss and after that the horde that was after them is nowhere to be seen. And let's talk about that boss fight for a second. I am not gonna spoil what it is, but you can rest assured that it is one of the stupidest enemies I have ever seen in a zombie show. They even try to explain how it came about, which surprised me at first since they don't really bother with explaining anything, but the explanation we are given only raises more questions than I had when I first saw the thing.

And last but not least, we have the production itself. To put it bluntly, the show wasn't ready to air. The obvious decline in quality after the first episode as well as the myriad of missing things seems to suggest that the show needed at least a year more to be finished. As if to prove me right, the show unceremoniously ends with the ninth episode. So far there has been no official release date for the missing episodes, so I doubt we will see them any time soon. I wonder who is gonna bother watching them when they finally get released. Not me, that's for sure.

The ending of the first season left the story in a really awkward place. With two of our three protagonists getting deleted from the story and Rudeus turning into a bit of a doomer, there was always going to be some weirdness to the transition. While I do think that they could have handled it much better and there are problems that really didn't need to be there (mostly concerning Rudeus), the end of the third episode left me hopeful for what was to come. Sure, Sara is no substitute for Eris and Soldat didn't exactly put his best foot forward, but I could see ... that with some time they could be molded into a solid cast of characters. Sike, we are going to Hogwarts now. Fuck all the time spent on these guys, you arent going to see them ever again. You would think that Rudeus would have better things to do but worry not. A god revealed the script to him in a dream, so there is nothing to worry about. I am sure his missing family will be just fine. And so onwards we go, to the Ranoa University of Magic.

I have said this a million times but it seems I have to say it again. Magical high schools are where fantasy stories go to die. Mushoku Tensei is not immune to this. As expected, the story grinds to a complete halt. Rudeus does a lot of fucking around but he has yet to find out anything important. But hey, at least we get some wholesome slice of life stories out of the whole thing, right? No. It would be no exaggeration to say that everyone we meet during this arc is either an irredeemably evil person or a complete waste of character. Because of this, I can only describe the whole school arc as horrible people doing horrible things to each other. But despite all of this, the show still tries to frame all of these escapades like there is nothing wrong happening and this is a normal slice of life. The amount of tonal whiplash this arc gave me rivals Anonymous Agony. Rudeus please, I'm begging you, could you do something normal for five minutes and no, buying slaves with your bros isn't normal. I think a character breakdown would be in order, just to show you what I mean.

Rudeus- Sadly, Rudeus got killed off screen and replaced by a skinwalker. What we are left with is a crude mockery of the man he once was. Almost all of his positive traits are gone, while all of his negative ones get amplified to a new level. Remember how Rudeus could be a bit pervy and it was really annoying at the best of times? Well, that is essentially his character now. Rudeus leveled up from a pervy guy to a full blown dangerous deviant and the only thing stopping him from becoming a fully fledged rapist is the fact that he can't get it up. I am not making this shit up, Rudeus almost rapes a girl he kidnapped and the thing that stopped him at the last second wasn't a sliver of human decency but erectile dysfunction. What an arc. There are other problems I have with Rudeus but I think they will be easier to discuss when we get to them while discussing other characters.

Sylphiette- Sylphiette starts off in a really awkward position. She is by far the worst love interest, yet she is forced to fill the void left by the best love interest leaving the story. With that in mind, you would think that the show will give her as much time as possible so she can reconnect with Rudeus and get the romance on track right? Wrong, she spends all of her alloted time pretending to be a guy named Fitz. A decision equally as cruel as it is stupid. For those unaware, her disguise is literally just sunglasses. Yet somehow, our resident retard Rudeus rejects reality and resists recognizing her. After her identity gets finally revealed, Rudeus just kinda accepts it as if nothing happened. Does this guy have no self-respect? If someone tried to pull that shit on me, I would never talk to that person for the rest of my life, but Rudeus just accepts it like the cuck he is. After the whole Fitz stunt, Sylphiette immediately betrays any trust Rudeus had in her by telling all of her acquaintances about his problems and follows it up by getting a love potion (aka the ultimate daterape drug), tricks him into drinking it and then sexes him. So, yeah, the would be rapist ended up getting raped instead. After that they get married. What a love story, really touching.

Zanoba- The worst character from the first season makes his return. Zanoba is the rich kid who uses all of his gifts for absolutely nothing, deciding instead to spend his time and money collecting anime figures of all things. There is not much to say here. He contributes absolutely nothing and his inability to do anything (keep in mind that he was literally born with superpowers) makes him unbearable to watch. Later on, he decides to get a child slave so she can make figures for him and they try to frame this as a good thing. The fact that he serves as the main sidekick to Rudeus just highlights how tragic the show has become.

Nanahoshi- Finally some new blood. Getting isekaied sucks if you aren't the protagonist and so all she wants is to get the hell out of there. Unlike Rudeus however, she has no magical powers to speak of and so she makes a deal with him to help her research. What is this? A competently written character with her own goals in mind who isn't laughably evil like the rest of the cast, can cooperate with others and will probably be plot relevant in the near future. Great, so how does she plan to achieve this goal? Well, she will summon another person and figure it out from there. Really, her plan is to consign another innocent person to the fate she is so desperately trying to escape from, not to mention the nationwide disaster that followed her summoning, just on the hunch that she might learn something from it. Surprisingly enough, even Rudeus gets weirded out by this and actually confronts her about it. Her response can be summed up as "Nah, it's gonna be fine. Trust me bro." after which she almost instantly reneges on her deal with him. I am not sure why Rudeus keeps helping her after that, but as I already said, he is a complete cuck, so I guess it's in character for him. In short, Nanahoshi had some potential but she turned into a complete sociopath like the rest of the cast. It's a shame but not unexpected.

The catgirl duo- If you went to high school you know these two. They are the two generic bitches every class has. This means that we finally made it out of the irredeemably evil section and we are now in the waste of character section (I guess Zanoba could also be here but he is much more of an edge case). That, however doesn't mean that they are good people. They still act like complete cunts but at least they are the cunts you know from real life. With that out of the way, can somebody explain to me why they exist? Seriously, their only distinguishing trait is the fact that they are related to Ghislaine, other than that they are completely worthless.

Cliff- The quiet kid. He spends his time buying a prodigious amount of nitrogen fertilizer, so I guess he really likes farming. Seriously, now why is this guy here?

Elinalise- Well, it seems that I lied when I called Zanoba the worst character from the first season because this bitch exists. The reincarnated Felurian spends her time the same way her predecessor did, fucking random dudes. Seriously, her entire contribution to the story can be summed up as banging random people. In all honesty, Elinalise isn't a character, she is a vapid communal fleshlight.

Badigadi- And last but not least, we have this article. If there is anything to take away from this guy it is the fact that the gods have absolutely fuckall to do in this world (probably the reason why its so shit) and spend their time doing pointless shit.

And that's all the characters. Now, keep in mind I am not saying that a story about terrible people doing terrible things is automatically bad. I am no moralfag. There are authors like Joe Abercrombie who make some excellent stories exactly like that, but the framing here completely undercuts that with the author constantly trying to play it off as a joke. It wasn't funny the first time and it still isn't.

The worst part about this whole mess is the fact that the studio clearly gave a shit and the production value is great as always, but the source material seems to be actively fighting them. The animation got hit the hardest since the story gives them absolutely no space to show their skills. There are no fights and, on the rare occasions Rudeus uses a spell, it is the most boring shit the author could come up with. The best example of this would be the "duel" with Badigadi. Rudeus is tasked with performing his most powerful spell and he casts a bullet. We could have had a flaming maelstrom, a flood wave to rival that of the bible or the skies descending, but no, we get a bullet. As you can imagine, there is not a whole lot to animate with a bullet. The music department had a little bit more room, since even this mess needed an opening and, for all that it's worth, the opening is great. Other than that, there is once again not much to speak off, since heroic themes or emotional tracks aren't exactly in high demand with nothing happening in the story.