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Frieren is an anime that I’ve been meaning to review for months, but I wanted to wait just a little bit for the emotions and hype to settle down. There’s a LOT to discuss when it comes to Frieren, but not all of it directly has to do with the anime itself. Firstly, I’m reviewing this on MAL and that means by necessity that I must address the elephant in the room. Frieren accomplished the unthinkable in unseating Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood from its highly controversial 15-year reign. Why was it controversial? Vote brigading my friends. It was artificially kept at number 1 by a ... highly obsessive faction of MAL users and…it’s a long story.

The first thing you need to know about MAL is that this site and its user base have always been incredibly image conscious to an obsessive and often downright comical degree. While MAL is Japanese owned, the early MAL userbase was overwhelmingly Americans and a lot of MAL’s culture was shaped by the perception of anime and anime fans in the United States in the 2000s. MAL users existed largely in isolation from the “offline anime community”. The people you meet at your local comic book shop buying battle shonen manga and monster girl ecchi or cosplaying at your local anime convention. In contrast, MAL has always aligned itself with the “Elitist” faction of the anime fandom who define themselves as the antithesis of the “weaboos” who formed the image of the Western anime fandom back in the 2000s. The weaboos were constantly getting dunked on back then and were widely perceived as pervy, horny, stupid, immature, manchildren. MAL users followed the lead of the European anime community on 4chan /a/ and desperately wished to be seen as well-cultured, sophisticated intellectuals who only appreciate a select few anime that have artistic value. With this kind of attitude and site culture being enforced, it was no surprise that Galactic Heroes rose to the top of early MAL. However, there was a problem. For there was another anime that began with a G. While the Americans and Europeans on early MAL would have been happy with Galactic Heroes staying on top, Japan and for some reason a huge chunk of the developing world happen to really, REALLY like a certain series called Gintama, which is famous for its irreverent, highly referential humor. The image obsessed elitists would be God Damned if they allowed “Japanese Family Guy” to become the highest rated anime on the site, so the first massive rating bombing and Great Fandom War began. This war threatened to tear MAL apart, but a new faction was forged in the fires of war: The Order of Brotherhood. A loosely organized group of MAL users decided in the forums that a 3rd anime should be deliberately upvoted to number 1 to keep both Galactic Heroes and Gintama from that spot. This anime should be a largely neutral, inoffensive work that presents a respectable face for the anime community but is still accessible and isn’t snobby enough to chase people away. The popular shonen Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood was chosen for this role. It would be like The Shawshank Redemption on old ass IMDB. It’s a peacekeeper title everyone basically at least likes. However, the Order of Brotherhood began to abuse their powers. Every single time a new anime briefly gained the number 1 spot, it was absolutely bombarded by 1 and 2 ratings until it was no longer a threat for the top spot. For 15 long years this happened. It got to be such a well-known meme that a youtuber asked his followers to get Interspecies Reviewers to number 1 just to mess with these guys and MAL had to completely change how it calculates ratings and how many anime you must watch before your opinion even counts. I think it’s at least 50 now. Throughout all this time, The Brotherhood firmly believed that they were keeping the peace and instilling order. Despite all their efforts, the downfall of the Brotherhood was inevitable simply because time doesn’t stop. While anime popularity in the US was in sharp decline in 2009, this is no longer the case in 2024. For most of the world, anime has never been more mainstream. Anime certainly still has a bit of a stigma in more rural parts of the US, but the image of the typical anime fan is no longer homogenous. A person’s first mental image of “anime fan” is just as likely to conjure up a famous athlete, rapper, or social media personality as it is the images in Filthy Frank’s “Weaboo Song”. If the anime fandom doesn’t have a huge image problem, there is no need for self-loathing, hyper self-conscious anime fans to gatekeep everything and bully others to try preventing the entire community from being bullied. Another factor is that the percentage of active MAL users who are American has dropped substantially over the last 15 years. The Brotherhood was and still is overwhelmingly composed of American users obsessed with image and “elitist vs weaboo” bullshit from a million years ago that doesn’t even apply to the anime experience and history of countries like India, Pakistan, Egypt, Turkey, China, Indonesia, etc. Random anime like Oshi no Ko were sneaking to number 1 more and more often and the effort it took to ratings nuke these newcomers back out of the top 50 kept increasing. Frieren just happened to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So…is Frieren actually the best anime of all time? Personally, I would say no. Not even close. However, there is some substance behind the hype. There is a reason the Frieren was able to unite the terminally online with offline casuals, liberals with conservatives, male viewers and female viewers, and Japanese otaku with the rest of the world. Frieren has many aspects that it does remarkably well. Before we even talk about the characters and plot and all that stuff, let’s look at some of the technical aspects. Frieren is a GORGEOUS anime that represents a triumphant return for Studio Madhouse as the king of quality anime. A title which had been slipping from them over the last few years. Frieren is also the 2nd mega hit in a row for young director Keiichirou Saitoh following up on his incredibly well received debut: Bocchi the Rock. He is only 31 years old and is now one of the most in-demand directors in the entire anime industry! Every scene in Frieren is not only visually appealing and directed in a way that squeezes every bit of emotion it can get from the source material, but it also has the confidence to pace itself as if it’s going to run for 6 seasons. Even though that’s far from guaranteed in the anime industry. Fortunately for Frieren, its Japanese merchandise and figurine sales are quite strong and further seasons seem like a safe bet. It is always tragic when you get a Promised Neverland situation where the director poured their heart out and they either get cut off completely or given WAY too few episodes to wrap up the story all because Japanese consumers didn’t buy enough dakimakura and didn’t care as much as the gaijin so the studio fucks it over! Frieren’s soundtrack was outsourced to an American composer named Evan Call and it sounds much closer to a Hollywood mega film than a shonen anime. Have you ever actually bought an anime soundtrack? There’s the main theme, the battle theme, and a few main character themes that you can instantly recognize and are REALLY good compositions. Then you get to the comic relief scenes and it’s like listening to a cat walking on a synthesizer and farting up a storm. Kaoru Wada is especially guilty of this. The Inuyasha soundtrack for example has some BEAUTIFUL tracks and then some of the worst auditory vomit you’ve ever heard in your fucking life. The vast majority of anime soundtracks have always been like this. There are one in a million exceptions like Cowboy Bebop, but music was a major theme of that anime. You’re not going to get a seasonal fantasy anime where the OST sounds like the LOTR movies and every single track in every single scene is good. However, Frieren is actually able to accomplish just that!

So Frieren is gorgeous, has an amazing OST, and is super well directed. So what? How is the world building? This is a shonen that deals with magic, so how is the magic system? This is once again an area where Frieren triumphs. Frieren is very happy to take a pause and explain minor aspects of its world and history but never in a way that bores the viewer. It gives enough details to keep us engaged but there is still a LOT that we want to learn. As for the battle system, some characters in Frieren have a higher base level of mana and can cast bigger and flashier spells, but it avoids the vertical power scaling pitfalls of previous shonen titles. Frieren is very strong, but she’s not invincible. Someone with a lower level of overall mana but the right spell at the right time could easily kill Frieren. This isn’t a series where strategy just goes out the window and it’s all about who has a bigger number. Frieren also manages to avoid one of the huge traps of bad fantasy writing where one spell is SO much better than anything else, that it ruins the magic system and makes everything else essentially irrelevant, so all battles end up looking the exact same. Stuff like fireball in the original D&D, Balefire in Wheel of Time or the Avada Kedavra in Harry Potter. Frieren actually pokes fun at this while adding to its own recurring theme about the passage of time. You have this super arrogant demon who has been frozen in stone for 50 years. He developed this killing curse that’s similar in essence to the Avada and he absolutely decimated the wizard population of 50 years ago so temporarily sealing him was the best they could do. He gets utterly humbled by an apprentice mage because his world beating spell became the new standard by which all offensive magic is judged and all defensive magic was developed against, so after 50 years it’s very average instead of remarkable. This tends to be how real-life weapon advances work and describes the relationship between armor and weapons development.

In terms of characters, Frieren once again does a good job. The anime hops back and forth through time between the current day, Frieren’s adventure party from over 50 years ago, and Frieren’s time with her teacher around 1000 years ago. In each time period, we see little ways in which Frieren has developed as a character and been impacted by those around her that she grows to care about. While Frieren gets the most development and character investment, Fern, Stark, and others are also allowed plenty of room to grow. Having said this, Frieren is still a shonen and once you reach the first tournament arc…yes course there’s a fucking tournament arc…you do get some characters that are less impressive. For example, we get this grumpy, middle aged bastard named Richter who not only is willing to kill 2 teenage girls to pass his wizard exam, but he goes out of his way against the orders of his superior to try do so and seems to revel in it. Then this sadistic and murderous aspect of his personality is just kind of dropped and is never mentioned again. Another wizard is a murderous psychopath, but this is largely played off as a joke and her personality never really evolves much beyond “lol, what a psycho bitch!” The demons are also kind of boring and shitty antagonists, but they’ll get their paragraph later. Don’t you worry!

Frieren is a shonen in terms of its core demographic and it uses several of the familiar trappings of popular shonen manga, but also a deliberately slower pacing in order to place just as much focus on its themes as it places on kickass fights. Frieren at the end of the day is a series about mortality and the bonds we form with other people. Even if we’re not immortal like Frieren, we all know a grandparent, a friend, or someone else who passed away and we would do anything to have spent more time with that person. We care deeply about the people that we love and recognize on an intellectual level that we only have a very finite, precious time to spend with those people, yet it’s still so easy to take our time on Earth for granted and neglect our personal relationships. Frieren captures a fundamental human struggle that’s both universal and powerful. When it’s at its best, Frieren is an emotionally moving series that inspires us to live our lives better and not shut ourselves in.

Sadly, we must now talk about the other controversy surrounding Frieren besides its unusually high MAL score. This controversy surrounds the demon race, who are the primary antagonists of the series. Frieren needed some kind of external conflict to add danger and keep things from getting too boring. So, the writer of the Frieren manga took the easy route and created a generically evil fantasy race that wants to wipe out or enslave all the other sentient species and must be stopped at all costs. However, this evil species isn’t like the goblins from Goblin Slayer. Those little bastards are a semi-sentient walking virus who can’t even naturally reproduce on their own without raping the females of other species and murdering the male population. They are simply a fantasy disease. Frieren’s demon race are a civilized, intelligent, fully sentient race who are simply evil and must we wiped out. Who cares? They’re literally demons, right? Well…sort of. They’re not demons in a Christian sense. They’re a naturally occurring, sentient species of humanoids with a slightly higher base level of magic who all just happen to be jerks and normal humans refer to them as demons. Unlike Warhammer demons and other Christian inspired demons, they don’t literally come from Hell. If you kill a Frieren demon, they die permanently with no afterlife. If you kill a Warhammer demon or any Christian inspired demon, they just kind of go back to Hell. The demons in Frieren have no interest in corrupting Humanity or deceiving humans into doing horrible things. They trick other species like Elves, humans, and dwarves into feeling sorry for them or giving them a chance before immediately betraying and kill them. Then the demons cry crocodile tears when they finally get what they deserve. The concept of an innately evil species that needs to be wiped out is one that fantasy has largely been trying to leave behind for about 40 years now. Tolkien is sometimes credited as the architect of this trope, but with him it comes from a very different place. Tolkien’s writing is always heavily influenced by his devout Catholicism. The orcs, trolls, and Easterlings aren’t evil because God made them that way. The God of Tolkien’s universe known as Eru Iluvatar didn’t create any being specifically to be evil, let alone an entire species. Tolkien’s equivalent of the Devil was jealous of God’s creations, so he took stuff that Iluvatar created and made his own warped mockeries of those things. However, even the Orcs in Tolkien’s belief are not entirely beyond redemption since they still retain the gift of language, which shows that part of their original souls are intact. Frieren is entirely secular in its morality and advocates a genocidal solution purely based on what seems to be rational.

“There are no women and children. Get it through your head. These are mere animals who imitate human forms. They convince the whole world to feel sorry for them and each and every time it’s just a trick so they can attack us again the moment our guard is down. The solution is obvious. We should just kill them all!”

While this quote is very close to one spoken by our favorite Elf Waifu, a quote that the series does EVERYTHING to perfectly validate her on, this isn’t actually a Frieren quote. This is a quote from some random old lady that got interviewed by CNN last month. The language that Frieren uses casually and without much thought by the mangaka is used almost word for word to advocate genocide in real life. It’s not just bad timing and bad luck that Frieren was released when it was. There is no time period where this aspect of the series’ writing would have been praiseworthy. Frieren in regards to this sub-plot engages in writing so lazy and so regressive that it stumbles into uncomfortable territory. Imagine for a second if you would that some political party in some country was actively planning a campaign of genocide or ethnic cleansing. However, they know that such actions are no longer seen as acceptable in any circumstances by an overwhelming margin of society. So…they decided to finance an addictive and popular show that (while not being the focus of course) subtly promotes genocide in a rational light and tries to shift the thinking of young audiences. This isn’t what happened of course, I already said that Frieren’s case is one of criminal laziness. However, that show would look EXACTLY like Frieren and that’s not a good thing.

Overall, I’m giving this series an 8 for now…but it would be more accurate that I’m giving it an I for Incomplete. I think Frieren promises to be a strong franchise and has all the potential in the world if it can avoid shooting itself in the foot. However, I wouldn’t have written that lengthy previous paragraph if Frieren was safe from monumental errors of judgment. The series could very well turn out to be a disaster that I will be embarrassed that I ever enjoyed. Or it could be absolutely amazing, and we will all just kind of forget some of the less ideal aspects of S1. The future of Frieren has not yet been written. Most of my offline buddies haven’t seen Frieren and don’t want to watch Frieren. To be honest, I’ll probably hold off shoving it down their throats until I get a better grasp on which way this franchise is headed.

Pluto was my 2nd favorite anime of 2023 falling just short of Vinland Saga S2. I really love this anime, but I’m not just going to be gushing praise nonstop in this review. Pluto is a beautiful, passionate work of art that comes straight from the heart, but it also has some flaws. Of course, having flaws and imperfections doesn’t suddenly make a work of art “bad” by any means. Art is created by human beings and humans are imperfect creatures. One reason I want to have a full, honest discussion on Pluto is that the internet tends to oversimplify things. The internet and review ... culture in general doesn’t like nuance and complexity. Everything is either “OMG AMAZING!” or “THE WORST FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT EVAR!!!” Sometimes, an anime starts out being viewed as the first, then some anitubers point out some obvious flaws and then suddenly, everyone jumps on the hate train, and it becomes “that piece of shit that idiots used to think was good!”. Pluto does NOT deserve such a fate. I don’t really think it’s in too much danger, but let’s have this discussion so we can appreciate Pluto blemishes and all and talk about the context in which it was made and what it wished to accomplish.

Pluto started out as a manga by the great Naoki Urasawa in September of 2003. It is a dark, more adult oriented reimagining of the most famous arc in the original Astro Boy manga called the Greatest Robot Arc, which ran from 1964 to 1965. Pluto as a manga has 2 main objectives. The first is to bring the creative genius and warmhearted brilliance of Osamu Tezuka to a modern audience. Tezuka is incredible when he’s at his best, but he also tends to mix in some very silly gags that don’t always pair well with the more serious scenes. There’s a segment of Astro Boy that Tezuka wrote to oppose the Vietnam War where Astro/Atom fights off some very cartoonishly stereotyped American soldiers with machine guns that come out of his butt. That’s just mild Tezuka silliness. It can get WAY worse. Apart from the odd tonal issues, Tezuka could get very heavy handed at times. This is to be expected when he’s trying to preach against racism and imperialism to an audience of children in the immediate aftermath of WW2. It’s also only to be expected that some of this hasn’t aged perfectly and can at times be a little cringe inducing to a modern, adult audience. Given, most of Tezuka’s stuff has still aged better than a lot of the American comics from the 40s-60s. Well…Kimba is kind of bad, but nobody bats a thousand. Tezuka was also heavily influenced by American cartoons of the early 20th century, so he loved comedic exaggeration. This can lead to some ridiculous looking stereotypes. Anyways, Urasawa wanted to take Tezuka’s strengths and refine his work to remove the weaker aspects.

Urasawa’s other goal in writing Pluto was deeply personal and political. It was created in direct response to the US invasion of Iraq in early 2003 and can’t be separated from that context. Pluto was written in 2003 and holy shit is that obvious! Urasawa like many in Japan was horrified that Japan’s closest ally launched a bloody, pre-emptive invasion on false charges and this ally wanted Japanese troops to join the war effort in support roles. Urasawa felt helpless to stop what he was seeing on his TV and listening to on the radio every day, so Pluto was born as Urasawa’s personal protest to at least try do something to impact Japanese public opinion in whatever small way he could.

Now that we have a little background on the manga, let's talk about the anime production. Pluto the anime took over 6 years to make and was a passion project by Masao Maruyama, one of the founders of Studio Madhouse and MAPPA. Pluto looks absolutely gorgeous and Studio M2 did an incredible job bringing Urasawa’s manga to the screen. The production value is off the charts since Pluto cost over 2 million US dollars per episode. The series is 8 episodes long with each episode lasting roughly an hour and each covering 1 volume of the manga. Let’s start this review off on a positive note and cover some of the things I really liked about Pluto.

1. The characters. One of Urasawa’s greatest strengths is character writing. Specifically, he’s REALLY good at fleshing out supporting cast and side characters and making them feel like fully realized, three dimensional human beings, even when they don’t have a lot of screen time. In Tezuka’s manga, a bunch of robots are introduced and rapidly killed off and the reader has zero reason to care. Pluto is going to make you care about each and every robot in this series. In the first episode, you have this robot named North #2 who was built as a weapon of war but suffers trauma from how many of his fellow AI he’s had to kill. He wants nothing more than to abandon his role as a weapon and start a new path, but this is easier said than done with all the guilt he feels for his past actions. He ends up discovering a deep love for music and bonding with a grouchy, aging composer suffering from a creative block. I personally got more both emotionally and intellectually out of this segment than the entirety of Violet Evergarden…and it’s only half of the first episode! That’s just how good Pluto is.

2. I mentioned that the production values were sky high, but this extends even beyond the incredible animation and detailed character art. The soundtrack by Yuugo Kanno is quite potent. This is the same guy who did the OST for most of the JoJo seasons, Psycho Pass, and a number of other high-profile anime. It’s good stuff. The English dub was also a treat. Easily one of my favorite dubs that I’ve seen in years! Not only does it have some very emotional and incredible voice performances, but I love the eclectic mix of the casting. You have Funimation veterans who have been in tons of modern anime, some old school anime voice actors from Central Park Media and the early days of dubbing, and actors like Keith David who have never been in an anime before. This led to the hilariously surreal situation of listening to Keith David act across Mike Pollock. Dr. Facilier vs. Dr. Robotnik. Hollywood actor who went to Juilliard vs. guy who was so desperate for work between 2005-2015 that he starred in all the straight to DVD Brazilian mockbusters like Ratatooing.


3. Pluto is able to succeed as an anime purely through great storytelling, character psychology, and drama. It doesn’t want to glorify violence, so it goes out of its way to not actually show the fights. It doesn’t want to rely on action scenes to make the audience invested. Pluto doesn’t feel the need to insert Marvel humor to break up the serious scenes and try win over audiences the easy way. Pluto has one tone and that tone is dead fucking serious. The entire anime. No fanservice. No comedy gags. None of that. I honestly appreciate just how hard Pluto commits to this. Usually, the more money something costs the make, the more it tries to pander to the lowest common denominator. When you spend an amount of money that could result in your studio going under if it’s not a hit, you REALLY don’t want to risk alienating the average viewer. You want to play it as safely as possible, but Pluto completely resists the urge to do this.

4. Pluto is an emotionally powerful drama that also serves as a powerful anti-war anime. It’s very, VERY rare for an anime to make me tear up or almost tear up and Pluto was able to do it in just the first episode and then multiple times afterwards. That’s honestly quite impressive.

Now, let’s cover some of the issues I had with Pluto. As you’ll see in the following paragraphs, some of Pluto’s greatest strengths are also a double-edged sword.

1. Remember when I said that Pluto’s only tone was dead serious? Well…this can cause some issues when you’re adapting a very heavy-handed children’s comic from the 1960s. Like Astro Boy before it, Pluto is a work all about empathy and the dangers of what can happen when we fail to do this and demonize entire groups as “other” and “lesser”. The robots in Pluto operate as a stand in for marginalized groups within society. This can be different religions, nationalities, etc. Unlike in Astro Boy, the robots aren’t just a 1:1 metaphor for racial minorities…even though you do get a side story about a man named Adolf who joins the anti-robot KKK. They’re literally just the KKK only they hate robots. This part was taken directly from Astro Boy and yeah...it’s a little silly for a highbrow, adult work that’s taking itself 100 percent seriously. It also must be mentioned that the Iraq War metaphor throughout the anime is SO blatant that it’s hard not to laugh sometimes. There’s an old episode of The Boondocks in which the rich villain’s idiot son “W” is misled by his nefarious friend “Rummy” into robbing a gas station while lying to everyone and claiming to have a noble motive for doing this. Oh, and the gas station owner is drawn to resemble Saddam. That super obvious political allegory in Boondocks was of course played as a satirical joke. It’s hard to create a political allegory THAT obvious and take it seriously, but that’s exactly what Pluto does. In fact, Pluto is even LESS subtle than the allegory I just described!

2. Ladies and gentlemen…Dr. Teddy Roosevelt. This one character creates a number of issues. Firstly, he’s an evil supercomputer who secretly controls the US government and bosses the President around while taking the form of an adorable little teddy bear. You see, the joke is that the teddy bear is named after Teddy Roosevelt, who was a big believer in US imperialism and using bullshit charges to declare war on Spain and gain more colonies to exploit. It comes across as kind of silly and on the nose, but we’re going to take it dead seriously because It’s Pluto. Professor Abullah and Sahad/Pluto are great, well-rounded antagonists with understandable motives. The struggle between those 2 and the team of Atom and Gesicht was phenomenal. However, Urasawa wanted to have the ultimate bad guy be this embodiment of US government imperialism, so he created a character that wasn’t in the original Astro Boy arc and frankly feels a little shoehorned into this story. Dr. Teddy has nothing even approaching an understandable or complex motive. He’s just evil incarnate and wants to wipe out most of the Earth's biosphere and rule what remains forever while tormenting the survivors. This brings me to my next issue…he’s a completely shameless ripoff of AM from “I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream”. Urasawa already likes to borrow characters from classic lit and put his own spin on it. For example, Inspector Lunge from Monster was heavily inspired by Inspector Javert from Les Misrables. However, Lunge is still his own character, while Teddy is literally just AM plagiarism. There’s no getting around it. Urasawa didn’t even have a good way of actually wrapping up this sub-plot, so Teddy is killed off in VERY anti-climactic faction by a legless robot who somehow dragged himself from Europe to America in a few hours, infiltrated the White House with nobody noticing, and got past all the security to reach the deepest chamber of the White House and finish off Teddy. Who btw has no means of defense despite being a brilliant supercomputer who would logically see the benefit of building a method to protect itself.

3. Pluto was written with a very specific purpose in mind, and I completely understand that. However, as a work of art, it would probably work better if it focused on being against war, imperialism, and discrimination in general as opposed to this one very specific war. This makes Pluto feel quite dated at times and creates issues due to how blatantly it wants to be a 1:1 exact allegory. Take for example King Darius, who is clearly just Saddam Hussein and is drawn to closely resemble Saddam so you can’t see him as anyone else. It turns out that not only did he not possess WMDs, but he was actually an innocent dude who just wanted to turn Iran into a more fertile land and plant tons of flowers. Um…Urasawa-san. Saddam killed 250,000 of his own people AND launched a completely unprovoked invasion of his neighbor in 1980 that resulted in an additional 1.5 million deaths. Just because the neocons who launched the Iraq War were lying scumbags doesn’t mean that Saddam was a nice dude who just wanted to plant flowers! More than one side can be the bad guy at the same time, this isn’t pro-wrestling rules where it must be heel vs. baby face! Pluto goes so far portraying him as innocent prior to the US invasion that it almost borders on genocide denial, which isn’t a good look. Also, this is a pure nitpick, but I'll add it here. Despite Urasawa usually doing his research when it comes to portraying foreign countries, Pluto follows the Hollywood stereotype that Iran looks exactly like Saudi Arabia. In reality, Iran is only 23 percent desert while Saudi Arabia is over 95 percent desert. Iran has mountains and ski resorts. It’s NOT just a giant sandbox!

4. The last issue is that Pluto works perfectly well as an allegory. However, it makes a lot less sense when you look at the story literally. Let’s assume that cloud computing doesn’t exist in the world of Pluto and there is no way to easily backup a robot’s memories and personality on some server farm and just download it into a new body if the robot's body was destroyed. You would still think that a robot would be fine so long as their chip is undamaged. The chip could just be inserted into a different body and the robot has all its memories and personality back with a new body. However, this isn’t how it works in Pluto since it wants to have lots of tragedy and sad robot deaths. When a robot’s body is damaged, they die, and their chip can be scanned by other robots but can’t be placed in a new body. …except when it can. That’s exactly how Sahad’s chip was placed into Pluto to give him a new powerful body. It is never explained why this is the one instance where a chip transfer works. The rules of Pluto’s world building are often contradictory and nonsensical. Gesicht dies when he gets a chest wound. When a human gets shot in the chest, they bleed a lot. The loss of blood means that less blood can reach the brain, starving it of oxygen and nutrients, which causes the brain to die. How the FUCK did Gesicht die from this? He doesn’t have blood! Damaging his body should do nothing to damage his chip, which is located in his head. We know this for a fact, because it is shown to us multiple times. He died purely because the plot demanded that he die, even though it makes zero sense within the context of the story and the established rules.

Anyways, despite my frustrations with aspects of Pluto, it’s still a very good anime overall. I don’t want to accentuate the negative and spend too much time beating up on an anime that I actually love. I just wanted to address some of these issues before some nitpicking critic on Youtube does it. I don’t feel that Pluto quite matches Monster in terms of overall consistent quality, but Pluto’s highs are some of the highest you’ll find in the entire anime medium. I’m really looking forward to the anime adaptation of 20th Century Boys to get my next Urasawa fix!

Rurouni Kenshin 2023 has finally ended and most people never even knew it was airing. Despite being a reboot of a legendary franchise that was highly anticipated in Japan, very few people on MAL watched this one. Anitubers have largely gone out of their way to not talk about it. So why the ice-cold reception? You know why! If you’re a Zoomer, you probably only know Rurouni Kenshin as being “That one old anime that boomers overrated and then it turned the mangaka is…yeah…so now I’m never going to watch it or read it.” There is a LONG discussion that could be had on the ... morality of making this reboot in the first place. Personally, I wouldn’t have made this anime if I were a producer. Unless maybe a large portion of the profits go to child abuse victims or combatting human trafficking. There’s also a long discussion that we could have about the morality of pirating this anime vs watching it legally. However, I’m not going to have either of those discussions in this review. The fact is the anime did get made and I’m going to cover what I liked about it, and what I didn’t like.

Stuff I liked about the new Kenshin:

1. I think Kenshin’s new voice actor fits the character much better than his 90s actress. Kenshin is a kindhearted goofball, so they went with an actress in the 90s anime to try be sort of like Masako Nozawa’s Goku, but…I watch 90s Kenshin dubbed for a reason. It’s NOT a perfect dub either. It’s Media Blasters and I still vastly prefer it over the 90s Japanese voice acting.

2. There are some very impressive action scenes in the new Kenshin. The old Kenshin is much more stylized, and it has a charm to it for older viewers like me, but they try as hard as they can to not actually animate during the fights. You see a LOT of action lines, recycled animation, and flashes of light to represent the clanging of swords. The 90s anime is Studio Deen, which is basically all I need to say. The new Kenshin actually looks like a modern anime and will be much easier for younger anime fans to stomach.

3. Almost no filler! Do you want a highly faithful adaptation of the Kenshin manga that follows it EXTREMELY accurately almost panel for panel? This is it. There is one little filler arc, but it was pretty charming, and I had fun with it. I was also happy to see that it was a brand-new story and not a rehash of the 90s filler.

4. It’s Kenshin! I probably shouldn’t be excited for this series given my strong antipathy for Mr. Watsuki, who unlike his manga protagonist has seemingly taken zero action to redeem himself and atone for his crimes. However, I REALLY like Kenshin as a work of art. I think that its beauty, artistic impact, and being a source of inspiration for an entire generation of anime fans is something independent from its scummy author.

Things I didn’t like about the new Kenshin

1. The new OST is trash. It doesn’t help that the 90s Kenshin has my single favorite OST in ALL of anime. I’m not sure why they didn’t just use the 90s music but…who knows?

2. Manga and anime are different mediums of art. What works when you’re reading a manga and flipping pages isn’t necessarily what works best in an anime. That’s why I don’t think following the manga THIS closely is the ideal way of making a great adaptation. The 90s anime wasn’t afraid to put their own spin on things and make changes when they felt it would work better. The direction in the new anime feels timid and slavishly devoted.

3. The new character designs are very bland compared to the original. Megumi, Kaoru, and even Tsubame all look the freaking same! The character designer had an obsession with giving every character the exact same dark hair, blue eyes, and facial shape. When Sojiro showed up on screen in the final episode I wanted to throw something at the TV. Backgrounds are quite minimalistic in Kenshin 2023 and it feels like very little is moving or happening whenever our heroes are walking through the street. It really feels like they saved everything for the action scenes.

4. They followed the manga’s version of the Raijuta arc. An arc that even Watsuki himself admitted isn’t very good and that was massively improved by the 90s anime staff. I guess part of the appeal is that the new Kenshin really follows the manga, but if I wanted to see exactly what happens in the manga…I’d read manga. I own the entire manga series BTW. It’s one of the only manga series that I physically own.

If you’ve never seen Rurouni Kenshin before and you greatly prefer the aesthetic of newer anime, I’d highly recommend this one. Kenshin is a phenomenal shonen with great characters, great action, and is just amazing all around. Personally, I still prefer the 90s anime…that we all know ended with the Kyoto Arc because season 3 didn’t happen. MAL says there’s a whole 3rd season of bad filler, but real Kenshin fans know it didn’t happen! Anyways, check this series out. I think it’s one of the sleeper hits of 2023 to be honest. If you don’t want to financially support an unrepentant nonce, the series is free to watch on Kissanime, gogoanime, WCO, and a number of other sites!

Karate Master: The Hunt for the Lost Classic. The Missing Link of Battle Shonen

Remember the ancient days of early MAL? It was mostly just some European guys acting snobby and dunking on Americans for having not seen all these “essential classics” that got widely released in Europe, but not in the US. We Americans had honestly never heard of Galactic Heroes, Rose of Versailles, Ashita no Joe, and a lot of beloved anime of the 1970s and 80s. We got so thoroughly embarrassed that it helped kickstart the trend of toxic elitism that was the scourge of the online anime community for several years. Of ... course, this isn’t 2009 anymore. I’m writing this review in December of 2023. American anime fans are much better educated now and are well aware of all the essential classics. If you want to hang out on R/anime, you better have heard of Nobody’s Boy Remi. Otherwise, you’ll be widely ridiculed and get some massive downvotes, which is a fate worse than death for Redditors. Surely there aren’t any historically important anime left that almost nobody has seen and that nobody ever talks about. Right? Wrong! There is the story of that one weird shonen that was REALLY popular in Japan and absolutely nowhere else. You’ve probably not heard of it, but it inspired a bunch of stuff that you have definitely heard of. This is the legend... of Karate Master!

The Karate Master manga started in 1971 and was written by Ikki Kajiwara, the same guy who wrote Ashita no Joe, Star of the Giants, and Tiger Mask. The anime started in 1973 and was directed by Osamu Dezaki, who also directed Joe, Rose of Versailles…oh and Remi. You see? There was a reason that I referenced that one earlier in the review! Karate Master was not only a heavy inspiration for later battle shonen, but it inspired the game Street Fighter 1. The character Ryu was visually inspired by the main character of this anime, and his palette swap was named Ken because the protagonist of Karate Master is named Ken Asuka. In the live action adaptation of Karate Master, Ken Asuka was played by Sonny Chiba, whose most famous movie is “The Street Fighter”. Yes, that’s the whole reason the game is called Street Fighter!

The story of Karate Master was directly inspired by the life of famous martial artist Mas Oyama. However, the character’s name was changed to Ken Asuka for…reasons. During the final days of WW2, Ken was fully prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice and die as a kamikaze pilot. However, his plane failed to take off and Japan officially surrendered later that day. Now burdened with extreme survivor’s guilt, Ken wanders the desolated ruins of his former hometown and sees that the once friendly people have become bitter and cruel in their poverty and desperation. While the American soldiers are portrayed as utterly awful, the local Japanese people are portrayed being just as awful if not even more so. With no job, home, or family left, Ken turns to using his mastery of karate to become a yakuza bodyguard. While Ken attempts to use his newfound money and influence for good, this plan backfires and he ends up meeting a kindhearted doctor who convinces him to abandon the yakuza and read the book of 5 Rings by Musashi Miyamoto. Ken finds meaning to his life once again through martial arts and trains in the mountains until he can break rocks with his fist. Then he enters the national karate championship and kicks everyone’s asses. It’s one of the earliest tournament arcs in battle shonen…and it lasts only 2 episodes. Ken is deeply disappointed by how weak everyone was and decides “fuck it! I’m going to fight a bull and kill it with my bare fists”. Then after that we enter “the bear arc” in which he decides to fight a brown bear with his fists. The first half of the series has very short arcs! Unfortunately, it’s way better than the 2nd half!

During the 2nd half of the series, Ken tours around America after having beaten every strong human and animal opponent in Japan. Somehow, almost every single person he meets happens to have lost a brother, father, or uncle at Pearl Harbor! Considering less than 3000 American sailors died at Pearl Harbor and America’s population in 1941 was already over 100 million, I think the writer has some incorrect ideas about America’s genealogy. By this point in the story, it’s the mid-1950s and none of the Americans mention Communism even once! Also, black and white Americans have zero conflict. They just both hate Japanese people with an equal amount of burning passion for the 200,000 American lives lost in the Pacific War. By contrast, Japan lost 2 million soldiers in that theater of war and 500,000 civilians and yet none of the Japanese characters resent Americans unless the Americans are just being complete assholes. It feels a little heavy handed by the tenth time that an angry mob attempts to lynch Ken for the crime of being Japanese. There is a real scene in this anime where an 80-year-old grandma impales him from behind with an umbrella containing a hidden blade. All while screaming “Kill the Jap!” The anime and manga really wanted to deliver a message that racism is bad, and war shouldn’t lead to long term hatred between nations. The anime doesn’t exactly do this in a graceful manner, but points for trying. This actually would have been a great opportunity to bring up the fact that Mas Oyama was an ethnic Korean whose birth name was Choi Yeong-eui. Ken could bring up that his people suffered under the Japanese FAR more than the Americans did, yet he bares no hatred towards them because the average Japanese person isn’t worth hating. Unfortunately, the anime and manga never once mentions this. Instead, Ken just fights a different pro-wrestler in every episode and the crowd keeps trying to kill him. Halfway through it feels like Kajiwara got really bored of writing a karate manga and decided to make it about pro-wrestling. That would also REALLY explain why this series ends super abruptly so Kajiwara could write a new manga about…you guessed it… pro-wrestling.

So why is this anime worth watching? The answer is because Karate Master is absolutely fucking insane! He kills a bull with one punch and punches it so hard that one of its horns flies off! Then he gets bored of fighting bulls and decides to beat bears to death with his fists! Kajiwara definitely wasn’t trying his hardest with this one. It’s NOT as well written as Ashita no Joe. However, it still has moments that are genuinely powerful and interesting. Especially in the first 10 episodes. Karate Master doesn’t look nearly as pretty as Joe since TMS was spending all of their budget on Lupin. However, Dezaki still manages to make this one wildly entertaining. The pacing is spectacular, and every episode ends with a cliffhanger. It’s a VERY bingeable anime! The OST only has so many tracks, but it’s extremely catchy and gets the job done! This is a very fun anime and the entire series is free to watch on Youtube with English subs, posted by TMS themselves on their official channel! The series was also brought over and released on Bluray thanks to Discotek. The US got a physical release of Karate Master and there is STILL no legal way to watch Ashita no Joe here, let alone own it on physical media! So America may not have Ashita no Joe, but now we DO have Ashita no Joe at home!

BTW, another amusing thing about Karate Master is that TMS gave it such a small budget that Dezaki decided to insert 3-4 minutes of live action stock footage into every episode! Usually, it's the same clips of people practicing karate. This did allow him to save the animation budget for the big fight scenes, but it at the cost of making it feel like Ed Wood directed this anime!

Cool Headed Hoozuki came out almost 10 years ago and to this day remains one of the most underrated comedy anime outside of Japan. The basic premise is that Buddhist Hell is an incompetently run bureaucracy and is only kept operational due to the incredible micro-managing and organizational skills of a single ogre named Hoozuki. Reception in the United States was mixed at best with many critics calling the series inexcusably boring, dry, and even "A Japanese Dilbert that requires a PhD in Japanese cultural studies to get any of the jokes. The series was licensed in the US and quietly given a physical release, ... but it never received a dub.

Honestly its reputation as dry, boring, and difficult to understand, is rather undeserved. Comedy is highly subjective, but I personally think Hoozuki is hilarious. The series does reference a lot of Japanese folktales and myths, but you really don't need a PhD in Japanese literature. All you really need is a cursory knowledge of some very famous Japanese stories that you've probably seen referenced in dozens of other anime and manga. The average viewer will have to look up a few of these stories if you want to fully appreciate every joke, but it's not that bad. It also references 1980s anime like Fist of the North Star and Urusei Yatsura almost as often as it does mythology! Let me give you an example. One of the jokes is that they meet Minamoto no Yoshitsune, who is a character from a Japanese epic poem called Tale of the Heike. Yoshitsune is a highly effeminate looking samurai who is secretly a badass and was trained by the tengu, who are Japanese mythical creatures who live in the mountains and according to tradition taught humans how to do sumo wrestling. Since Tale of the Heike repeatedly describes him as effeminate, the anime imagines him as a stereotypical "pretty boy" character with a large female following. However, he was raised by tengu and wishes to become fat so he can learn the ways of sumo, much to the horror of his fangirls. The joke isn't really hard to follow once you have a basic idea of who this character is supposed to be. This guy shows up in the game "Okami" as a character named Waka btw. I told you that you've probably seen these characters before if you consume Japanese media.

Hoozuki is an episodic comedy, so of course it relies heavily on its colorful character cast to carry the goofy humor. Hoozuki is the very deadpan, loveable asshole. King Enma is the "boke" or funny guy who does the stupid shit that Hoozuki reacts to. My favorite character though is the rabbit from the fairy tale "Kachi Kachi Yama". There's this weird Japanese fairy tale about a tanuki who was caught by a farmer. The tanuki begs for his life so pitifully that the farmer's wife lets him go. The tanuki then repays the farmer’s wife by raping her, murdering her, and cooking her flesh into a stew. The tanuki then disguises himself as the wife and tricks the farmer into eating the stew before immediately transforming back and mocking the farmer for having eaten his dead wife. The farmer is so crushed with sadness and rage that he visits his friend the rabbit who agrees to carry out the wrath of heaven on the tanuki. The rabbit ends up playing a series of incredibly painful tricks on the tanuki including setting him on fire, rubbing pepper in the wounds, and eventually drowning him in a lake while bashing his head in with an oar. The rabbit appears in the anime as Hell’s most gifted torturer and like in the original fairy tale is kind of an unhinged psychopath. Even after centuries, the rabbit still holds a powerful grudge against the tanuki and is driven into a blind rage whenever anyone mentions the word “tanuki” in any context. For example, the rabbit carries out extreme punishment on corporate white-collar criminals when she is reminded by Hoozuki that they are referred to in Japanese slang as “clever tanuki”.

Hoozuki also has a Chinese rival that's extremely similar to him, but they've hated each other for so long that neither can remember how it started, and of course it was over something extremely ridiculous. Japan's cultural rivalry and pointless antagonism with Chinese civilization is poked fun at frequently. Hoozuki could get into offensive territory for some, but it gives shit to everyone. Momotaro is a very important folklore figure for Japanese nationalists and the series jobs him out in the first 2 episodes and makes him a complete chump. Hoozuki makes Satan and the demons of Christian Hell into absolute buffoons and also makes fun of some Chinese figures, but it's definitely NOT a series that Japanese ultra-nationalists would appreciate.

While Hoozuki may not be to everyone’s comedic tastes, I would highly recommend checking it out. The series is widely available with excellent subs that explain all the cultural references that non-Japanese audiences might miss. As for who I would especially recommend this to, the Hoozuki mangaka is a huge fan of Urusei Yatsura and this is immediately evident if you’ve seen or read that. This is definitely a must watch for fans of Rumiko Takahashi. Even if you’re not a big fan of Grandma Takahashi though, I would still recommend watching a few episodes and seeing what you think. You’ll know pretty quickly if this is going to be your kind of comedy or not.

Since there's a new Indiana Jones movie out, I figure now is the perfect time to do some anime archeology! Today, we're going to be examining the very first giant Super Robot anime that was produced in full color. Astroganger the anime was released in October of 1972 and beat Mazinger Z's anime adaptation to Japanese television screens by 2 months. The first super robot anime was Tetsujin 28 but that was in black and white like most all anime from the 1960s.

Astroganger was produced by Studio Knack, who is mostly remembered today for their less than stellar anime projects. The same writer, director, animators, ... and voice actors would reunite just 2 years after Astroganger to make Chargeman Ken, considered by most Japanese otaku to be the single worst anime ever made. While nothing can fully explain the magical disaster that is Chargeman Ken, today's anime at least gives some context and clears up a little bit of the mystery behind the worst anime of all time.

Astroganger begins with a story that wouldn't feel out of place in the Silver Age of American comics or the Golden Age of science fiction. A famous astronomer notices that entire systems are disappearing all over the galaxy. One night, he sees a UFO crash near his observatory and meets an alien woman who is the last surviving member of her species. This alien woman named Maya tells him that an evil, shape shifting species known as the "Blasters" are wiping out entire star systems to harvest their energy and raw materials. If they aren't stopped, they will destroy all other sentient life in the Milky Way. Fortunately, she was able to bring a substance from her home planet before the Blasters destroyed it. This substance is a living, organic metal that can be crafted into a giant guardian robot and controlled by a member of her species. However, they didn't have time to make one of these robots before the Blasters invaded their peaceful world...apparently. Mayu and the astronomer, who is clearly modeled after Colonel Sanders for some reason, end up having a child together named Kentaro and building a giant robot that she brings to life by sacrificing her own. The robot is actually organic, fully sentient, and feels pain and emotions, but does NOT contain the soul of our hero's mother. Hideaki Anno is safe. Of all the old mecha he stole elements from I don't think that list includes Astroganger. Kentaro is able to merge with Ganger with a magical pendant, but he doesn't actually pilot the robot in a traditional sense. Ganger can operate completely autonomously, but he fights like an idiot. When Kentaro uses his pendent, he turns into energy and merges with the robot to lend his brains and creativity to Ganger. This allows Ganger to fight slightly less like a dumbass, which is always enough to win because Ganger is nearly invincible due to special material he's composed of.

If you've seen Chargeman Ken, you should already be seeing the similarities. However, Astroganger actually explains shit since the episodes aren't all 5 minutes long. Chargeman was an ill-conceived attempt to recycle Astroganger (often literally in terms of tracing animation) as an abridged version but assumes that the audience has already seen Astroganger. Kentaro violently hates the Blasters and wants to wipe them out before they can wipe out any more species. This makes sense, since they wiped out his mother's entire species and he blames them for her death. Kentaro's father is less quick to violence and acts as a counterbalance to his son's brash youthfulness. Chargeman wants to wipe out the aliens invading Earth, but their background and motivations are never explained. Some are even shown to be good and Chargeman acknowledges this, but still jovially wipes out an entire species without stopping to consider any other alternatives for even a second. While Kentaro's father is a wise and noble guide, Ken's father is somehow even worse than he is! Chargeman Ken took a story and characters that were already bare bones and made it completely incomprehensible by removing all context and explanations for anything.

Astroganger was a low budget anime created to sell cheap robot toys to small children. Having said that, it still looks ok for the time and for what it is. Some scenes even look better than the much more famous Mazinger Z from the same year. While the character art strongly resembles that used in Chargeman Ken, the animation and technical quality are lightyears ahead of its infamous successor. That's because Knack actually worked on this one. Most Chargeman episodes were apparently made in a single day so everyone could go to the beach! That's a direct quote from one of the surviving members of Studio Knack.

While Astroganger is still fondly remembered in parts of the Arabic speaking world, this anime is definitely showing its age. Unless you’re extremely devoted to studying the history of anime, you’re going to struggle getting through all 26 episodes of this. If you thought Ideon was dated and hard to watch by modern standards, this is a step below that. Fortunately, you can just watch episodes 1-3 and then 26 and you’re basically getting the whole experience. The other episodes are all essentially filler and follow the same formula. I wouldn’t exactly say Astroganger is a good anime, but it’s a masterpiece relative to Chargeman Ken and Invisible Detective Akira, which is another piece of shit that Knack made. I would highly recommend Astroganger to ironic fans of Chargeman Ken to shed light on the context and background behind that atrocity. I would also recommend this series to fans of Super Robot anime due to its historic significance. If you’re just looking for the greatest, most essential anime to watch from the 1970s, go watch Rose of Versailles or something. You probably want to skip this one.

It’s become a cliché at this point to say just how powerful nostalgia is, but it’s all true. Once you get into your 30s, 40s, and beyond, you start to feel this longing for the things of your youth. Not just the most beloved things, but anything from your youth. My fellow boomers and I will dance to shit we HATED back in the 90s just because it’s from the 90s. Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs will set off an explosion of nostalgia for anyone who grew up watching shitty harem anime. This was made in 2018 but feels exactly like something that would ... have come out in 2001. The Yuuna manga ran in Shonen Jump from 2016-2020 and really wanted to pay homage to the romcom mangaka of the past like Rumiko Takahashi and Ken Akamatsu. To be fair to Yuuna’s author, Tadahiro Miura, that’s exactly what this feels like. If you were to tell me that Ken and Rumiko met on vacation somewhere and made the first few chapters of this manga together, I would genuinely believe it!

This is the story of a young man with spiritual powers named Kogarashi, who spent his childhood constantly getting possessed by ghosts. After the ghost of a failed day trader possessed him and made him go into crippling debt, he went into the countryside to find a Buddhist monk and master his psychic powers. After a few years of grueling training, Kogarashi is now a master exorcist and is OP as FUCK. When he hears about a haunted inn offering a room for dirt cheap, the utterly destitute Kogarashi shows up thinking it will be a quick exorcism and a peaceful life. Instead, the inn is home to a sexy ghost girl named Yuuna and a whole harem of supernatural babes.

Unfortunately for this anime, audience tastes often change over time. The same show that would have sold 2 million DVDs and been a smash hit in 2001 was met with utter disdain in 2018. Funimation passed on it. Sentai passed. Aniplex got roped into licensing it, but then they just sat on the license and never released a dub or DVD/Bluray. Allegedly, this was after test audiences despised it. I can definitely see why Zoomers would hate this anime. This isn’t a “cool” ecchi like Mushoku where you can tell people you’re just into the magic system and the world building. This is the cringeworthy shit that your weird uncle that watches anime jerked off to 20 years ago. This is “guy slips on a banana peel and accidentally a grabs a boob” humor. In fact, there are SOO many scenes like that in Yuuna that it somehow becomes funny again! The fanservice in this show is relentless. Kogarashi is accidentally getting his face shoved into tits, ass, or vagina for what often feels like 30% of the runtime. It’s fucking insane! Despite all of this, I actually still loved this anime! Don’t worry, I’ll explain myself.

So, what studio would put THIS amount of ass and titties in their anime? If you guessed Xebec, congratulations! You win a free trip to horny jail! This was one of the very last series that Xebec made before closing their doors forever. A fate that they shared around the same time as their longtime rival Studio Arms. Xebec burst onto the scene with the Love Hina anime and their entire history was mostly harem anime. These horny bastards did To Love-Ru, Shuffle, MM, Ladies Vs Butlers, Keijo, Mnemosyne, and a dozen others. This was their swansong and by God they wanted to go out showing as many titties as humanly possible. You know that really famous scene from Cinema Paradiso? The old film projectionist before he dies splices together all of the hundreds of romantic kiss scenes that the village priest forced him to cut out and it forms this beautiful compilation that represents his love for cinema and his life devoted to film. Well Yuuna is basically like that…only with titties. Xebec put in every single titty shot that they held back on in Shuffle and Love Hina and everything that came before. It is simply ludicrous how many titty shots are in this anime. I think you see every female character topless like 3 times every episode. This has to be the world record for a non-hentai anime. Interspecies Reviewers only has like maybe 1/4th as many titties as this show. Obviously watch the uncut version. Otherwise, what are you doing with your life?

So why do I like this piece of shit? Firstly, a lot of the humor when not resorting to “oops I grabbed a booby” is actually funny. I was shocked that it managed to deliver so many genuinely clever gags. In one of my favorite episodes, Kogarashi is concerned about Yuuna’s lingering regret that’s keeping her bound to the Earth as a spirit. So, he takes her to an exclusive couple’s resort to try make her happy. He does this without thinking about the fact that nobody else can see her and everyone is going to think he’s just some loser who is SO lonely that he’s gone insane. The shenanigans that follow are quite hilarious. Part of what makes the humor work is that Kogarashi and Yuuna are actually likeable characters and their romantic chemistry together is sincerely good! As in better than 85% of romcom anime main couples. The side characters definitely borrow heavily from Love Hina and Ranma, but they manage to work. The cast has really solid comedic synergy and it makes every scene of them hanging out together enjoyable! Like their previous work on Shuffle, Xebec managed to squeeze in these really sweet moments that catch you completely off-guard because you’re just expecting some dumpster fire ecchi show. What is THIS? The anime that just showed me 300 mammaries in the last 15 minutes is actually making me feel things?

So how does Yuuna compare to modern ecchi? I’m going to be honest here. Yuuna just beats the dog shit out of most modern ecchi anime. It’s not a fucking isekai. It’s not pretending to be better than what it actually is. Kogarashi isn’t just a “nice guy” who wants to help everyone around him with no ulterior motives. He’s much more than that. He’s also assertive, strong, and frankly admirable in his moral convictions. One girl desperately wants his seed because he’s super powerful and she will throw herself naked at him. He’ll calmly put her clothes back on and tell her that he’s only interested in doing that with the woman he loves. No nosebleed freak outs. No judgment. Just outright stating his feelings. Compared to most ecchi leads, Kogarashi is a fucking GigaChad. However, he also avoids being wish fulfillment bullshit. Kogarashi is not supposed to be us. He is an idealized positive example for young men to try living up to in the classic shonen sense. So many modern ecchi instead give us this lonely otaku who is “Just like me” but then he gains this power and starts desperately making up for all the ass he wasn’t getting in high school. Stories that mostly appeal to bitter, angry, single men in their 20s and 30s. That evolutionary tree within the ecchi family can pretty much directly be blamed on Rance, which led to Mushoku, which led to Shield Hero, Overlord, Redo of Healer, and SOO many others. I’m absolutely thrilled to see something that sprouted from the grandma Rumiko tree again. I’m sick to death of Rance and his offspring. Also, Yuuna is astoundingly wholesome compared to Higehiro, Domestic Girlfriend, Rent-A-Girlfriend, let alone anything from the Rance Family. The show with 500 boobies an episode is crushing modern ecchi in wholesomeness. That’s honestly very sad but it’s true.

In conclusion, this absolutely should have received a dub and physical release in the US. If it really was a test audience that convinced Aniplex to do Yuuna dirty like that, I have something to say to them. In the immortal words of Michael Jordan, “Fuck them kids!” Yuuna frankly deserved WAY more love than it got back in 2018. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a masterpiece or anything. It is still kind of bad in some regards. Some of the running jokes do get a bit stale. The full-frontal nudity unfortunately extends to the 13-year-old innkeeper. Why Xebec? Why would you do this? The anime also left on a cliffhanger regarding Yuuna’s forgotten past that will never be resolved in anime form. The manga eventually answered all the questions, but this anime sure isn’t getting a second season. Yuuna does have some problems. However, this trashy ecchi is also worth your time. It’s only 12 episodes and it’s pretty damn enjoyable. I have to recommend this one.

Warning! This review will include spoilers. I really can't talk about this heavily plot-driven series in the way I want to without getting into spoiler territory.

Heavenly Delusion is the big budget, Post-apocalyptic survival sci-fi extravaganza that anime fans have been waiting for! Ok, besides Attack on Titan of course. Production IG have come to the rescue! The narrative in Heavenly Delusion swaps back and forth between these mutant children with superpowers living in a facility (The Heaven Arc) and 2 children on an epic journey through the wasteland of what was once Japan (The Hell Arc). Much like Baccano or Odd Taxi, the story is ... a puzzle that you have to put together piece by piece. Not everything is explained in the anime's first season but by this point in the manga we have basically all we need to complete the puzzle. Unfortunately, that puzzle ends up looking pretty messy. There's a good reason the manga's score has dipped so much. Sometimes with this series you find out the answer to a mystery that you've been wondering about for months and months only to be confronted with an idiotic answer that creates a massive plot hole. There's one example that I'll explain in detail that's SO stupid it left me feeling like Patchy the Pirate after watching the lost episode.

Before we get heavily into the plot, we have to cover the tone. This series is kind of weird. At first it seems like it's taking the gritty and grimdark future setting very seriously, but then you're confronted with a super powerful laser gun powered by regular AA batteries, brain transplants performed on bodies that would already be brain dead due to blood loss, magical powers, monsters, and kids surviving for years by searching through ruined houses and eating canned food that expired over a decade ago. So now it's like The Last of Us if combined with the whimsical dream logic of Earthbound! This would be fine if Heavenly Delusion was a parody of survival sci-fi or some kind of political satire like Warhammer 40k, but it's not. It's entirely played straight, and all this goofy shit really undermines the serious portions of the series. There are a few episodes like episode 8 that are genuinely good and work well, but in a lot of places the show really struggles to find the tone and demographic it wants to go for. Heavenly Delusion is FAR from the only anime to suffer from this issue, but I really found myself getting frustrated with this one at points.

I've mentioned that this series is extremely plot heavy and it's not that long, so most of the characters really don't get all that much time to develop. Maru is the main character and he's a kid with a special superpower that allows him alone to destroy these immortal monsters called "Hiruko" that are running around the future eating the human survivors. He was born around the same time as the mysterious event that destroyed civilization and was raised on the street by various gangs. One day, he met a mysterious woman who gave him a super powerful laser gun, explained how to use his powers, and immediately before dying sent him on a quest to find the remains of a facility known as "Heaven" and deliver a syringe to someone who looks just like him. To accompany him on his quest, he hires a bodyguard to take care of him. This bodyguard named Kiruko is the deuteragonist. Kiruko was born as a boy named Haruki, who was a member of the neighborhood watch before he unfortunately got eaten by one of the monsters during a street race. His sister managed to drag his severely bleeding torso away from the monster and take it to a back-alley doctor who somehow performed a brain transplant despite the fact technology has badly deteriorated in the future Hell setting and they barely have electricity beyond a few people with generators. Thus, Dr. Impossible was able to save Haruki’s life at the cost of his sister’s. So, one of the main characters is a male who is trapped in a female body. You might think that with transgender issues being all over the news that this series would take this opportunity to explore gender identity and what it’s like to be a woman in society vs being a guy. How are expectations different? How do people treat you differently? This series is NOT that smart. The only reason they did this sub-plot is just to let the audience know that brain transplants are possible in this universe. This is important because it clues the viewer into the motivation behind the evil secret society in the Heaven Arc.


You may have noticed that the manga isn’t as highly acclaimed as the anime. Well, that’s because once you piece together the puzzle, a lot of the series’ mysteries aren’t given satisfying answers. There are a few lightbulb “Ah-ha!” moments that are satisfying like something you’d get in Odd Taxi. However, most of the answers just leave you thinking “…..ok” and a few will downright piss you off! The first few dots are very easy to connect. We learn very quickly that the Hell arc takes place at least 15 years after the events of the Heaven arc. That’s because the Heaven arc takes place before the apocalypse and in the Hell arc, they’re trying to find the ruins of Heaven. We learn very quicky that the super powered children in the Heaven arc keep getting this mysterious disease and dying. After they die, something emerges from their bodies and becomes the monsters from the Hell arc. We know that Maru has powers and only “Hiruko children” have powers, so Maru MUST be a Hiruko. Sure enough, there’s a girl in the Heaven arc who looks just like Maru and is revealed to be Maru’s mom. She gave birth to him at age 14 just before the apocalypse and Maru will eventually die and become a monster unless that mysterious syringe that he was given contains a cure. One of the biggest mysteries in the series is “How did the apocalypse happen?” None of the adults can remember exactly what happened to end the world. The show devotes an entire episode to this. One theory is that it was a nuclear war that instantly destroyed all communications, so nobody even knows who fired first or which countries were involved. Another theory is that aliens invaded, which would explain the monsters running around and the laser gun that defies physics by putting out WAY more energy than it’s taking in. 2 AA batteries can’t even power a Sega Game Gear, let alone produce enough energy to fire off Dragonball Z beams. I’m just going to spoil what happened because it is SO fucking stupid that you will be furious if you wait anxiously for season 2 and spend the next 2 or 3 years devoting mental energy to this shit.

In the near future, a supercomputer at an observatory predicts that an asteroid will strike the Earth. The entire UN is informed of this and they coordinate a plan to launch rockets that will alter the trajectory of the asteroid. However, an evil secret society of mad scientists decides to tamper with the rocket trajectory data so the asteroid will strike Earth and wipe out most of Humanity. The Secret Society has a different plan for Humanity’s future. At some point in the past, they managed to recover some alien parasites from somewhere that’s not yet been explained. The Society decided to experiment with these parasites by implanting them into genetically engineered children that were grown in test tubes. The children quickly displayed incredibly random superpowers and a healing factor that makes them basically immortal. The leader of the evil society then immediately came up with the idea to transplant her brain and the brains of her elite acolytes into the bodies of these super children so they can emerge from the ashes of the apocalypse and rule what remains of the world as gods. However, they didn’t think this through at all because even before they fucked with the rocket data and doomed the world, the Hiruko children were shown to be highly unstable. The alien parasite ends up killing the host and gaining full autonomy as a man-eating monster. In the end, it’s the parasites that are immortal, not the host bodies. The word “Hiruko” is a Shinto mythology reference btw and literally means “Leech Child” because you know…alien parasite. The Society also created the laser guns through unknown means, but it’s assumed by fans they were salvaged, or reverse engineered from an alien ship where they got the parasites. These guns were meant to help them take care of anyone left to oppose them…even though at this point they thought they would be immortal with superpowers and would have no reason for this level of fire power. The reason the adults can’t remember that it was an asteroid strike is because….everyone just kind of forgot. That’s it. That’s really the answer. Fuck you Heavenly Delusion! The mysterious woman who gives Maru his gun and explains his powers is actually the head of the evil society who had her brain transplanted into a new body. She was never truly remorseful for wiping out most of Humanity but was a bit miffed at how badly she botched the whole bioengineering thing. The “person who looks like Maru” is actually a clone or Maru is the clone. We don’t know which yet, but Doctor Impossible cloned Maru as a baby for some reason that will probably be explained in the last part of the manga and will DEFINITELY be stupid. Doctor Impossible from the beginning of the story was the doctor hired by the evil Society in the Heaven arc to do the brain transplants because of course he was. Oh, and Kiriko’s missing big brother figure who taught him how to fight and was the Batman to his Robin just turned out to be a psychopathic rapist all along. Kiriko finally finds his mentor, and the mentor just rapes and tortures him for 2 straight days…because he thought it would be funny to rape his former male apprentice in the body of a hot girl. Why include this in the story? Well besides shock value, it gives Maru the chance to charge in like a heroic knight and beat up the big bad rapist man. Don’t worry though, Kiriko instantly gets over the whole 2 days of rape and torture business within 5 minutes, so it doesn’t have to take itself seriously or get too sad. Kiriko even stops Maru from killing the evil mentor immediately after being raped and tortured for 48 straight hours. Kiriko is in a calm, rational state of mind and is happy to spout off his “no-kill rule”. Um…ok. Good for you Kiriko. You truly are incorruptible.

So why did I give this a 6? Didn’t I spend the entire review ripping on it? I mentioned before that some episodes are actually good and I really mean that. The animation is spectacular. I enjoyed the music. The monster designs were really cool, and the action scenes are very entertaining. This was a highly entertaining show most of the time and even with all of its flaws, I would still say it’s a fun watch that’s worth experiencing. Just don’t take the whole world building and mystery aspect too seriously or you might get disappointed. I also love how fucking random the superpowers are that the alien parasites grant. The mangaka needed a plot device for how one of the kids can sneak around the facility so the reader can see the test tubes and connect the future monsters with the Hiruko kids. So, one girl has the ability to be invisible solely to security cameras. Her power is that she can’t be seen by the human eye, but only when nobody is directly looking at her. I would say that’s the stupidest power I’ve ever heard of in my life, if I hadn’t actually heard that one before. The mangaka ripped that power straight from a 1999 box office bomb called Mystery Men. This series is honestly a fucking mess, but it’s an enjoyable mess. Sometimes you just have to embrace a piece of media flaws and all and this was one of those times for me.

Studio Orange director: “Man, I was watching this piece of trash Boomer anime the other day and all my buddies around me were laughing at it. Then it suddenly struck me. This is an absolute tragedy! This old piece of trash actually has all the elements there to be a masterpiece and it’s simply being handcuffed by all this hackneyed anime bullshit! Imagine if it cut out the stupid comedy, extra characters, pointless romance sub-plot, pointless fanservice, and just really doubled down on the psychological drama and grimdark elements. Those Zoomers who laugh at this shit right now and dismiss it will have their minds ... absolutely blown! They don’t even know! We’re gonna break this series free from its chains that have been holding it back and by God it’s gonna COOK!”

Me: “Say no more! I know exactly what anime you guys are talking about. You don’t even need to say it! God, it’s hard to be an Elfen Lied fan in 2023. People just don’t get it, but you’re clearly seeing what I’m seeing!

Studio Orange: “Elfen what? Bruh, I was talking about Trigun!

Me: “….are y’all serious?!”

Welcome to Studio Orange’s well intentioned albeit often baffling attempt to “fix” Trigun by giving it a darker, grittier reboot that completely does its own thing and often flat out gives the finger to the original manga and anime. We all know Trigun is a Boomer anime with a cult following, but what is Trigun exactly? Trigun is a Space Western that at its core is a love letter to old cowboy movies. It takes place in a bizarre, steampunk setting on this desert covered alien planet that a colony of human pioneers have been stranded on. So, you have a mixture of crazy science fiction stuff and aliens with 1860s technology and old west gun duels. This is admittedly a silly premise. The original series and the manga are fully aware of this. The manga started out as a screwball action comedy that was published in a shonen magazine, but it went on hiatus and returned in a seinen magazine with a much darker and more serious tone. This gradual shift is emulated by the 1998 anime adaptation that starts out very funny and wildly entertaining before taking a more somber turn.


The 2023 anime by contrast is a much more serious affair throughout. The first episode at least tries to capture some of the zaniness of the early manga and the 1998 anime, but if those were cranked up to 10, Trigun Stampede turns it down to maybe a 4 or 5. Then there are children being killed in just the second episode of Stampede and the comedy never returns. Trigun Stampede very clearly feels like the fun element and comedy was an impediment to the franchise’s quality. I feel like this is a deeply misguided take on the franchise. The comedy and fun elements of Trigun actually compliment the ridiculous setting and whole “Space Western” thing, which would be a mistake to simply make dead serious. The gradual shift from lighthearted to serious also works in the series’ favor by making the serious moments really stand out and giving them an added punch. To be fair to Studio Orange, there are series that have comedy that feels completely tacked on and the inclusion of these scenes does nothing but hurt the series. That’s a common problem in old anime. I joked in the opening paragraph about Elfen Lied in particular suffering from this, but Ashita no Joe part 1 suffers from this! Even some really good anime have this problem. It’s just that Trigun is NOT one of those series!

Another massive departure from the source material and original anime is that Trigun Stampede never once feels like a Western. The original anime has over a dozen shots directly ripped from old Western movies. In one of the very first episodes, you have this longshot of a creaky windmill which is taken directly from 1968’s Once Upon a Time in the West. There’s another shot from an early episode taken directly from the 1964 film Fistful of Dollars. The original anime is shot and framed like a Western. The soundtrack feels like a Western. Vash and Knives end up settling their differences in an old-time gun duel that feels straight out of a Western. The 1998 anime is proud to be a Western. Trigun Stampede has Knives hook Vash up to a supercomputer and hack into him using his weird tentacles in order to ascend to the “higher dimension” and make contact with the “Wave Existence”, Capital G God in order to give his fellow artificial life forms souls so that they can have freewill. I’m sorry, but what the FUCK is this?! The team behind Trigun Stampede has clearly played Xenogears before and watched Evangelion but I don’t think anyone on this production team has watched a Sergio Leone film, let alone loves those types of movies. There’s a weird scene in Trigun Stampede where a young Vash draws a parallel between Humanity settling space and the American pioneers of the old west, but this idea of a space western is brought up in Stampede only to be immediately ridiculed and dismissed. This is a thing that reboots do when they’re trying to be more “mature” and “gritty” than the original. It’s that trailer scene in X-Men 2000 when Wolverine snarks “What did you expect? Yellow spandex?” Trigun Stampede is a pure science fiction with weird JRPG pseudo-religious stuff that has zero interest in being a Western.

Yet another massive difference can be found in the main protagonist Vash, who in the manga and original anime acts like a complete and utter goofball. He starts out as this Looney Toons character, but then you find out that it’s simply a persona that he shows to the public to hide his pain and loneliness. The real Vash underneath the goofy mask is a suffering, Messianic figure who doesn’t want others to have to share his burden. He essentially treats Humanity like a parent would treat their small child. This makes perfect sense given that he’s a 120+ year old alien with Godlike powers. Vash in Trigun 2023 is a much weaker and more vulnerable character. He’s not super OP in combat and emotionally he’s kind a mopey emo boy for almost the entirety of the series. Trigun 2023 believed they were making him more human and relatable, but I don’t feel like it worked exactly in the way that they wanted. If anything, it just made him much more forgettable.

Most of the cast got shafted in Trigun 2023, but Meryl Strife easily got it the worst. Meryl in the original is a short tempered, no-nonsense girl boss who can hold her own in a gun fight, has hilarious chemistry with Vash as the straight man to Vash’s shenanigans and is also a romantic interest for Vash. Meryl in the 2023 reboot is basically April O’Neil from Ninja Turtles. She’s this naïve reporter lady who is simply looking for her big scoop but ends up largely being a spectator with no real agency and doesn’t really contribute much. Milly was entirely replaced by a grizzled old reporter named Robert DeNiro who is only 3 weeks away from retirement and is getting too old for this shit. Why is he named DeNiro? He should clearly be Danny Glover! Fucking Stampede can’t even make the right actor jokes. Although it is mentioned in the last episode that Milly exists in this universe and may appear if a sequel ever happens. Wolfwood is given a lot less time to shine here and just feels like a very watered down, shittier version of the original character. His motivations in Stampede are also a lot dumber. Wolfwood in the original series was raised in an abusive household and murdered his own father, thus becoming an orphan. He was then raised by one of Knives’ super soldiers as a possible successor and uses the skills he acquired as a gun for hire to finance an orphanage. Wolfwood is basically a sleeper agent since he’s in contact with someone who works for the main villain, but he doesn’t directly work for the main baddie or know his plans. He ends up refusing to go along with the main villain’s plans and to the end stays loyal to his orphanage and his friends despite his wrongdoings. Wolfwood in 2023 exists solely as a delivery boy to bring Vash to his brother Knives, which honestly makes the rest of the Gungho Guns and Legato completely pointless in the 2023 anime. Knives in 2023 didn’t intend for any of his super soldiers to kill Vash or force Vash to suffer by having to kill one of them, thus preparing him for their final duel. They are literally there for no reason. Wolfwood works directly for Knives and clearly knows that Knives will use Vash’s energy to do something absolutely apocalyptic and almost certainly wipe out Mankind, but he’s delivering Vash to Knives all for the sake of the orphans…whom Knives will kill the second he makes the delivery. Did they even think about this? Insert Biff Tannen and/or Omni Man clip.

Now it’s FINALLY time to say something nice about Trigun 2023. They actually tried to make Knives a more complex character whose love for his brother Vash is just as strong as his hatred for Mankind. Knives’ motivation for hating Humanity is much more fleshed out in 2023 and he’s given a level sympathy that he never got in the original. In the last 20 years of movies and TV media, we’ve come to expect for villains to have more relatable motivations. Everyone wants to write MCU Thanos or Toguro from Yu Yu Hakusho and not the cackling madman who is just an asshole for the Hell of it. Knives in the original anime is an artificial life form who was created to serve Humanity, but from the beginning looked down on Humanity as his inferiors and wants to wipe us out. He’s a very solitary figure with a God complex and not a lot of love in his heart for anyone. OG Knives is basically just Sephiroth from the original FF7. That type of villain works best when you don’t see a lot of them. They’re this shadowy figure with unknowable motivations whom you are never asked to empathize with. All you know is that they’re going to be hard to stop. This is the Lovecraft approach to writing antagonists, and it’s widely considered antiquated. Trigun 2023 had an interesting take on Knives and I appreciate that they made the effort.

The animation is..fine if you like Studio Orange’s approach to CG. This series had a budget. They put effort into it. It has some scenes that are very visually impressive. It also has some scenes I think looked like dog shit, but I digress. The music is fine. It’s definitely not iconic like the original anime’s OST, but it serves its purpose adequately. I also appreciate that while Orange’s vision of Trigun was radically, fundamentally different, they did keep it consistent. It wasn’t grimdark one moment only to be goofy the next. They didn’t go full science fiction one episode only to backtrack. They fully committed to their own interpretation of what Trigun should be. When you consider Trigun 2023 to be its own series that’s loosely inspired by Trigun, it begins to look a lot better. Instead of a replacement or a reboot, we can see this series as a sort of “spiritual successor” that takes some concepts from the original while comfortably being its own thing. That’s the takeaway point at the end of the day. I think it’s a horrible adaptation of Trigun that fundamentally misunderstands what made Trigun so beloved in the first place and why it worked. However, it’s also not a bad anime when you examine it in a vacuum and stop thinking about the original. If it didn’t have the Trigun name, I would say this is an above average anime that I could comfortably recommend to friends. It’s fine. It’s perfectly serviceable as a seasonal anime in 2023. That’s why I’m still giving it a 6 out of 10. It doesn’t deserve to be crucified simply because it’s not the original. The original already exists. It’s not going anywhere or being replaced on every streaming site and store shelf. If you’ve never seen either version of Trigun, I would definitely check out the original first, but you can also give this one a watch. If you hate old school animation and you’re only interested in new stuff, you can watch Trigun 2023 and just not worry about the original.

It's not often that I review anime that I drop. Typically, I wait until I finish a series to review it. However, this is a frustrating series that I feel I need to review but I also have zero desire to actually suffer through 10 more episodes. A friend of mine recommended this series after the Youtuber Mother's Basement hyped it up as a subversive dark comedy and brilliant parody of shitty, isekai power fantasies. Eminence in Shadow or "ES" as I'll refer to it from now on uses a lot of tired tropes and cliches. It's fully aware that it's doing so and intends ... to poke fun at poorly written isekai, but it doesn't actually do enough to distinguish itself as a parody. It ends up just looking like it's aping trashy isekai and becomes the very thing it set out to make fun of. The series tries to let us in on the fact it's a dark comedy and a parody because the main character is a "chuuni" sociopath with delusions of grandeur and megalomania. He's willing to slaughter dozens of people simply to role play as his favorite anti-heroes. Haha! the joke is that he's not actually a good guy like Kirito! This is ignoring the fact that Overlord exists, Shield Hero exists, and Mushoku exists. Nothing the main character does goes over the top enough to let the audience know that the writer actually looks down on these type of power fantasies and is just having a laugh at them while holding them in disdain. Redo of Healer actually accomplishes what ES wanted to accomplish far more effectively, even though Redo likely did it on accident and was probably just written by a complete degenerate.

The first episode actually starts out with some potential. Our sociopathic main character tries to blend in as a background NPC while secretly mastering dozens of martial arts and training intensely to become a crime fighting vigilante by night. He goes around beating yakuza and motorcycle thugs to death by dual wielding crowbars. So, at first it looks like it's going to be a darkly comic deconstruction of the concept of the Superhero and what would actually happen if a mentally ill person decided to go vigilante while LARPing as a hero. This concept has actually been done to death in the West with movies like James Gunn's Super and Mark Millar's Kick-Ass. However, I've not seen an anime take on this concept. Sadly, ES abandons this concept and has the hero intentionally throw himself into a truck in the hopes that he'll be Isekaid and reborn as an overpowered badass. HAHA! They referenced Truck-Kun! They're aware of the meme! Seriously, Konosuba did that joke over 10 years ago and did it better!

Our hero gets his exact wish and is born as a noble with great talent for magic and physical combat. By 12 years old, he is using his OP skills to slaughter bandits and keep their loot to himself so he can eventually build a Bat Cave. One day after killing some bandits, he finds a girl who has been mutated by a curse and takes her home to perform experiments on. He ends up accidentally curing her and when she can't remember what happened, he creates a bullshit backstory for her and tells her that he's fighting a secret, evil organization. The girl happens to be a master assassin and recruits an entire harem of sexy female assassins offscreen to create an army for the MC. The MC btw has changed his name to Cid because Final Fantasy exists. Cid believes that he's just killing bandits and guards while pretending a fight a secret society, but since this world seems to grant his every wish, there actually is a secret society exactly like the one he made up.

This is all in the first 3 episodes. By episode 10, I just feel like I'm watching Overlord again and wasting my time. It's not the worst anime ever, but it's not really doing anything for me. The animation is fine, but not stunning. The character designs are kind of bland. The music is kind of bland. Watch this series if you want a trash isekai that's aware it's a trash isekai but doesn't really accomplish anything with that knowledge.