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I'm just going to refer to this as DanMachi. It's too long to type out the title every single time.

DanMachi is an anime that suffers mostly from its length. The anime series only covers the first three novels, which barely even mentions the beginning of its overarching story. As a result, the story more or less just ends on a cliffhanger after the first story arc's climatic battle. It is more or less just about Bell Cranel wanting to become stronger. His early desire to rescue a beautiful woman and be loved by her is sidetracked immediately at the beginning. The result is that the ... overall story suffers and we do not get to see a larger picture of events.

The art is one of the things I like about the series. They are fairly simplistic, but it works. There is quite a large cast of characters and best of all, they do not feel like copy paste, which tends to be a problem when there are tons and tons of characters. The backgrounds are quite beautiful at times and even though the characters spend most of the time in the Dungeon, there is enough variation to make it feel like they are not trekking through a cave all the time.

The biggest problem though is the length of the series. At 13 episodes, it is incredibly short and as a result, we do not see character development nor progress in the overall story. This is unfortunately all things that happen in the novels that take place AFTER where the anime ends. In the end, this is basically an anime that had to suffer because of its length. Had it been 26 episodes when we essentially start seeing the true conflicts between the Gods and the Labyrinth grow, the series would have been a lot better. Sadly, this is only available in the Light Novels and that is where you are going to have to go to continue the story.

Sword Art Online: Ordinal Scale is the first anime movie I've seen in a theater since Evangelion 2.0 several years ago.

The basic premise of the story revolves around an Augmented Reality game designed using The Seed and the ever continuing fallout of Sword Art Online and Kayaba Akihiko. The bad guy's plan seems strange and a giant mess that requires like a hundred different things to go perfectly to work right. I would compare it to Captain America 3's villain. For fans of the Sword Art Online series, this story would have made a lot more sense if it took place chronologically AFTER Alicization (read ... spoilers yourself if you want to know why). Instead, it takes place after Sword Art Online II and some of the concepts and ideas are not introduced yet and leads into Alicization from there, resulting in inconsistencies that lead to plot holes. Overall, it leads to Kirito saves the day again, something that has occurred in every story arc. It would have been nice to see something different, but at this point, it is expected to be the tradition.

Like most anime movies, the art is very impressive. Most characters have alternate designs of their Sword Art Online costumes. It makes the characters seem familiar, but also different at the same time. I kind of like it. The visuals are great, but do not help to hide a story that needs to be fixed desperately.

The biggest problem here is the characters. Because this movie is essentially a filler, there is little character development. The relationship between Kirito and his friends do not really change. There is practically no character development in this and do not help to establish much of the relationship between the characters other than Kirito and Asuna love each other and the fact that their friends all want to help each other out when needed. The characters needed a little more depth, but like most anime movies, it is more geared towards fan service, causing the overall story and characters to suffer because god forbid, here is actual long lasting development in fillers.

Overall, this is what you expect of a typical anime movie. The action scenes are great. There is a lot of fan service and beautiful art, but lacks depth. It is better than a DVD recap if you are a fan, but if you are not already a fan of the series, you might want to skip this one.

Persona 3 the Movie 2: Midsummer Knight's Dream is the sequel to Spring of Rebirth. The problem is that it is not exactly clear when the movie takes place other than that it hints that it is something like the summer. The movie immediately begins in the middle of the Lovers' Shadow on a full moon with no context for how they got there. It immediately cuts to a beach episode before getting serious again. They flash some scenes of minor characters and social links, but unless you played the game, you would have no idea who they are. While there seems to be a ... story between the past relationship of two characters, it is split up so far apart and not emphasized before it reaches the climax and you actually figure out the significance of the event. It felt like there was a lack of direction and they chose to just adapt what they felt would be popular with the fans rather than trying to make a coherent story.

Like its predecessors, the art and the sound are great. The animation is excellent and makes great use of CGI to show how the Persona are foreign. The impressive shadow and lighting effects make their return and continues to contribute to the overall feeling of the story. There are a few scenes where the lighting does seem a little off because one character appears with shadows and then suddenly, another character in the same conversation does not. The sounds and music of the game make their return in high quality.

The poor story ultimately hurts the character development and the overall enjoyment of the movie. While the first movie spent some time to develop the characters, Midsummer Knight's Dream felt like it constantly shifted between action scenes and suspense scenes, skipping large chunks of the story just so it could follow this formula. The few scenes that do not follow this do little to contribute further to the characters. This becomes an even bigger problem in the third movie, Falling Down, where one of the things they kind of glossed over becomes important towards the climax of the that movie. This movie felt like a movie that could only be enjoyed by people who had already played the game because then you could at least do things like fill in the missing information yourself. But if you are experiencing Persona 3 for the first time, all this does is leave you confused.

Persona 3 the Movie 1: Spring of Rebirth follows the story of Makoto Yuuki, a boy who is able to witness strange events during the period known as the Dark Hour. During this time, there are some people who are aware of this are able to move while others cannot. The story follows a group of people who can move during this time as they try to discover what is the cause behind it. The only problem is that there are some odd cuts that kind of mess up the pacing and would have been better if it was just flat out introduced in the ... beginning instead of in the middle of a battle. The way they do it make it sometimes look like the main character not a new power out of nowhere. Characters take the time to compare their experiences as well instead of just writing off some battles as past experiences.

The quality of the art and animation is very high. The animation and character designs are great, with no signs of off model characters or silly looking animations that are sometimes present in TV shows. They definitely make great use of lightning and shadows. One of the things I like is how the Persona are clearly CGI while the characters are not as obvious. This gives them an "otherworldly" feel that makes it seem like they do not belong in the world.

A lot of the sound in the anime is directly taken from the Persona 3, but I feel that there is a noticeable improvement in the quality. The voice acting is also pretty good. They also make great use of timing and changing the music to reflect the sudden shifts in tone.

Overall, the movie is pretty good. It is a great adaptation of the early parts of the Persona 3 game though they do kind of start rushing things towards the end. The music is good and the characters do have some development to make them interesting. The only downside is that it starts to get rushed towards the end.

Overlord is the next in the series of novels where people are trapped in video games to be made into an anime. The story of Overlord is about Momonga, who almost immediately renames himself to Ainz Ooal Gown, who is online in a game called Yggdrasil at the last moment that the game is going to go offline. However, he is still there once the servers are supposed to go down and he finds himself in another world with everything that was in his castle at the time. In this new world of swords and magic, there are elements from Yggdrasil, but also elements that ... are not. There, Ainz begins his search for what the heck is going on.

The art of Overlord is very impressive and there are times when it feels like it is the quality of an OVA instead of just an anime series. The only downside to the animation is that sometimes, the skill effects look out of place because some are made with computer effects and have a bit of 3D whereas others fit in like standard animation. It creates a bit of inconsistency.

The opening theme of the series is fairly generic fast and loud guitar and song about power. The ending theme is similar, but more with Albedo and lyrics about love and obsession, which matches her character, but still sort of feels out of place like the opening theme. Had the music in the show itself adopted a similar style during even combat, it could have at least been more consistent. This greatly contrasts the fantasy setting that it is going for when the towns often play lighter music that sounds like it's from a banjo. However, the music that often goes into the Great Tomb of Nazarick matches its atmosphere and theme. If the series had been more consistent with its music, it might have been a lot better.

A big weakness in Overlord is the lack of proper character development. The entire story is pushed by the fact that Ainz does not know what is going on and attempts to do so, but we do not learn much more about him or his previous life. He just accepts things as is and hopes to seek out anyone else from Yggdrasil. Each of the Floor Guardians of Nazarick have their own personality and theme, but also do not change. They are all driven by their love of their masters and do little on screen but swear their loyalty with only a few exceptions. Each of those characters are supposed to have been programmed by members of Nazarick with complete character profiles and programming, but we never really get to see this.

If you enjoy a standard Shounen series or something like Sword Art Online and Log Horizon, you will enjoy Overlord. The main character is absurdly powerful to the point where anytime he or his companions enters combat, he just rolls his way forward destroying everything. For comparison, most trained soldiers are like at a level 20 range, the main character is close to 100 and can summon creatures that are considered to be legendary to the local population. However, the fights are not the focus of the series though there are a few epic ones. The focus is on the world and learning about it and a little more of the world is explored with each story arc. If you are hoping for character development and an eventual escape by Ainz back to his world, then you might want to skip this. If you want to see what happens when the most powerful being ever to exist ends up in another world, then Overlord might be worth giving a try.

Yakitate Japan is manga about making bread. For me, this was my first experience with cooking related manga right after Cooking Master Boy. What is different is that Yakitate Japan is solely about making bread rather than cooking in general. It does expand a little to cover other things that are related to bread making, but bread is the focus.

The story is about a young boy named Azuma Kazuma who gets into making bread because of the nearby bakery. He really enjoys it and attempts to make bread on his own. His first goal is to get his grandpa to enjoy his bread. He ... eventually expands his goal to making the first true bread that can be associated with Japan. To do this, he must obtain work at Pantasia by passing their exam. From there, Azuma can start building the one true Japanese bread. It starts off as a local competition, but it eventually turns into a global competition and the creation of a bread focused TV show. Towards the end it also decreases the emphasis on bread and begins to focus on what can go into bread. However, the story ends a bit abruptly.

The artwork for the series is surprisingly good. The character art improves over the course of the series, but it is by no means bad in the beginning. Lots of diverse environments and characters are featured in the series and it really does showcase the author's talents. The backgrounds are detailed and included in many frames unlike some people who try to get away with drawing as little of the environment as possible. This carries over to the extras that the author does including making special pages for some of the real bread recipes that are included in the volume release.

The main problems that I have with this series is the characters. While Azuma is someone who is heavily focused on his dream of creating a Japanese bread, at no point does it ever feel like he is moving closer. He creates a lot of new breads using different methods, but we almost never see his inspiration or thought process. His relationship with Tsukino does not make significant progress during the course of the series. His co-workers are eventually downgraded to commentators when they can no longer keep up with the development of new bread.

If you enjoy cooking anime or manga, Yakitate Japan is a good series. There are a good number of jokes and a huge cast of characters that react to the food as they eat it. It has all the standard surprising cooking technique twists and strange ingredients placed into food. The main character is dedicated to his craft and gifted at it. There are a few surprising twists though the main character almost always wins.

Overall, Yakitate Japan is one of the better manga that has been made about cooking. The problem is that the characters never really develop and if they do, it is quickly ignored because the supporting cast simply cannot keep up with Azuma. If you are in it for the strange and wild foods along with over the top reactions to them, then Yakitate Japan might be what you are looking for.

Sword Art Online: Progressive is an alternative version of the main SAO story. It attempts to cover all the events that happened in SAO in the order that it happened from the 1st floor all the way up to when they finally clear the game. Luckily, the book is also written in a way that allows you to jump in at any point.

The story in SAO: Progressive is exactly the same as the original. Kirito is one of 10,000 players trapped in a game called "Sword Art Online" and in order for the players to escape, they must go to the 100th floor and beat ... the final boss. What differs from the original is that they cover most of the story events from each floor (currently up to floor 3). They show how Kirito obtains his Anneal Blade and how Kirito learns hand to hand combat skills. Each volume functions as a stand alone story as well. It is possible to start reading from book two and be able to understand most of the situation along with some character relationships.

The artwork in this novel is great. The characters are depicted in a way that makes them appear similar to the anime. The pull page art in each volume are well drawn with details in the background instead of just a character focused piece of art. It helps to bring the environment and atmosphere into focus as well as the character. The covers also show the characters that are going to be the main focus of each volume.

The best thing in Progressive is the character development. The original series was missing a lot of this because it had skipped a lot of events. We get numerous mentions of "noodle incidents" like the time that the Army was nearly wiped out by the 25th floor boss or the fact that Kirito obtained his weapon for the first boss from a quest. The problem is that we never saw this and just have to assume it happened. With Progressive though, we see every major event ever discussed from the moment Kirito entered the game to when he meets Asuna to the moment Asuna begins to fall in love with Kirito. This helps to fill a lot of unknowns about the characters. What harms the series a little is the fact that the point of view jumps between Kirito and Asuna at various points and it is not always consistent.

If you are a fan of SAO, you should definitely give Progressive a try. It greatly expands on the original and each volume showcases some issues with either the Nervgear or the new SAO world. Some of these also foreshadow problems that arise later on in the main SAO series. The problem is that you have to have read the original SAO in order to get these references. The anime largely cut these scenes out or put them out of context and it makes it difficult to understand without having read the book.

If you are a fan of SAO, you should definitely give Progressive a try. If you have not read SAO before, Progressive is also a good place to start and eliminates the problems that arise from events being out of order when you start a story near the climax. On top of that, each volume actually works fairly well as a stand alone story despite being part of a larger series. It is still easy to understand because it follows standard storytelling elements with an exposition and introduction to the current situation.

Mushoku Tensei is the story of a NEET (Not in Employment, Education, or Training) who is kicked out of his house and then almost immediately dies saving a few kids. He is then reincarnated in another world of sword and sorcery as Rudeus Greyrat. In this new world, Rudi attempts to become a better person and accomplish what he was not able to in his old life. There are some twists that push Rudi along a certain direction in his life.

What Mushoku Tensei does well is that it attempts to cover a large portion of Rudi's life, from childhood to adulthood. During this time, we ... see him grow and change. There are times when Rudi shows his otakuness from his previous life, such as when he attempts a Wife Husbandry with a young girl in his neighborhood. Few other stories attempt this and I really enjoy the stories that place over a long period of time because it gives the opportunity to show proper character development rather than just using implied characteristics. However, what hurts the story in the long run is the overall inconsistencies. The series takes a sharp turn about halfway through and the story changes its focus drastically. Some of the story events are also different from what you think the characters would do in their case and feels inconsistent. On top of that, part of the story is told from different points of view with sudden jumps to another character's point of view at the end of nearly every arc just so they could summarize what happened to another character. This attempt to show everything ruins part of the pacing when Rudi is the focus character. Everyone else is minor and their part tends to interrupt the story rather than build upon it. The only side story that was worth reading in my opinion, was the explanation for why the reincarnation even happened. Events like the training events of one of the characters could have largely been ignored with no real impact on the story.

The artwork that is included in some of novels are pretty good. It does seem to suffer a bit in terms of facial diversity and even though only a handful of characters are depicted, you can tell a lot of them are similar. This is really the only problem with the art. The other artwork that is included are fairly good at depicting various scenes and shows the characters in different situations. Luckily, the manga manages to largely avert this problem. The artwork stops around the time Rudi enters the School so there's nothing to judge after that.

There is a large cast of characters in this series, but at the same time, it feels like a lot of characters do not serve a larger purpose other than to push the plot along. A lot of things we see early on disappear for several volumes at a time and some are never resolved because Rudi ultimately ends up as something small in a much larger world. We do see the impact of Rudi's training later on when it demonstrates the strength of a King class magician against typical ones during a war, but that element at that point had been unmentioned for several volumes. Rudi demonstrates weather manipulation powers early on in the series, but this never really comes back in any way. The only foil character to Rudi is his father and they both turn out similarly. His father gets the family's maid pregnant and adultery treated as a fairly big issue, but when Rudi comes along into a similar situation, everyone just accepts it and it kind of feels like a harem series for a while. There is no serious challenge to it. We sometimes see events happen from another character's point of view, but this does not change much. Instead, it serves to simply interrupt the story.

The best part in the series for me was the developing relationships between Rudi and his friends. The series takes a sudden turn towards the middle in favor of a more action oriented series and each volume begins to end with a massive fight to achieve a goal rather than a focus on how Rudi has developed and changed during this period. I feel that this change resulted in less character development and the impact of the success or the failure of a mission can largely be ignored because everything is small in the grand scheme of things.

Overall, the series starts strong with strong character development and the impact of Rudi's choices pushing the story along. As the story progresses, this begins to diminish and Rudi ultimately loses control. The main character loses his agency and is no longer the driving force in the story, instead he becomes part of something larger that feels like it is ultimately unresolved because Rudi is not meant to be the person who ends the conflict. The first half of the series is great with Rudi developing and learning, but the second half begins to drop off as the larger conflict is now the focus with just a series of escalating fights. Because of this second half, the overall story felt like it was a test for whatever the author was doing next.

Sword Art Online is one of the most recent hits to hit the anime world. It focuses on the story of a boy who is referred to in the online world as Kirito. The premise of the story is that 10,000 people who log on to a virtual reality massive multiplayer online role playing game (VRMMO) are now trapped inside by its creator. In order to escape, they have to complete the game by clearing all 100 floors of the game.

The premise of the story is great, but what ultimately hurts the series is the fact that it is incomplete. The journey of Kirito is ... one that is full of hardships and difficulties, but we only see highlights of it. It starts from the first floor, then it jumps to around the 50th, then to the 74th, and then at the end. They talk about other events that occur, but they are never shown on screen. Some of these are important events that seemed to have affected the entire community that is trapped in the VRMMO, but they become "noodle incidents" that are only referred to in name. As a result, it feels like a lot of it is missed out.

For some reason, I really like the art of the series. To me, it seems simple, yet is highly effective in communicating that the world is in fact a virtual world. Each of the characters are introduced in the first episode (some are shown for a split second in the crowd), but we also get to see them change as they progress through SAO. It is nice to see that characters change their appearance as time passes for them.

Both of the opening themes and the main theme that plays whenever Kirito does something amazing are all songs that stick out to me. In the past, I have rarely taken a liking to the theme songs of anime, but SAO is one of the ones that I like and those songs stood out to me. The songs help contribute to the atmosphere, but they are mostly done for action phases. However, in the later episodes, the music also begins to help communicate emotion.

Character development is something that I am mixed about in this series. The main reason for this is that it feels like a HUGE chunk of the story is missing. Kirito begins his journey on the first floor, but we only see his first day and his last two or so days on the floor. We do not see key events in the story that contribute to their growth. Some of them are mentioned and a few are hinted at, but it feels like they are glossed over. For example, Kirito and Asuna have a disagreement about how to deal with a monster and whether or not they should lure the monster to the town so that they can kill it while the monster is busy killing NPCs. However, we do not see the events leading up to it, or what happens after. Leaving out these events hurts character development greatly. The second half of the story also depowers Asuna and forces her to become a hostage that Kirito has to rescue. She does have a moment in which she does try to free herself and nearly succeeds, but it is ultimately up to Kirito.

While the story, art, and music is good. The story still feels incomplete. There seems to be a lot missing and the two year period that Kirito is trapped in SAO is condensed into a dozen episodes.

Tate no Yuusha has become tied with Sword Art Online as my favorite Japanese Light Novel as of writing this review.

The basis behind Tate no Yuusha is fairly simple. Four heroes are summoned from different Japans in order to fight against the invasion of monsters from something called the "Wave." At periodic intervals marked by a special hourglass, the monsters will attack and it is up to the four summoned heroes to defeat the monsters. However, what separates it is the fact that the main character, Naofumi, is rejected as a hero and quickly chooses to become an anti-hero due to circumstances. We also see ... how pride and pre-existing beliefs cause problems. These beliefs are criticized and called into question on multiple occasions. Over time though, he begins to develop some of the more heroic qualities and we see how people change over time, something that a lot of series fail to do properly. Tate no Yuusha does a good job of showing Naofumi's growth and connects events together fairly well.

Since this is a light novel, there's not much art, but the ones that are there are great. They show off the characters at key points in the story and their faces and expressions in these pages contribute greatly to the feeling of the story. Also, they're not always focused on the action sequences, which is a nice break from what other light novels often try to do.

The character development in this series is one of the best by far. The series follows Naofumi and it shows how he goes from someone with good intentions to a complete jerk who only shows traces of the kindness that existed in his heart before. However, he begins to recover over time, and we get to see the events that lead to him slowly becoming a heroic figure that is gradually earning the respect of the people. This limits the number of out of character moments despite being quite a long series so far. Each character also has to deal with the consequences of his or her own actions, and this leads to some interesting moments.

Overall, I recommend this series to people. It does not seem like a lot of people read it, and I believe more people should. It shows how an anti-hero can be created, but how an anti-hero can also become a true hero.