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So I just finished Prison School, or I think I did because the ending was disappointing and out of place as it didn’t quite wrap things up but rather ended in a circular way. Is Prison School worth a read despite its ending? Yes and no, as the ending isn’t the only bad element.

This review contains minor spoilers.

Prison School makes it clear from the very first beginning that it’s dumb and absurd. It’s not exactly your run-of-the-mill comedy that relies on cheap one-liners, inside jokes and moronic situations where a character trips over nothing and ends up groping a female like in To-love Ru or ... any other ecchi comedies. It goes beyond that by being nonsensical as well as relying on misunderstandings, from guys giving weird relationship advices to people worshipping a plastic bottle. No, I am not joking.

Prison School revolves around 5 guys attending an all-girls school but ending up in a prison inside the school itself for breaking the rules, so they decide to break out. Unfortunately, the whole prison idea stops being the focal point of the series midway. The first two arcs are solid as they revolve around breaking out from the prison in a thrilling and fun way. Will the characters work together? If so, why and most importantly how? What will happen after they break out? Well, to answer some of those questions, the breakout didn’t matter one bit afterwards. The characters didn’t really achieve their real goals, or completely forgot about them. The next arc is about a cavalry competition in a sport festival, and is the worst sub plot in the entire manga for two main reasons:

- It drags out for no reason other than to sell more volumes

- The competition ends in a *drum roll* draw! and the reason why I’m spoiling the result is because it doesn’t matter in the long run! This whole filler arc drags itself over the mud unwillingly and in a sloppy manner and doesn’t resolve the real conflict between the characters.

The following arc is slightly better since it focuses more on character interactions and aims to tie some loose ends between their relationships. Except, it doesn’t manage to succeed. In the final arc, the author flushes the buildup and development of the characters down the drain and ends his story haphazardly by having the characters return to their original state. It’s a common way to end a story when you have no idea how to wrap it up. It’s the easiest and laziest ending one could think of, by having the story eat its own tail, and it’s probably one of the most disappointing closure to a 278 chapters manga. The author might as well not have written it in the first place unless his intentions were just to make you laugh without thinking too much of it.

And to be fair, Prison School still manages to be funny, mainly due to its characters acting in a dumb way and finding themselves in absurd situations. But every story needs some form of development, especially to its characters, and the manga fails to deliver despite succeeding in the first half.

I recommend Prison School for those who just want a good laugh or two and are willing to put up with the final two arcs out of curiosity. My advice is to skip the entire cavalry arc, and not expect too much from the ending.

Demon Slayer is the defintion of great visuals with no substance. The story plays out like your typical fighting shounen formula, except in this case, the writing is subpar and terribly predictable. The formula is as follows:

1) Something bad happens to the protagonist: In this show, there was absolutely no build up for the tragedy. His entire family gets slaughtered right away in the first episode.

2) Protagonist sets out on a quest to avenge his family: This pretty much defines the goal of the entire series, even though the ending of the series as a whole can already be pictured: Tanjirou, the Main character, kills ... the Bad guy™. But in Demon Slayer, you need to be constantly reminded of the goal by Tanjirou through his inner dialogues. Not only is it frustrating to the viewer, but it also diminishes any form of story and character development. The story has only one objective, and its main character has only one personality that he constantly boasts about.

3) Obligatory training arc: Instead of having the main character immediately fight battles which gradually become more challenging and interesting, while he slowly learns from his past mistakes, overcome his weaknesses and become a bit stronger after each battle, the series decides to slap you with a boring training arc instead. Said arc won't matter in the long run since Tanjirou pulls out completely different techniques out of his ass that weren't explored even the slightest in the training.

4) Episodic battles. Nothing can be said here other than its the selling point of the series, pretty much. It's solely the visuals, the choreography, the cool special effects applied in the fighting sequences that got everyone's attention. Yes, the battles are cool. They are entertaining to some extent, but can also become quite predictable and sometimes inexplicable, but we'll get to that point later.

So the story isn't something special, but isn't bad or unbearable either. It's pretty generic and straightforward, and any shonen fan can quickly pick up where the story is going at, what is it aiming for and why. The issues lie with the characters and the writing, or should I say the lack of it.

Tanjirou is presented as a typical scout boy, always wanting to do the right thing, regardless if it backfires on him. This makes him relatable and consequently, easy to root for. On the other hand, the supporting character are downright annoying and completely unnecessary. I think everyone can agree that Zenitsu shouldn't even exist. I heard that many people dropped the series because of his unbearable characterization. And to be honest, they were not wrong. Zenitsu does absolutely nothing in the series, and doesn't bring anything special to the table. Instead, he constantly fulminates and cries out of fear before someone manages to save him. I remember a peculiar scene which I found pretty bizarre and rather funny. Zenitsu was accompanying a kid (and not the other way around) and at some point the kid becomes annoyed of Zenitsu's childish and scaredy-cat personality. So I guess the series is self-ware of the issue in having this character in the first place, but proceeds nonetheless just to have a pointless comic relief device and fill some unnecessary screen times here and there so it can drag the story even further. But here's the thing: having a comic relief character in this series plummets the seriousness of the whole plot, not to mention its tragic nature. We're talking about people getting brutally slaughtered and teared apart at one end, and watching Zenitsu make a move on the protagonist's sister who is a demon at the other end. And Zenitsu cannot stand demons, let alone look them in the eye! Even if the story somehow requires a form of comedy to ease the tension, having a character whining and complaining at everything that moves doesn't equate comedy.

Some scenes honestly don't make any sense. I'm not talking about the fighting scenes, because by definition they shouldn't make any sense in this context since the fighting system was not completely fleshed out and fully explained. I'm talking about a memorable scene where the characters left Zenitsu and went inside the forest like it's a normal, everyday-thing to do. They left a scary, good-for-nothing character by himself because he didn't want to accompany them in the suspicious forest. Later on, he decides to join them, not because he suddenly felt the urge to save them or act bravely. But because he suddenly felt like he wanted to save Nezuko, the protagonist's sister... The scene is absurd, almost funny in bad way, since Nezuko doesn't need saving!

Speaking of Nezuko, she acts more like a weapon than a character. She doesn't speak, doesn't protest, and conveniently saves his brother whenever needed, almost like she's a plot device or something. Now you may be wondering, how is it possible for a demon to be tamed and not attack anyone, even though the premise first states that it's impossible to do so and there's no turning back for them. Turns out, there is: just have an old man BRAINWASH Nezuko into thinking humans are good, off screen, while Tanjirou is training outside, without his consent of anything. I mean, who knows what else the old man "forced" Nezuko to do and not to do. This alone proves the poor writing aspect of the show. Since demons can be saved after all, why the hell are you trying to kill them?

Moreover, demons are first presented as monsters who needs human blood to survive. NEEDS. It's a necessity. But somehow, Nezuko doesn't. She only needs a bit of sleep and it's all good. Now I can think of many ways to make this more plausible, say having Nezuko drink animal blood, or drink Tanjirou's (this in turn can somewhat explain the natural and non-hostile connection they have by drinking a blood from a kin instead of brainwashing her off-screen!).

I almost forgot the other supporting character: Inosuke. He comes second in the most unbearable character in this show after Zenitsu. He is constantly shouting at everything and everyone and acts in a rude and animalistic way. There's a scene where the characters are having a funeral and Inosuke refuses to help them bury the corpses, highlighting the fact that he doesn't respect the dead, so they resort to convincing him to do so!

Delete the supporting characters and Demon Slayer would have been twice as better at least, since the poor writing is mostly related to those characters.

Then comes Muzan, the villain of the story. The following part contain a minor spoiler so feel free to skip it:

*SPOILER*
Muzan is one-dimensionally evil, killing innocent people so he can drink their blood and gain powers, but at the same time extremely weak and fails as a leader who has a good sense of strategy and thinking. In the final episodes, he slaughters all his soldiers due to their incompetence of defeating the main character and leaves only one guy, simply because he liked his way of thinking. At first, the show heavily emphasized on the "12 Demon Moons", basically stronger demons who work directly under Muzan. So one would think that as the story progresses, the demon moons will get defeated one by one before arriving at Muzan himself. The writer realizes this troublesome issue himself: he needs to write at least 12 arcs, much like popular shonen shows are doing, one arc for each villain. So instead, he forces Muzan to kill his OWN ARMY, leaving only one Demon Moon. Not only is it lame and out-of-character for any reasonable villain, but it also makes said villain appear extremely weak and nonthreatening. I mean he pretty much did Tanjirou's work himself. This does not prove his ruthlessness and cunning character, it's the quite the opposite: it makes him look stupid since he's unable to manage his "resources" efficiently.

So now, instead of having a proper build up for the villain in a form of ladder, each step revolving around defeating a Demon Moon, you now have a ladder for toddlers with only one step. And the villain is also a toddler himself.
*END*

Despite all of those glaring issues (obviously, I can give more examples regarding more plot inconsistencies but I believe the ones that I gave are more than enough to give you a general idea of the poor writing and characterization), the show still manages to be entertaining at some point. This is mainly due to the animation aspect: the fighting sequences are smooth, with many special effects applied almost like fireworks, especially during the cool fighting techniques used by the characters. Even the CGI doesn't look that bad to be honest. As for the sound, the OP is good and fits the nature of the show quite well. I don't really remember the ED. The voice acting and background music are also decent, nothing memorable or outstanding by any means.

So should you check out Demon Slayer after all? Sure, if you want to watch some cool but predicate battles with amazing visuals. But don't get your hopes up expecting an excellent story, unforgettable characters and threatening villain. In short, the TL;DR is as follows:

(+) GOOD
- Acceptable protagonist with a clear motive
- Amazing visuals and animation
- Fitting BGM, decent voice acting

(~) MIXED
- Battles are entertaining but predictable
- Protagonist can become annoying sometimes

(-)
- Terrible supporting characters
- Writing is subpar
- Boring one-dimensional villain who doesn't act like a proper one

This show starts out decent then gradually becomes less enjoyable starting from the third episode.

As far as story goes, there is none. Even though the pilot was intriguing which encouraged me to check out the following episodes, all we get afterwards are arcs (2 so far) revolving around mysterious murders that won't matter in the long run since the writer makes it clear that the story isn't going anywhere.

First arc is sloppy since there was no build up for the characters related to the murder. They were just introduced on the spot the moment they were mentioned in someone's theory, which makes this whole arc ... bland and completely forgettable. Eventually, the mystery was supposedly "solved", yet the characters didn't even bother to validate their theories afterwards. I guess relying on pure intuition is good enough.

Second arc is an improvement but boy is it riddled with plot holes. The writer didn't care enough if the explanation of the mystery makes sense and goes as far as contradicting the premise which states that Youkais and Ghosts are real. He was too busy making the heroine look smart, since most of each episode is wasted on info dumps, followed by a ridiculous amount of dialogues where she comes up with drawn-out theories. Theories about a murder you won't care about since as it turns out, they knew who was behind it from the very first beginning but kept it to themselves.

The MC has 2 broken abilities. The first one negates any form of suspense or tension. The second, if exploited to its fullest, can solve any mystery in a matter of seconds. Instead, the show drags itself on purpose by not revealing that information until it felt convenient for the writer.

Ironically, the fight scenes are laughably bad since most of them consist of dodging the enemy's attacks in a sloppy manner. I've seen 3rd graders fight better.

There is absolutely no chemistry between the two main characters. The girl basically falls in love with the guy because he's "quite the looker" (actual line), even thought his personality is akin to a brick. All he does is completely ignore her and even complains when she's around, but hey they're dating! Even his ex points out that she's totally not his type and he agrees with her. I guess the writer was really scratching his head to come up with an excuse for a forced romance. But then decided that it won't matter since this will make it easier for the viewers to self-insert themselves into the MC.

And speaking of our main girl. Sometimes she becomes horny for no reason, coming up with ridiculous ideas such as spending a night in the hotel together or literally sleeping in the same bed. Did I mention that she's only 17, and even looks younger for obvious reasons? Other times, she whines and complains out of jealousy whenever the MC is talking to a female friend. I guess this is what passes as romance and comedy nowadays.

Watching each episode felt more like listening to a broken radio broadcasting a large amount of information that is impossible to digest. The story as a whole is pretty much forgettable. I can't even remember the names of the characters in the first arc. The MC is your typical dense self-insert protagonist who is almost complaining that he's in a romance story. The art and animation are pretty standard for a shonen, even if it cannot be classified as such since the action scenes are almost non-existent. Most of the screen time is spent on rambling about nonsense that you will forget the moment you avert your eyes from the monitor for a split second.

Angels of Death is a weak, poor and unnecessary adaptation of its video game counterpart. I didn’t actually play the game. In fact, I didn’t even know there was a game in the first place until I watched the first episode. So even if you’re diving into this show without any prior knowledge about it other than the actual synopsis, I feel almost obligated to warn you that it’s in fact terrible. Any game adaptation for that matter has been terrible, minus some extremely rare exceptions. Take a look at Corpse Party and the KanColle Collection.

This anime is not inherently bad, in a sense that ... the original game is bad. This anime is bad because it lacks any form of development, is full of inconsistencies and unlikable characters in a story that could have ended in 1 second but didn’t.

So Rachel, our main protagonist wakes up in an eerie abandoned hospital. Having no recollection of her past and how she got here, she begins exploring the building before getting chased by Zack, a murderous psychopath who wants to kill her for no reason whatsoever. After miraculously escaping, something snaps in her head and she decides to die, still HAVING ZERO recollection of her memories. But hold on to your seat, because its gets even more absurd. She asks the very same psychopath to kill her, but to her surprise he doesn’t accept, simply because she’s “not making a good face”.

And so the duo go on a suicidal adventure, casually defeating enemies on every floor, because how else are we supposed to move the story forward? Throughout the series, they continuously engage in a repetitive, flat and awkward dialogue that is repeated 20 times or even more. I don’t know at this point, I’ve lost count. Here’s a typical conversation between the two that you can almost certainly find every 5 minutes in a single episode:

- “I want to die”
- “I will kill you when we get out. Just make sure you make a good face and smile a bit”
- “But you will kill me right? Because you promised God”
- “Don’t get so serious you brat. You look too boring I don’t want to kill you”
- “I want to be useful to you”

Not only that, but every single villain in the story paraphrases the same thing over and over again, because how else are we supposed to fill 20 minutes of screen time? The villains are stereotypical, bland and forgettable since they are one-dimensionally evil and constantly remind everyone about their goal.
The doctor reminds everyone about his eye fetish, and how he will literally pop Rachel’s eyes out because they’re beautiful. I’m not even joking about this. The kid reiterates about his obsession with graveyards and also Rachel. He loves her so much that he decides to kill her just to bury her in a nice looking grave. The sadomasochistic girl wants to torture the main characters just for the fun of it, as this wasn’t clear enough from her high-pitched crazy voice. And finally, the priest who complains about how bad religion is, by acting like any teenager in his rebellious phase. *hurr durr* God doesn’t exist, religion is bad, people are hypocrites.

As for Rachel herself, she is an irritating, ambivalent and indecisive girl who wants to die at the hands of her psychopathic friend but at the same time doesn’t want to be killed by the villains. Because how else are we supposed to give her a clear and convincing motivation? If she’s that determined to die she can simply kill herself for crying out loud. But for some bullshit philosophical debate, she doesn’t feel like it because God will get mad. I mean, isn’t the act of asking someone else to finish you off the same as your decision of committing suicide in the first place? God will get mad in both cases anyway. The writer pretty much plot armors the very thing the protagonist can achieve in an instance by having said protagonist NOT WANTING to achieve it in an instance, but rather waste her entire time fooling around a hospital with her friend, aimlessly defeating enemies every floor, before finally accepting to be killed after escaping the building. Then why exactly didn’t she kill herself in the first place and be done with it? Why waste your time that you clearly disregards for such absurd means? Because how else are we going to write a meaningless story with a crystal clear objective that could have been achieved in an instance?

But the inconsistency doesn’t stop there. Her companion, Zack, genuinely wants to kill her. But doesn’t because he wants her help to escape, even though he can clearly do it by himself since the puzzles in the show are basically made for kindergartens, by kindergartens. Plus, she doesn’t really hold a unique ability, weapon, or a skillset that he can use to his advantage. Having an IQ greater than 0 for solving such puzzles doesn’t count. Halfway through the show, Zack slices his belly wide open with his scythe, loses 10 times the blood capacity of a normal human body but somehow survives after 2 whole episodes. And get this, Rachel spends her remaining time finding a medicine for a guy she doesn’t need nor care about since she can JUST kill herself or hell, ask another villain to do it in her place. Plus, why the hell should we care about Zack? He’s still a serial killer who brutally murdered countless innocent people because his parents treated him like a tool. You can show us flashbacks about his tragic past but this won’t magically make him a better person. He has to earn it. And so far, all he’s trying to do is resist the urge to kill Rachel. So I don’t see any progress.

Giving each main character a tragic backstory is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s not going to help redeem the characters because all they do is act irrationally, contradict themselves all the time, and have barely any resemblance to an actual human personality.

As for the other scenes, they are indecipherable and a complete waste of time. Rachel basically gets teleported in and out of different scenes for no other reason than to fill screen time. And she finally gets back to where she was at the beginning of the episode, so there is absolutely no continuity. The story is basically a snake eating its own tail: it keeps running in circles until it finally breaks out from its loop by revealing a “plot twist” at the end. A plot twist that makes zero sense because it turns the two characters against each other by having them fight to death. Wait a second, wasn’t this the premise of the show?

The art is clearly a step forward from the actual game and even the manga itself. The animation is most of the time captivating, but other times makes your head spin when special effects such as smokes, blood, weird writings and such are all applied at the same time. The music on the other hand is average and repetitive, especially the piano music which was spammed in almost every episode. The OP fits more a Slice of Life setting, seriously. The ED was a bit better though.

To sum it up, Angels of Death is a badly written horror story of two sad protagonists who are thrown in an excuse of a plot that looks and plays exactly like in a RPG. You’ve got characters defeating a villain every level and finding a clue or a trigger before passing to the next stage. The only catch is the awkward and almost laughable relationship between the duo, where Rachel refuses to commit suicide since she prefers getting brutally killed by some serial killer she just met, and Zack who refuses to kill her because she’s not “making a good face”. This back and forth ultimately led the show to its demise due to its own inconsistency.

"Everybody Hates Naofumi" is your obligatory seasonal Isekai that went viral just like its predecessors because it tried to bring something else to the table. This time, its not about time travel but the victimization of our protagonist in the most exaggerated (and almost comical) way imaginable. But before we get to the "twist" that made this show unlike any other Isekai you've seen, let's take a moment to talk about the elephant in the room: the protagonist everybody hates in the story, including me.

Naofumi, your ordinary Otaku, gets summoned to a fantasy world against his will. Instead of actually voicing his opinion on ... the matter, he accepts it instead, unlike the 3 other heroes who immediately frowned after being teleported, or should I say "abducted" at this point. At first, Naofumi seems your typical self-insert protagonist who gets all the waifus and lolis while treating them as they were mere "prizes" he can collect and show off to the viewer, without actually making any move. But then we get to the "twist", which this time is a false rape accusation that was randomly thrown away without any actual context or motive. Apparently, almost all the characters in this show victimize the protagonist and treat him like garbage because of rumors about the "Shield Hero" being a horrible person. Then why exactly did you summon him in the first place? Why not execute him after falsely accusing him without any evidence whatsoever?

Needless to say, Naofumi, who was first presented as an atypical protagonist who doesn't do any of the cliches mentioned previously, becomes your typical protagonist who does ALL of the cliches mentioned previously in just 2 episodes. But this time everything is excused, since he was victimized and everybody who doesn't side with him is immediately labelled as villain. No matter what he says or does, it makes sense to the viewer who immediately sides with him without actually taking his actions and decisions into consideration.

Some of his decisions are questionable as they raise some serious ethical questions, like his idea of buying a loli slave. Why exactly does it have to be a loli? Couldn't be something less pathetic and more adequate for a fantasy world, like an animal companion? Later on, he decides to buy an actual animal as means for transportation. But that exact animal turns into a loli too for no other reason than to pander people's fetishes. There is nothing wrong with having a harem, loli or any other type of fanservice element as long as its relevant to the genre. When I decide to watch a fantasy anime, I'm not exactly expecting constant arguing between the waifus over the protagonist. I'm also not expecting random lolis who add nothing to its story and development. In fact, the only reason why I decided to watch this show in the first place was because everybody was saying how different and refreshing it is. Is it?

As the story progresses, Naofumi begins to feel like any other overpowered, know-it-all protagonist since he never looses, even when the enemy is clearly cheating or way beyond his level. Not to mention the fact that he was presented, from the very first beginning, as the weakest among the heroes since he can only use a shield. Apparently, this shield turns out to be a devastating plot device he can use to heal, damage, trap or block enemies.

Everything and everyone is in Naofumi's favor, since he is the victim in the story for poorly explained reasons. I'm guessing it has something to do with a devilish curse, but it all feels too contrived. From the false accusation to the slave loli to the typical harem.

You might as well call him "Kirito, but this time its more tragic".

The pacing is absurdly fast sometimes, like when Raphtalia turns from a weak, shy and sensitive loli to a tsundure, jealous and badass 20-year old girl in just one episode or when Filo rapidly grows up in just one day. And all of this fast progression is shown using a slideshow of images, which honestly felt more like a PowerPoint presentation to me. Really? That's not character development. Its more of a skipping in order to rush Naofumi's harem.
Other times, the pacing is purposefully dragged out for the sake of fillers. You have a fight between Naofumi and another Hero over who gets to keep the loli, and it is used to victimize Naofumi even further by making EVERY single character in the episode hate him. You have a risky pointless adventure where they go looking for magical crystals just to make a special dress for Filo (She constantly transforms into a loli, remember?).

World building is almost non existent. Everything is presented as a video game even thought it isn't (the protagonist gets summoned after opening a book that describes the fantasy world he's trapped in, and not after playing a video game or something). The protagonist even has an interactive UI at his disposal he can use to upgrade his weapons or view his stats. So it actually is an alternate reality video game after all. Moreover, the world is a copy-paste of what you'd expect to find in any Isekai anime. If I took a random screenshot of this fantasy world and showed it to people next year, they wouldn't be able to tell which Isekai anime it is. In fact, they will probably think its next year's Isekai anime. That's how dull, unimpressive and repetitive the world seems to me.

"Everybody Hates Naofumi" is no different from any other Isekai you've seen for the last 5 years. The only reason you feel like its different and refreshing is because the writer tries his best to convince you that it is, while pouring the exact same elements scavenged from different Isekais over the years into the mixer and calling it a day. He's the perfect example of a seller convincing you to buy a product you already have and seen (OP protagonist and his harem) by telling you its different (victimizing the protagonist for the sake of plot armoring everything and everyone around him). But this victimization which was too exaggerated to the point that it became irritating is more than enough to fool the average viewer into thinking this time its different.

It's not.

Associating the “Magical Girl” concept with brutality, torture and killing can be contradictory at first. You’re basically taking the innocence of that magical girl trying to save the world and reducing it into “Girls with supernatural abilities trying to kill each other”, regardless of their intentions. Torturing someone to death, even though he deserves it, doesn’t really fall into the heroic nature of the “Magical Girls” concept. Because it is still a wrong thing to do. You’re no better than the person you’re actually harming. Because you’ve become him. Point is, you can forget about the whole “magical” genre here. You can replace the title ... of the show with anything you’d like, say “Devilish Girls Site” or “Mentally Unstable Girls with Powers Site” and it’s not going to change a thing.

This show is not about everlasting conflict and dilemma between good and evil. Because let’s face it, almost all of them are evil, and they try to wash away their sins by pretending nothing happened in the first place.

This show is about retarded girls who get rewritten every time the writer demands it so they can supposedly fight each other without any sense of logic and motive.

Magical Girls Site is a bad, bad show. And it doesn’t even try to hide it.

This review will contain minor spoilers.

The story revolves around Aya, a social awkward student who just transferred to a new school. Little did she know that some of her classmates are the reincarnation of the Devil himself. From the very first episode, we witness endless bullying, extreme and exaggerated physical torture such as drowning Aya’s head straight into a toilet and hiring a rapist to have his way with her. Man, school sure sucks. Can’t wait for her to go back home so she can take a nap from all this nightmare. But it doesn’t stop there! At home, her brother tortures her by treating her as his “personal punching bag” just because he wants to release his stress. Because what better way to let it all out? Gym, boxing, music, gaming? Forget it. Punching his very own sister is much more enjoyable because he blames her for enjoying a carefree life. What an ignorant. Enough of that, let’s give Aya a cat, the only companion who truly understands her suffering and acknowledges her existence as a human being. Let’s also kill this pet by the very same bullies at school. What a day! Aya has had enough. In fact, we had enough. What’s with the exaggerated bullying and torturing of this poor and innocent girl? We get that the brilliant writer wants to victimize the protagonist, but why go so far? So far for a girl who apparently suffers from social anxiety and struggles to fit in her school. But that’s not the main reason for the bullying. Aya was bullied because she didn’t thank her classmate. I wish I was joking!

So all this brutal torturing and harassment must be for a reason: becoming a Magical Girl. Oh boy! Can’t wait for Aya to teach the bullies a lesson! And she does, well, accidentally and feels sorry for them. Yes, she feels sorry for the man who tried to rape her, and the girl who brought him here. Basically, she feels sorry for defending herself.

I get it. The writer wants to portray Aya as an innocent and caring little girl who doesn’t harm a soul. But how can she stay the same after all this physical and mental torture? This is where the psychological aspect of the show fails miserably. And it doesn’t begin with Aya. You’ve got Rina, a serial killer on the loose known as the “Magical Hunter” who murdered hundreds of magical girls but later on befriends Aya and her friend Tsuyuno like nothing ever happened. One would think that Rina is heartless and cold-blooded killer, because that what she was at the beginning, but then she starts crying at Nijimi’s funeral, a girl she barely interacted with, a girl whose friend was brutally murdered by no other than Rina herself.

After Rina “magically” becomes one the good guys, she transfers to school, having NO MONEY and PARENTS to rely on because she took the identity of another Magical Girl. And she admits it when she decides to spend the night at Aya’s house, a girl she tried to kill a few episodes ago. At this point, the story doesn’t present any sense of logic. Characters do whatever they want to, change their personalities however they like, and get rewritten from scratch just so that they can fit the plot and its context.

I wish it gets better. Tsuyuno, Aya’s BFF, keeps the guy who killed her parents locked in her house in a BDSM fashion. Did I mention that the girls we’re talking about are only 14? Yet Tsuyuno sadistically tortures the killer day after day. Let’s not forget about Nijimi, a friend of Aya and Tsyunuyo and enemy of Rina. We have a whole episode where all the characters cry at her funeral when in reality they barely even knew her. It was unsympathetic and irrelevant because nothing was really giving to the viewer so he can CARE for her character, just like nothing was giving to the characters themselves so they can care for her. They just HAVE to pretend they do, and we just have to blindly imitate their emotions. This is why Magical Girls Site can never be considered a drama, simply because it fails portraying its characters and doesn’t develop their relationships and interactions between each other. It just paints them as if they exist already, and we just have to accept that. Just like we have to accept that 14-year-old girls can be worse than real life criminals.

On the other hand, Aya’s brother becomes a forced antagonist who wants to kill his own sister along with her friends. Wait, wasn’t he supposed to be focusing on his studies all day? Because that’s how he was presented in the beginning: an angel who studies in the day and a devil who tortures his sister at night. Again, he gets rewritten, just like everybody else.

Remember the leader of the bullies, Sarina? She wants to get back at Aya for killing her “friends” but suddenly becomes friends with her after she gets saved for no apparent reason. Let me get this straight: Aya saved a girl who mentally broke her, physically tortured her, and attempted raping her with her bigger “friend”. Sounds about right.

Even the voice acting was not well-handled. They hired a fairly new voice actress for Aya. When voicing, Yuku Ono was not acting. She really had trouble reading her lines. The other voice actors/actresses were acceptable. We have an ED that blatantly shows sperms flying around and girls dancing on the roof. Huh. In episode 4, there’s a live action ED based on Nijimi’s character. This was far better than the previous nonsense.

The animation was also mediocre. Besides the rather funny faces such as Njimi’s killer face or the brother’s rape-y face, nothing was really memorable. In fact, they tried their best to hide the facial traits of the characters especially during the more serious scenes for several minutes at a time. It didn’t help settle the mood, it just made it worse.

I wanted to like Magical Girls Site. I really did. But it turns out to be a show that ironically goes too far with its “edgy-ness” without actually going anywhere. It’s not a disappointing show that gradually becomes worse in time. It’s a show that starts bad and ends bad, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless he’s as mentally insane as the writer.

Ever wonder why Horror in general is the least appreciated and the fussiest of all the genres out there? Be it a movie, a TV Series or even a book, Horror has always been an experiment. And not the successful kind of one. You see, horror writers tend to focus on typical "scary" or disturbing elements, use absurd situations as scare tactics, and even rely on previously-used clichés just to be on the safe side. And the worst part is, they try to please every horror fan by mixing everything up together and shattering the story and its characters as a result. Sure, Gore is ... great, even "enjoyable" at some point, but not when it's irrelevant to the plot and used just to induce horror. Because it gets lame really fast.

“Another” is not one of those exhausting experiments. It's a diversion. It plays the audience as much as the audience "plays" each episode. The first five episodes are creepy to say the least, but not enough to encourage someone to keep watching because story-wise, nothing is actually developed in those episodes. The atmosphere surrounding the characters, their interactions and relationships with one another is just too unsettling and dark. And the viewers have to be patient; it's a price to pay.

“Another” is an unorthodox show that focuses more on the atmosphere while trying to fool the audience, rather than attempting to scare us using cheap mind tricks.

This review will consist of two parts: one about the many positives of the show, and the one thing that was in my opinion poorly handled.

(+) POSITIVES

●STORYTELLING:
MYSTERY: "A cursed and unfortunate class close to Death" is all you can get from 5 episodes. And while this simple phrase seems blurry and lacks any form of context, it makes it easier to tell more than just one story. It’s confusing, but at the same time intriguing, because it creates diversion. Here's the best way that I can describe it: the story is like a chameleon that continuously changes its color skin. In short, the writer meticulously creates a situation with multiple scenarios but showing only one at a time such as convincing the audience that one of the characters is a ghost or a potentially resurrected classmate nicknamed “extra student". The writer chooses to name the female lead character "Misaki" on purpose, which is conveniently the same name as a mysterious person who died 26 years ago and pretty much started all this misfortune. This first part of show succeeds in piquing our curiosity by simply teasing us with mysterious elements before explaining them afterwards. And this is important: it DOES answer the questions it raised contrary to most Mystery animes where they tend to keep you on the edge of your seat but at the end decide to keep all the details for themselves. Of course, raising one or two questions at the end may come in handy in some cases, but not when they only serve as an extra pile of unanswered questions.

SUPERNATURAL: As expected from a supernatural view, most of the deaths in the show are absurd, especially the first one. But is this excusable? Is it actually linked to the story (or just used for experimentation purposes like excessive gore and violence) ? Since the calamity causes someone related to the cursed classroom to die unexpectedly and sometimes inexplicably, yes. What's the chance of getting killed by an umbrella while walking down the staircase? Close to 0%. But I accept improbable deaths as long as they matter, as long as they are relevant to the core story (In this case, the curse).

HORROR: Sometimes, the small details matter because they help settle the mood and create something unique. One of the most interesting elements of “Another” is the use of representations to express feelings of loneliess, alienation and emptiness such as the focus on dolls which cleary depict lifelessness and isolation, the interpretations of different paintings (“The Scream”, random sketches of a wingless angel…), the ravens (Death), the rain (indicates misfortune to come and hints at traumas and tears) and the list goes on. The writer even associates the female lead character with complete emptiness by fusing her right eye with one of a doll, as if this wasn’t enough already. Mix those small elements up with a plain and simple horror setting such as “a curse in a school” and you’ll get an interesting result. Because it’s not an ordinary curse anymore, like striking a nail into a straw doll or anything like that. It’s a curse that involves ignorance and disregard (I’m not going to say more than that for fear of spoiling it) which happens to be of the many themes of “Another”. In fact, it shows us the horror by carefully exploring its hidden themes instead of resorting to meaningless violence like most horror shows do.

●ART & ANIMATION:
I don’t usually take much time in this section, but this time it’s an exception. The art is almost flawless: it’s overly detailed and carefully crafted and drawn to point that you can read the title and cover of the book that one of the background characters is reading, more or less. Speaking of which, every background scene has details and colors instead of the usual “blurry” cartoonish shapes or even worse, the famous “faceless” students in the back. The production team also took their precious time adjusting colors so they can perfectly fit into the scene and setting. They played a bit with wind effects at the beginning, helping us predict that misfortune is about to come, but they got tired of it later on.

All of the character designs are unique in their own way, making it much easier to distinguish them by their looks instead of their forgettable names. There are no characters that present remotely the same shape, outline and features: they have been drawn with a unique “skeleton” unlike what most animes are doing nowadays, where they focus on one particular design and then keep adding or removing facial features accordingly to match a different character. Apparently, they focused more on Mei Misaki ‘s character design, most likely to further isolate her from the others by adding more dark features than her Manga counterpart (which is cuter and less gloomy).

As for the animation, it’s fluid, concise and delicate. There’s almost no stuttering between frames, or overused jump frames that make question what just happened in the last few seconds. In short, you won’t have to rewind the episode to re-watch a scene, unless you’ve missed the subtitles.

●CHARACTERS:
Around 20 characters are present, including 5-6 main characters. This makes it impossible to develop all of them in a 12 episode-deadline. Instead, only the main characters are developed, especially Kouichi Sakakibara (Male Lead) and Mei Misaki (Female Lead). The others are only described with a single trait, such as a certain hereditary illness, nothing more. This leads to a certain dilemma: we can have some under-developed characters only if we will kill them later on for the sake of the story. People will complain that those deaths are meaningless as they weren’t invested in those characters and as a result, don’t really care what happens to them. OR: we can try to fully develop most of the characters including their background stories but we will still kill them (the story will remain unchanged). People will be outraged that the writers killed their “favorite” character(s) and wasted their precious time. So what’s the solution here? Well, we can’t have one without the other. And since some characters are cleary more important than others, the stage should be given to them instead. Discard the rest. And this is exactly what “Another” does. It presents its secondary characters by summarizing their traits, nothing more than that, and later on kills them in favor of future events to come. It’s a necessary sacrifice to be made, especially in the horror genre. People die, a lot. And it shouldn’t shock us. It’s a tragedy, and it made it clear from the start. Everyone is on the writer’s Death List, even if you don’t believe it yourself.

Regarding the characters’ psychological state, it’s messy, crumbled and distorted. They are scared, selfish, even psychotic and violent (last episode) and will do anything to stay alive, even if it meant killing their own classmates. Ironically, the character with the most distinctive traits is the silent one: Mei Misaki. “Another” shows us that there’s another way to express a person’s feelings and state of mind. Words lie (and Mei doesn’t talk much), but representations don’t (the scenes are mostly emphasized on her). The same goes for the main character.

●SOUND:
Most voice actors did a perfect job in conveying the characters’ emotions and feelings, so you won’t find one of those annoying high-pitched voices that makes you wish you were watching a Dubbed version (God Forbids).

OP made by ALI Project titled “Nightmare Contagion” was awesome and fit the horror-thriller genre perfectly. I recommend you give it a try if you enjoy eerie violin melodies and a good vocalist.

ED was an alright one.

( - ) NEGATIVES
Besides the slow-paced and dark beginning (first 5 episodes) which will discourage a lot of people to continue, “Another” had one problem. The execution of its last episode. It felt rushed and chaotic, and I believe it was on purpose. The writer wanted to confuse the audience by combining multiple events that happened, or were supposed to happen (some of the events couldn’t be shown on-screen due to time restrictions) while also making many character decisions for no other reason than hype us for the final revelation. Just like us, the characters were confused and lost, but out of their fear of dying miserably by “unfortunate events”, and this backfired a bit. Nonetheless, the ending was on-point and the closure perfectly wrapped up the whole story and may serve as a prologue to a next story with a good ending.

●ENJOYEMENT: I watched “Another” twice as of now. The first time was when it aired and I didn’t quite enjoy it because I didn’t pay much attention to the story and its metaphors. After a second examination, I loved it, maybe because I got tired of the repetitive horror shows out there and wanted something unique in its own way. Not the kind that makes you question your sanity or the writer’s sanity. But the kind that makes you curious, excited, frustrated and even sad at the same time. So to wrap this up:

Give this a try if you:
- Prefer atmosphere and setting over plain and simple horror story
- Look for acceptable main characters
- Enjoy exploration of dark themes

Avoid this if you are impatient. Otherwise you’ll be disappointed.

Before even watching any kind of TV series or movies, we always have expectations. Of course, we also get a “feeling” about how the show will progress by reading about it somewhere on the Internet or watching the first few episodes before building up our “requirements”. However, twists and turns don’t actually contribute to these expectations because they are generally more story-related, not content-related. The content is everything that the show has or is currently offering us, from characterization, to storyline, to animation and audio. Now you may be wondering what this is all about. Why should “expectations” matter? We should just watch and then ... judge, right? But on what basis? People’s opinions? No. Expectations. If you don’t expect the show to have a good set of characters, and if by any chance they turn out the other way around, then you will be surprised that this actually exceeded your expectation from the characters. It was twisted around, but in a positive way because the characters didn’t turn out the way you expected. If, however, you expect the series to show you something it promised but unfortunately failed then it’s an entirely different matter. Yes, we’re talking about Neon Genesis Evangelion, a show that promises everything but ironically presents absolutely nothing. NGE is all about one thing: False promises.

This review is spoiler free.

Let’s talk about what NGE actually promised us, the viewers. Character development is the first thing that comes in mind, because the main character is portrayed as a weak, self-absorbed and depressed individual with parent issues on top of that, who must overcome his weaknesses. There it is, “overcome”. And the show clearly emphasizes on that single word by constantly proving to us that he’s beginning to change, only of course he doesn’t at the end and stays the same. But we’ll get to that later. A secondary expectation is the action scenes, since it is a shonen after all, even if it tries to deconstruct the genre. Finally, there is one primordial requirement: a comprehensible story. This may sound vague right now, but we’ll talk about it in a moment. Right now, imagine reading a book with torn up pages. That’s how NGE felt like, not just to me, but to everyone who has watched it so far. Some people enjoy this sort of thing, and I don’t mind it either if it’s kept at a minimum level but there’s a difference between “contributing to the story” and “creating your own”. NGE used symbolism and philosophy on top of a somewhat “normal story” to make you confused and lost, but in my opinion it did more harm than good because it didn’t bother exploring those elements. They were just out of context so everyone tried to twist them around to their own liking. Personally, it is a nightmare for me to assemble a puzzle when I’m actually missing some pieces. It’s frustrating, and the only solution is to fill the missing pieces with something else, something that I MADE.

•STORY: Let’s cut to the chase. The story was like a roller-coaster that derailed at the end of the track; this is the best way that I can describe it. NGE begins on a promising premise, becomes a bit repetitive, but gets interesting again, and then finally loses its charm. It jumps from an unusual shonen where the main character has to overcome his weaknesses and solve his relationship with his father (this was my supposed expectation from the show) to a deep philosophical show where every single character whines and talks about his feelings and thoughts. What happened to the story and its objectives? It was thrown away from the window and replaced with depressive materials where the 14-year old characters speak as if they were divorced twice and lost their job. Yes, Shinji is supposed to be the writer’s projection into the show, but this sudden shift from one genre to another was irrelevant to the story. It was tiresome, because we already know how the characters feel and act in the show. We don’t need another set of episodes explaining the obvious.

This is not how psychological drama progresses. We’re supposed to anticipate the person’s feelings and thoughts through his interactions, actions, decisions, and ultimately relationships. And we already did in the first part of the show. It was beautifully presented, I admit. Unfortunately, NGE decides that it’s not enough and continues on its journey by pretty much summarizing the entire thing again instead of developing it. The characters constantly paraphrase ONE single thing. There is no development, no progress in the story. It even gives us a slight moment of false hope when Shinji was praised by his father who told him that he did a great job, and that was it. Shinji remembers this moment again later on, but then nothing happens afterwards. They both stay stagnant and their relationship doesn’t go anywhere. So what’s the point of watching a show if you constantly want to feel let down?

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. NGE had an acceptable story but rushed its ending in an almost comical way. It introduced a Deus Ex Machina character at the last second and suddenly everything was “resolved”. The two last episodes are not even qualified to be called “episodes” (budget issues) and barely tried to convey a message. On the other hand, NGE has a tendency to “tease” the viewer by throwing at him unexplained words. No, not feeding him information. Just words. Like “Human Instrumentality Project”, “Dummy Plug”, “SEELE”, “Angels”, “Adam”, “EVA”… Some of these words are ambiguous as they can be interpreted in a different way each time, but others are just unacceptable. Throwing words at the viewer without at least giving him some highlights makes the story look poor and weak, not mysterious nor deep. I admit that I was so frustrated when they kept using these words without explaining anything at all that I decided to look up the information on the Wikia fandom page. So enough teasing, get to the point already.

So besides the plot being a bit frustrating at some point, the psychological aspect of the show worked at first but was prolonged to fill more episodes. The story began simple but then was filled with useless symbolism to make it look like more than “just a story”. It failed however at delivering its message because everything was rushed at the end and the last two episodes were a joke (there’s a reason why they made an alternate ending and the movies, people!). The story wasn’t some form of allegory, because nothing was highlighted or given any meaning at all. It was pure teasing of religious references, unexplained elements and classical music.

•CHARACTERS: The characters are not bad per se, they just seem analogous. Most of them are heavily depressed and have parent issues, and there’s only one aspect that really separates them from one another. Also, new characters are introduced conveniently and too quickly by a simple phrase: “We found the one!” without a decent explanation of how they were found.

-Shinji: First of all, Shinji is not a bad character. Sure, he has his weaknesses, strengths and dilemmas but this is what makes him special. And this is exactly why many people despise or love him. He’s different than your average main character from any shonen. But this doesn’t mean he’s perfect. Yes, he’s supposed to be portrayed that way so he can feel realistic and more human because he makes irrational decisions, complains about everything yet secretly desires human contact. He has all the right to do these sort of things, but I don’t think he has the right to waste our time. The fate of the world rests in his hands, and what does he do? He goes to school! Instead of training hard, he wastes almost half of his screen time with his school friends when the world is two inches away from being extinct. And ironically enough, he complains that he’s lonely and weak. He also runs away more than once from NERV because he’s actually scared (and that’s fine) but comes back like it was nothing. So his characterization which was excused because he was clearly presented as an “imperfect human being” became underwhelming, even for him.

So at first glance, Shinji may seem closer than a human than a fictional character, but in reality he’s just a cheap excuse for the writer to project himself into the story. That’s why the second part of the show only focuses on Shinji’s psychological state. And his nihilistic view of the world remains the same. Why? Because that’s how the writer sees it, and wants you to see it in this way. So I wouldn’t call it “character development”. Even if we clearly notice that Shinji is actually making progress (Meeting new friends, protecting them, having his first kiss…), he denies it! And we’re back at square one. Again, it’s a false promise. His thoughts, emotions and attitude remain the same. Even if he has almost everything that he desired a long time ago, he’s still not happy about it.

-Rei: I wouldn’t call her a character because she acts like walking puppet. No personality, no emotions, no reactions, and this seemed to be the trend back then. Absolutely nothing that can characterize her besides her name and her “true identity”, but I won’t spoil anything.

-Asuka: She doesn’t actually contribute anything to the story. Everything that she says or does is because she wants someone to praise and acknowledge her as a human being. And this becomes irritating because we already have a character like her. It’s Shinji. Asuka doesn’t add anything new to the drama. She just magnifies it. It’s like stacking up several “Shinjis” on top of each other: it’s a character amplification. At some point, the show insists on her being Shinji’s rival as she constantly tries to overpower him so she can get all the attention for herself. So if she adds anything new to her character, it’s jealousy. She can’t stand not being the first and most powerful EVA pilot.
Moreover, some of her actions and decisions don’t make an ounce of sense, like deciding to kiss Shinji because she “was bored”. Sounds like she’s a fanservice material to me.

-Nagisa: A Deux Ex Machina who is conveniently introduced at the end and appears for no more than 10 minutes during the whole show so he can unexpectedly provide a lazy solution to the story. He’s not a character but more of physical key to the story and he was poorly handled. He was forced to interact with Shinji for a few minutes so he can leave a good impression on him. But it was JUST a few minutes, and this made Shinji thought of Nagisa as his own brother.

-Gendou Ikari: He’s always asking for the impossible, as he expects his 14-year old son to pilot a giant robot and fight aliens while he sits in his chair with a dead expression. If he was supposed to be some sort of an analogy of a strict and authoritative father in real-life then he clearly isn’t, because I don’t think any person with a functional brain would ask a child, let alone his son, to instantly turn into a soldier without a proper training or mentor. Sure, some parents push their kids a little bit too much but I’ve never seen a parent asking his kid to pilot an airplane. Have you?

•ANIMATION: The art is decent but the animation is rather disappointing to say the least, even if we take into consideration that the show is more than 20 years old. At first, the animation didn’t look that bad, but then we started starring at static images for up to 2 whole minutes. And it wasn’t to build up tension. It just made 1 second feel like 1 hour. But I wasn’t that annoyed, because the animation budget ran out… that is until I watched the last two episodes. Ah. Another false promise.

Instead of actually wrapping things up in the last few episodes, they decided to throw some poorly made sketches, flash some images here and there, while also adding some voices to still frames on a black background so they can stall for time. At that moment, the animation was no more “understandable” nor excusable. It was embarrassing and barely tried to conclude the story which at this point felt more like broken glass.

•SOUND: Voice acting was good for most characters. The opening is also great but doesn’t really fit the theme of the story. Remember, the second part of the show is heavily depressing and dark. So it’s not your typical, good-ending shonen at all, and I don’t think that the boy “became a legend” at the end, because honestly there was no ending, and the boy remained pretty much the same.

•ENJOYEMENT: I enjoyed NGE at first, especially the action scenes. Most dialogues between characters were somewhat interesting and mature while monologues were constant paraphrasing and a waste of time. I didn’t dislike the characters, but some of them were a waste of screen time and money, especially the school friends, Asuka and even the Penguin guy. Some animated scenes were decent, others were a complete disaster. So right now, NGE seems like any average show. It has its ups and downs. Except…

There was one thing that I, and many others, couldn’t stand. It’s the poorly explained story who barely tried to provide the viewer with information and constantly shifts between psychological drama (which was supposed to be the main theme) and philosophical fiction that mainly focuses on negative and dark themes such as pessimism, nihilism and cynicism.

In conclusion, NGE promised us character development, explanation of the mysterious elements that were continuously thrown at us, and a decent ending (which is the upmost and basic requirement of every storytelling) but gave us nothing in return. Even though it’s highly praised by many, I still can’t recommend it to anyone who wants:

-An acceptable character progression
-A properly explained story with a decent ending – A “Straight to the point” approach

Of course, if you’re still curious then you can try it out, but this is what you’ll be getting as a result:

-Stagnant characters who remain the same
-A barely explained story with no ending – A “Do it yourself” approach
-Unnecessary and irrelevant philosophical elements that become repetitive
-Disappointing animation, even considering how old the show is

However, if you like reading a torn up book and fill the missing pages, this show is for you.

Excessive violence can be useful in many ways. In Hellsing’s case, the violence shows us the worst side of Humanity by inverting the roles of the supposed “Good Guys” with the “Monsters”. In other words, it insists heavily on fanaticism to prove a point: to show us that humans can be worse than real monsters. Now the question is: Does it succeed?

It tries to, but in a pretty ridicule and pathetic way that it becomes more of a mockery than a message or a lesson.

The story is tedious and looks like any Vampires Vs Church or Zombies mashup movie. It is filled with ... made up historical facts but it doesn't matter since the writer cleverly uses distractions such as introducing a new character every episode as well as prolonging the action scenes more than they deserve.

The characters are blunt and can only be described as pretentious. They are all badasses who wear shiny white glasses to cover their eyes so things can get easier to animate. They look the same, behave the same and speak the same garbage nonsense for up to 7 whole minutes to waste our time. However, we do have one exception: Alcurad a.k.a Dracula a.k.a The Almighty Invincible Vampire of All Times who can’t be killed even if you tore him to pieces or cut off his head. Consequently, the action becomes very predicable so you’ll be left out rooting for the enemy instead, hoping for Alcurad to STAY dead this time. But nope. He can’t feel pain, can’t get hurt, and is impossible to kill. And it’s not because he’s a vampire (Even vampires can be injured or killed in the show, but not him). It’s because the writer said so. He’s a necessary plot device who obeys any order or request Integra (a.k.a the writer) gives him with a simple nod of “Yes, MY MASTER” (i.e “Yes, MY WRITER”) without even questioning it.

There is a scene where he becomes a brainless namby-pamby who can’t act on his own since he prefers sitting in the basement doing absolutely nothing and waiting for the intruders to massacre everyone in his mansion. He’s so strong yet doesn’t feel like helping his people. Instead, he sits on his chair, smirks while waiting a good 10 minutes for a strong opponent to finally show up. Then he acts as if he’s completely powerless and gets chopped off, only to turn into a nightmarish creature and kill whoever was in front of him.

What makes the show pathetic is the fact that he could have prevented the death of thousands of people simply by transforming into this deadly monster in the first place. This way he could have defended the mansion in a matter of seconds before coming back to defeat the opponent who conveniently showed up at the last minute. But we had to see him act irrationally for the sake of forcing the violence. Otherwise we won’t witness the unnecessary gore upstairs, right? Otherwise, the show won’t look good.

I’m not joking about this. This literally happens every single episode! Smiling Alcurad stays immobile and intentionally waits to get shot multiple times for hours until he finally decides to strike back. So if you have a problem with a flamboyant and over powered main character, now’s your chance to drop the show.

And what makes it even more frustrating is the scene where Alcurad slaughters thousands of innocent police officers who were just doing their job instead of simply escaping the building. He can’t die, right? So where’s the harm in trying to make a run for it?

I won’t waste any more time spoiling with more examples. This is what Hellsing is about. Violence for the sake of violence. Nothing more, nothing less.

Regarding the female lead Seras Victoriais, she’s a half-written supporting character who plays zero role in the story. I’m not exaggerating. Alcurad doesn’t even need her help since he can single-handedly wipe out thousands of enemies in a blink of an eye. Even her messed up back story was rushed and resolved very quickly for some unknown reason.

The villains are also boring and consist of a fanatic priest, ghouls, and a Hitler-wannabe who kills people simply because he “Loves war”.

The serious tone of the show is ruined by the excessive use of “funny scenes” to lessen the tension. There’s even a scene when Alcurad meets his archival again and things are about to get serious but suddenly Seras steps in to break the mood, leading a bunch of old people into what seemed to me like a concrete wall. Play that scene again if you don’t believe me.

Even though it takes itself too seriously, Hellsing prefers using random sketchy and goofy animations to make us laugh and forget about the dark side of it. This seems absurd since it goes to such great lengths to look dark and mature. And I’m not just talking about the excessive gore. I’m also talking about how the show proudly uses themes of rape and necrophilia, but how can we take it seriously if it constantly tries its best to make us forget about it, as if those elements are nothing serious to begin with?

Sadly, Hellsing stays monochromatic and fails to deliver its message. There is no contrast between good and evil. They are all portrayed as evil. You just have to pick a side, most likely the one that looks better than the other.

At the end of the day, Hellsing is a horror shonen-ish anime that does what it does best: impress us. The action can get pretty long but still keep you entertained. However, the characters are worth forgetting since they don’t even try to engage in the story. Their only concern is to show off so they can look good no matter what, but in reality they can all be reduced to a single character. That’s how homogenous they are. And the worst part is that they constantly use empty talk to stall for time so they can gain some sort of an advantage over the enemy which is ridiculous. So once again, if this isn’t your thing, stay away from this show.

Nonetheless, Hellsing still deserves a shout out for the amazing art and animation it has. It looks good, too good that you won’t even notice what’s wrong with it. So giving it an overall score of 4/10 seems like the least I can do.


Me: “So next time, what do you do when you’re in a Life or Death situation?”

Integra: “It’s easy. Play it cool. Smoke a cigarette and stall for time while waiting for your backup to arrive.”

Re:Zero is not one of those generic animes that almost anyone with a little bit of taste in the fantasy genre can enjoy, regardless of the things that keep bothering him such as excessive fan service or frustrating plot inconsistencies. No. Re:Zero is much, much worse than that. It’s a show that is aware of its own flaws but is surprisingly okay with them. It even points out several clichés and generic characters as they were mere facts. Re:Zero admits that it’s overwhelming and boring to use those elements again, and again, but uses them anyway and tries to hide them with violence and melodrama.

The ... show starts as a joke of almost every fantasy anime using the main character as the perfect parody tool, making him say satirical things like: “This must be the event where I cast my spell. Ha!”, “Where’s my protagonist status?” and “Where’s the cute girl who summoned me?” but then the story quickly settles down and becomes a serious matter. It’s like the writer wanted to tell us: “We get it. We know that you’re tired of this overused fantasy world, but we’re going to use it anyway”. We laugh because we know that they’re right, even though we feel like we’re giving them the permission to use it. After starting on a parodic tone, Re:Zero slowly becomes darker and darker throughout the episodes, using horror and drama as its main genres. It gives us this unusual feeling that it’s original and appealing unlike its siblings, by ending almost each episode with a dramatic cliffhanger (sudden death of a character for example). And the problem is, it takes advantage of it EVERY episode to shock the viewer by making the main character look miserable and pathetic to the point that it becomes repetitive and melodramatic. The writer has one rule: each episode MUST end with a cliffhanger whether it makes sense or not. Re:Zero hides under a carpet of clichés and uses drama as an excuse to get away with it. Many people don’t have a problem with this. They actually find it awesome and thrilling. But I don’t. I find it exaggerated and unnecessary. What we need is a real explanation of the story, but sadly there is none: the story is divided into small or long arcs so there is no “story line”. What we demand is a motive, a goal that our main character has to achieve, a reason why certain characters act the way they do, a character development or a background story and NOT a sudden character transformation into the “Good Guy”, nor a romance that’s going nowhere. Unfortunately, we get nothing. Nothing at all. There is no attractive story and the characters are badly written. The whole show is painful to watch and makes you want to break your screen.

Please note that some sections in this review contain some spoilers. Feel free to skip those sections indicated by a *.

Let’s start with the bad elements:

•STORY: It seems that nowadays, new animes are basically copy-pasting what’s popular (be it an idea, a set of characters, a setting…) and keep twisting it around until it becomes better. One of the major problems in Re:Zero is that it can’t decide what it wants to be so instead it becomes everything at the same time: parody, horror, mystery, slice of life, comedy, action… And you can’t just pile up all those elements and expect a good and comprehensible story. What is Re:Zero trying to be? That’s the question that I’ve been asking myself (and still is) the whole time. Because to me, the anime fails in every aspect: there is nothing mysterious that you have to find out. Instead, some elements are brought up once and then completely forgotten later (characters, plot elements…). The slice of life (the mansion arc) is unnecessary and repetitive: it doesn’t develop the relationship between the characters. It insults it because the time-travel resets everything. The comedy is also removable as it doesn’t relieve the tension, because there is no suspense to begin with. It’s a time-travel fantasy where the main character never dies and keeps respawning back in time to try again and again until he manages to save everyone. It’s like playing an arcade game where you have an unlimited amount of credits. You’ll win the game eventually.

1) DRAMA: The drama fails due to a simple plot device that keeps the show going: time-travel. Many writers don’t take this sensitive element seriously in their Si-Fi’s and fantasies, and use it whenever and however they want to. But the real advantage in using time-travel in a fantasy is allowing the writer to tell the story in a different kind of narrative: use of different characters and scenarios, seeing the story in another character’s point of view… Time-travel can easily lead to a suspenseful and interesting story if used correctly. However, if it is triggered when the person holding the ability dies, it becomes a little bit more difficult to handle. The main character’s emotional state becomes crumbled with fears and traumas after each death, whereas from now on, each character who will die besides him will have absolutely no effect on us because we already know that anyone can come back from the dead by time-travel. So the point of this “Rewind by Death” is not to shock the viewer, but rather the character. And the sad part is that everyone thinks it’s the same thing. It’s not. You’re feeling sorry for the main character, and not the person who has just died in front of him. And why should you sympathize with a useless main character who doesn’t do a single thing during the whole show? Nevertheless, the drama is forced due to the vicious cycle of death-rewind. It lost its value when the writer made this poor choice of allowing the MC to reset the day when he dies. So stop trying to force it, it’s not working.

2) CLICHÉS: I already mentioned this at the beginning, but Re:Zero is still full of clichés no matter how much you want to deny it. Think of it: knights, castles, elves, witches, “lizard people”, “ground dragons”, actual dragons, apples that look exactly like ones but are called “appas” (talk about originality), lolis, maids… The problem is that the show is aware of all of those lame and overused elements. For example, the MC refers the small and cute characters as “lolis” and barely use their actual name. So in the end, we can’t really say that the fantasy world in Re:Zero is original because the setting and characters are nothing we haven’t seen already. And changing the name of a known fruit is not going to help, sorry. Re:Zero is based on a whole bunch of clichés, and made this very clear to us. This seems ironic given that it’s a cliché and is trying so hard not to be.

3) CLIFFHANGERS: The cliffhangers are poor. Some of them are too predictable, others are too unexpected and impossible to believe. Cliffhangers must make a little bit of sense and more importantly be relevant to the story but instead, they are used left and right for shock purposes. It’s not shocking if it’s not convincing, and it’s not convincing if it’s not provided with any proof. Even the MC doesn’t understand what’s going on anymore, so how can we? One or two cliffhangers are fine, but if you’re going to end each episode with one because you want more drama to your story then it’s not going to work. The viewer will eventually get bored after playing the long and famous game: “Who’s going to die next?” And the answer is too obvious: Subaru, and maybe another character that we don’t care about.

*MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*

An example of a typical cliffhanger is the episode where we learn that one of the maids Rem killed the MC. Get this: a loyal maid trying to kill the totally-not-suspicious guest who tried to save her master more than once. This was way out-of-character. She didn’t even talk about her suspicions with anyone, and didn’t even provide any evidence. The only thing suspicious about Subaru was his witch scent, but everybody knew that and nobody really cared to bring that up again.

How about the episode where our MC commits suicide, but then becomes too scared to die again and let the "plot conveniences" (some random monster you don’t know yet) take care of that? Why raise more questions when you can simply avoid them by letting him commit suicide again? And we're talking about a desperate and hopeless guy who wants to save EVERY SINGLE character he meets, even villains who tried to kill him once. And that’s definitely not going to work if he’s going to wait for something or someone to kill him so he can reset everything. He’s wasting his time, and ours.

There’s also an episode where Rem is brutally killed in front of Subaru because the killer wanted him to feel guilty and bad. That’s the reason why there are so many deaths in this show: to traumatize the main character, and not us. Because killing a character in this show is unbelievable and pathetic. It’s like faking death: we already know that whoever dies is not really dead and will come back by Rewind.

*END OF SPOILERS*

The endings are executed in a way to keep the suspense and thrill but in the end it’s just for a cheap shock value to keep you hanging and wanting more.

4) PLOT CONVENIENCES: The story doesn’t look appealing nor smart at all. Why? The plot conveniences are everywhere, not to mention too easy to spot. This makes the characters look manipulated instead of independent.

The first issue is that all the deaths are forced and used against the MC in order to traumatize him.

*MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*

In episode 14, Subaru arrives at the mansion only to find everyone dead. He then blindly walks into a suspicious ice room and suddenly freezes to death by some curse just after hearing someone whispering to him: “You’re too late”. That’s right: Subaru waits to be killed by the unknown because letting him commit suicide will be nuisance to the writer, since Subaru will take advantage of it every time and use it whenever something bad happens. Instead, the writer let him witness everything because he wants to traumatize him even more, kills him using someone/something we don’t know about, and later on tries to justify it. That’s not smart. That’s running away from a logical path that the character could have taken.

An episode later, Subaru gets his head chopped off by the same monster. His death is not only absurd, but confusing. After we learn the monster’s identity, we then come to the conclusion that killing Subaru in this way doesn’t feel right. It was not his fault. It never was. The monster could have prevented all of this, but didn’t because Subaru HAD to die. It’s almost as if he let him die on purpose. And the writer tries to justify his poor excuse of making this monster kill Subaru even if it doesn’t look compatible with the monster’s personality.

Another issue is a very annoying plot armor: the inability to inform anyone about the Rewind ability, either by killing the person holding the ability or by killing the person listening about it. Subaru needs to suffer ALONE before transforming into a completely different person. If he ever tries to alert someone, he starts hallucinating and seeing a witch’s hand coming from the dark grabbing his heart. Let’s say for the sake of argument that this is part of the witch’s curse. Couldn’t he IMPLY that he has been there before or that this was a Deja-vu? Repeating a character’s line for example, predicting his actions and movements… Is it that hard? (like the MC in “All You Need is Kill” or its movie adaption “Edge of Tomorrow”). But of course that’s too much for Subaru. He can barely lift a sword, literally. What about the other characters? Are they like Subaru incompetent and indifferent? Just by observing a person’s behavior, you can tell that there is something wrong with him, or that he may have experienced this before. We get to see one of the characters who barely shows on-screen saying that there’s something off about Subaru’s eyes, and that he looks like he experienced many deaths and traumas, but keeps it to himself. It seems that no one really cares about Subaru or pay any attention to him, and I guess it’s normal given his personality.

The writer needs something that can emphasize the drama. Every episode, from 1 till 18, someone HAD to die or something bad HAD to happen so Subaru can feel guilty, because that’s all on him. He’s the only one who can prevent this using his ability but nobody can help him because they’re not allowed to. So this is really a cheap plot armor that is barely justified by the writer. It is used to traumatize the MC, and it takes way too long that the trauma eventually becomes impossible to erase or overcome. So how, in just one single episode, did Subaru magically overcome his trauma that began since the very first episode and turned into a completely different person? But we’ll get to that later.

After episode 18, the drama fades away, because it did what it had to do: make the MC suffer alone using a simple tool: time-travel, while preventing him from telling anyone about it, since it would hurt the show so badly it would end in 12 episodes instead.

The story is also riddled with plot holes. The writer doesn’t explain why Subaru is suddenly transported to another world and then cursed by a Witch who doesn’t show up in the end. He doesn’t explain how the “save point” works. One of the most obvious examples is the episode 23 where Subaru respawns back to the strategy meeting after the White Whale battle and says: “Wow. My save point was updated!”, which is the same as him implicitly saying “Thanks writer, even though I have no idea what happened!”.

5) FILLERS: The story doesn’t have a sense of continuity because it’s divided into small and unrelated stories. Some of them are short and acceptable, others are fillers to lengthen the drama and waste our time. I’m going to explain the real reason behind those removable parts of the show, so I’m most likely going to give examples.

*OBVIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD*

The Mansion and the Village Arc (Episode 4 to 12): This whole arc has one purpose based on an absurd claim: to strengthen the relationship between Subaru and Rem after she killed him several times because she thought he was a threat to the whole mansion. This is why it’s absurd: she’s JUST a maid so it’s not up to her to decide who lives and who dies. The fact that she’s even trying to kill a guy that has done nothing more than being nice to everyone and helping them because he’s in debt is beyond ridiculous. Subaru tries to convince her that he’s innocent but she doesn’t even listen to him. Beatrice act as his witness and tries to justify his innocence but fails. He blames himself for that and tries to figure things out because his life is at stake here, and not because he cares about Rem. So this arc is just another way for him to escape death by building a fake relationship between a maid so he can earn her trust. The writer makes Rem act irrational and out-of-character by accusing an innocent guy with no evidence whatsoever so he can give this arc a meaning. So if this isn’t filler, what is?

The Royal Selections (Episode 13): This episode has one goal: to get Subaru into a fight with Emilia. How? By making him look as ridiculous and pathetic as possible in front of everyone. The episode looks like a joke because not one single character in it takes the situation seriously. Subaru keeps screaming and shouting at anyone who insults Emilia. One of the council of elders is caring enough to ask him who he is and if he is done with his painful speech already instead of throwing him out instantly. Felt (one of the eligible candidates) also makes a scene screaming at Reinhard and asking him what she is doing here (I mean, isn’t it obvious?) but later on claims that she will kill everyone in this town if she ever becomes the queen, because to her that’s what a perfect ruler should do. Priscilla claims that she will become a tyrant and make everyone kneel before her, while Anastasia informs us that she’s too greedy and wants her own nation. Old Man Rom literally pops out from the ground to save the day and Emilia finally kicks Subaru out of the room after getting embarrassed in front of everyone. In other words, the introduction of the candidates which was supposed to be the whole point of the episode happened too fast and eventually turned out to be another cringe moment for the viewer.

The White Whale Arc (Episodes 19 to 21): the main objective of this arc is to make Subaru look smart and helpful, showing us a contrast between his old personality. This arc is no more than just a fight against a giant floating whale that takes up to 40 minutes when it could have ended instantly. Yes, the fight looks serious and cool, but what does it have to do with the story? Isn’t Subaru’s current objective to save Emilia, and not to waste his time running around a monster while teasing it? Wilhelm thanks him even before the fight because defeating this monster is avenging his dead wife, so it’s kind of a big deal for him. In other words, the writer makes the arc look serious and necessary to everyone so we don’t complain about it, and here I am trying to figure out the whole point of it. I think Subaru’s priority is to defeat the guys who killed Emilia in the first place (The Witch worshipers), and not a random monster who killed him once.

*END OF OBVIOUS SPOILERS*

•CHARACTERS: If you thought the story was bad, just wait and see what’s even worse.
The characters are too plain. They have up to 2 noticeable characteristics and once they do their job, they are thrown away into the garbage and completely erased from the show. Moreover, most of their lines and dialogues sound cheesy and messed up. Here are some examples:

“Do I look clever to you?”

“You are still Emilia’s dog”

“Explain this to Emilia and the loli”

“That was a vague order, but alright”

“Thank you for being defeated”

"Only I'm allowed to sniff Subaru"

“Love love love love love love love love love love love…”

“That was perfectly well-coordinated. Did you guys practice that for this meeting?”

"Will you be quiet? I'm trying to make myself look good."

This is not a joke. Those are actual lines from the show that are applied to serious situations like fights, meetings, convincing a certain character about something, giving an order. In general, the characters are well-presented (art, animations, voice) but look dumb when they talk so it’s impossible for you to take them seriously. It’s like they don’t even care about their situation as much as we do. They talk because they NEED to, whether what they say makes any difference or not. They don’t have a mind of their own. They are just following the writer’s orders without thinking like a reasonable human being.

1) MAIN CHARACTER: To put it simply, Subaru is an 18-years old that acts as if he’s 12. He has a special ability that lets him rewind time by his own death but he barely takes advantage of it and doesn’t really explore its limitations. He thinks of it as a joke and doesn’t understand what he’s truly capable of. In the first episode, it took him 5 seconds to realize that he’s been transported into a fantasy world: “It's safe to assume that this is a fantasy world” (Episode 1, minute 3), but when he dies the first time and resets the day, it took him almost 2 episodes to understand that he can time-travel by death (did I mention that he’s a NEET who plays video games and watches movies all day?). And what’s worse is that when he goes back in time, he takes the same routes and doesn’t try out new ones. He goes to the same alley where he got mugged last time and screams to the thieves: “You again?”. This is a time-travel fantasy, shouldn’t you at least explore different paths, meet different characters, and for the love of God question yourself: “How did I get here?” or “How do I get out of this place?”

In other similar shows like SAO, GATE and KonoSuba, the main character voluntarily travels to a fantasy world, so he doesn’t need to find a way out of it since he knows what he’s doing. So why does Subaru who is suddenly transported to another world take the situation so lightly that he doesn’t even TRY to escape. He accepts everything that happens to him AND everyone that he meets without using his brain.
Instead of searching for a way out of this world or getting rid of the curse, he ends up hunting for waifus, from maids to princesses to cat girls, because to him that’s more important than safety.

Subaru is one of those main characters who pretends to be the “know-it-all” but actually has zero intelligence. He doesn’t do anything in this show; it’s that simple. Instead, he just let the other characters do their job as he sits idly, claiming that he will save everyone. Hell, he even admits it later. There’s one sentence that could sum up his personality: “Go with the flow”. And by flow I mean plot. Subaru’s role is to blindly follow the plot without thinking twice. He repeats the same mistakes over and over again because he NEEDS to die so he can reset everything or wait for something “shocking” to happen in the end of the episode. In other words, he acts this way for the sake of the drama-cycle (so he can die, reset, then die again…)

Subaru’s second role is to over-dramatize the show, either by making an irrational decision, regretting it later and blaming himself for everything (even though it’s not his fault. He feels guilty because he knows he can do something about it but doesn’t) or becoming completely traumatized and unable to speak. One of the writer’s main objectives is to show us a development of his mental state (from best to worse) but it becomes exaggerated and too dramatic. There’s a whole episode where he doesn’t speak a single word because he witnessed another death: he has given up, but he hasn’t done anything AT ALL so how can he easily give up? Death is a serious matter, but not when you can reset it by time-travelling. It’s almost as if you’re taking advantage of it, since this will help you avoid it next time by exploring different possibilities. I don’t want to spoil another anime, but go watch Magical Girl Madoka and you’ll know what I mean.

Subaru also changes his behavior every time the plot demands it. Sometimes, he makes a scene because the show needs more drama. Sometimes, he doesn’t and completely turns off his psychological scars by pretending nothing happened because the drama needs to cool off at some point. He saves a maid who killed him once while pretending that she didn’t. He ends up protecting a thief named Felt while pretending that she’s not the reason why he and Emilia died in the first place.

Subaru wants to feel like a main character even though he’s not, at least not to me. You can almost hear his screams “Notice me! I’m important too” when he throws a tantrum in the royal selections episode and gets mad at anyone who insults Emilia, even in the episode where a Knight simply kissed her hand showing his respect towards her. On the other hand, Subaru acts like an ex-boyfriend who’s still overprotective towards his supposed girlfriend. He claims that he’s a Knight that’s going to protect her in a room full of Imperial Knights while wearing a track suit and shouting like a complete idiot but that’s just too pathetic because he simply can’t. Everyone knows that. He knows that. Consequently, Subaru is beyond pathetic and cringe-worthy. He shouts that he’s going to save everyone and two minutes later he runs away begging for people to help him, to the point that he was willing to lick the foot of a princess. Yes, that’s how far he was going.

After episode 18, Re:Zero becomes another “Find the missing Main Character” game (similar to Tokyo Ghoul Root A), where you have to question yourself: Who is the main character in this show? Is it Wilhelm, a Knight who suddenly becomes important to the plot and defeats the enemies in one swing of his sword? Is it Julius, a respectable spirit knight who acts as Subaru’s personal bodyguard? Or is it Subaru, the supposed main character who can only act as bait using his witch scent?

In episode 18, Subaru becomes self-aware and finally accepts his character: “What I am now is the result. All my powerlessness, all my incompetence, is the product of my rotten character (…) That’s right. I have no character”. If he was aware of his character the whole time, why didn’t he do anything about it? Why wait an endless 18 episodes to do so? And here’s the worse part: his character transformation is too sudden. After Rem’s speech, his personality makes a 180⁰: he becomes smart, patient and calm. This long speech barely seems convincing and powerful to completely turn a person’s personality upside down. It’s the personality that we’re talking about: it’s almost a built-in feature that you are born or raised with and it’s too difficult to change that quickly. It takes months, even years. And using Rem’s love confession is a weak excuse as it doesn’t suddenly make him a better person: it takes time.

There is no convincing character transformation, like the one we see in Tokyo Ghoul (where the MC was mistreated during the whole show and almost tortured to death before becoming a complete badass). Even though his character is written that way to make you hate him and then watch him overcome his flaws, it takes up to 18 episodes and in the end it doesn’t really succeed. After “Subaru’s second form”, he becomes a completely different person: calm, reasonable, smart... A true gentleman who admits his mistakes and forgives his enemies. It’s impossible to believe that 1 episode ago he was the same character. Subaru 2.0 still asks people for help because he can’t do anything on his own and acts as bait the whole time while others defeat the enemies. So what really changed in all of this? He made one good decision (a deal with a princess) and that was it. Then what’s the problem? He’s still weak and useless, but everyone accepts him as their hero and start helping him out for no reason: he gets his own army at his command, even though before no one knew about his existence and if they did they though he was a complete idiot. His character transformation is like night and day: one second he was irrational, stupid and thinks that he’s Rambo and then 1 episode later after one simple love confession everyone thinks of him as Napoleon executing the perfect plan or Gotham’s next Batman saving the entire city? I don’t buy this.

Believe it or not, Re:Zero becomes another shonen after the MC’s “transformation”. Rem made it very clear to us when she kept insisting that Subaru is her Prince Charming. There are different factors involved. I’ve counted three so far:

1) He informs the people about the whereabouts of the White Whale (a floating monster), because apparently nobody in this world can use their magic powers or a simple magic spell to track it down.

2) In every single fight, he acts as bait using his witch scent while others defeat the enemy.

3) He risks his life by acting as bait again, and saves a random maid he barely knows by doing so. Not to mention that the risk is non-existent to him since he can reset time the moment he dies.

Doesn’t this seem a little bit insulting to other heroes out there, who try their best to defeat the enemy, using their different set of physical and mental skills? I’m not even convinced that Subaru is a main character, so how can I believe that he becomes a hero later?

Not to mention the overuse of soliloquy (a situation where the protagonist speaks his thoughts out loud so he can indirectly address himself to us). Subaru keeps screaming out loud "OMG. I'm awesome!", "I look great!" and "I'm garbage" so he can highlight his character. He points out clichés to tell us "See? I'm aware of that, so it's not a cliché!".

2) SECONDARY CHARACTERS: Well, let’s start will the main heroine Emilia. She is a kind and caring person but in reality she’s simply a cheap fan service element for a barely developed and non-reciprocal romance. She’s very naive as she welcomes Subaru into her home after knowing the guy for no more than 10 minutes and that he smelled like the Witch (a very despised figure in the show). In addition, Emilia’s character doesn’t get enough development and this seems crucial since the whole show is driven by the relationship between Subaru and Emilia. Think about it: if you remove her then everything else will lose its meaning: the maids, Subaru’s objective and decisions… Emilia can be considered as a plot engine, and some characters even admit it. Ram acknowledge Subaru as “Emilia’s dog” (actual line), not only because he acts as one (he barks at people he doesn’t like and defends his master without thinking) but also because the story wouldn’t have made any sense if his master was not in it. Isn’t this the plot device of the whole show: a relationship between a dog and his master? So why give more attention to side characters like Rem & Ram? Let’s analyze then each character so we can see for ourselves:

-Rem: a bipolar maid with no fixed personality. She starts as a kuudere, becomes a yandere and slaughters everyone, goes back to being cold to Subaru, goes completely insane, then becomes surprisingly kind, but later on turns into a typical tsuundere who can’t admit that she’s in love. So instead of creating more maids, the writer decided to mix all the possible personalities you can come up with into one bowl of a character, thinking that he created a character development instead. Rem acts as a supporting character as well as a fan service one. Try to remember what happened in episode 18: she falls in love with Subaru while telling us (and not him) a fantasy about them living together and having kids that we know will never happen so we can fantasize about it. And of course, she’s just another mindless puppet who makes the drama look even more dramatic by acting irrational all the time and getting herself killed. Her actions barely help the story and the MC. In fact, she once ran away from Subaru and went to the mansion all by herself only to be brutally killed. This was the only safe and logical decision she could think of. But in reality, she was just following the drama path: to shock and traumatize Subaru when he finds out that everyone is dead.

-Ram: Rem’s twin sister with a dull personality, unless you consider “cold and irrational” a type of personality. Her character design is almost the same as Rem’s (except for her hair color) but surprisingly she’s not giving any importance at all. She’s there because the writer needed a background story for Rem, then decided to throw her away since she did her job. In episode 23, she comes back, only this time to kill Subaru and his entire army because he left the mansion and ran away from his master: “So this is what it means to bite the hand that feeds you”. It was Emilia who asked Subaru to leave the mansion in the first place after they got into a fight and NOT him running away to a new master without telling anyone. It was a simple request, not a betrayal. So if she can’t even tell the difference, what can she really do?

3) SIDE CHARACTERS: Almost all the side characters seem completely static and hold no real meaning in the show. They are there because the story is not crowded enough and the writer needs some fillers.

-Wilhelm: His Sword training with Subaru doesn’t change anything. It’s just to show us that the MC is actually trying to do something for once, that he’s trying his best, but he fails in doing so and finally admits it. Wilhelm is suddenly giving more attention than primary characters when he got his own flashback about how he met his wife. He can almost be considered as a main character replacement for Subaru.

-Beatrice: a tsuundere loli who despises Subaru but ironically enjoys his company. She tries to help him by convincing Rem that he’s innocent but apparently that led to his suicide.

-Reinhard: a.k.a “Mr. Nice Guy”. He’s an angel, a saint who helps Subaru out of the goodness of his heart but later on abducts a harmless child. Lolicon confirmed?

-Felt: too childish and ignorant. She blindly follows Reinhard without resisting and becomes one of the eligible candidates for becoming the ruler, only to ask him in a room full of princesses, Imperial Knights and people: “Why did you bring me here, and why am I dressed like that?” (most likely to relieve the tension).

-Felis: your typical cat-girl who turns out to be a boy even though he acts, speaks, and looks like a girl. His job is to look cute and help others without interfering with the harem (like the one in Highschool DxD).

-Julius: a spirit knight who takes his role very seriously, until he becomes Subaru’s pet and obeys any order he gives him without complaining.

-Roswaal Mathers: because the show needs another clown besides Subaru. He acts and speaks like a clown. That's his only unique trait.

- Betelgeuse (In English “Beetle Juice”): One of the 7 Sin-Archbishop representing Sloth. He reminds me of Nobuyuki Sugou: a one-dimensional, too-evil villain who becomes a joke in the show due to his funny way of speaking and acting.


Now for the good elements:

•ART & ANIMATION: The art looks really good and is actually nice to look at. The background scenes are noticeable enough and more detailed than usual. The choreographic scenes are fun to watch, others become repetitive but that’s fine. In conclusion, the art & animation is overall enjoyable.

•SOUND: The voice acting was acceptable except for some characters like Bettelgeuse: it was too high-pitched and was a pain to the ears. We get that he’s a villain but trying to make his voice as ugly and insane as he looks is just too much that he eventually becomes some sort of a joke in the show. We look at him and all we see is a Joker-wannabe but with a really annoying voice. Another voice acting that was supposed to be funny became extremely distracting and ruined the whole mood: Roswaal Mathers’ voice. It even makes you question his sexuality.

Other voices are good, like Rem & Ram (same voice actress), Emilia, and most male characters.

The OP was also great. I never skipped it. Same thing for the ED, except I didn’t listen to it every time. I was too busy trying to figure out the ending.

•CONCLUSION: In a nutshell, Re:Zero is an obvious cliched fantasy that tries its best to appeal to the general public. What I mean by that is the typical “edgy” cliffhangers, the time-travel, the fantasy elements (cute maids, princesses, Knights… the usual), the horror elements (blood and gore… so it can look serious and addressed to adults), the melodrama (way too much), the harem... Now try imaging a show that has all of those elements and more. No wonder you’ll get a messy, scrambled anime that is not just confusing, but painful to watch.
Re:Zero has a tendency to introduce certain characters but later on completely dispose of them as they were mere paper characters. Now the characters are one thing, but take a look at the story line: it’s not linear nor episodic. It’s lazy and filled with useless and boring arcs. It’s a whole bunch of stories, like a small book that you read to your child at night: it doesn’t make any sense but it’s a good way to make him fall asleep quickly.

•ENJOYMENT:
I never enjoyed a single second in this show. Why should I? The story is divided into stories, the main character is pathetic, useless, and acts like an idiot but suddenly becomes the hero we all need by acting as bait the whole time. Some episodes were rushed, others were mere fillers and the cliffhangers are always there, whether they make sense or not. Fan service and forced drama win in the end, because that’s what people want nowadays.

Do I recommend this? Well, let’s see:

Do you like to watch a bunch of unrelated stories, each one in a different genre?

Do you enjoy watching a completely useless and static main character similar to a statue?

Do you have a problem with abusive drama and cliffhangers that don’t make any sense?

After you answer each question, you'll know what to do.