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Kaijuu no Kodomo is the personification of a teenager smoking weed for the first time and spilling into incoherent babble about life and the universe. "Duuuuuuuuuuuuuude the seas and the stars are one... We're all, like, totally connected." Without any hint of self-awareness, prattling on about romantic-sounding yet entirely vacuous germs of ideas about "listening to the song on the winds," "we're all made of the same matter... whoaaaaaa..." and other such flowery, inconsequential drivel. The characters and plot are superficially there to laboriously drone on about shallow musings on life and the universe. What little there is in terms of ... narrative in the first half entirely falls away for a second half of self-indulgent spectacle, pretty to look at but utterly devoid of any substance, yet completely oblivious to how pompous it is.

I really can't stress how cartoonishly self-aggrandizing this is. Don't bother watching it if you at all intend to pay attention. There are nice visual sequences in here but it's only surface-deep. This would be completely boring and unremarkable if it weren't for how outrageously pretentious it is.

When I started writing this review, I was a little more generous than I think it deserves. This anime deserves a D, it just barely passes the bar, and I would not recommend it, even conditionally, to anyone.

Summer Time Rendering is ultimately a grab bag of fun sci-fi for young adults mainstays, *rendered* in as cheap and juvenile a way as you possibly could. There is no point throughout the show where you will not be held by the hand, with CONSTANT over-explanation of everything: not only pertaining to the mystery at hand, but all aspects down to every thought of, well, not ... even just the protagonist, literally whoever is the current PoV will be monologuing at you. The show does its damnedest to make sure you don't have to worry your poor little head with things like interpreting what is going on or even how our characters feel. And almost like a rhythm to the show, when the monologuing and exposition dump dialog stops, that means it's time for some not-so-tense suspense. The show betrays any inkling of tension in several infuriating ways: it firstly has prevailing tonal inconsistency, flip-flopping between wacky anime gags and ecchi humor, and turning the corner sharpish into stone cold life-or-death seriousness. At the drop of a hat, you will have characters confessing love and Dr. Slump style gag faces into someone getting stabbed in the head. It's hard for the "oh shit" moments it's going for to have any impact when they're prefaced by grating "comedy" bits, themselves things you'll have seen a million times before. It's less "OMG" and more "finally, we can get back to the story." It gets even worse as it establishes this rhythm, making the literal out of nowhere twists somehow anticipated. Even when the gag stuff isn't groan-inducing, it still somehow always feels out of place in the context of the story. Going beyond this, as I've said before, it's very overt in its presentation, and it frequently slides out of mystery/investigation into thriller chase/run/fight, the latter becoming basically the entire back half of the show, culminating in a climax reminiscent of Hellsing of all things. It was loud, it was lights and noise and disintegration of anything you probably came into this show at full force. Many of the sci-fi themes Summer Time Rendering plunders from more thoughtful peers and predecessors end up being rather shallow explorations, often ending up simply being used once to explain or handwave away why something else is the way it is. The more integral sci-fi ideas the show is built on fare a little better in that they are more fleshed out, but the development of this ideas is pretty linear and only serves to progress the narrative, rather than offer any deeper open-ended implications, let alone anything applicable more broadly to life or humanity at large. There aren't any moral questions to leave with, there are no hypothetical worlds to explore on your own. It's a closed system of unoriginal concepts used to deliver a rather cheap narrative. And God forbid I mention the tired old NON-sci-fi conventions.

Cheap drama, flimsy motivations and back stories, a story that rips the thrills, suspense, and interaction straight out of your hands make this an extremely unsatisfying experience, one that has just enough ingredients to not be an absolute failure, and a few things it does well enough that I didn't credit here because they ultimately pale in comparison to all it does wrong preventing it from going to "it's a story" to "it's a good story." If you're 14 and have literally never engaged with any sci-fi before, you probably would like it, I'm sure this is going to be influential in many little zoomies' lives, but if you're any more mature than that, just skip this. Anything you see in the synopsis that makes you think you'd like this, I guarantee there is a better-rendered ;) story somewhere else.

If you loved Red Garden and wanted more: DO NOT WATCH THIS. I made the mistake of watching it and in spite of all my efforts to keep it separate from the original show, it's still creeping in to taint the memories. This OVA starts out with amusing character dynamics and fun nods to the original but by the end of it, it is a waste of time in its own right and, with regards to the show proper, is an assassination of the characters you fell in love with and the story that presumably moved you. Don't take the same psychic ... damage I did and just pretend this doesn't exist.

This show was a pleasant surprise. When I decided to pick this anime up, I knew virtually nothing about it, and that's how I'd recommend experiencing it, so I'll try to give you just enough justification to trust me and watch it yourself. If you're already here on this MAL page and on the fence of whether to pick it up or keep going, please read on for a bit of mindset I think approaching this with will maximize your enjoyment of it.

This is an anime that will require some concessions to get the most out of, but goddamn it it's worth it. ... For most of the runtime, it looks like shit. There is a blatant lack of funding behind it, prominently evident in much of the visuals (this is a QUALITY anime if there ever was one.) From backgrounds and non-important objects and people looking straight out of the 80s to the "fight" "scenes" (yes those quotes both need to be there,) you will not be impressed except for maybe a handful of climactic moments and the inserts with an entirely separate but beautiful artstyle. The script isn't the tightest; it could use some revision that they didn't have time or money for to iron out a lot of contrivance and missed opportunity, so you will need to have the ability to look over convenience for the sake of keeping the plot going, or gaps in explanation for the full world-building. The voice acting ranges from "damn fine job" to "where did they find this guy." HOWEVER! If you can relax your standards, what lies beneath is a character-driven mystery-thriller-drama in the vein of SHAKESPEARE. Yes, I'm serious. I was thoroughly invested, on the edge of my seat, and once it gets going, the emotional punches just keep coming and you won't be able to take your eyes off the screen. There really is a diamond in the rough here. The mysteries are intriguing enough and the characters endearing enough that, once you're hooked by the story, the goofiness of the unpolished aspects offers its own charm. I would be remiss to call this a masterpiece, but there is a compelling stageplay-esque drama here. It moved my dusty old heart and made me feel things I haven't felt in years in spite of the weak production and at times lacking script.

SSSS.Gridman was a shocking success for me. Before deciding to watch this, I'd never heard of Gridman the property, and from the experience I have with Studio Trigger anime, was fully prepared for this to be just more of Trigger doing as Trigger does. Narrative focus has never been their strong suit, always feeling like an after-thought in favor of action, humor, and "the cool factor." So color me blown away when I watched Gridman to find, by God, an intimate, character-driven low concept drama draped in the typical Trigger fashion?!!

Yes, as shocking as that may seem, this show is very much ... a tight, smart seriocomedy focusing on just five characters and their feelings and relationships, reacting to each other and the changes they go through, using giant monsters and alien robots as merely a backdrop to set the stage. More important than the focus being on the narrative, though, is that it is also done WELL?! Now you must be doubly surprised. Yes, I'm glad to say that the characterization is the perfect balance between the typical simple, silly fare one might expect from Trigger, but with great attention to making them have real, human thoughts and feelings and reactions, subtle enough to organically understand them without needing to be over-the-top, shoved in your face oversimplifications or leaving them shallow and one-dimensional. It never goes so far into being brooding melodrama, but has enough seriousness to also not be kiddy, mindless schlock. Gridman is the ideal for what I think trigger should be striving for in terms of narrative focus.

That said, if you come to this show seeking action, or even if you don't, you will still find the actual fighting to be underwhelming. It feels mostly inconsequential exactly how the fights go down (until the last few episodes) and it's easy for your mind to wander during the combat scenes. It's a shame that the individual characteristics of the large majority of the kaijus have no bearing on the narrative and diminishes the gravity they ought to convey. Now, as much as I appreciate attention to the narrative, I'm not a complete condescending 2deep4u snob. I like me some kickass action, too, just not when it's mindless punch kick explosion garbage without purpose. Thematically, the kaiju *are* just props, but they are also the impetus for the plot and having them be indistinguishable from each other beyond appearance emphasizes how underutilized the whole framing device of the show is. The action is typically relegated to the last five minutes of the episode and during that time feels almost severed from the character development going on for the bulk of the screentime.

The last two or three episodes really drive this home (while at the same time showcasing the potential for the interweaving of action and story.) I really don't want to spoil anything but there's a certain kaiju in the 10th episode iirc that embodies the narrative themes of the current situation and while it's going about its course, the action AND the story coalesce into a perfect exemplar of having everything on screen matter without a single wasted thought. It's really hard to convey what I mean without spoiling it so I hope that got through. Because the last two episodes have the opposite and what I'd consider the lowest point of the action, where it does just devolve into brainless bang and boom, and a lot of that I think can be attributed to the fact that this show is not entirely an original production.

If you weren't aware, which I wasn't until halfway through watching, SSSS.Gridman is an adaptation, to some degree, of a 90's tokusatsu show (google that term if you don't know it because I'm sure you will be familiar with the genre, just not the name for it.) I don't know to what degree it adapts the 90s show and how much is original, as I've never seen the live-action series and know nothing beyond my post-watch cursory googling.) But in regard to the last two episodes, and some other aspects of the show, a good deal of it is clearly simple reverence on the anime creators' parts to pay tribute to it. The ultimate battle largely untethers the fighting from the core character-centric story you've been watching before and only deals with the superficial plot elements. While all the threads that have been developed throughout the show DO pay off, some of them suffer in terms of quality directly because they need to reconcile the overarching plot with the characters that have been building up in the show. I will say most of it is satisfactory, but some of the pay-offs are clearly leagues above others. Also, this is a minor spoiler but I think it's prudent to mention to other viewers going in blind: there is a character introduced in I believe the sixth episode who seems completely non-sequitur, but they are an allusion to the original show, being the successor to a one of the characters. Just keep that in mind, I think you'll know by the end who I'm talking about. Without prior knowledge, that character is at best totally unexplained, but potentially detrimental to your understanding of the narrative. There are many artifacts of homage to the original that detrimentally affect SSSS.Gridman as a self-contained experience, unfortunately. That and the excellent build-up of the narrative elements having disparate pay-offs in terms of quality are the greatest points against Gridman and what stop it from being a 10/10.

But those are the critiques and forewarnings. As you can see, I still enjoyed this greatly and whole-heartedly recommend this show to all. I hope this review can serve to urge those on the fence about whether this is worth the time or not into giving it a go.

Despite the heavy themes, this is a very safe anime. It checks most of the boxes on a basic narrative level, but not in any outstanding way. It's your typical apartment comedy setup: central character and neighbors of different backgrounds have fun and learn lessons from their interactions, full of vignettes interspersed with little arcs focusing on Kotarou or one of his neighbors learning some kind of lesson, the kind that early South Park would parody with "you know, I learned something today."

It's very evident within the first episode that this is meant to be a "healing" anime, something one might ... turn on and have in the background while they decompress. It does not have any deep themes, messages, drama, humor, or anything really. Yes, it does introduce many of those things but has such a shallow exploration that trying to engage with it will only leave you disappointed and unfulfilled. Everything is portrayed so lightly, despite many, many depictions of abuse (to an almost comical degree in the latter half with how frequent it is.) There is not a single scene that could be described as "intense." You will never get some "Whiplash"-esque seen of yelling and screaming and fear and anxiety. It will show only the surface of the various forms of abuse, and things will always work out in the end, to an almost delusional degree. That is what I mean by safe. There's no tension to any of the dramatic story beats because there isn't meant to be. The show skirts around showing the true face of abuse and the ugly reality that things don't always end in sparkles and sunshine. It's a Lifetime movie in ONA form.

Overall most of the limp messages the show promotes are agreeable, there's not often an issue to take with what it's preaching, but it does greatly rely on convenience and cheap emotional manipulation to convey them. There is, however, one story arc that will make your brow furrow for not only how it diminishes the character involved, but for its takehome message as well, calling it controversial, to say the least. Every story has a message and at times it can feel preachy, especially with the strawmen and trite conveniences that make it go in the way it needs to, but they are mostly unobjectionable takes which makes it less so. The perspectives it gives regarding the various forms of mistreatment and abuse it illustrates are mostly self-evident to anyone with a brain, taking away much of the value of the stories in the first place, because without the message, the show does not really have anything else to it other than again, the cheap feel-good calming atmosphere.

I called this a comedy, but it really isn't. It does have many attempts at humor. However, these mostly boil down to kids say the darnedest things lines, the oddness/quirkiness of the characters, and very rarely, actual intentional jokes/humor, although how effective it is, that's debatable. Kobayashi, a lawyer that interacts with Kotarou for plot reasons, is the only character that is consistently portrayed humorously, which is a tad dissonant from the rest of the rather grounded characters.

This show isn't funny enough to be a comedy, nor is it dramatic enough to be a drama. Cheap and safe is very much the name of the game here. It's something that any audience can watch, but only people that don't really consume media will get anything out of. It's something you can show Grandma. But for me, it was a very middling experience, one I will surely forget, and would not recommend to anyone wanting substance.

I am so sad to say that Violet Evergarden was shockingly bad. I really, really don't like shitting on things but I feel my criticisms about this show strongly enough that I'm okay with stepping on a few toes if it means saving people from wasting their time on this.

I want to be as fair as I can to Violet Evergarden before I rip it apart, so I will preface the critique with the praise I can give it. This show is absolutely beautiful to look at, any given still shot will look like it's straight out of an artbook. The characters ... all look stunning, both static and in motion, and there is never a dip in quality. The animation is a technically impressive feat. I have nothing to say about any of the raw visuals, although I will have some things to say about the editing later on. There are also, at a conceptual level, in a vacuum, ideas and the briefest of scenes that could (and one that did) have an emotional impact. Here ends the good, and now, the hard part.

This show so spectacularly fails on every other level that I don't know where to even begin dissecting it. There will be some minor spoilers but I will try to only divulge the minimum amount necessary to make my points. There are two halves to this show, either operating entirely separately from each other, or clashing when they do intersect. One is a sort of action drama tragedy focusing on a CHILD SUPER SOLDIER and her trauma and "overcoming" her tragic past, and the other is Mary Poppins globetrotting, fixing random people's entire troubles and woes by gracing them with her presence. While both of these halves are bad, I couldn't actually tell you which one was worse. There's a fair argument to be made for either. The show is framed in such a way that the first introduces Violet and alludes to the super soldier story, then goes about the episodic Mary Poppins vignettes until the last quarter of the show where it resumes the super soldier stuff, presumably because it makes for a better "climax" for a 1cour tv show, although as I mentioned before, it barely connects to what you were watching for the 2nd through 8th or 9th episodes. Simply put, there's not a build up to a finale at all, there's just the introduction with a big bookmark basically saying "we'll come back to this later," then it fucks around for 7 or so episodes with throwaway episodic plots. They are very formulaic, following the same basic pattern of framing the episode through some literally who having a problem, meeting Violet, and being so amazed by Violet's mere presence that their troubles just resolve themselves. These stories are unoriginal tripe you've probably come across in any number of media before, being stuff you'd expect in some random shoujo anthology. Violet helps a princess cope with an arranged marriage with a hot guy who she happens to not actually have a problem with because he was nice to her once. Violet is contrivedly plopped into a monastery/cotillion ball where boy/girl pairs need to decode old texts, gets paired up with an angsty twerp who falls in love with her and resolves his parental abandoment issues and is never seen again except in the inevitable montage of everyone Violet met "changing" her. A playwright with a dead daughter who Violet reminds him of and guess what, her presence helps the writer cope with his daughter's death and now he's okay and the day is saved because she jumped into a lake. Yeah, those question marks over your head are justified. In all of these procedural stories, there's a really forced framing device of writing letters to up the "artsy" value, which is quite hilarious given how shallow the show is and how prosaic the letters themselves are. Anyway, this part of the show largely comprises the bulk of the runtime, and literally nothing of importance happens in them, and were you to skip them, you'd be able to resume the show just at the end of episode 7, start of episode 8 without missing a beat. All of the side characters are completely irrelevant, only a handful actually have any presence beyond being superficially "there" and none have any growth. Don't bother getting attached to anyone because you're unlikely to see them develop substantially if at all. Does it shock you that you wouldn't even be missing any important character arcs or development?

That's because beyond side characters more or less being entirely background props, Violet's character herself is simulataneously incongruous, inconsistent, and at all times, shallow. She's whatever the episodic plot wants her to be, or in the super soldier robot child half of the show, at best you can trace the thinnest line of character development but that development is never earned.
She's quite a Mary Sue, as well. Yes, the show is literally her name, but nearly every single line of dialogue that's not laying down the basic plot beats is in some way directly discussing Violet. Praising her, secondary characters discussing Violet and how tragic she is, voicing concern for her, whether she's present or not. At times bizarrely and rather distastefully fellating her when in no real world scenario would such dialogue ever make sense. For example, she delivers a soldier's final letter to his parents and girl back home and the only words out of their mouths are praising Violet and voicing concern for her (this was the first time they'd ever met her or learned of their son's death btw.) Her only dissenter in the show contrivedly turns his entire decade long grudge against her around instantly when she deflects a grenade launcher shot at him with her robot arm. Here, I must stress that this is not an action show.

Now, there is that super soldier plot thread, and I will say it's the more interesting of the two, with the most potential, but it's done so offensively bad that I don't think I would say I'd prefer if the show focused on it. This plot line will try your suspension of disbelief at every moment. Everything about is so profoundly idiotic that trying to seriously explain actually has me at a loss for words. It almost has to be seen to be believed. At the very least, though, unlike the pretentious letter writing Mary Poppins shit, though this still has those airs about it, the super soldier part devolves into goofy shlock so at least you can get some laughs out of it. However, when it does try to be serious, the very poorly done characterization, plot development, tendency toward cliche, and even music undermine anything that could have been successful. To illustrate this, I'll set an example that is a SPOILER so beware of the next sentence, as it is a SPOILER. That was your fair warning so don't get mad if you get SPOILED. Alright? There's a part where violet spontaneously develops PTSD and tries crushing her neck and the music is this kinetic, plucky staccato music you'd find in a quirky indie movie trailer at Cannes or something, that really takes away from whatever gravity the scene could have had, not that it had a lot because of how ill-planned the narrative development of this whole scene was. Look up "Torment Violet Evergarden OST" if you want to hear it, although that doesn't carry across just how ill-fitting that music is with the scene.

Speaking of the music, in general, it is overbearing, overtly manipulative, and often unwelcome. And while I'm at it, the quality of the animation also ironically highlights a problem with animation that is easy to ignore when it's not so disproportionately better than everything else around it or when you're engaged in the narrative. When something is so fluidly moving amid a static environment with very soundbooth-y voice clips, plug in SFX, and a very in your face score, it's a very uncanny experience and actually serves to take you OUT of the experience rather than immerse you. While I praise the visuals and animation of Violet Evergarden, the production as a whole is quite lackluster. I'd like to mention the editing as well, since I haven't mentioned it yet. The actual shot transitions are underwhelming, it was basically entirely hard cuts and often those cuts had really weird issues with framing the subject so that you'd be looking at one character talking, then it would hard cut to an unintuitive angle showing something, then back to a third shot with a new subject in a different part of the frame, leaving you disoriented. Other times, it's bafflingly choppy. In animation, you don't have to worry about stuntmen, camera logistics, or any of the real world concerns that often leave live-action movies blurry eyesores. Yet here, you will find occasional cut salads of more than a cut per second, shaky cam and flurries of unintelligible movement, and randomly awful framing between shots. Given the high quality of any still image in this show, it's uncanny how much more amateurish the editing is.

I could go on and on about the individual stupidities, pretensions, and missed opportunities of this show, but I'll wrap it up here and say that there is no reason to watch this. It is unfulfilling in every department save the visual design, and if you watch it, there's a high likelihood that you will not just be bored, but angry at it for how inane it is yet how highly it thinks of itself. I tried my damnedest to frame my mind so that I could enjoy it for the positives but even at my most lenient I would unfailingly be let down time and again by this show. It's such a shame.

Going into this, I made sure to set my expectations low, and I still left underwhelmed. With only six episodes to adapt a similarly short manga that was forced to a rushed conclusion because of the publication it ran in, I knew to not expect everything to be fully fleshed out but I'm still disappointed with how little substance there really is.

If you took the story beats and characters on paper, in a vacuum, this story is fine, with great potential to be enjoyable. Not much in the way of complexity or novelty, but still a solid framework for a fun romp through ... a fantasy setting. Now just develop this over the 120 minutes or so that you have and it should work. Sadly, this happens so little in Murder Princess, telling only the minimum needed to get from A to B to C and so on. Characters have almost no depth to them at all, only a handful of traits, simple and shallow motivations (if they even get them at all,) very little interaction between characters outside of propelling the plot, and surprisingly little in the way of levity. You very well could count on your hands (maybe, maaaaybe your toes) how many intentional jokes or moments intended to be humorous there are over the entire run time of the series. The plot is bare bones and especially in the last two episodes sped up to the point that ass pulls and deus ex machinas are dropped on a by-the-minute basis. Exposition dumps make up half the dialogue: tell, don't show is the reigning paradigm here. Compounding these issues are numerous oversights in basically every department. For example, characters addressing others by name when they haven't even been introduced to each other. Sure, you could excuse it and say "they got to know each other off screen," but having to constantly cope and do the heavy lifting for the show does not make for an enjoyable experience.

All this is to say nothing of the poor "animation." This is a very stiff show, lots of slideshows and panning, flashes and cuts. Fights VERY often being one swing and it's over. Sparse sets and little detail make this a very un-stimulating visual experience, so it's going to be up to you to make yourself pay attention, and when the plot, characters, and all the little things that fill in the gaps are in large part MIA, it's very likely to be a chore.

Ultimately, my time watching this was mostly spent trying to excuse things on its behalf and the other part lamenting how much better it could've been with only more competent, passionate hands. It may seem easy to excuse a 6 episode OVA for not accomplishing a lot in its run time but 120 minutes is actually quite a lot to work with to tell an engaging story. Even ignoring the entirety of filmdom, there are even SHORTER OVA series that still manage to make what they're given to work with into a compelling, enjoyable experience that far outlives its runtime in the hearts and minds of those who view it, and this is not one of them.

PS (Actual postscript, lol): I went and read the manga to see if any of that potential was realized better. There two are almost entirely different plotwise, save for several key points. I'd actually say the plot in the anime is more complete but the characters in the manga feel marginally more developed, or at least a couple of them, and it's more humorous. The fact that you can breeze through the manga in an hour or two makes it feel much less like a chore to get through, but ultimately both are unsatisfying with how little anything gets fleshed out.

READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE WATCHING, I will elaborate as to why later but this is for your own good, trust me.

Gangsta is NOT a finished product. It is a sample platter of a dish that will never come out. When Gangsta was airing, I was interested but never got around to watching it until now, and I must say, it's a bittersweet tale. I went in knowing nothing except what I knew about it, what, 6-7 years ago? Of course, after viewing, with the "ending" the anime has, I HAD to look into it. Apparently, the studio adapting Gangsta, Manglobe, ... was down to its last dollar and after Gangsta, they closed down. But that's okay, we'd just be waiting until some other studio can get rights to adapt it or whatever, right? I mean, it's not uncommon for different studios to do different seasons of the same continuity, right? Well, not so fast, because there's another bump in the road, or perhaps it's more accurate to call it a wall. The author of the manga has lupus and it has greatly impacted her ability to work. It's been about 4 years since any progress on the manga seems to have been made, so I wouldn't get my hopes up. I wish her all the best, and it would be great if she was healthy enough to work on it more, but for the purposes of this review, this is your fair warning that the series is more or less over.

All that said, I still find compelling reasons to check this series out. This recommendation comes with many caveats, and the first one is that if you expect resolution in any capacity, drop this and don't look back. There are more warnings that I will give but I hope you'll read til the end before making your final decision. First of all, in addition to the story not having an ending, there is a presentation issue: the story progresses slowly, and large swaths of what you are shown is backstory and flashbacks, in a wholly unsatisfying manner that is frustrating when you aren't even clear on the what and why of the action you are currently seeing, only for the show to yank your head to look at some stuff that happened way back in the past with characters you still don't know. However, the story unfolds slowly enough that you will get a sufficient understanding of who the main characters are now before it starts tugging you around, so there's at least some room for you to get a foothold and immerse yourself before the ill-planned presentation of the story starts pulling your focus around left and right. Further compounding this, you will no doubt roll your eyes at so many cliches and archetypes that the characters fall into. Even though I think the more important players in the show eventually get enough of their own identity to transcend their archetypal roles and relationships, even just a little, you will definitely have seen many of their specific traits, personalities, relationships, developments, and arcs in other shows. I'd urge you to stomach it because eventually, they can warm to you and you can overlook these tropified introductions, but if you want strong, unique, novel characters or story beats, I'm afraid this is the second barrier to enjoyment that will alienate another chunk of people.

Now, let's talk about the audiovisual components. First off, the visual design of the show is probably the biggest reason you're still here. If it looked ugly, I doubt you'd tolerate any of the above. The characters and still shots of everything look great. It's definitely a strength of the show. The animation, however, is rather hit or miss. There are times where it's intense, fast, and energetic, but there are also times where it's lethargic, looking very much like the efforts of a studio going through a budget crisis. I don't know how much is laziness, incompetence, or just lack of resources in time & money, but it must still be said that you will notice varying degrees of quality. It was never enough that I thought it looked like shit, but there were a couple moments toward the end of the show where I remarked in my head that it was looking a little slideshow-y. The sound is serviceable, I can't recall anything that stood out negatively, but there was a small moment that made me appreciate this show a little more, and that is Alex's VA. There's a part midway through where she sings, and normally, I'm one to fast forward through singing because it makes my skin crawl. For example, in Kakegurui, when that one Momobami clan girl sings Amazing Grace, I was rolling around cringing to death until it was over. However, here, the singing is gracefully implemented into the story, performed very well (not light praise coming from me,) and the selection itself is something gentle and understated in the grand scheme of things. They don't have her belting out a pop song or done to death license-free song. It's not as grand as I make it out to be but when you're expecting the worst, it being even just decent goes a long way. Overall, I don't think anything in the sights or sound will make you want to give this up if you stomached the story and the character flaws, but be aware that if you just want the greatest action scenes ever, here's the last barrier.

So if the story is in large part missing, the characters are tropey, the animation is inconsistent, and there is next to no hope of it answering anything, you must be asking why the hell I'm even recommending this. That je ne sais quoi that makes me still look at this show positively is the world-building; the immersion that comes with an open ended story, with a broad cast of diverse characters, systems that only work in this world, and endless possibilities to dream. It's the kind of setting and story that you can dream about, write conclusions to in your head, take it in any direction you want. The lasting appeal of Gangsta is something that very few people will likely appreciate, but if you think that at all sounds enticing, I do recommend checking this out and reading the manga as far as it goes after. For those with trepidation, I don't think this is the kind of series that you can give an episode or three to see if you like it because the more you watch, the warmer reception you'll have. If anything I've mentioned is an absolute dealbreaker, go ahead and drop it, but if you think you can look past the numerous, numerous flaws, I think you'll find something nice to chew on with Gangsta.

Disclaimer: I dropped this in the 7th episode, so if you don't value the opinion of someone who didn't bear something awful until the end, then read any of the other negative reviews because I'm sure our points will overlap anyway.

For the first four episodes, there was a feeling in the back of my head, a little bit of deja vu. After a bit of a shocking cliffhanger end to the fourth episode, I thought about it for a little bit and realized what it was: every single individual element was something I've already seen before. Every character archetype, interaction, plot thread, event ... scenario, everything was all derivative. Clearly inspired by something else, plucked out and thrown into a stew. But whatever, I thought to myself, as long as the ingredients come together to form something interesting, I don't mind. But it only got worse, first off because the stakes of that cliffhanger were IMMEDIATELY undone followed by several contrivances, but then in the sixth episode, the show peels back the curtain and lets you see just how truly contrived it is with the entire episode serving as an exposition dump for the backstory, and its full form is unveiled. This show is the scribblings of a chuuni 12yo making his own epic grimdark fantasy, but revisited in adulthood adapting all of the concepts with none of the passion, resulting in a mess of a story that is both outrageously idiotic and yet utterly bland. In episode 7, any reason to believe that it would ever be anything else was squashed, so I dropped it, and all I have to show for it is this review urging others not to waste their time.

There are good production values, the visuals are great, and its clear that time and effort went into the show to make it look good. On the sound front though, the same can't be said. The ending theme, while it does evoke a certain emotional response, is often utilized rather questionably, occasionally coming in while dialogue is still going on dulling the impact of both the ending and the dialogue, and I have to ask what the fuck they were thinking having it come in at times like that. There are also sound effects that actually made me pause and go back because they did not fit the action that was happening at all, to a confusing degree. The sound design is serviceable but I can't call it "good."

It's a shame the high quality visuals are in service to such a garbage narrative. This anime really doesn't have a redeeming factor outside of them.