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The premise starts off surprisely interesting and the use of color is pretty cool, but this is unfortunately an instance where the god-awful writing and intensely problematic misogyny only start to really show themselves later. The writing for all the female characters in particular is painful, like the author is 12 and hasn't ever interacted with a woman in his life.

The childish nature of the main character initially comes off as endearing, but between the sexual depravity and intense inability to show any sort of character growth, it gets stale fast. All he really ends up doing, from the episodes I saw, is dragging ... everyone else down with him over time.

Then, around halfway through, it gets particularly bad. The introduce a foreign girl character, and it's one of the most offensive depictions I've ever seen out of Japan in so many ways. That's when I knew I was out.

Do not bother with this one. What a shame.

Sailor Moon Crystal is a disgrace. Touted as a remake of the original that more closely follows the manga, it fails on nearly all fronts that an anime can, only surviving due to the inherent appeal of the original IP. While I'm sure many exist in the genres I avoid, I personally have not encountered an anime with such blatant disregard for the basic building blocks of story or animation in some time.

Sailor Moon Crystal's animation is atrocious. Characters often pause on in-between frames that were clearly not designed to be seen, with distorted faces and incorrect proportions. Pacing between or during scenes can ... often cause major confusion due to a lack of narrative through-line and poor conveyence of information. CG is often used blatantly to cut corners, with the worst offenses being in both the OP and transformation scenes, ruining both. I've heard comparisons to Betty Spaghetti dolls, and I can't disagree.

With animation this poor, the story really needs to pick up the pieces, but it doesn't. Sailor Moon Crystal's characters are consistently shafted, meaning you learn very little about who they are or why you should care. They don't really interact enough for you to consider the cast friends, either. Character building just doesn't happen here, which makes the emotional scenes about them feel all the more absurd.

The plot? It's entirely off the rails, if I'm honest. While at first it seems like a nice and cute magical girl anime, it very quickly becomes something more close to Kingdom Hearts, with moon clones and light and darkness, made-up-on-the-spot plot points, reincarnation, time travel, and more. It feels like the writers tried to put every idea for a story they ever had into a single anime and I can't call it anything other than bad.

The biggest issue is in the second season, after time travel is introduced. The sheer number of plot holes this causes, where Sailor Moon's daughter, from 1000 years in the future (which makes no sense at all, even after their explanations), travels back in time to save her world. She's still like a 7 year old, by the way. It only gets worse from there. And, keep in mind, all this is presented in just about the worst way it could be.

Thankfully, if you manage to stomach these first two seasons, there is a silver lining. The third season is directed by someone new, who actually knows what they are doing, and it's a night and day difference. So if you happen to manage until then, you'll see almost all these problems thoroughly addressed there (other than some of the plot issues). I just wouldn't at all recommend doing so vs. watching the original or watching better magical girl anime.

At a certain point in the story, I found myself wishing the main character would just die. Keep in mind that this is the character who is supposed to be a victim and is supposed to be someone we sympathize with. However, the author has written these characters so outright incorrectly that I was wishing for the MC's death instead. Let that sink in.

Blood on the Tracks is meant to be psychological horror. However, after the first 30 chapters or so, the jig is up and it instead just becomes an extreme dumpster fire of a drama. This is because the "antagonist" ends up being ... so psycho that it becomes easy to understand/expect what she will do next, destroying any fear the reader might've had and replacing it with frustration instead. Now, normally, in a drama, there'd be some sort of character development or relatabilty involved with its characters to make you care about them, but here the author instead chooses to throw that out the window as hard as he possibly can at every opportunity.

In particular, with the main character, who after getting "reset" (brainwashed, I guess?) after a certain point in the story, becomes entirely impossible to understand or relate to. Maybe this would have worked if the story started with him in this state, but the jarring way it's written just ends up making it feel like a cop out for story progression/decent writing. And what's worse is that not all that long after, the author chooses to backtrack on this anyway. Only after making you hate the main character as much as he possibly could first, of course.

One of my biggest gripes with the story is how it handles the Fukiishi character, the only character I found myself feeling anything positive toward at all, despite not getting much of a focus. The author ends up using her as an emotional torture porn punching bag, which entirely defeats the purpose of her character and also imo of the story's premise. What's worse is that the author decides to taint everything relating to her with these creepy sexual undertones that feel extremely out of place. This is not the first time I've encountered this with the author, but I thought after a decade or so he might have grown the fuck up. Unfortunately, this shit is still in here and it's honestly offensive. I don't know if the author is some fucked up sexual deviant or has something mentally wrong with him or what, but I'd appreciate it if he'd just get some fucking help and keep this crap out of manga that could have otherwise had some potential.

This manga also draws on for far too long. By chapter 75, I was just begging for it to end, but this is somehow still ongoing with almost double that amount now. I understand they want money (you see them gloat about sales numbers every damn chapter) and probably wanted to extend this shit for as long as they could, but it absolutely destroys the pacing and ends up making the lack of psychological horror after the intro very apparent.

Finally, the manga'a art, unlike what some people claim, is really hit or miss. Some of the early panels do legitimate incite some fear with how they are drawn, but after some time, this stops happening very often. Instead, you get strangely expressionless characters that simply do not communicate their emotions/motivations/etc. in any meaningful way. I still do not even slightly understand what the weird panels with people's mouths opening are supposed to mean, because I've never seen a real human do anything like what he is drawing. Probably because they don't. Now, with that said, the environments are generally fine and this is admittedly drawn way better than his old stuff, which I'd just consider bad art outright, but this is still very disappointing wasted potential overall.

In any case, it turns out the hype for this manga is as BS as I feared. I really had hopes that the author had gotten better over the years. Maybe he got more ambitious and maybe the art got less trashy, but the biggest problems with his works are still very much here. In fact, he might have doubled down on them. Steer clear of Blood on the Tracks and steer clear of all of this author's other manga as well.

If you'd like some psychological mangaka that are good, read manga by Inio Asano or Naoki Urasawa instead. Please don't give this trash or its author any more undeserved attention.

What a strange OVA.

Parasite Dolls is a Bubblegum Crisis spinoff, but takes a far more serious tone than that main series. The concept of a "Boomer" is explored in more cool ways here, but its otherwise pretty different.

I was all ready to add Parasite Dolls to my list of one of my new favorite cyberpunk anime, but sadly, it didn't quite end up that way. While the first two episodes are fantastic, right up there with something like Ghost in the Shell Innocence, the last on ends up ruining most of the fun as it goes completely off the rails. I'd rate the first ... two episodes a high 9, but the last one more like a 6.5.

I would probably say it's still worth a watch for cyberpunk fans, as it really nails pretty much everything for awhile there. But be aware that it doesn't end up anywhere near as good as it starts and it might even be in your best interest to skip the last episode entirely.

Whisper of the Heart is the manga "adapted" to movie form by Ghibli. Most might come into this after first watching the movie, but be aware, the movie shares very little in common with this manga original. Personally, I consider that to be a massive boon, as the movie had a myriad of issues this original manga never had. And, in fact, this manga is easily one of my all-time favorites. Here's why.

Primarily, I consider this manga to be such a success for one main reason: everything within it works together to reinforce the core themes of finding love in support of each others' passions. ... The two main characters and their hobbies fit together perfectly to deliver a compelling story focused on this idea and what it means to be passionate about something. But the main character's siblings, the two cats, the Baron, the shop owner, and the other students at school all also reinforce this theming too, all while feeling believable. The two main characters are an artist and a writer, which means they have potential to work together inherently and are easily able to encourage each other to improve. Most of these things were sadly lost in the movie.

I very much appreciate the nostalgic, often contemplative, but cute tone of the manga. It isn't afraid to take time to let the reader dwell on the atmosphere, which I strongly appreciate. The setting really helps with this mood too, being set in a relatively typical Japanese town, rather than a busy and chaotic. The art definitely helps bring this to life, with expressive characters that can show just the right amount of emotions depending on the scene. This especially applies to the main character Shizuka. It also helps that all the characters are very cute.

If there is one gripe I have, it's that the manga's ending is ever so slightly sudden, in part due to its length. There is a sequel that addresses this, but I do think this actually works in the manga's favor here for the most part. Rather than being just another "happy ever after" love story, the focus is actually instead on the growth of the characters and how they learn to do what they love. When those arcs are complete, so is the story we see. This, to me, has far more impact than it would have it was sidelined in favor of a typical shoujo romance. I do still wish we got a little bit more time focusing on this aspect more thoroughly, but it still works very well.

Overall, this manga is basically the perfect shoujo one-shot and I'd consider it a must-read for everyone interested in the genre. Don't bother with the movie or anything like that, just read this.

9/10

I'm not really sure what happened here. I'm a massive fan of Ghibli, particularly of their more human stories (When Marnie Was There, From Up On Poppy Hill, Totoro, Ocean Waves, etc.). I read the manga this movie is based on and absolutely loved it. And yet... I hated this. Like, really hated it. I guess I better dive into why.

Story:
You already get a general description, so I won't go into it here, but the story here diverges a good bit from what is seen in the original manga. And most of it actually makes very little sense in context. It feels like they ... filled in the details, like they do so well in other Ghibli movies, but here they failed to take any care in HOW they filled those details in.

Important events are missing or entirely changed to remove their original meanings. Important details about characters are changed or removed, leaving far less of an impact and causing the relationships to feel far less believable. Some characters are even missing outright, like one of the cats or Seiji's older brother, both of which were very major parts of why the original story worked so well. The tone from the original is also quite different, putting a weird focus on the bustling city for some reason, which muddies the message a bit imo. And finally, the antique shop doesn't even look to be a shop at all for some reason, which really kills a lot of the awe there.

Frankly put, they really failed here somehow. I don't know what happened, but it was very disappointing, unfortunately.

Art:
This review won't be all negative, though. If Ghibli manages anything well, it's usually the art. And this movie is no exception. In fact, it might be the best example of their work from a realistic setting. The backgrounds in particular are just absolutely gorgeous and it makes me want to go to this city. If I have one gripe, it's that many of the locations changed how they look compared to the original story, sometimes in ways that don't make as much sense, but the art is still drawn well either way.

Sound:
On the other hand, this is the worst OST in a Ghibli movie, by far. I didn't realize an OST could be bad in a Ghibli movie until watching this and I'm still in awe a bit. The big problem here is the abysmal and repetitive use of the god-awful song "Country Roads" throughout the movie. This song has nothing to do with the source material at all (in fact, there was no topic of music in the manga at all), but it's EVERYWHERE here. You hear renditions of this song 3 times in a row in the first 10 minutes. And it just keeps bringing it back over and over and over. The 7th or 8th time I'd heard it was my breaking point and I stopped watching. I was only halfway through the movie...

This would be a lot less bad if the other music was any good, but outside of one scene at night, I can't say I enjoyed any of the other music in the OST either. It really feels like the composer just couldn't be arsed to make a proper theme and the director had some really bad ideas for the story, so they came together to make a special kind of shitshow. To be clear, they rewrote key details about the main characters just to shoehorn this song in as much as possible. Seiji is supposed to be an artist, not a musician. And Shizuka is supposed to be convinced to write from Seiji, not because of this shitty song. I hate it.

Character:
Since much of my complaints with the characters are intertwined with portions of what I've said already, I won't restate much here. But the combination of removing major characters, changing key details of characters, and changing character relationships to make them get along less makes the characters far less enjoyable than any Ghibli movie should be able to manage. Beyond what I've mentioned already, I think my biggest disappointment here was how they managed to change "Moon" from the type of cat in Cat Returns (which was also how this cat was designed in the original manga) to some ugly fat one instead. Not only is this change arbitrary, but it also just ends up making quite a few things make a lot less sense in the end...

Enjoyment/Overall:
Needless to say, I didn't enjoy this much. I did appreciate the art, but as a movie and a story, it's just not good at all. I would recommend reading the original manga, but stay well clear of this unless you really need to. And definitely don't try it if you can't stomach listening to "Country Roads" like 20 times within a couple hours, ugh.

In the end, it was great source material absolutely destroyed by bad execution, unfortunately.