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I like this show, and I hope people who read this review are encouraged to give it a try. Keeping that in mind, this review will be entirely spoiler-free.

There’s really only one criticism anyone has ever made about this show, so let’s tackle that straightaway:

“Rudeus is a pedophile.”

Mushoku Tensei is not about *moral* redemption. If you hate Rudeus, it’s your opinion, but criticizing the story for not “canceling” his sexual perversion is objectively incorrect criticism. You could, for instance, criticize Rent-a-Girlfriend for being moralistic and yet excusing itself far too often to indulge in obviously immoral stuff. But this show isn’t trying to conform to ... your moral echo chamber in the first place. This is a story about a man given a second chance at life to live without repeating the same mistakes he made in his first life. Ignoring his family, not leaving his house, thinking nobody understands him, amongst other stuff. But, whether you like it or not, he does not view his sexual perversion as a mistake. It would also be incorrect to assume that his degeneracy is the cause of his regrets. I would say it’s the other way around, that the social isolation he forced upon himself is what brought about his sexual perversion.

But we digress. The point is, yes, Rudeus is a pervert, but does that make Mushoku Tensei an objectively bad work of fiction? Absolutely not. Even on a subjective level, I find it rather unfortunate that so many people dismiss this show for such a shallow criticism. Are we, the enlightened people of the twenty-first century, really going to let ourselves be offended by an immoral work of FICTION? Is the foundation of our moral sensibilities really that weak and unstable that we need FICTION to continually reinforce it?

Once you are willing to ignore these surface-level criticisms, I believe you will find that the show handles themes of depression and redemption exceptionally well. Despite being reincarnated into a promiscuous society, Rudeus doesn’t find it easy to deal with people. People betray him, people are apprehensive of him, and people come to absolutely despise him. He is repeatedly reminded of his previous life despite him having now spent YEARS in this new world. Despite all this, he keeps improving. He tries to gain the trust of his friends. He tries not to run away from his problems. He tries to make everyone around him happy. It’s not a groundbreaking concept, but it’s certainly very empathetic.

Rudeus is the main aspect of the show, but I feel I would be doing an injustice to the show without talking about anything else. For one, I absolutely love the setting. Season 1 in particular has a lot of traveling, and we see a lot of different places and meet a lot of different people. But it never becomes repetitive, it truly feels like we’re exploring a new, unknown, unfamiliar world. The worldbuilding in this show is seriously stellar. History and magic system are subtly expanded upon, unlike many shounen anime that dump entire episodes worth of exposition to explain stuff that frankly doesn’t even require an intricate understanding for the main plot. The action sequences are all classic, 2D, hand-drawn stuff, and it’s genuinely awesome and nail-biting.

I’d also like to briefly touch upon other characters. Some side characters are simply used to expand our understanding of Mushoku’s world, but many are very well written in their own right and help to further Rudeus’ development. There is this one character who was also reincarnated from Earth, but unlike Rudeus, they despise this world and seek to return. There is this other character who is trying to isolate themselves just like Rudeus did in his previous life. There is this yet another character who thought that they were fulfilling Rudeus’ wish but actually ends up hurting and alienating him. Of course, these are just the tip of the iceberg, and you have to see the show yourself to appreciate all the characters.

In conclusion, Mushoku Tensei is a controversial show, but with a little introspection, all its criticisms will seem trivial. This show has a truly fascinating fantasy setting, but more importantly, it’s a really empathetic story about people trying not to repeat their past mistakes and becoming better versions of themselves.

Thank you for reading.

The audience’s reception of Vinland Saga S2 has been pretty bipolar. On one hand, we have the fans saying Thorfinn has had fantastic character development and is now a very wise and mature figure, while on the other hand, critics say this season was slow and boring like a farming simulator. However, very few people seem to share my main issue with the show.

Thorfinn is a hardcore pacifist, which is alright, but the show tries to present him and his philosophy as *THE* right way to live your life, and that anyone who uses violence has yet to come to the “enlightenment” that Thorfinn has ... arrived at. I think a great example to illustrate this would be Thorfinn’s iconic “I’ll run away” line, which is basically his response to Canute’s violent expansionism. I’ll reiterate that there is nothing wrong with Thorfinn’s ideology, but at the same time, there’s also nothing wrong with standing your ground and fighting back. Vinland Saga fails to realize this. Ketil is portrayed as this insane, bloodthirsty man who beats up pregnant women simply because he chose to fight for what is rightfully his. Yes, Ketil’s paltry farm guards had no chance against Canute’s Vikings, but what matters here is the intention, and Ketil has every right in the world to try to defend his homeland, even in a losing cause. Meanwhile, Thorfinn pulls up at Canute’s camp to show off his masochism in the most obnoxious way imaginable. The 100 punches deal was dumb for a variety of reasons. First, there is no way an ordinary person can bear a 100 punches. Thorfinn was only able to do it because he used to be a Viking, aka the antithesis of his present ideology. Second, 100 punches was just an arbitrary deal made without the knowledge of Thorfinn’s past. What if the deal was a 100 punches by a 100 different people? Even Thorfinn wouldn’t be able to bear that. The point I’m trying to make is, there’s absolutely no need to subject yourself to such suffering simply because someone tells you to. If you want to do something and someone is trying to stop you, you either defeat the guy by force or give up on your objective. The whole idea that you’ll prove his violence wrong with your silent suffering is so embarrassingly childish.

But for whatever reason, Canute, who went from being a devout Christian to an unholy, immoral aggressor in the span of 10 minutes in S1, again did a 180 and decided to shrink his fleet in England after Thorfinn told him to do so. And guess what happened next. The people whom Canute had so brutally oppressed suddenly realized his goodwill and were all too happy to let themselves be ruled over. The amount of plot contrivance Yukimura adds just to justify his puerile pacifism is honestly hilarious, and it’s baffling to me how so few see the show for what it truly is.

As for the production, MAPPA did a fairly decent job, but I guess the manga is the superior version. Despite finding his ideology disagreeable, I do think Yukimura is a great mangaka, and his panels, at least from what I’ve seen here and there on the internet, are absolutely gorgeous. Either way, the experience isn’t going to be much different if you agree with the points I’ve made.

Thank you for reading.

A long time ago, AOT used to be an excuse for the industry’s greatest legends to come together and flex their talent. Shamelessly flex. They could have made a decent action show with a decent soundtrack that most would forget about in a couple of months. If that had been the case, I would’ve laughed my ass off at this ending and promptly moved on. But unfortunately that isn’t what happened. Tetsuro Araki had to direct the show with the most excessive camerawork, Hiroyuki Sawano had to imbue the show with the most heart-thumping soundtrack, and WIT Studio had to animate the show with some ... of the most technically competent 3DCG models to date. It’s honestly their fault for making me this upset over a bad ending to some work of fiction.

Let’s face the truth: MAPPA doesn’t care. They never did. The fact they were the only studio willing to take on this project under Pony Canyon and Kodansha’s inhumane production schedule is the very proof of that. They were in for the bucks, and the bucks they got. WIT Studio’s AOT was borderline indulgent in how awe-inspiring it tried to be with every important scene. In MAPPA’s AOT, everything just happens, scene after scene after scene, with the bare minimum amount of passion. The action scenes are alright, the soundtrack is alright, everything is just barely good enough to be watchable. This wouldn’t have been a problem for any other anime, but AOT is special. AOT used to be the defining masterpiece of our generation, and seeing it receive this kind of treatment is really tragic.

But let’s not pretend that this ending would’ve been any better had it still been under the geniuses that originally made AOT the behemoth it is today. Because the main architect of this downright depressing trainwreck is none other than the original author. The basement reveal turned the whole story on its head and everyone and everyone’s actions became morally ambiguous, so in order to achieve a satisfactory ending, Isayama had to chuck any semblance of motivation and logic our characters had out of the window. Levi has no qualms working alongside Annie while he continues to obsess over killing Zeke when they both did the exact same thing, Armin gets all chubby with her because blond & blonde, the parents of Reiner & Annie get redeemed because they’re oh so teary-eyed, Eren goes all “I want her to think about me for at least 10 more years!!!” for a girl he couldn’t care less about for 99% of the story, Ymir loves the pedophile King Fritz because who the hell knows why. The last arc makes negative sense, and absolutely nothing gets resolved. Hell, the last scene even hints at the revival of the Titans when we’ve just spent the entirety of the manga hating them. I just don’t understand the point behind anything.

Most people I know either hated AOT from the beginning or have loved it till the end. But being in this weird minority where you absolutely loved the show for a long time only to be given this ugly, contrived nonsense of a conclusion is genuinely traumatic. Nothing less.

Thank you for reading.

*Contains major spoilers from episode 1 and minor spoilers from the following episodes*

This show is so disingenuous.

We begin with the famous pop idol Ai Hoshino being murdered at her home by a crazy stalker, and her son Aqua, realizing that the only person from whom the stalker could have obtained their address was their unknown father, sets out on a path of revenge. That’s all very heartbreaking and stuff, but I want you, my dear reader, to ask this to yourself. Is Aqua the real son of Ai, devasted over the loss of their only parent and unable to understand how a fan can be ... so obsessed with their idol? Nope. Aqua is—drumroll—FUNDAMENTALLY THE SAME AS THE STALKER. Of course he wouldn’t ever harm Ai, but just like the stalker, he’s utterly obsessed and infatuated by Ai, so much so that he was literally reincarnated as her “son”. He seeks revenge not as a son, but as a fan. This distinction is important to make, because while I could sympathize with a real son agonizing over the loss of his mother, I couldn’t care less about a middle-aged dude getting all edgy over the death of his favourite idol.

But hey, I guess I am making a mountain out of a molehill. After all, this storyline is completely sidelined for the rest of the season, and we move to our next topic: the cut-throat nature of Japan’s idol industry. I might be the last guy to care about idols, but as someone who is just getting started with his professional life, I honestly thought this could be interesting and relatable. Unfortunately, the show simply lacks the gravitas. There’s this one character who listens to literally every single person, no matter how irrelevant or uninformed their opinion might be. She is depressed at the overwhelmingly negative response she’s getting online, and tries to commit suicide. Aqua saves her, and her friends make a candid video about her to improve her internet image. All this is great, but it still doesn’t address the root cause of her problems. She needs to learn to ignore others, and as someone who also used to be insecure about what others think of him, trust me that’s a terribly difficult thing to do. But the show doesn’t concern itself with all that, and promptly moves on to her imitating Ai to impress Aqua. There are more examples. There’s this other character who had been shunned by the industry simply because she was no longer a teenager. Aqua, being the nice guy he is, recruits her for a newly-formed idol group. But you have to understand that the people who rejected her did not do so out of some personal preference. Ultimately, it’s the audience who doesn’t want to see older girls. It doesn’t matter which idol group you join, because you would be reaching out to the same audience any way. And of course Oshi no Ko doesn’t address this. It seems to me that this aspect of the show only exists because Akasaka is too insecure to write a straightforward romcom. He wants to give the characters depth in order to appear superior to your average harem ensemble, but the only way he knows how is to give them an emo backstory. All these complex social and psychological issues are merely used as leverage for the audience’s sympathy, and are never explored in greater depth.

This show is not the emotional masterpiece it’s been made up to be, it’s nothing more than your average harem. Aqua is the self-insert MC for people who fantasize about women depending on them and/or falling for them, while they themselves remain emotionally detached and show no interest. Akane, Kana, Mem-Cho and Ruby are little more than your average waifus, who will never leave the idol industry (i.e., will never stop entertaining you), no matter how much they are troubled by it. And before all the fanboys come to my profile and say, ”Nooooo, how can you call this a harem? READ THE MANGA!!! It’s so dark and depressing and blah blah blah”, no thanks. There’s this weird belief in the anime & manga community that if after a hundred million chapters the author finally does something interesting, all the previous tomfoolery can become worthwhile, enjoyable even. Nope, this formula sucks. It’s a gigantic waste of time for the audience and an everlasting cash cow for the publishers and the production committee.

To conclude, if you want a good psychological anime about the brutal nature of the idol industry, go watch Perfect Blue. If you want a good revenge story, go read Berserk. If you want to watch a multicolored assortment of waifus feeling all doki-doki and waku-waku whenever the emotionally detached MC shows them the slightest gesture of kindness, yup, you’ve come to the right place.
Thank you for reading.

I've read and seen a lot of critically acclaimed fiction in my life. Some became my favourites, while others were so-so. Monster, however, is the first instance of me coming across a critically acclaimed fiction that turned out to be truly, truly terrible. And I'll be honest, even though I have tried to be as objective as possible, my intense hatred for its completely undeserved reputation is what motivated me to publish this review.

It's ironic that my single biggest issue with Monster is what its fans claim to be its greatest asset, the villain Johan Liebert. It's very clear what Naoki Urasawa's motivation was behind ... creating him. Johan was supposed to be the embodiment of evil, someone who could commit crimes without the least bit of guilt and remorse. That's all very scary and stuff, but I ask you this, my dear reader. If I raise a person to be a terrorist, and the person turns out to be a terrorist, does that make the person evil? Because without spoiling anything, that is who Johann Liebert is. A person designed to be evil, and therefore not evil at all. Naoki Urasawa failed to comprehend this simple fact that what makes a villain interesting are their own convictions and emotions, born out of an intensely personal birth; not some contrived backstory where every Tom, Dick and Harry would influence the character.

But Urasawa's amateurism doesn't stop there. Not only did he make his villain essentially meaningless, he genuinely doesn't believe it's possible for people to turn out to be evil unless someone conditioned them to become as such. We come across many bad guys in his manga, but time and again, we see that the only ones capable of committing crimes in cold-blood are the ones who have been conditioned to be like that; everyone else, be it alcoholics, robbers, murderers or whoever, end up feeling guilty or remorseful. Hell, even the people who made Liebert who he is have become kind and empathetic with age. I’m sorry, but this is an unbelievably juvenile understanding of human psychology. People don’t need to be conditioned into becoming terrible, and more often than not they aren’t. And as far as fiction is concerned, the greatest villains are always the ones who became who they are by their own convictions and ideals; Bondrewd, Griffith, Makishima, just to name a few.

Talking about Liebert is incomplete without talking about Tenma. Tenma is the single most archetypal “good guy” that you can imagine. He is very kind and friendly, he always helps everyone out and he thinks all lives are equal. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with all that, but there’s nothing interesting either. On one side, you have a villain who isn’t evil or frankly even interesting, and on the other side, you have the most naïve do-gooder in the history of popular fiction. The result? One hundred and sixty-two chapters of mind-numbing slog, filled to the brim with filler which only serves to show you how much of a good guy the good guy is. I hope this doesn’t count as a spoiler, but the good guy is vindicated in the end. So yeah, the message of Monster is, everyone is equal, everyone is inherently a nice human being, and the only way you can become terrible is if someone turns you into one. Even if you believe in such a comically simple worldview, I’m sure you didn’t need Urasawa to realize it.

Thank you for reading.