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Mar 27, 2024
Bottom Tier character Tomozaki season 2 is honestly a really big upgrade from s1 in a lot of ways. It remains a series about self improvement and I really enjoy the main plots of Tomozaki, Kikuchi, Erika, Hanabi (Tama). Unlike season 1 being primarily about building up Tomozaki, we got to see multiple characters have their own self improvement arcs, which was really neat to see. I really enjoy the self improvement overarching theme of this series and it really fun watching other characters grow as people and not just the MC.
Obviously there are a lot of socially awkward scenes in s2 as the MC
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still doesn't fully understand social cues, but I think that adds dramatization and slow buildup of the character's "growth" arc. One point I really like is when the MC has to come to a realization that despite his low self image, there are other people who could possibly see him as attractive and he has to have that snap back to reality moment when called out on it. Really important growth moment.
The only downside I'd have to say to this season is probably the romance subplot in the second half, I've seen a LOT of mixed opinions on the romance subplot, in my opinion the romance subplot was really well done albeit slow at some times, but a lot of people take it a lot more seriously than they should (as it's only a subplot, romance is not the main theme of this show). I've seen a lot of mixed opinions on the romance subplot and people really not liking the season's ending because of how the romance subplot ended, but I think it was a satisfying conclusion.
However, I bring that up as a warning, that the romance subplot could potentially effect how you feel about season 2, seeing as it's half of s2.
Personally I think it's a really good season 2 and definitely a must watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Feb 16, 2024
Solo Leveling is a really great story to read. It's a low fantasy story which is really uncommon in Animanga, there's more high fantasy than low fantasy out there so being a low fantasy story already creates a lot of interest. Instead of taking place in a highly magical world, it's just the normal Earth we all live in but magical creatures have invaded our world and Hunters are sent to shut down the gates they're trying to cross over from. A really great concept and pretty great execution.
Solo Leveling is nearly a masterpiece I'd say, the characters and character dynamics is great, story telling
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is insanely good, the art is amazing, character development is great. Personally I think the story peaked around arc 16 and then stagnates, but just because it stagnated doesn't mean it degraded in quality, you just never saw the highs like you did in arc 16 in my opinion.
The only thing holding back Solo leveling from being a masterpiece was the ending to the main series, the ending felt like it wasn't meant to be the ending at all, it felt so out of place and honestly was super disappointing to see considering how good everything was up to that point. I held onto hope that the epilogue taking place after the main events would rectify things but it felt like fan service to make up for the ending to be honest. I didn't hate the epilogue but it just felt like a means to make up for that ending to the main series in order to make fans happy and I wasn't exactly excited about it.
The ending aside, I think solo leveling is a must read if you love fantasy stories.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 21, 2024
Trapped in a dating Sim is a GREAT anime. Think of the Star Ocean games but an Isekai with it's own original spin and that's what you get with this series. I think there might have been some inspiration because it has tons of similarities with the star ocean franchise. They're both SCI-FI Dungeon crawler games with dating sims in them and tough boss fights scattered throughout the main plot. That's probably what makes it so good.
This style of formula feels really fun and fresh and the main character, Leon, is extremely arrogant and cocky and he's completely unapologetic about his behavior and it's
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fun to see how he's forced to live in this crappy world he was sent to.
Another strong point is the characters in the show, they are all extremely entertaining. I really enjoy the dynamic between Leon and his partner Luxion, it's really funny how they always have snarky arguments back and forth all the time but they have a great partnership despite that.
This series is a must watch, it's very reminiscent of the things that made old JRPGs and VN's enjoyable with it's own flair to it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 17, 2023
I detest this series with a passion. What I hate more than this series though, is myself. I forced myself to watch the entirety of this series because I hate to drop shows once I start it, so I grinded it to the end knowing I didn't like it.
Probably the BEST thing I can say about this show is that it's conventionally different from the norm of romance anime. It's not a bunch of quirky high school kids who take an entire season to hold hands or any of that slow-paced garbage you expect of a romance anime. The pacing of the characters falling for
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each other is fine. The first episode seemed a bit interesting early on, with how the main character fell into a depressive state and went in for a hookup right from the rip. Not many romance MC's actually end up getting laid in the beginning, so that was an interesting concept. That's about where the good qualities of this show ends, however.
I'm not a fan of incest plots, but I've come to accept that's a trope that anime will use, there's a lot of incest plots out there. However, Domestic na Kanojo is probably the worst and weirdest incest plot I've seen. The show has embarrassingly awkward moments. I couldn't even watch this entire series without stopping because of how much embarrassment was irradiating through my screen. I had to take tons of breaks to finish this series. They really tried to force the love triangle plot line of this series, and it does not do this series any justice.
The ending of this series was absolutely horrid as well, for an already bad anime, it's actually quite impressive how you can make an ending to an anime exponentially worse than an already overall bad series.
This series is not "a so bad it's good" series, it's just a bad series. The only reason I can see anyone liking this is as a guilty pleasure anime. However, I personally think this show is more "guilty" than pleasure.
This is arguably one of the worst series I've ever seen. No one should ever watch this series unless you seriously need a confidence booster thinking "at least I'm not as bad these characters".
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Sep 16, 2023
Whether or not you love or hate this series depends on your mindset going into this series.
If you're looking for a continuation of Naruto's story and seeing a lot of what he can and will do going forward, you won't get that with this series. A lot of Naruto fans will be disappointed with the fact Naruto is being side-lined to the role of a supporting character, but that is something that is inevitable with his story being over. Also if you're attached to the main cast of the original series, you will likely be upset by some of the plot developments that happens
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here.
If you're willing to overlook that and just seeing how Boruto's story unfolds, I'd say it's a pretty fine series. It's not groundbreaking nor does even have the same charm as the original Naruto story in my opinion, but it's a good read nonetheless.
This story has a lot of problems that the original Naruto series had, such as a lot of the characters introduced outside of the main team will be sitting on the sidelines, even at times the other members of Boruto's team are sitting on the side, but I personally like this new team 7 crew more than the original team 7 from Naruto. My mine gripe with the original Naruto being the fact that there's so many side characters but a lot don't actually hold much importance in the story, and while that STILL exists in Boruto, it feels SLIGHTLY better. Still not great, but a little better.
Another thing people may not like is, if you're not a fan of the antics of the 4th shinobi world war from Naruto, this series will have A LOT of tropey stuff, call backs, and continuations of plotlines from the 4th great war that have lasting effects in this series. I know that arc is very divisive for fans, so it will definitely be a hit or a miss depending on who reads it. There's a lot of the crazy power-scaling antics that the 4th war had going on with it happening in this series. Characters power up very fast considering the length of this manga.
If you care about reading a good battle shonen, then this is a serviceable series. It has good fights, I've never felt the fights here are not entertaining. I know there's a demographic of people who wanna see nice beat-em-up scenes, I do too, and Boruto has good fights in it.
Story-wise, I'd say Boruto is a fine story by Shonen standards. It's nothing overly complex, it's a classic shonen story I'd say. It has some good plot twists that made jaw-drop at times, but it's not top-tier writing by any means. It doesn't have insane world building to back it up, it doesn't have crazy character motivations, it's a very short series after all. The story is kind of like an extension of the 4th great war from Naruto, specificially the Kaguya portions of the arc. It borrows a lot of themes from Naruto in this story(what a surprise).
Character-wise, I think the characters and their interactions is probably the strongest part of this series, second to the action. The villains specifically are the main reasons to read this series I'd say. I mostly grinded through this series to see how they'd play out the plot of the timeskip that they showed in the first few panels of the first chapter. I was curious how things got there, and the villains I'd say are good. Specifically one villain, Momoshiki, who is an overarching antagonist who is repeatedly causing Boruto problems throughout the series. I constantly kept reading to see what kind of schemes he would cause to threaten Boruto. Momoshiki really makes this series for me, and I believe his presence is probably a major interest of a lot of readers.
Overall, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations is a pretty fine and serviceable battle shonen series. If you're a shonen fan you can probably find enjoyment reading this, it's not long, it's quick to the punch and its decent fun. Not everyone will enjoy this, especially if you're a hardcore Naruto fan. I'd say it's an above average shonen story, though I'd rate it as mixed, considering it can be very polarizing depending on what mindset you have going into it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 18, 2023
This review is of One Piece as of Egghead arc (chapter 1060).
One Piece is probably the best of the Shonen genre. It does what you expect of action adventure battle Shonen series and perfects the formula. I was hooked almost instantly reading one piece, but I wasn't fully a fan of the series until around the time I reached the grand line in the Whisky Peak arc of One Piece and it really just kept going uphill from there with very few pitfalls. If you are a fan of Shonen Manga, One Piece is great for what Shonen is known for. For someone who
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is not invested in Shonen that much, even I can recognize how great One Piece is.
Strengths:
- Comedy
One Piece has good comedy, not like the usual tropes you get out of anime/manga. It does have A LOT of the classic "gag" tropes. but it has a lot of good punchlines that land well. One Piece has made me laugh a lot. One scene that I personally laughed was Sanji received his bounty poster and it was the goofiest looking caricature of his face, I laughed hard at that, and I laughed harder when I found out that caricature was a real person (Duval). Another really funny moment was in Water 7, the straw hats created a plan assuming that Luffy would rush in and bust down the front door and they'd go in after him, only to find out Luffy never did because he was stuck somewhere else. I laughed at the notion that they planned around his impulsiveness and didn't meet their expectations.
- World Building
One Piece has a pretty expansive world with a lot of lore and thought put into it. Lots of politics, intrigue, and history goes into the vast amount of islands that exist and Oda does not waste any of that vast information he uses. There was an island, Raijin island, which was mentioned back before the timeskip when Nami was training on Weatheria, and htey mentioned Raijin being an island of raining lighting, and Oda brought it back in the Punk Hazard arc, even though the main crew never visited it, but it goes to show how even information like that is not wasted or forgotten. Even the "Cover stories" which appear at the start of chapters are relevant to the world building, I was shocked to find out how relevant even that was to the plot, because originally in early One Piece I always skipped past the cover series until I saw these characters return to the main plot. Virtually no information is wasted information.
- Fights
Just like any classic Shonen, One piece has lots of fights. If you enjoy watching slugfests, there is a lot to see in one piece. Some have unique ways of using their powers to get advantage over the enemy and some are just straight up slugfests where the people fighting are just throwing hands endlessly, it's pretty enjoyable in both cases.
- Story
The story is pretty great, like I mentioned earlier, no information is virtually wasted so a lot of things boomerang back to something introduced earlier and this is very much true in the story arcs. Even though the main arcs fall under their own sagas, some sagas all lead up to one overarching story. For example in part 1 of One Piece, a lot of the arcs, specifically Sabaody and onwards until end of part 1 all lead up and compound at Marineford arc, making the arc a great culmination of everything leading up to it. In part 2, it's from Punk Hazard onward which compounds in the Wano Country arc. The payoffs of concluding both Marineford and Wano arcs is immensely great.
Weaknesses:
- Bad Gags
Since one piece has a lot of gags in it, some of the jokes land and some just get tired and annoying. For example, the gag of Luffy constantly being obsessed with meat gets pretty tiring, Luffy literally got into a fight with Zoro at whisky peak over the gag that he becomes friends with anyone that feeds him, which is probably the furthest Oda has pushed the "Luffy hungry" gag. Another annoying gag is Nami constantly being angry and hitting or beating up people. It's a trope that sticks from the time Nami joins the crew, she's constantly getting mad and yelling and beating up people, and that gag has never landed for me and is getting boring in late One piece. Another bad gag is how Sanji is constantly head over heels for women, and while it's not too egregious for most of the series, it gets REALLY bad in Fish-Man island arc, his gag of being in love with all women literally causes a problem for the crew multiple times in Fish-man island.
- Fake Out deaths
There is a LOT of fake out deaths that happen in One Piece. I probably attribute this to being a Shonen story and because it's target audience are teens they can't have lots of gore and death, but the fake out deaths gets really annoying and makes no sense in some cases. Two of the most offensive fake out deaths was Pell from Alabasta, he literally blew himself up which seemed like a character moment that was going to wrap up his arc, but he survived which made the character moment seem lessened. The second most offensive one was in Wano, there's a villain who died THREE times but only actually died on the third one because of fake out deaths. Three time fake out deaths seems extremely excessive, especially for a character you plan to kill anyways. Ultimately, I think the fact it's targeted to teens is why the fake out deaths are so prominent, but it gets really annoying at times.
Conclusion: One Piece is a phenomenal of Shonen manga and if you love shonen, you WILL love One Piece.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Mar 12, 2021
Tokyo Ghoul Re was pretty phenomenal. The story starts off pretty slow but once it picks up it doesn't stop with the enjoyable plot progression. Characters are all pretty interesting and none feel like throwaway characters and are given ample amounts of character growth and screen time. The only character I had a real problem with was the final antagonist, Furuta. He seemed far too perfect of a villain during the final arc, constantly having the upper hand and getting his way at every step. I didn't have an issue with the plot progression but it seemed crazy to me how good of an antagonist
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he was and how effective he was being at opposing the main character. Otherwise, I think he was pretty good of a villain despite the series making him seem untouchable until the end. The story arcs in the series were all amazing, especially the arcs at the middle point of the story. The only gripe I have with the story was the final arc of the series, the final arc seemed like they were trying to rush the end of the series and push the main character to face off with the final villain. To me it didn't seem as fluid as the other story arcs, however I generally liked the ending. The ending of the series in my opinion felt deserved, despite all the main character's efforts, the problems of Tokyo never magically went away. Sure his efforts created change that made his situation better, but never did the problems of Tokyo become 100% fixed, which I liked.
My main complaint with the series was the art during fight scenes. Some fight scenes were really all over the place and it was quite hard to tell what exactly I was looking at during some scenes. This is the only low point of the art.
Overall the series is pretty amazing and well worth a read.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Sep 5, 2020
One piece is an awesome series but I don't wanna spend half a year - a year on a single anime again like I did with DBZ/Naruto especially with a crap ton of fillers(I hate filler arcs) so I'm just gonna switch to the manga but it's still a great series regardless. The main character is goofy and interesting, side characters are awesome, the theme as well is awesome too, not being limited to one environment and traversing the world. I would probably finish the anime if the length was condensed somehow, perhaps eliminating some of the countless filler episodes would entice me to watch
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the entirety instead of just reading it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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