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Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is, by all means and purposes, a female oriented power fantasy. Yes, this is exactly how I started my review last time and that's because this series is really not better than the first season, hell, Maomao at this point is no longer the underdog she was supposed to be at the start, she has more support than ever and is as capable as ever.

What has improved since last season? Well, I don't have to see Maomao intimidating stupid ladies-in-waiting, but I guess that's about where my compliments come to an end, as it follows the same formula of having a mystery ... and Maomao solving it with some parts building a bigger picture to resolve at the end of the season. Maomao and Jinshi's romance is as bad as it has ever been, but you now get some rapechad scenes just like in our favorite shoujo series, like Jinshi gently laying down Maomao and pulling her leg up while asking her if she wanted to find out if he had a dick, and honestly, they completely lack chemistry since the first season and they don't seem to be moving their relationship as it's so one-sided that it hurts, but I guess the rapechad moments will be the closer they get to have any kind of thing remotely similar to romantic tension in the foreseeable future.

Of course Maomao is still a Mary Sue, you can scream to me that she isn't, but what people don't realize about this term is that it works on a spectrum. Sure, there are some characters that might fit better all the criteria, but Maomao covers most of them pretty easily, she just lacks fighting abilities to kick people around, and you will always see a discourse about this. It still looks like that, without Maomao, the integrity of the palace would fall in any moment; her underdog aspect of being a lowly servant has been pretty much put into irrelevance ever since Jinshi bought her; we were told last season about her father Lakan, a very high ranking member of the military who would literally wage a war if something were to happen to her; she has been working under Gyokuyou, one of the emperor's main consorts, as her attendant, so basically no lady-in-waiting ever pesters her again; the fact that Maomao and the series still act like she could catch fire any time is nothing short of stupid and dishonest. The closest argument you could get from this season was that Maomao was "kidnapped", which I put in quotation marks because nothing ever happened to her, she was taken to a festival, then put inside a house where she didn't suffer anything beyond doing some medicine for immortality, she could read, she could eat, she could rest, the two worst things that happened to her there were that she was hit with a fan (which is even less than the metal bat from the previous season) and she was put inside a closed room with insects and snakes, but she is very quirky, so she just ate them, which means that at no point in time she was in any danger. Nothing about this arc made me think that Maomao wasn't a Mary Sue, and just as I put it at the start, one of the thing she lacks to be a Mary Sue to a "T" is having any kind of fighting abilities.

At the end, the only episodes that may be worth a damn are completely ruined by their cop-out solutions: the kids that dramatically died last episode by drinking some shit? They aren't dead and drank the medicine that can "kill" a person and later "bring them back to life", of course, this was quite obvious if you remember that said medicine exists, but it doesn't make it any less stupid. Suirei? She doesn't have any punishment whatsoever for what she did this and last season, she quite literally plotted to kill the emperor's younger brother and is quite literally associated to the clan that tried to do a rebellion, and instead it's her comically evil step-mother who takes the fall for everything she did because she was abusing her, it's so unrealistic that she didn't get executed and instead is living with the kids alongside Ah-Duo. Shisui? She has this stupid "emotional" dance with music and everything while she gets shot multiple times and then falls from a high place, of course, that is a fake-out and at the end she is perfectly fine. For the last year, I have been pestered about this series being mature, smart and realistic, which is quite obviously untrue, these events are quite literally on the level of intelligence of battle shonen (which are kid's shows), events like emotional deaths followed by death fake-outs is overused in those, you can see them in Bleach, Naruto or One Piece and they are already stupid there, despite the fact that they are quite literally for kid's so they don't try to be smart, this series pretends to be smart while at the same time pulling this kind of stuff which is honestly embarrassing, I wish this was me twisting the events or anything, but this is quite literally what happens in the series, this author has no backbone at all.

It has been a pain watching this series, it didn't help that I was sick to the point of being bedridden without wanting to watch anime for an entire month, so I had to catch up with many things instead of just taking it more slowly, and Kusuriya was easily the thing I wanted to see the least between the list of anime I hadn't dropped at that point, you don't have to worry about me anymore, as I'm not excited in any way to even see the continuation of this series.

Thank you for reading.

If I said that I'm disappointed with Afro for this show, then that would be putting it lightly. If you know me, you'll see I love Yuru Camp, it’s one of the CGDCT I use as a bar that others have to try to reach because of how great it is. Mono is extremely forgettable to the point I can't remember the name of its main characters except for Haru, and I remember her name, not because I like her, but because I think she steals the show, and I don't mean that in a good way.

When I watch a CGDCT, I think the most ... important part is the characters, since they’re completely based around them, there usually isn't a bigger plot picture but following these adorable moeblobs, so the way they behave, how funny they are, or even how visually appealing they can be are the key to make this kind of series good, especially because the theme used to start their interactions might not be touched heavily. The main girl in Mono, who joined the photography club because she was a fan of her senpai who was in the club, has so little presence she might as well be a side character in her own show, and her friends are not exactly more entertaining than her.

I singled out Haru earlier because she is the part I disliked the most about this show, she is basically Afro's self-insert: she draws manga and asks these girls to help her with it by going to different locations, so she drives most of the episodes' plot because the main characters stopped having agencies for themselves after about episode 2. Imagine if after Sawa-chan appears in K-On, she is the one telling the girls what they are going to do and where they are going to go across many episodes. I'm not saying you can't focus in an older character, Sawako had great episodes that were mostly dedicated to her, but seeing Haru is like watching Afro's blog but with moeblobs around her for her to order around. I mean, there's an entire episode about Haru and her mangaka friends complaining about making manga, her presence is just overwhelming in the show, it really isn't a surprise that the best episodes in the series are the ones where she is featured the least.

The photography aspect is also pretty ignored after episode 2, despite the fact that they keep going to locations where they could most likely take pictures, but they just not do it, there are some episodes that focus more on it later on that are actually kind good, like the skateboarding episode, but the photography club aspect is almost ignored most of the time. K-On is usually mocked by detractors pointing out that they don't spend much time doing music, but you can at least see them practicing for about 5 seconds in multiple episode, if this series was memorable I would surely pinpoint you in which episodes photographing anything at all was important, but being too focused on going to different places in Yamanashi following whatever Haru is telling them to do is clearly more important.

And as you might have guessed by watching it, this series is happening in the same city as Yuru Camp, so it has Yuru Camp cameos, to the point it's like this series isn't trying to be its own thing. Yes Afro, just shill your waaaay more popular manga here, because we clearly forgot about Yuru Camp and we need to see them some more here. Some cameos are more obvious than others, while in some episodes you can see them on the background, in some others they will have lines or be the punchline of a joke. Again, I love Yuru Camp, but this isn't necessary.

The biggest saving grace of this series is the animation, as when it wants to, it’s colorful, dynamic, creative and full of life, they really got a great team working here and I'm grateful for that, because I have seen series about visual creativity that looks like shit. It was made by a pretty recent studio, but some people working on it who are very much veterans, like Masanobu Nomura being the art director and he has been fantastic across the years, so it's not surprising that the quality of both the animation and backgrounds is great here.

Mono is, to my displeasure, a pretty forgettable series, I was really excited when it was announced, but I guess I'll keep myself to Yuru Camp, as this series kept mentioning and it is clearly the superior product.

Thank you for reading.

This is what you guys get from not being harsh enough on Unicorn.

Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX is a Khara production, and as such, it's a cynical cash grab made to exploit nostalgia for a better series that this one fundamentally misunderstands. It's a show that suffers from an identity crisis, trying to both be an alternate universe version of the original Gundam that explores a OYW where Zeon won, but also a FLCL-style coming of age story for a group of young Newtypes who don't know how to face the world. Instead of deciding to pick one, the show tries to cram both radically different ... storylines in a mere 12 episodes, leading to both sides to be criminally underdeveloped due to a lack of breathing room, leaving both the character development non-existent and the world building of such a changed UC a blip on the radar.

Machu is very clearly intended to be a Kamille type character, a rebel who wants to break free into the world but doesn't have a way to so they go straight to violence, but that's basically all her character, she never really grows in any way and never faces consequences for her actions, she ultimately exists as a character the UC cast can give exposition to. Shuji is basically a mix of Kaworu and Lalah, a mysterious boy whose relationship to the MC serves to drive a breaking point, but we're never given explanations on WHO he is and HOW he's involved with the Rose of Sharon at all. Nyaan is probably the most developed of the three, as her desire for a new place to belong actually gets her on a way to take greater role in the story, but the entire thing is cut short with no real resolution once she's reduced to just a love triangle with Machu and Shuji.

Something really damning about this show is that, despite the constant key jiggling of references to the original Gundam and Zeta (constantly bringing characters and even music from those even if it plays no role on the plot, like the Titans), it really doesn't seem to understand the characters it is using from those old shows. Why would Char want to do CCA like Challia says? He never lived the events of Zeta, he has no reason to have his faith in humanity broken over his dreams of a giving the next generation to Kamille and the AEUG being shattered, him wanting to do this without that context is completely opposite to his portrayal in the actual CCA movie. Why does Sayla want to lead Zeon? She hates her family heritage, always siding with the Federation at every turn, her suddenly deciding to take it is complete character assassination. And the series just keeps having all these little holes, like why does the Murasame Lab exist if Flannagan research wasn't folded into the Federation, why does Bask have a Psyco Gundam when the Federation lost the Gundam and never even made GMs, why does Haro exist in multiple numbers without Amuro making it popular after the war - this show is more focused on referencing old shows than actually following its premise of exploring a different UC.

Unicorn did irreparable damage to the depiction of Newtypes, completely destroying their lore to make them weird reality warpers, and GQuuuuuuX follows Unicorn's lead by having Newtype powers (or Kira Kira as they bizarrely want to call them here) literally remake universes, which is such a disgusting and gross misappropriation of what Newtypes were always supposed to be in Tomino's work, even Gundam X could get this shit right but not an actual UC work. Ignore anything allegorical about their role in the search for human understanding, a Newtype realm is completely real, they can make black holes and travel to other timelines, because these hack writers are just going to use them as plot devices to make anything they want possible, including facilitating a MCU level member berries multiverse plot like this one.

FLCL was definitely a fluke, because Tsurumaki has never shown himself capable of making any good original work again, this shit is on the level of the FLCL sequels he had no hand in. Anno is an hypocritical nostalgia obsessed fanboy who wants people to move forward, but is completely incapable of doing anything but retreating old plot threads, and has done nothing but remake his childhood shows for years now. Khara has given us the most creatively bankrupt Gundam series since Unicorn, and I hope that people clapped at the epic cameos and references, because this is what you get for always refusing to innovate and instead relaying on infinitely exploiting decades old IPs as the Disney of anime.

Thank you for reading.

If I haven’t been clear before, because I didn’t do a review of such a soulless and manufactured, by-the-numbers product like the first season of this show, then I will just say it clearly, I loathe Solo Leveling, I’m disgusted by it, it’s one of those abominations called “Webtoon adaptations” that are a completely different medium creeping into anime by the power of American companies such as Crunchyroll, who shamelessly shill these Korean series and call it “anime”. Can you really see this series and tell me that it was made because the author has anything worth to tell? Of course not, because Solo Leveling ... is even more shameless than any generic low quality isekai that get forgotten a day after they finish airing that people have been complaining about for like a decade now. In fact, Solo Leveling reminds me of this absolutely terrible isekai called IseLeve, because in that show this fat ugly guy suddenly stumbles upon powers and from one day to the other becomes this super hot guy that girls fawn over everywhere he goes, and he is so OP he can basically do anything, and that show was mind numbing. If you ask me if I prefer to watch that show or Solo Leveling, then I would watch that one again, these two shows are basically the same, but one was rightfully relentlessly mocked while Solo Leveling gets praised to high heavens by “people” who sound no different from bots, as I have never seen an organic Solo Leveling discussion, when I say that Crunchyroll has people shilling it, I mean it seriously.

This series couldn’t possibly have been written by someone older than 13, this show is an infinite repetition of itself and there’s absolutely no variation at all, you can easily see the formula: jobbers get sent to a dungeon, they get defeated by the super strong enemy, MC appears and easily defeats the super strong enemy, rinse and repeat until the end of times. Even before the anime came out, I saw people comparing it to SAO, but there isn’t much similarities between these series beyond the game mechanics, and while they make sense in SAO because they are inside a literal videogame, in Solo Leveling they just are there for the protagonist. I mean, at least SAO isn’t shameless enough to make Kirito’s friends completely useless, they get their time to shine and sometimes Kirito faces hurdles that he couldn’t complete if he didn’t have these companions, but Solo Leveling is different since, in its absolutely moronic world building, people cannot get stronger except for the MC, so even S-Ranks are absolutely useless in comparison to the protagonist, because fuck any character who isn’t the protagonist, right? And this protagonist whose name I couldn’t bother to remember is a wet tissue of a character, it’s basically seeing a caricature of a caricature of a caricature, this guy has no character at all, I don’t think you could give me a description of his personality because he doesn’t have one, I have seen people describe him as an “aura farmer” and I don’t know what the fuck that even means, it seems like words randomly put together by an AI or maybe something a 12 years old kid on TikTok came up with, but anyhow, there aren’t characters in this show, because only the protagonist matters and he doesn’t have a character. The plot of this series is also palpably non-existent in ideas, it’s basically a ripoff of the author’s favorite light novels and at some point he decided to add some parts of Hunter x Hunter, but as the author has absolutely no ability to write and you could probably find something better written in Wattpad, these little points of the so-called plot fall so flat on its face that you will feel that you wasted your time, because, as I said at the beginning of this paragraph, this show is just a repetition with no variation where the GOD CHAD MC beats everything effortlessly because of his gifted powers, because unlike what some people tell you, no, he didn’t work hard for his powers, even Saitama worked harder for them and the way Saitama got so powerful was literally told as a joke for the series, but this series take itself super seriously as if it wasn’t some kid’s wet dream where even his smell makes girls wet.

Did you expect some kind of good soundtrack because of Hiroyuki Sawano? Prepare to be disappointed, because this is the driest soundtrack he has ever composed, it’s like this series is lacking so much on having people with soul working on it that it removes the soul of people that are talented, I mean, it doesn’t matter if you think Sawano can get repetitive after a while, but he has composed extremely recognizable and unforgettable stuff, the fact that I don’t hear in my head a single track this series had should tell you all. Did you expect good animation because it was A-1 Pictures? Well, think again, some battles are literally colors traveling around the screen with absolutely no choreography to speak of as if you’re watching Dragon Ball Z, but that’s a 300 episodes long anime, it at least has an excuse to have many lows in animation and even then it tends to have much better battle choreography than this show, I’m not going to say the animation is low quality all the time, but it definitely isn’t the best A-1 Pictures have put out even in recent years and I don’t consider them even close to the best studios. Did you expect literally anything at all because of the popularity? Sorry to ruin it to you, but there’s nothing for you to be attached to here, no plot, no characters, no nothing, I refuse to believe people who praise this aren’t bots or shills, it’s obvious that Crunchyroll is going to far lengths to promote the series and you have seen this kind of thing with basically every Webtoon adaptation, this isn’t the first and definitely won’t be the last poisonous plague that will come out from there.

I think I’m disappointed in myself for getting so far into this show, it’s probably the most uninteresting Korean adaptation I have seen so far, which is an extremely high bar because no other “Crunchyroll Original” originated from Korean has been interesting in the slightest, it is honestly embarrassing that something like this is even allowed to exist and to be considered one of the best Korean series, do Webtoons really have nothing worthy to offer aside from porn? I have seen better writing in porn than in this. Recently, I was sick for like 10 days with ugly coughs and even felt like I was getting choked when going to bed because of all the phlegm, and that’s probably a better experience than watching these Webtoon adaptations, and the fact that we are getting another one next season seems dreadful, I’m probably going to watch it and give it a 1/10 again or simply not watch it at all, but the problem is not if I’ll be watching it or not, the problem is that these products are worthless garbage that doesn’t deserve being called anime, even if you were to call them such, you would have to be either a kid or have never seen anything else in your life, anime or not, to be impressed about a show so devoid of everything such as Solo Leveling, everything about this show is as artificial as the jawline surgeries that are so popular over Korea.

Thank you for reading.

Every time I watch a Dandadan episode, I get confused, not because it is deep or because it is difficult to follow or anything, but because I just fail to understand why would anyone watch this and consider it something great or revolutionary or different from other battle shonen series they have seen, and while I guess it has something different, it’s the same thing that leads Chainsaw Man to be called different, and that reason is because it is written to attract late zoomers/gen alpha people with short attention spans who watch too much TikTok.

Dandadan is like a complete mismatch of genres where the ... author doesn’t know how to write any of them, as he does a terrible job at doing a battle shonen, he does a terribly childish job at comedy, he is doing an atrocious job at doing romance and he is doing a terrible job at doing compelling characters. I have been seeing the joke, or the thing I was hoping that was a joke, that shonen MCs are being more and more emasculated over time while citing as examples characters like Deku or Eren, so when you sit down, watch this show, and see that the premise is that the MC was literally emasculated, it feels ridiculous and surreal, as if trying to double down on what was supposed to be a joking statement.

The humor in this series is extremely childish, who else would laugh at jokes like “dud, he has, like, no balls” and stuff like literal toilet humor unless they are a kid, and this will show some of the most childish comedy while characters are acting stupidly and making “funny faces”, but when I say “comedy” I don’t actually mean it as the show doesn’t have actual jokes. And I guess that’s a problem with the series, it is basically like Kimetsu no Yaiba in this aspect too, but with even worse comedy somehow, as they will show multiple gruesome scenes but still trying to be a show that a kid will watch because everything else is extremely silly. For example, they might show the main girl in underwear and about to be raped, but you know that won’t happen as it was only made to titillate you somehow before it gets interrupted by the MC possessed by a spirit who was asking to suck on his “weenie” in a previous scene; if you can tell, that scene isn’t actually a serious one and it doesn’t make the show less stupid to show some breasts or blood from time to time, one of the times I dropped it in my unpleasant time while reading the manga was when Okarun turned into Kaneki and started rapping about being depressed, it’s really like checking social media like BlueSky and seeing people saying that they are depressed without comprehending the meaning of the word “depression”, because this manga is written as if the author was saying the meme of “how do you do fellow kids?”. I know I’m not the first one to make this comparison, but this show is basically Chainsaw Man, but while Chainsaw Man is for teens who just entered their edgy phase, Dandadan is for people who are still laughing alongside their classmates saying “pee” and “poop” as if they just discovered they aren’t bad words.

There’s a scene where Okarun and Momo are swimming, and in that very scene Okarun says that he can’t swim, but 10 seconds later he is swimming again, it’s like this series cannot keep basic consistency during only one scene. And this lack of consistency happens multiple times, Momo’s grandmother looks completely different in the first episode than how she does when she debuts, even if you think this is a mistake on the manga then it didn’t get fixed by the anime either. The show will also sometimes try to get people to cry about their antagonists by saying some sad thing or that they were actually doing something good before, as if trying to bring some sympathy towards them, but the problem with this is that it’s always only said after the fact, there’s an entire episode dedicated to some antagonist that tells their sad backstory and how they came to be, and this episode is supposed to be extremely emotional or some shit, and seeing the reactions to it tell me that some people are extremely easy to manipulate emotionally, as I cannot build any kind of sympathy for a character we know so little we aren’t even told their name.

I have known for a long while that a lot of writers who do battle shonen usually are incapable of writing romance, and this author is not an exception, he makes the “generic romcom where 2 people blush at each other and that gets considered as romantic development” type series look like masterpieces, none of the romance development here feels earned or that it should have happened at all. For example, there’s Momo with Okarun, where the reason why she has a female boner for him is because he has the same name as her favorite actor, and unless you are incapable of thinking, you can notice how stupid that is, Okarun doesn’t even look like Takakura Ken, but she gets flustered every time his actual name gets mentioned because of this, it really makes me prefer the very simple reason of “I like him because… he was nice to me ONCE!” as that makes more sense than this, and that isn’t even getting into the episodes that try to focus on this “romance”, as they just focus on minor miscommunications that don’t actually amount to anything while their relationship stays the same every single time. And it only gets worse from there, as a second girl falls in love with Okarun, and for absolutely no reason whatsoever, I don’t think he and Aira interacted positively once before the series tells us that Aira loves him, she was nice to him basically to make fun of him in one episode and that’s the most significant interaction they have before the love triangle appears, it’s like this show doesn’t understand that romance isn’t their forte and it actually becomes annoying to watch because of how badly done it is.

You can tell the animation is well done, which I guess is the only positive thing I could mention about it, even if I find funny the first thing Science SARU airs after being bought by a big corpo is premiering a Jump battle shonen, but with writing this bad, it might as well be a turd in a silver plate. However, it almost seems like the direction of this show is actually pretty incompetent, take for example the scene in episode 1 where Okarun mentions his real name towards Momo, in the manga, it is basically a spread where there are petals behind him, meanwhile in the anime they added an explosion behind as if this show was directed by Michael Bay, and it might as well be, because that explosion not only wasn’t there, it wasn’t necessary at all, and all this was while some of the most horrid background music was playing. Really, every time I hear that OST my ears feel like they are hearing a fork scraping a plate, I felt that the guy who did the music for this anime needed to get fired, and it took me by surprise when I saw that the person who did it was Kensuke Ushio, the same Kensuke Ushio who did such magnificent OSTs such as Ping Pong’s and Koe no Katachi’s is doing this kind of terrible earbleeding job, was he being threatened to do the worst he could ever do? Is he ok? Because this definitely is not the same guy I know and he couldn’t have fallen this much in the span of a couple of months, because the soundtrack is absolutely the worst part of this adaptation. It isn’t helped by the fact that the opening is probably the most obnoxious anime opening I have heard this year, I'm surprised Shitty Nuts surpassed themselves this very year after the already horrible Mashle season 2 OP, it’s like they are competing with themselves to do worse openings every time.

Unless you are the kind of kid who watches Skibiddi Toilet, I can’t possibly recommend you Dandadan, everything about it is, in zoomer slang, “not cooking”.

Thank you for reading.

Like many, I learned about the existence of this show in conversations about Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru, that this one was an “spicier” or more ecchi version of it, and I thought that, just like the series it was being compared to, this would be a light trashy lecture to see hot girls, and I wouldn’t say I disagree with people who called it an even ecchier version, you are immediately bombarded with everything you were expecting, even if by now I disagree with the comparisons since both series are very different despite the cosplay theme as they go in pretty different ... directions. As the author of the series would put it, the real series started after it stopped being a series where a guy gets himself in lewd situations with a couple of girls and turned into a cosplay manga, it’s not like it stops being ecchi, but it definitely puts a stop to only being that to actually have a focus on the actual characters and storyline, focusing more on otaku culture and even being some kind of hot blooded sports manga but with very hot girls.

This show starts with our dear otaku Okumura in his manga club at school when suddenly one day this very cute and hot girl Ririsa enters the room, wants to join the club, starts undressing to change into her cosplay and as the MC’s waifu, and then you just know the kind of series you are getting into, it’s a fun ecchi series for the first couple of episodes. However, I think the series actually gets real by the time Mayuri appears, because that’s the point where the manga evolves, the scene where they have to submit a report to keep the club’s room but they don’t want to lie about it because it is not true to their ideals, that it would be admitting that they are embarrassed about what they enjoy, where we’re given the counterpoint about people thinking that something like cosplay is just for some girls to get attention on their social media, and that people won’t take seriously that kind of hobby even if you’re serious about it because it would still look “shameful”, as these people will see you liking anime and say that those are “merely cartoons” and you have no reason keep watching it past childhood age, Ririsa’s response to it is powerful, and it cements an important part of the theme of the series, that doing your hobbies is not something you should be ashamed of just because some other people may not approve of it. That’s pretty much the moment where the anime and series in general start taking a change into something that actually stands up for something, and that something is probably very relatable for anyone who has watching anime, reading manga or even reading comics or playing video games for being very real issues that fans face.

From there on you have actually genuine arcs that follows similar themes to that, and it was very easy to care about it as these characters are very endearing, because they very clearly have some attitudes that you have seen or experienced before, for example, I immediately loved Nagomi’s character because of the way that she talked to Ririsa as if Ririsa didn’t even know in which floor she is standing on since she was just a beginner, then proceeds to tell her all the criticism she has gotten and how she doesn’t care about that, to then say that she loves cosplay more than anyone else, and I know people will see her as mean for that, and well she was but I felt very endeared towards her from that point onwards as I have definitely said some similar things to people multiple times across the internet, of course, her character isn’t only being mean to new people but actually rediscovering her love for cosplay and how fun it is. Noa with her communication problems created one of the most annoying arcs of the series, but once you actually get to know her as a character, she clearly become much better as she can actually open her mouth and speak properly things one can easily understand, like complaining about extroverts just doing whatever she tried for so long in a couple of seconds when it comes to communication, or how she doesn’t want to be with people who compare things to the Avengers. Surprisingly, despite being cute, Mikari is probably the one that contributes the less towards the otaku feeling as she is one of the two people in the cast who isn’t an otaku, even if she is there for almost every group cosplay, she is the one that mainly moves the romance side of the things as she is clearly in love with Okumura, and because he don’t see 3DPDs that way, she gets very frustrated over the fact that she basically gets ignored in that aspect. Aria is the other normal person of the group who is barely getting started on cosplay to see her father again, her arc is actually one of the emotional highs of the series and has one of the best Okumura scenes. One line that has been lingering in my mind ever since I saw it was Mayuri saying that her watch list has been getting bigger and that she haven’t even catch up with previous seasonal anime, and I just know I’ll possibly end up like that one day.

The worst part of the adaptation is extremely obvious, that is, the censorship. Believe me when I tell you this is one of the worst cases of censorship I have seen in the last couple of years, to the point that thanks to it and another popular show like Ranma getting censored, people have gotten so paranoid about censorship that every single ecchi adaptation announced has been getting immediately jumped to the conclusion that it will be stupidly censored. Those people are exaggerating, of course, however, the censorship in this show isn’t normal at all, for example, say that they won’t add nipples, I have seen anime where the original manga showed nipples but the anime didn’t, not even in the blu-rays, and taking into account that JC Staff hasn’t made an anime with nipples in like 5 years then I was expecting the nipple censorship, but it doesn’t stop there, you just have to take a small look at how Liliel’s outfit looks in the manga, that was the first sign of this seen in the KV of the anime, as you can tell there’s far less underboob and the outfit is zipped, but the censorship level doesn’t stop at nipples, as it also includes pantyshots, underboob, boob grabs, ass shots, altered outfits to show less skin, and even entire scenes. The censorship in the cosplays is one of the worst offenders here, after all, this is a cosplay anime, censoring the cosplays is simply a ridiculous idea and I have no idea how it got into anyone’s head that they should do that, and it’s quite funny as there is an scene in episode 3 where Ririsa explains exactly that while trying to make a cosplay, showing how the outfit of the character in the manga always shows the nipples through the top and that the anime changes it to not do that so fans of the manga will notice the change and care about that part of the design, so it’s hilarious how the anime seems to lack this much self-awareness when that scene is exactly what is happening to the series saying it.

Of course, that is not the only problem with how the anime shows the girls, because in the manga, they have more distinguishable body types, there’s even a scene where Ririsa, Noa and Aria are changing and they start talking about how they look different, yet in the anime there is basically no difference between Ririsa and Aria’s bodies despite one saying she and the other is more muscular, when in the manga there is an obvious difference, as Ririsa actually looks soft while Aria looks more muscular and even Noa looks more slim to the point you can see her ribs, but this isn’t reflected in the anime at any point. This is the kind of little details that add to the erotic aesthetics of the show, which the manga is full of yet the anime very clearly lacks. I can’t get why they decided to take this manga and censor so much of it, I have heard people saying that it is for the gacha or to make it more accessible to other people which aren’t fond of ecchi, but at that point they are devaluating part of the message of the show about not being ashamed of your hobby even if others call it unfitting.

Of course, I love the show and the pretty poor job that JC Staff did won’t change that, it is very obviously a very inferior product compared to the manga, but it still is good enough to watch and enjoy, after all, the characters are as lovable as in the source material and there are many scenes that one could relate to in according to their experience with watching anime.

Thank you for reading.

I remember when I decided to start watching Makeine, it wasn’t in my plans to watch this show at the start, because when looked from afar, it looked exactly like every other romcom you and I already saw dozens of times, and I thought I was already watching enough of those. I decided to start watching it after I dropped a show whose name I cannot even remember anymore and because I heard that this “wasn’t like other harem romcoms”, this “this was different”, and without even having even started it I knew those claims were a lie, why would I believe these people when ... the cover and the synopsis definitely doesn’t even imply what they’re saying? But the second you start the first episode with a quote that even Oregairu would deem childish, and which is not actually relevant to the series because this isn’t about failed relationships in high school but rather about people who failed to get one, as if the author failed to grasp what his own series is about, then my mind just ended up being completely sure about one thing: this show is just any other romcom which both you and I already saw dozens of times, but it thinks it isn’t and by that little detail it comes across as worse being than them.

The only argument you could make about Makeine being “different” is that the girls didn’t fall in love with the MC immediately, and that’s honestly misleading, a lot of girls in those other harem romcoms don’t fall with the MC instantly either, and in fact this series plays exactly like them, because those romcoms linger on the fact that it is a more of a “will they or won’t they” dynamic, so actual romance doesn’t happen most of the time besides the MC sharing moments with each of the girls in each of their respective arcs, and if you didn’t notice it by now, Makeine works in the exact same way.

This is one of the most pathetic attempts of an MC I have seen in a series as praised as this one this year, I don’t think I need to mention his name because he was such a nothingburger of a character since he’s a soulless self-insert, this MC doesn’t even have a personality at all, his most notable qualities are that he reads light novels (because he’s just like you) and that he likes tap water, aside from that he doesn’t have any notable trait to him and yet all the girls are flocking to him, why? Because he is the MC, and in fact, there are multiple questions that you can do and the answer is the exact same thing every time: why did the tomboy started undressing after getting trapped in the same room as him? Because he is the MC; why was he found in a changing room alongside a girl that already has a boyfriend by her boyfriend? Because he is the MC; why did the super busty girl that already has a boyfriend fall with her breasts on his face? Because he is the MC, and that scene even had a “I heard that exact line in a light novel!” as if trying to be self-aware, but this series isn’t actually self-aware. This anime is not doing anything different from other shows of the exact same genre, it isn’t subversive no matter how much you try to twist it, it just thinks it is different despite using the exact same tropes as all others, and the fact people actually buy there’s anything unique about it makes me think they need to watch more romcoms.

This show reminds me of Oresuki, that show worked on a similar premise that other girls around the guy were in love with his best friend so they wanted the MC to set them up with him, however, Oresuki was pretty much honest from the very beginning by making a girl in love with the MC from the start. I saw many people saying that Oresuki was a subversion of the usual formula and it really wasn’t, but it was at least funny to watch, which is more than I can say about a lot of romcoms and specially about this one, the cracks that this was written just like a normal harem romcom were pretty obvious from a glance, but that show didn’t have a good reception like this one, probably because the fact that it was a harem romcom was even more obvious than here, and this anime has A-1 Pictures on it so you can say it was made by the same studio that did other “peak”, and by that I mean overrated, romcom shows like Kaguya-sama combined with their “great visuals”, and by that I mean the usual A-1 slop, make some scenes like someone dancing or boobs bouncing look good and make the rest of the anime look average, wobbling with so many drops in quality that the times it doesn’t look bleh seem impressive in comparison.

This shows tries to get me interested in how the girls solve their previous rejections because other girls got with the guy they were in love with which is terrible to watch, and while the comedy can be tolerated the drama here is simply unbearable, partially because I don’t care about these other couples, and the fact that all of these love triangles the girls went through makes one of them the childhood friend of the guy makes me think that the author fell for the meme that “the childhood friend always loses”, it is the same kind of stupidity that another anime already committed years ago, that show was called Osananajimi ga Zettai ni Makenai Love Comedy, and it was called that way because the author is stupid and also fell for the same meme. Of course, that series had a modicum of competency with the writing in some characters, something that I cannot say about Makeine, because in this series it isn’t even a focal point, it is there because you already watched other romcom shows and can recognize the joke from there, and that’s actually the part where Makeine shines, and that is in trying to be different just to return to the usual formula in one way or another. Obviously, after the girls get rejected, they have someone to go to cry to and that person is the MC, because once that other guy gets out of the way, they can flock to your self-insert after they got over their love for the other guy so they’ll slowly fall in love with literally you, because that is the type of show that Makeine is.

Thank you for reading.

Grendizer U is the first TV anime based on the Mazinger franchise in 15 years, the first anime adaptation of the UFO Robo Grendizer series in nearly 50 years, and a collaboration between staff members that worked on mecha classics like Gundam SEED, Code Geass and Evangelion… and it’s not good. I really wanted to like this show, and there’s a lot of ideas here that could lead to an interesting story, but the series just ultimately was a massive let down.

I’ll address the elephant in the room about this show upfront: the pacing sucks. Grendizer U feels like it’s trying to have a whole ... 50 episodes worth of plot despite only having 13 episodes to work with, so everything feels incredibly rushed, from the fights almost all ending in 2 attacks, to the characters suddenly going from not standing each other to developing strong bonds in the span of 1 episode, to the loads of exposition to advance the multiple plotlines being juggled every episode, and this just makes everything about it feel lacking in impact. I mean, I know the state of the modern anime industry sucks so asking for 2 cours was probably too much, but then they could just write the plot to actually fit the 1 cour they have, it’s not like good mecha anime that are only 1 cour don’t exist, Shin Jeeg told a coherent plot in the same time and had cool stuff like the double Jeeg battle. The show has multiple plots that are brought up, never elaborated on, and then dropped that coupled with the ending make it feel like the staff desperately want to get a second season, but given how that went for the last Mazinger anime, I won’t hold my breath for one.

Speaking of cool battles, that’s the other key issue with his show: it’s just boring. I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece of story given how messy the plots of SEED and Geass are, but I was looking forward to a fun super robot in the spirit of previous Mazinger anime like Shin and Mazinkaiser, but this show is incredibly dull. Aside from the OP and ED none of the music here is memorable, I wouldn’t care for any of these characters if I wasn’t familiar with their past versions as their relationships (with the exception Koji with Duke, for the better, and Teronna with Duke, for the worse) have no time to develop, and with the battles being so short, I hardly found myself interested in seeing how they were going to play out, which is a shame because I think the CGI mecha in the show are on the better side and the moments where they change to 2D actually feel they could be cool with the proper context. I mean, the animation of the show in general isn’t stellar, in fact I’d even call it subpar, and some of the character designs were redesigned better than others (I still don’t get why Sayaka has purple hair?), but I wasn’t expecting it to seeing as Gaina is basically Gainax’s corpse somehow still moving even after Anno took away their sustain.

This isn’t a slap in the face of the original like Devilman Crybaby was, but as far as Go Nagai remakes go, Grendizer U is sadly one of the weaker entries and I wouldn’t recommend it as an entry point for people not familiar with the Mazinger franchise. Go and do yourself a favor and watch Shin Mazinger Shougeki! Z-hen if you want to see a modern remake of this classic mecha franchise done right.

Thank you for reading

Note: I’m not into Vtuber culture, but I can recognize and understand some things about it mainly because they are so popular it’s basically impossible to escape them if you’re into otaku culture as they pretty much are a part of it, so I’m not going to be biased for it.

This anime is an advertisement for the Strong Zero beer- uh, I mean, it’s about a Vtuber breaking character and getting popular because of it as the title says. I'm surprised no one pointed out inside the show the little comments that are in the streams, because this show follows how Vtubers work, they even ... did their own live2D models of the characters for the show and use them from time to time where they could simply use regular animation all the time. While it also shows them outside of streamings, they usually don't change from how they look in their avatars, I could be cynical and say that it is to keep the illusion that Vtubers are still their personas outside of streams or that the studio was lazy and couldn't bother doing designs for how they should really look, but it is pretty obviously none of those, it’s because the show isn't focused on that, this isn't a show that has Vtubers on it, it’s a show about the Vtubers.

This show is pretty silly, it’s a complete slice of life show where you don't have to expect a plot, the characters can change a little in their relationships but it never goes to a point where you'll miss much, as it is basically a collection of streams which I guess most if not all are based on streams made by actual Vtubers and you'll probably see some characters and say that they remind you of some Vtuber you know. It’s also one of those anime where the comedy can vary a lot in quality, but it will never reach a point where you will be laughing a lot from them, if you understand the culture you will surely be able to enjoy it more, because the moments that landed the most for me was stuff like in that episode where they shouted "MAKOTO" and then showed the "nice boat", or the episode where they were playing an online card game where the studio even made an entire small animation for Rias Gremory and references to other TNK anime which I watched and loved, I mean, TNK animating Rias Gremory in the year 2015+9? I didn't even remember the last time they animated her, while other jokes are as bad as the adult baby fetish ones which I can only guess is one of the fetishes the author has as it had two episodes on it. If for some weird reason you were expecting something about the "dark side" of vtubing or anything of the sort here, then you aren't watching the right anime, there are some darker moments like Awayuki being forced to drink to keep capitalizing on her new drunk persona or when they doxed her, but those are played as comedy sketches that don't impact the characters or the setting much.

I can't understand why Vtubers are so popular, if anything they remind me that when I was like 12 there were some YouTubers that would do Let’s Play videos that my classmates would talk about, I never got into those because 1) I wasn't interested in that 2) I didn't have Wi-Fi back then, so watching things on YouTube was pretty difficult, so I wouldn't be able to do it even if I was interested. The only difference I can see from Vtubers to Let’s Players is that these are behind cute anime girl avatars, and it's not like I didn't try to watch things from them, I remember when I tried watching one of those Vtubers stream, I watched it for like 10 minutes or so, and while I guess it wasn't so bad, I just cannot possibly get what would be so interesting about watching it for hours to get all the popularity they have right now. If anything I'm surprised this anime isn't more popular given it’s about Vtubers, something extremely popular nowadays to the point of dominating the Comiket just behind a plague like Blue Archive, but this show doesn't even get much fanart, I guess it would be because Vtuber fans aren't even interested in anime or they could just watch their Vtuber instead of watching an anime about completely original Vtuber personas, or maybe the overlap of fanbases just isn't as strong as one would think, as Vtubers are much more similar to watching any other streamer than watching anime. If anything, this show is about what Vtubers can only dream to be, actual anime girls.

It's not like I could expect TNK to do this anime, they are one of the only studios that can constantly put out good ecchi anime and they don't do many works per year despite not having impressive animation or anything, so I can just wonder why they chose a light novel about Vtubers to adapt it, I could be disappointed on it as there are other ecchi shows that aired alongside this one like 2.5 getting censored, however, the reason why I'm not really disappointed is because you can see that they really were having fun doing this show, it surely won't change your opinions about Vtubers but you can see how much they appreciate the culture and the last episode is pretty much a testament to that.

Thank you for reading.

Political dramas are hard to make, I’ve seen enough series be completely unable to have the gravitas needed for such storylines, so the fact that Karasu wa Aruji wo Erabanai actually managed to pull it off was a pleasant surprise to me. The series tackles webs of conspiracies ingrained in the royal family, in the royal court and even in the common populace, taking it all with the seriousness these plots need, but also the complexity needed to be engaged in them. A character chart to keep track of every character, their relations and alliances is practically a must if you want to follow all ... the twists the mysteries provide, being a rare example of a modern anime that rewards you for paying close attention to everything happening, something I never expected to see when I picked this show purely because of finding the premise intriguing.

Character wise, our standouts are the main duo of Prince Nazuhiko and Yukiya, the future ruler of the land of Yamauchi and his young bodyguard. The Prince is the one fated to become the Kin’u, a mythical Messianic figure who’s said to keep the land of Yamauchi afloat for reasons the show eventually delves on, so he can come across as being a bit too perfect at times, but this is no Mao Mao, he actually has flaws and self-doubts that he needs to confront over the course of the story. Yukiya has the more interesting character arc, being forced by his family to serve as the Prince’s bodyguard due to his status as a rebel but laid back bum, and the circumstances where he has to put his life on the line for the service of a man he barely knows leads to his growth as he discovers more about the actual state of affairs in the government. Other notable characters like Sumio (the Prince’s older bodyguard), Rokon (first prince Natsuka’s bodyguard with his own agenda), and the Prince’s mistresses (a bunch of slimy women who want power no matter the way they have to get it), round out a memorable cast living in this palace of conspiracies.

Superficially, the lore of the show looks like a fairly standard Feudal Japan but with fantasy elements, with the fact the main characters are not humans but shapeshifting birds called yatagarasu coming across as its only twist, but the show also addresses on its latter half where we see more of the situation surrounding Yamauchi, so the world building is actually richer that it may seem at first glance. The show is a bit lacking animation wise, being very average with its many long shots, even if the art direction provided by the former Yuru Camp staff involved at least manages to make it nice on the eyes, while the OST is very fitting for the kind of setting this has.

Overall, I enjoyed seeing a series that succeeded where Kusuriya no Hitorigoto failed, providing a proper political drama that takes itself seriously and has flawed main characters with obstacles to face, so I’ll gladly wait for another season to see if the duty of the true Kin’u is fulfilled.

Thank you for reading