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All ye infidels who doth worship the pretender god Madoka beware! Haruhi is the one true God of anime, and those who dare say otherwise shall incur Her divine wrath! Oh man, the Haruhi Suzumiya series is one of those programmes that I loved the shit out of in my late middle school/early high school years and still adore to this very day. Equal parts awesome concept, gut-bustingly hilarious English dub, and equally hilarious comedy, Haruhi is one of the few programmes where I'll gladly jump aboard the bandwagon and praise it.

Alack, it's also one of those franchises that's becoming increasingly ignored over the ... last few years. The light novels have been on hiatus for a couple of years (if I'm not mistaken) and its most recent instalments (with the exception of The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya) have had shall we say... mixed reception? Yeah, Endless Eight and The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan have their fans but the detractors are more than numerous. Regardless, the original Haruhi series which came out in 2006 is something that I say should be watched by all, detractors be damned.

Before I get into the contents of this review, I should just make one thing perfectly clear: it's best to watch the series in chronological order. I have no idea who the idiot was that thought airing this series out of of order would be a good idea, but I say that person at Kyoto Animation or TVTokyo or whatever needs to get fired and have their entire pension stripped away from them. It doesn't help that Crunchyroll of places decided to retain this irksome trend as well. Thankfully, we have websites like Kissanime to remedy that but it's still something to be mentioned. Anyway, with that nastiness out of the way, let's talk about what really makes Haruhi so fun to watch.

Haruhi plays out like a strange cross between a mundane slice-of-life show and Bewitched, with a twist of Uncle Grandpa thrown into the mix: our average Joe with a dry, ironic wit comes across an eccentric girl who ultimately turns out to be an unwitting reality warper. Several beings, including an alien, an esper, and a time traveller find themselves gravitating toward our reality-warping heroine. If that weren't enough, our sarcastic protagonist always ends up having a part to play in the hijinks that go down, much to his own chagrin of course.

The story is divided up into two halves: the first 6-7 episodes (in chronological order), which is an overarching story where Kyon learns more about Haruhi and the last 7-8 episodes (in chronological order), which is mostly episodic comedy that involves the SOS Brigade taking on a random task just to appease God, lest She lead the world into oblivion. Whilst I'm quite the fan of the episodic comedy, I'm afraid I'll have to side with the detractors on this one by saying that the story episodes are better. Simply put, episodic comedy is inconsistent with some episodes being much funnier to watch than others. On top of that, comedy's subjective and not everyone's gonna find the same shit funny.

Meanwhile, most (if not all) of Haruhi's detractors can at least agree that Haruhi's story-based episodes are quite involving. From the very beginning, you can tell that something major's going to go down very soon as Kyon meets Haruhi for the first time. No spoilers here, but I'll tell you this: I REALLY want to know what the rest of Haruhi could've been like if it kept up this kind of momentum. Alack, the geniuses at Kyoto Animation just had to do their own thing. It's moments like this that make me wonder what Haruhi would've been like if SHAFT got a hold of it (assuming they treat it like Zetsubou Sensei and NOT the Monogatari series, that is).

In terms of characters, they're certainly not compelling individuals by any stretch of the imagination but that doesn't make em any less entertaining to say the least. Itsuki is amusing, Yuki is Rei Ayanami 2.0, so she's automatically best girl, and Mikuru is the resident shy and timid moeblob (though to be fair, if I were Haruhi's chew toy, I'd probably be shy and timid around others as well). The best of the characters would definitely have to be Kyon because without his constant sarcasm, this entire show would probably end up being rather annoying to watch. Also, the fact that he's voiced by Crispin Freeman in the English dub also helps out immensely in terms of his likeability. It's like listening to Hideki from Chobits snarking at every stupid thing that Chii says!

Haruhi herself is ultimately what will either make or break your experience. She's hot, she's hyper, and she also exhibits psychopathic tendencies. Imagine the male protagonist of a Rumiko Takahashi manga but with the gender swapped and a noticeable lack of empathy, and you'll basically have Haruhi in a nutshell. Don't get me wrong: Haruhi has that heart of gold somewhere but I really wouldn't put it past you if you end up hating the entire show because of how irksome she can get. THANKFULLY, she's balanced out by Kyon so she's not running TOO wild. Still though, I dread to imagine what the world would actually be like if Haruhi was real and she really turned out to be God.

Animation and sound are especially deserving of mention, considering how fucking AWESOME they are. Keep in mind that this show came out in 2006. Then again, this show ALSO came straight from Kyoto Animation so it's no wonder that everything looks so good. On another note, tell me how everyone in Haruhi can go into a dance sequence and it'll strangely fit with whatever song you decide to play over it? The animation would only serve to get better over time, as evidenced by the 2009 series and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya.

The dub is also fucking amazing as well. Crispin Freeman, Wendee Lee, Johnny Yong Bosch, Stephanie Sheh, and Michelle Ruff all had a hand to play in this dub and it turned out beautifully. Crispin Freeman really hits the mark as Kyon, as does Wendee Lee as Haruhi, Johnny Yong Bosch as Itsuki, Stephanie Sheh as Mikuru, and Michelle Ruff as Yuki. Really, my only complaint with the dub is that Steve Blum didn't have a hand to play in it whatsoever! It's not fair that the last time Crispin Freeman and Steve Blum were in the same dub was in Wolf's Rain, and they didn't even interact all that much together that time! Sorry, just getting a little ahead of myself. Still kinda salty over that, but I digress.

My own personal enjoyment of Haruhi goes up and down. Whilst I still find Haruhi so fun to watch almost 10 years after I first watched it, I can't help but feel like there was so much more that could've been done. Then again, that's the hindsight talking. For what it's worth, Haruhi is a good show that really should've had a better follow-up. It's disappointing to see what became of one of my favourite programmes but then again, it's not like this show was widely beloved when it first hit the market anyway. There were still people who were talking smack about this show, and it would seem that their criticisms of the show have been vindicated over the years. For what it's worth though, Haruhi isn't without merit and it's a joy that should be experienced by all in the near future. Here's to hoping that Haruhi gets a reboot that properly adapts the LNs without any Endless Eights or shitty spin-offs happening any time soon. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)

Pokémon was a cornerstone of my childhood and even my early adolescence. I've watched almost all of the movies (prior to Gen V, that is) and I've completed every TV series up to and including Diamond & Pearl. On top of that, I've played all of the games and have been playing "competitively" since 2006. I think it's safe to say that I have a rather biased perception of Pokémon as a whole. Whilst most people I know either lampoon this series at every chance they get or overrate it to high heaven because of either old shame or nostalgia respectively, I have an opinion ... that's somewhere in the middle.

As far as my opinions on Pokémon go, well... I personally don't consider it to be anything more than shallow entertainment meant to entertain sugar-high children on Saturday mornings and it works just fine for that. I'm pretty sure we can all agree on that, especially given how Pokémon actually was broadcast in the USA as a show meant to entertain sugar-high children on Saturday mornings alongside programmes like Jackie Chan Adventures, Xiaolin Showdown, ¡Mucha Lucha!, and the 2003 reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (all of which, I still do happen to like and enjoy to this day).

Don't get me wrong: I definitely understand where the vitriol toward Pokémon comes from. The world-building is absolutely atrocious, the story is repetitive, Ash/Satoshi is an incompetent fool who relies on Pikachu to do practically everything for him, the production values are fucking awful, etc. Had this show been played completely straight, odds are that I too would probably hate it. So why then do I still like and wholeheartedly enjoy the first four instalments of the anime? One simple reason: the dub (yep, you read that right).

Whilst I've certainly got a great deal of vitriol built up toward 4Kids as a whole, it's not like they didn't have any successes. Their dub of Pokémon is hands-down, their best dub to date. I'm sure that the blokes at 4Kids realised how stupid this show is in hindsight, so they just decided to make the entire thing self-aware to an extremely hilarious degree. This is especially notable whenever Team Rocket is actually in the frame. It's almost like 4Kids had a time machine, realised that Funimation would make a gag dub for Crayon Shin-chan and then they decided to beat them to the punch by making a gag dub of a kid's show but without all of the vulgarity that the former had.

Yeah, Pokémon definitely has problems and it's definitely not something I'd turn to if I want something of actual quality. At the same time though, the nostalgia draws me in and the dub keeps me around. I'm an overgrown man child, so letting go of things from my youth is pretty hard to do sometimes. Thankfully, shows like Pokémon have aged gracefully and give me something new to appreciate about them. Here's to hoping that some kids of today's age have access to Netflix so that they can watch the original series of Pokémon and realise what they've been missing out on. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :]

***

How could I have forgotten the iconic 4Kids intro? The Japanese dub ain't got SHIT on this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcfdoSuC6MI

Oh, I'm not gonna make myself any new friends with this review. PA Works is one of those studios that you either praise the shit out of or you just don't give a rat's ass about. Even for the number of "successes" that they've had in the past, I don't really find myself feeling anything but indifference toward the bulk of stuff that they've produced. Hell, I'm surprised I found myself giving this show a negative review. Granted, I've never truly liked a single show that they've ever released. PA Works' programmes aren't as visually enticing as A-1 Pictures', they're nowhere near as emotionally involving ... as Kyoto Animation's, and they're not as comfortable to watch as JC Staff's. But yeah, PA Works doesn't really rank all that high on my visceral outrage meter. So what is it about Nagi no Asukara that doesn't work for me? Well, it's hard to sum up in just a few words so let's just dive straight into the review.

I should point out that I actually quite enjoyed watching Nagi no Asukara when I first started. The fantasy setting was certainly intriguing and I also found myself quite fascinated by the relations between the land and sea people. Of course, another reason why I picked this show up in the first place was that it was supposed to be one of the better anime romantic dramas out there on the market and I was in the middle of a romance binge at that point in time. But over time, the stuff that I found myself liking about the show combined with other things the show was doing as it progressed ended up causing me to actually really hate the show. Allow me to explain.

1) The "romance" is fucking terrible and it eclipses the actual plot of the show

Now, I'm not one to despise will they/won't they romances from the get-go (especially given how I happen to adore the shit out of Rumiko Takahashi's works) and I usually don't take umbrage with love polygons because if done well enough, it makes for a more suspenseful read and leads to interesting developments going down (like in the manga for Ichigo 100%). But in Nagi no Asukara's case, nothing of the sort actually happens. This is the kind of love polygon that's just meant to shoehorn some shitty melodrama into the show for no other reason than to give off the illusion of actual romantic development.

Kaname likes Chisaki, but Chisaki has the hots for Hikari. Hikari wants to bone Manaka, but Manaka's fingering herself to the thought of Tsumugu. Meanwhile, Tsumugu's just standing there like Kurasama from School Rumble with a blank expression on his face. Hell, this isn't even a love polygon. It's a love line segment, if anything. I mean, I wouldn't mind this so much if the characters were actually capable of carrying a scene without it devolving into melodramatic territory. I wouldn't mind this so much if the farcical melodrama didn't eclipse the actual plot of the story, but it unfortunately does.

I have nothing against works that try to tell a romantic subplot whilst telling a larger story at hand, and if done correctly, it can actually be quite lovely (i.e. Futurama, Justice League, Daria, The Spectacular Spider-Man, etc). Unfortunately, it would seem that PA Works forgot that the real story at hand is (supposedly) about two tribes of people with vastly different ways of life that must work together to avoid cataclysmic disaster. I wouldn't mind this so much if the "romance" actually went somewhere but unfortunately it doesn't and it never does at any point in the series. Hell, the resolution is open-ended with only one official couple actually forming by the end of it all (and even then, that pairing didn't have much build-up going for it).

2) The characters are one-note archetypes with no depth whatsoever

You know, it seems like just yesterday when I was 15/16 years old so the hormone mixture was still running wild and I was having a shitload of brand new experiences. As such, I can definitely sympathise with what our leading quartet would (presumably) be going through... to a certain degree, anyway. Unfortunately, being able to sympathise with someone does not a good character make. I suppose it's not entirely fair to say that the characters are one-note archetypes but I'd be lying through my teeth if I said they weren't defined by a gimmick or two.

Hikari is your typical male tsundere, whilst Kaname is the mature, mild-mannered one. Manaka is the primary love interest who's a crybaby, relies on her friends, and has the hots for some other guy whilst Chisaki is the tertiary love interest who withholds her feelings for Hikari because he knows he wants to fuck the shit out of Manaka. Meanwhile, Tsumugu doesn't even have any sort of characterisation about him. He's just this quiet guy who follows our leading quartet around.

Manaka and Chisaki could've easily been fused into a single character, because they both feel like they were meant to originally be one character but were then written into to separate separate characters for some undecipherable reason. On that note, Kaname has to be the most useless character in the entire show. I appreciate how he's a foil to Hikari, but he never contributes anything of relevance to the story at hand. All he really does is just stand there chatting with the other characters. At least Manaka, Hikari, Chisaki, and even Tsumugu (at one point) contributed *something* of relevance to the story at hand. Hell, I can't even call Kaname a Kaworu Nagisa clone because Kaworu actually did more stuff in Evangelion in one episode than Kaname ever does across the span of 26 episodes.

Then again, I really shouldn't be bitching about Kaname and Tsumugu not contributing anything of substance to the plot because they (along with some irrelevant side characters) are the only ones I could actually find myself liking. I couldn't help but feel contempt any time I saw Hikari, Manaka, Chisaki, or Miuna in the frame because they're so fucking unbearable. Hikari's tendency to shout at everything he doesn't understand is what ultimately causes me to viscerally despise him because I just want him to shut the fuck up AND HE NEVER DOES. Whilst I hate Manaka and Chisaki, I can safely say that they're nowhere near as infuriating as Hikari is.

On that note, let's talk about our two lead "heroines" and why they make me want to shoot up some heroin. Manaka is a moeblob plot device and nothing more. Thankfully, she's not the insufferable hyperactive type of moeblob, but that still doesn't change the fact that she's a useless crybaby who serves no purpose other than to advance the plot. Say what you will about Usagi from Sailor Moon, but at least Usagi grows as an individual over the course of the series. Hell, at least Nagisa from Clannad helped spark Tomoya's growth as an individual. I have absolutely nothing of the sort to say about Manaka whatsoever. Virtually everything I've said about Manaka can also be applied to Chisaki, but it should be noted that Chisaki at least has *some* sense of characterisation about her.

3) The worldbuilding in Nagi-Asu is absolutely appalling.

Considering the fact that this show takes place in a fantasy world where one group of people split off from another and then went on to live their own lives whilst still retaining *some* form of contact with one another, one would assume that the cultures of the people on land and at sea would be highly divergent but that couldn't be further from the truth. Aside from the fact that the people of Shioshishio live underwater and worship a sea deity, there's virtually no conceivable differences between the people of the former village and the people of Oshiooshi. I mean, their names are just anagrams of one another's for Christ's sake!

On another note, I love how the series claims that all of humanity originated from the sea and moved onto land but we only really see two locations throughout the span of the entire series. By sheer implication, Shioshishio would've been the origin of all humanity since that's the only sea village we're ever made aware of and it's never stated whether or not other sea villages exist. So how is it that a faction of people could emigrate from a single village and then go on to populate the rest of the planet? I mean, Nagi no Asukara does exist in /some/ space of reality. We have electrical grids, motor vehicles, grocery stores, and other such things that would imply that the history of the world that Nagi no Asukara also follows real world events to /some/ degree. I wouldn't be bitching about this so much if the show didn't bring up all this shit and decided to do absolutely fuck-all with it. Hell, I wouldn't have minded any of this whatsoever if the actual "romance" went anywhere meaningful, but both plots are fucking awful and half-baked.

4) The second half of the show is a poorly paced time skip and has a resolution that forces a happy ending

The second half of the show starts us off with a time skip after a MAJOR event occurs, which is already an indicator that these episodes are bound to suck because PA Works already proved that they're incapable of writing a cogent plot in the first half of the series. With that in mind though, it's not like the first half of the show was entirely without merit because the actual plot of the story, though extremely atrophied in terms of depth and detail, was still interesting enough to keep my attention and the episode before the timeskip was nothing short of intense to the point where it was almost enough to make me forget about all the shit I was complaining about previously.

On that note, I should point out that I don't have anything against time skips in general. When you get right down to it, a time skip is a literary device and what ultimately matters is how that literary device is used. Oyasumi Punpun, one of my all-time favourite mangas uses time skips to great effect, as it covers life-changing events throughout various points in time that ended up shaping the person that Punpun would eventually become. Unfortunately, the guys at PA Works lack the tact of Inio Asano so they just ended up using the time skip as a crutch to avoid actually writing up the direct aftermath of what just happened after said major event.

If that weren't bad enough, the pacing is just dreadful. There's almost no sense of transition whatsoever, so events are brought up like there's no fucking tomorrow. Random plot details are also introduced at random intervals with almost no sense of foreshadowing whatsoever and effectively diminish the impact of events that previously happened. The events pre-timeskip implied that the world was doomed because the sea god was angry at the fact that people abandoned the sea to live on the surface, and the land dwellers aren't appeasing him with regular offerings. It's not a perfect set-up, but at least that seems like something meaningful, right? Post-timeskip, apparently the sea god is just lonely and he needs someone to cuddle on those cold winter nights. Way to ruin what little good there was to be found in your shitty programme, PA Works!

On top of that, the actual ending to the entire series just feels forced beyond all belief. I understand the desire to see everything work out for the better in regards to your protagonists, but god damn it, you have to fucking EARN that happy ending and I can safely say that nobody in Nagi no Asukara deserved that happy ending. The entire conflict is just resolved without any hint of subtlety, foreshadowing, or anything of the sort. Hell, nobody ends up getting sacrificed to appease the sea god's raging boner by the end of it all! Like, what the actual fuck PA Works? Is it so hard to actually write up an ending that doesn't stick a gigantic middle finger to anyone with a functioning brain? Of all the things that I dislike about Nagi no Asukara, the ending would definitely have to be the thing that I hate the most.

***

So, in conclusion: this show sucks the chrome off of doorknobs. In between the farcical melodrama, the shitty worldbuilding, the hackneyed "romance," AND that shitty ending, I just have one question to ask: Why? As in, "why did PA Works even greenlight this show in the first place if it had such obvious problems?" I guess this is the level of quality we should expect from a studio that's effectively the poor man's Kyoto Animation. Whilst Nagi no Asukara is far from the worst thing I've ever watched, it's still undoubtedly the most disappointing thing I've ever sat through. Here's to hoping that PA Works won't fuck up another show beyond all belief... oh wait, we have Charlotte. *sigh*

Oh ItaKiss... you know, I just can't work up the visceral hatred that I once had for this series. Don't get me wrong: ItaKiss is irredeemably bad and is the very piece of crap that started the whole "abusive male/idiotic female" trope that I so viscerally despise in shojo romances. At the same time, ItaKiss is one of the few mangas that actually goes well beyond the scope of high school and it's not like there isn't anything good about it either. Do keep in mind that all of the good there is to be found in the manga isn't anywhere near enough to excuse ... the failings this series has.

Kotoko Aihara is part of Class F, the class where all the dumbest students in school are located. She just so happens to have the hots for Naoki Irie, the most handsome (hah!) and smartest guy in school. Despite the fact that Naoki has made it quite evident that he does not want anything to do with Kotoko, she keeps on trying to win his heart and as fate would have it, Kotoko and Naoki end up living together in the same house after a freak accident occurs because Naoki's father is a dear friend of Kotoko's and he offered them a place to stay. As time goes on, they gradually warm up to one another and blah blah blah, you already know the drill.

There are several fundamental problems that exist within ItaKiss, the first of which being what never ceases to piss me off whenever I think about this manga: the foundation of the romance between Naoki and Kotoko. For all intents and purposes, the basis for this romance rests purely on superficial attraction. In the beginning of the manga, it was quite obvious Kotoko only wanted Naoki because he was a smart, good-looking guy and nothing more. On that note, she consistently makes it an effort to keep harassing Naoki until he just gives in and starts dating her. The girl is literally incapable of taking "no" for an answer, and it's ultimately the most infuriating thing about this manga.

Now, I'm not one to automatically take umbrage with people in love who can't take "no" for an answer and if done right, it can be pretty endearing. Take Family Matters, for instance. No one would argue that Kotoko does to Naoki what Steve Urkel does to Laura on a daily basis. At the same time, what separated Steve and Naoki is the fact that Steve was like 12-13 years old when we first saw him and as such, it was actually excusable a good majority of the time. Let's not forget that any time Steve DID go too far in his pursuit of Laura, he'd receive his comeuppance at the end of the episode. Kotoko is a high school senior when the manga starts and she's NEVER in the wrong when she keeps pursuing Naoki, even if she does go too far. Sure, someone might call her out on it in one chapter but by the next chapter, all of Kotoko's transgressions get forgiven and forgotten.

Don't go thinking Naoki's free from sin either, because he's just as bad, if not WORSE than Kotoko. His actions throughout the entire work are more in-line with a sadistic psychopath rather than a guy with a bad temper and little patience. Now, at first he was just shown to be a regular jerk to Kotoko but as time went on, his behaviour changed and started becoming more spiteful and sadistic. Any time Kotoko would have a moment of clarity and realise that she has the hots for a complete and total jackass, in comes Naoki and nips any sort of progress Kotoko could've made in the bud. The iconic first kiss between the two is a clear example of the dynamic I'm talking about here. Kotoko gets made a fool of in public, she and Naoki have a fight, she says she doesn't see anything in him anymore and wants to move on, Naoki kisses her and then says something along the lines of "Try moving on from me now." That ain't cute, that's abuse.

What's more is that any time a legitimately endearing and romantic moment occurs between these two, the chapter ends with Naoki seeming like he won't be such a douche to her but we all know that's never the case. As soon as the next chapter begins, Naoki reverts back to his original characterisation of being an irredeemable jackass, regardless of whatever went down between the two of them. This is the kind of writing that I absolutely despise more than anything else. Why write up your characters in such a way, make them look like they're gonna change, but then not go through with it? It's so bizarre and confusing, to say the least and in the worst case scenario, it can lead to a character intended to be one thing end up coming off as something entirely different.

The other characters aren't much better either. Naoki's mom started off as a rather likeable character but her constant attempts to hook up Naoki and Kotoko regardless of whatever Naoki wanted to say in the matter to the point where she'd actively sabotage ANY interaction Naoki had with anyone that isn't Kotoko. Yeah... she's entertaining every now and then, especially since her constant quips to Naoki are indeed amusing, but 90% of the time, she's a major pain in the ass. Don't even get me started on Kinnosuke. Kinnosuke is basically Kotoko's Kotoko, but somehow even worse than that would imply. Like, Kotoko is an idiot but she never really went into obsessive stalker territory. Kinnosuke is basically what Kotoko would be like if she was literally Steve Urkel but without ANY of the charm whatsoever.

Now, for the smack I've talked about Itazura na Kiss, it did manage to do a few things right. For starters, this manga actually spans well over 15 years' worth of story. Part of that can be attributed to the fact that this manga was publishing for about 10 years until Kaoru Tada's unfortunate death, but that still doesn't change the fact that Itazura na Kiss goes WAY beyond the scope of your average romance, something that very few (if any) romances in anime/manga have ever done. Hell, the closest I can think of would have to be either Clannad: After Story and the manga for KareKano. Whilst I DO give points to ItaKiss for that, the execution is just so bloody awful. The bulk of the characters are irredeemably irritating, the foundation of this romance is based off of nothing more than superficial attraction, and what's more is that the artwork is fucking HORRIBLE.

No, seriously. This manga has hands-down, some of the WORST artwork I've seen in all my life. Not even Yoshihiro Togashi was this bad when he was finishing up the Greed Island arc of Hunter x Hunter. For the first 20-30 chapters, I honestly couldn't tell if Naoki was a guy or a girl with a REALLY bad haircut, and if that wasn't enough, all the character models look like they were just drawn together within the span of 3-4 minutes. I mean, it DOES improve as time goes on, but it doesn't improve by a considerable margin. If there's one thing redeemable about the anime, it's the fact that the entire anime was drawn up by competent artists. That's not to discredit Kaoru Tada in any way because her backdrops are passable, but this is a manga that requires the reader to look past the presentation to focus on the story. Unfortunately, the presentation AND the story in this case are so fucking awful.

Now, you already know that I hate this manga and hell, it would seem that a LOT of people do too. Why should you read it? Honestly, I say that you shouldn't. Read KareKano instead or watch the Clannad movie. It would be time better spent, and what's more is that neither one of those two are unpleasant to read or watch. Itazura na Kiss is like a habitually relapsing heroin addict that "tries" to get clean but always ends up going back on the junk after getting out of rehab: just when you think real progress is being made, everything resets and we're back to the same old thing. Just do yourself a favour and don't read this manga at all. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace like yeast unleashed in the east :)

Publishing on a monthly basis from the late 1980s up until last year with a little over 300 chapters to its name, you'd think that this is a manga that goes well beyond the scope of countless other romances, right? Well... you'd be sorely mistaken. In reality, Ah! My Goddess is the ultimate game of will they/won't they. Its concept leads to a foregone conclusion that takes much too long to get to and by the time that the foregone conclusion rears its head, one question still remains unanswered: why did it take so long to get from point A to point B? With that ... said, it's not like I hate Ah! My Goddess. No, quite the opposite in fact. I love the entire series and Belldandy will always be best girl. However, I'm not so quick to recommend the manga over something like say... the 2005 TV series done by AIC.

My biggest problem with Ah! My Goddess is the fact that it takes WAY too long for any substantial developments to occur when it comes down to Keiichi and Belldandy's relationship. From the very beginning, we already know that Keiichi and Belldandy will end up with one another. I mean, the guy wishes for an all-powerful goddess to stay by his side forever. What other possibilities could happen other than the two of them ending up as lovers? Living in a dysfunctional relationship? Yeah, if Belldandy was the abusive one and that'll never happen... unless she was secretly Shion from Higurashi in disguise.

From Chapter 1 up to Chapter ~280, Keiichi and Belldandy's entire relationship was a constant dance of will they/won't they. Now, Ah! My Goddess is primarily a comedy manga and this is where the bulk of the comedy is supposed to come from (key word: supposed to). Basically, Belldandy is a literal goddess, a friend to all creatures and things, and so on and so forth. Keiichi on the other hand is your standard nice guy that gets screwed over by everyone else and one day, he finds himself living with a literal goddess that he has the hots for and he can't bring himself to confess his feelings. Whenever he tries, Belldandy inevitably makes things worse because she doesn't know the first thing about love or romance. For example: he tries to confess, he stutters a lot, and Belldandy thinks he's sick so what does she do? She rushes him into bed and starts forcing cold remedies down his throat until he gets "better." Belldandy is a lot of things, and she's most definitely an unintentional sociopath. Pretty funny stuff, right? Not really...

As much as I love my sociopathic romantic comedies, there's a limit to how much I can find funny before it just gets tedious. The funny thing is that Ah! My Goddess was always a seinen manga, so one would think that it would be a logical course of action for the author to actually try and go beyond the realm of a will they/won't they relationship. Unfortunately, that's not the case whatsoever. If you really want a romance that goes beyond the conventional will they/won't they dynamic, you might as well read KareKano or *gulp* Itazura na Kiss (it may be shit, but it DOES go beyond the norm). Then again, who's to say that the constant will they/won't they is an inherently bad thing?

One of the main reasons why I love Ah! My Goddess so much in the first place is because of the fact that it's this really sweet and endearing read in the first place. In recent years where all sorts of grimdark stuff that try too hard at being edgy ends up getting popular, I feel like Ah! My Goddess serves an important niche as one of the few lighthearted mangas that you can turn to when you're sick of all the dark and edgy content being shoved in your face. Even if the romance isn't that great, I can count on Ah! My Goddess to at least make me smile whenever something sweet goes down between Keiichi and Belldandy.

On that note, the characters ain't half bad either. Aside from Belldandy and Keiichi, we have plenty of other characters that show up and make things more interesting like Urd, Mara, and Keiichi's sister (I'm too lazy to look up her name, please forgive me). I would include Skuld in the list too, but she's an irritating and possessive cockblocker and so I don't really care much about her. Over the course of 308 chapters, I can safely say that the characters were handled much better than the actual romance. Everyone has their own motivations, quirks, and so on and so forth. At the same time, the constant repetition that went on in the manga prevents any substantial character development to come forward when it actually matters. I mean, it DOES happen but at a much slower pace than I'd like for it to.

On another note though, the artwork is actually quite lovely. This manga was publishing for well over 20 years, and it's quite obvious that the artwork changes significantly over time, but another reason why I like reading Ah! My Goddess in the first place was just to see these changes make themselves more evident over time. I mean, mangas like Berserk that have also been publishing for well over 20 years also go through some form of art evolution but most of the time, the changes are actually pretty limited and just involves the mangaka finding their own style and then sticking with it for years. Ah! My Goddess is one of the few mangas where the author actually experimented with his style multiple times throughout the entire work.

Would I say that I enjoyed reading Ah! My Goddess? Well, yeah. Even when it was getting tedious, I really did like reading it but at the same time, it lost momentum way too quickly for my liking and whilst the ending DOES make up for it, to some degree, that doesn't really change the fact that the conclusion it DOES reach by the end of it all could've easily been achieved in around half the time it took to actually get there. Even though I really do like Ah! My Goddess, I don't think I'd be recommending it to anyone anytime soon. If you really want Ah! My Goddess, watch the 2005 TV series instead. It cuts out a lot of the crap that was in the manga so that Keiichi and Belldandy's relationship could develop much quicker and it was always meant to be a self-contained story, so it could go much further than the manga ever did. Plus, it has two seasons! Can't go wrong with that, now can you? Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)

In 7th grade, I stumbled across the original Fate/stay night TV series produced by Studio DEEN and it was one of my favourite programmes at the time. It had magic, legendary heroes, action, and all that guff. Of course, I got older and I watched other shows that had way more to offer on that front so the original Fate/stay night didn't really hold up for me that well over time. In fact, I can't bring myself to sit through the original Fate/stay night series nowadays since there's so much wrong with it. Then enters ufotable, Type-Moon's best friend when it comes down to adaptations ... promising us a fresh remake of Fate/stay night that actually adheres to the visual novel's story closer and with incredible visuals. Did they deliver? Well, I can't say that they lied because they gave us exactly what they promised. However, my expectations were shattered for the most part as I found out that the ufotable remake of Fate/stay night is basically identical to the Studio DEEN version (barring a few differences here and there).

ufotable's amazing production values can't mask the fact that Fate/stay night at large is mediocre and is still a lacklustre sequel to Fate/Zero (which I seriously need to get around to finishing). What's more is that the pacing across this season is absolutely appalling. Action-heavy episodes get followed up by mundane slice-of-life stuff, which never failed to kill my buzz as I was watching the show and what's more is that if you count the prologue (aka Episode 0), this show has TWO back-to-back episodes that are 45 minutes in length. I don't care what you have to say about this, it's NEVER a good idea to have two back-to-back episodes that are damn near an hour long. As someone who marathons the stuff he watches, this just made Fate/stay night much more tedious than it needed to be.

I'm sure that fans of the Fate series are gonna get at my throat for saying that I'm an idiot for expecting Fate/stay night to be anything like Fate/Zero. Well guess what? Fate/Zero is the prequel to Fate/stay night, and logic dictates that the sequel should at least hold up to its predecessor. Fate/stay night as a sequel to Fate/Zero is incredibly disappointing. Why? Well guess what? Fate/Zero was actually entertaining! There were high stakes, likeable characters, enthralling battles, and all that shit. Any time Fate/stay night comes anywhere close to being as entertaining as Fate/Zero was, there just HAS to be some mundane slice-of-life stuff to follow up the intense action and that just pisses me off to no possible end. Speaking of stuff that pisses me off, let's talk about Shirou and Tohsaka because they're the ones that I take umbrage with the most.

I understand that Shirou wants to be a hero and is on the idealistic side of the spectrum, but there's a way to do the whole "idealistic hero" concept properly WITHOUT turning your character into an insufferable idiot. Seriously, I don't think ANYONE who had a problem with this in the first series should disagree with me on this one. He's still an idiot who hasn't learned thus far that his ideals are NOT pragmatic whatsoever. He STILL insists on fighting Heroic Spirits whilst completely mortal and vulnerable, still insists of saving the lives of the few rather than looking at the big picture, etc. Come on, Shirou! Don't disgrace Kiritsugu's memory by not listening to one of his teachings. I understand that Fate/stay night is about Shirou, but I CANNOT stand the fact that he's thrust into situations where he should've logically died but then gets saved by Sabre/Tohsaka/Archer ex Machina or the guy/girl they're fighting decides to spare him because fuck it, why the hell not? I don't always mind plot armour, but Shirou just takes that shit to a whole new level. Hey writers, if you're going to do that kind of shit, DON'T FUCKING PUT HIM INTO SITUATIONS THAT ARE ALL BUT IMPOSSIBLE TO ESCAPE FROM!!!!! My suspension of disbelief can't take much more of this...

On the subject of Tohsaka, let's talk about her for a little bit. She's a tsundere in all the worst possible ways. She tried to kill Shirou three times, and yet she still blushes around him and wants to eat lunch with him. That alone should be more than enough to explain WHY she's such an infuriating character. I'm not the biggest fan of tsundere characters, and Tohsaka embodies all of the WORST possible tsundere traits that I've come to viscerally despise. If Tohsaka was a real person, she'd be committed to a mental institution because she's completely incapable of suppressing her homicidal tendencies toward the person that she apparently has a crush on. Tohsaka worst girl, Sabre best girl. That's the best way I can put it anyway. Can ANYONE explain to me why they like Tohsaka in the first place? I mean, she's far more competent than Shirou is but that's not really saying much.

I really wanted to like Fate/stay night, I really did. In fact, I started out really liking the show but as it kept going and the tedium just kept making itself more and more obvious, it just killed off any joy that I would've gotten from the show otherwise. Will I watch the second season? It's hard to say because on the one hand, the show could get better but on the other hand, it could just be more of the same, inconsistent bullshit. With that said, I don't hate Fate/stay night. There are plenty of other things out there that are worth my ire but Fate/stay night isn't one of them. I still do like the Fate series as a whole, and Fate/stay night is just fine as far as casual entertainment goes. However, the amount of praise this series gets never ceases to make me laugh raucously. Seriously, who the fuck in their right minds would think a porn game adaptation is a masterpiece? That's all for now, though. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)

Kill la Kill is one of those shows that my friends adore the shit out of that I'm incapable of getting on with. How could this be, though? I'm a huge fan of Gurren Lagann and Kill la Kill was made by the same blokes who created the former and for what it's worth, the show really does retain the same sort of fun atmosphere Gurren Lagann had. Unfortunately, that sort of fun atmosphere isn't enough to actually make me like this show. Whereas Gurren Lagann had me cheering on all the senseless stupidity that was going on, Kill la Kill didn't really have me ... cheering on much of anything. In fact, Kill la Kill got pretty grating after a short while and it's basically what soured my overall impressions of Trigger as a studio and given their track record as of late, I don't think I'll ever get on with them.

All of my gripes with Kill la Kill boil down to three simple problems:

1) It's functionally identical to Gurren Lagann

This was basically what turned me off of Kill la Kill for the most part. I understand that the bulk of the staff working on Kill la Kill were the ones that made Gurren Lagann, but that's no excuse to rehash the same type of over-the-top stupidity from one show into another. Really, was it such a monumental effort on the part of the production studio to come up with something original? Whenever I watch an episode of Kill la Kill, I can't help but feel like I'm wasting my time watching this show because Gurren Lagann does exactly what Kill la Kill does and does it significantly better. Why is this? Well for starters, it's not shoving shitty self-parody down my throat half the time. That actually brings me to the next gripe:

2) The self-aware humour was EXTREMELY grating

I don't know about you, but I'm beginning to despise self-aware shows mostly because of the fact that it seems like any show that came out within the last few years basically point out all of their problems without doing anything funny with what they bring up. In other words, all they're doing is saying "Hey, look at this thing we did! It's so stupid, right? Laugh, damn you!" Whenever Kill la Kill makes a self-aware joke, it takes me out of my bubble and reminds me that what I'm watching is stupid and I could be watching something better. You see, the biggest reason as to why I enjoy shows like Code Geass and Gurren Lagann boil down to the fact that everything is so hyperbolic and ridiculously cool to the point where I'm too wrapped up in my own enjoyment of the programme to realise what I'm watching is stupid. Whenever Kill la Kill comes close to making me forget that what I'm watching is stupid, there has to be a goddamn self-aware joke thrown in because they did this stupid thing and they want me to know that they're aware they did this stupid thing and that I should laugh because it's so stupid.

However, it doesn't make me laugh because it tells me that Trigger is doing is stupid, they KNOW what they're doing is stupid, but they're still doing it anyway. This isn't to say that self-aware humour is inherently bad, because it's something that's actually pretty funny if the guys making the show know how to make a self-aware joke funny. If you want a good idea of something that does the whole self-aware shtick properly, just watch an episode of Ouran HSHC, Dave the Barbarian, Sheep in the Big City, Ed Edd n Eddy, Chowder, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, or one of the classic Looney Tunes shorts (like Duck Amuck). Studios like Trigger irritate the shit out of me because they're ruining self-aware comedy just because they're too lazy to actually come up with a funny joke. Well, I guess the self-aware humour isn't as big a thorn in my side as all the fan service.

3) The fan service got downright nauseating for me

Say what you will about Gurren Lagann and how they handled Yoko, but the fan service in Gurren Lagann was tame enough to the point where I could look past it and focus more on the story at hand. Unfortunately, the story at hand in Kill la Kill is all about the fan service. Before you say anything, Kill la Kill is NOT a parody of fan service and if it actually was a parody, it's even worse than it was before. The lacklustre comedy and the fact that it's a cheap imitation of Gurren Lagann make it mediocre on its own. If this were actually meant to be a parody or a satire of fan service in anime, that brings this show down even more.

This show does nothing to subvert expectations and instead opts to use fan service like Ikkitousen or Queen's Blade does. THANKFULLY, Kill la Kill is nowhere near as obscene as the former two but it does get rather close at times. I get it, Ryuko and Satsuki are hot. There is NO need to shove their half-naked bodies and damn-near exposed breasts down my throat for 75% of every episode. As much as I like my daily dose of animated girls exposing their skin, there's a limit to how much I can enjoy before it stops being enticing and ends up becoming repulsive.

Now with all of that in mind, there is one question that has must be answered: did Kill la Kill truly save anime? No, it's more of the same pandering shlock that's been polluting anime at large for the last several years in a different coat of paint. You know, Trigger could've gone ahead and created something that was actually worthwhile like the anime equivalent of a show like Steven Universe, Gravity Falls, or Adventure Time: you know, shows that appeal to all ages and are fun to watch whilst also tackling darker and deeper themes. Unfortunately, they decided to rehash the same shit that they did before (whilst working under a different studio) and judging by their current offerings now like Inferno Cop and Ninja Slayer, it's obvious that pathetic comedies are the only thing they're capable of making. Say what you will about Gainax, but at least they've got more variety to their roster.

Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback is always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)

Much like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, the 2011 reboot of Hunter x Hunter is grossly overrated. This is a show that is definitely a cut above other battle shonen programmes like Naruto and Bleach, but it receives much more praise than it actually deserves. There's this backward-ass mentality here on MAL that causes people to hold shonen programmes to a much lower standard than what they'd hold anything else so when a shonen programme DOES come out that defies various conventions of the genre, it's automatically deemed a masterpiece and ends up in the Top 50 here on MAL. This was the case with Fullmetal Alchemist: ... Brotherhood, Gintama, and Attack on Titan and now the cycle continues with Hunter x Hunter.

This isn't to say that I don't like Hunter x Hunter, because I honestly do like the programme. It had this ebullient charm that was lost in the recent sea of grimdark shonen programmes that came out over the last couple of years like Attack on Titan and Akame ga Kill!. This show combined the light-hearted atmosphere of shows like Dragon Ball and One Piece, the wit and humour of Yu Yu Hakusho, and the maturity that came with shows like Fullmetal Alchemist and Rurouni Kenshin. Hunter x Hunter had virtually everything I could ever want from a battle shonen programme along with the kitchen sink. What's more is that when it did decide to drop the shenanigans and take itself seriously, it was able to do so without going overboard. The stakes were gradually getting higher and higher, but it still retained some of the ebullient charm that made me gravitate toward this show in the first place.

The very concept of "Hunters" was also something that I adored the shit out of. Much like the Grand Line from One Piece, the whole concept of Hunters allows for adventures of any scope to go down. We could have an arc that shows what it takes to actually become one of these fanciful Hunters, an arc dedicated to simple fighting tournaments, or we could have an arc where the the fate of the world and humanity as we know it rests upon the shoulders of an elite group of Hunters as they combat nightmarish creatures. The possibilities would've been endless were it not for the fact that Yoshihiro Togashi lack's the work ethic of mangakas like Eiichiro Oda. With that said, Togashi shows that he's more than capable of writing up complex characters, countless artifices, plot twists that actually make sense, and all that stuff. As the stakes gradually get higher and higher, you'll be demanding more because you're hooked and living in suspense is killing you.

Unfortunately, this is the thing that gets my goat with Hunter x Hunter: Yoshihiro Togashi spends all of this time building up your expectations and then instantly shatters them because it's like he gets bored with what he's doing and then moves onto the next arc to do the same exact thing. Take the Yorknew City arc: Kurapika spent so much time chasing down the Phantom Troupe, the villains were all fleshed out really nicely, but what does it amount to in the end? Nothing! Nothing of consequence actually happens by the time the arc is over! Instead of seeing the bombastic conclusion to a story about a person exacting revenge on the monsters who killed his family, we get an ending that reinforces the tired-out cliches of friendship and not becoming the monster that you set out to destroy.

This isn't even getting into what became of the Greed Island arc because that entire ordeal was something that left a sour taste in my mouth and made me want to give up on watching the show altogether. Gon and Killua go into a video game to look for a trace of Gon's father, but the problem is that Gon's father left a message for him saying that there's no clue to his current location. Right off the bat, Gon and Killua's impetus to play the game was shattered. However, all was not lost because Ging said he wanted Gon to have fun playing the game. You know what? That's a sentiment I could get behind and the entire concept of Greed Island being the ultimate game for any Hunter seemed like would bring about some rather entertaining adventures to watch. Unfortunately, the Greed Island arc was just some pathetic excuse for a survival story with one of the worst villains I've ever had the displeasure of seeing as the focus of the entire thing.

The Bomber's entire characterisation amounts to nothing more than "I'm a bad guy and I kill people for fun." That in and of itself isn't an entirely bad thing, I mean that's Hisoka in a nutshell too. However, all of the other villains in Hunter x Hunter had a personal connection to the main characters. For example, the Yorknew City arc had the Phantom Troupe and they were the guys that murdered Killua's entire clan. Hell, even the Chimaera Ant arc had Neferpitou who was responsible for doing unspeakable things to a close companion of Gon and Ging's. Bomber lacks any sort of connection like that whatsoever, and so I have no reason to care about what this guy's doing. Hell, he even gets killed off by a bit character once the entire arc is over so that just hammers in how pointless he was to the entire story. This arc could've been omitted completely and NOTHING of relevance would've been lost whatsoever.

Now we come to the Chimaera Ant arc, which is one of the most lauded arcs in all of shonen anime and manga. I can totally see why people would adore the shit out of this arc but it's not flawless. Hell... it has multiple problems, all of which come back to bite this show in the ass. The first (and quite possibly the biggest) problem is that the world-building in Hunter x Hunter up until this point was rather non-existent. The only locations we got to see before this point were Whale Island (Gon's home), the Hunter Exam testing facilities, the Zoldyck family estate, Greed Island, and Yorknew City. The Hunter Exam arc established that there's a vast world out there with countless adventures waiting to be told but we never got a good idea of the finer workings of the world that Hunter x Hunter takes place in.

The Chimaera Ant arc takes place in a place called the "Mitene Union," an island consisting of 5 nations with varying degrees of a turbulent history. This is a complete departure from the previous locations we've experienced before, but the problem here lies with the fact that Togashi brings up all of this political mumbo jumbo into the foray as he also goes along with the story of the Chimaera Ants. For example, we find out that the NGL region where the Chimaera Ant Queen is residing abides by an isolationist, Neo-Luddite culture where anything synthetic or remotely technological is expressly forbidden. That in and of itself would've been more than enough set-up for us but then we learn other irrelevant things like how the NGL was really a front for an international drug cartel and arms-dealing operation along with the founder of the NGL's history via protracted spiels of expository narration. Let's not forget the whole situation with the Republic of East Gorteau among other things as well.

This is all stuff that would've made GREAT material to work with for other arcs, but the problem is that all of this stuff is being shoehorned into an arc about carnivorous mutant insects. As the Chimaera Ant arc progresses, any sort of extraneous material introduced in this arc that could've made excellent subject matter for future arcs ends up eradicated due to various plot developments and that just further reinforces the biggest question that I have with this arc: why did Togashi even bring up these details in the first place if he wasn't going to use them at all? All of this extraneous stuff about Gyro, the NGL, and other such political nonsense could've easily been omitted from the story completely and nothing of consequence would've changed.

On that note, the pacing of the Chimaera Ant arc is absolutely appalling. It took Yoshihiro Togashi NINE YEARS to actually finish this arc because he was going in and out of hiatuses and those protracted breaks he took whilst writing up this arc really do make themselves quite obvious. The anime excerbates this problem by slowing down the pacing of the arc from Episodes 113 through 120. If I'm not mistaken, Togashi was on yet another hiatus when these episodes were being produced so Madhouse was close to running out of material to work with. Whilst I can understand why they intentionally slowed down the pacing of the arc at that point in time, they chose the absolute WORST place to slow everything down. Our team of Hunters were in the middle of invading the Chimaera Ant King's castle and right when the invasion starts, the pacing slows down to such a degree to the point where I'm wondering if I'm watching Gantz again.

Okay, that comparison was a bit too hyperbolic but the point still stands. Madhouse chose to adopt a psychological approach to the whole invasion but that's the problem: THEY WERE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FAST-PACED INVASION THAT WAS CRITICAL TO THE PLOT. The psychological approach to the invasion would lend itself better to manga than anime as a medium. For seven back-to-back episodes, the pacing of each episode was slower than the flow of sand in an hourglass. I don't care if we got to see what was going on in their heads during such a crucial moment of the story, I wanted to see Gon and everyone else haul some serious ass! To me, there's nothing quite like the lingering feeling of dissatisfaction that stems from being denied my fix of fast-paced and enthralling action and unfortunately, Hunter x Hunter denied me my greatest pleasure multiple times over the course of 148 episodes.

Going off on a bit of a tangent, another problem that the Chimaera Ant arc suffers from is the way Yoshihiro Togashi handles the darker and more complex themes he brings up. The Chimaera Ant arc brings up themes such as survival of the fittest, human nature, and all that stuff but its execution is rather heavy-handed to say the least. I think it's safe to say that Togashi lacks the sort of tact that mangakas like Inio Asano and Naoki Urasawa have when it comes down to tackling darker and deeper themes in a particular work. Instead of operating on two levels where you can either take the story at face value or choose to analyse it further and then draw parallels between it and other things like Monster and Oyasumi Punpun does, Hunter x Hunter opts to just outright tell you "this is happening, and I want you to know that I'm trying to draw parallels here." The whole thing just reeks of pretension, and it just gets really irritating after a while.

Also, what really made me dislike the Chimaera Ant arc as a whole is the fact that this is the arc that took that ebullient charm that Hunter x Hunter had from the very beginning and just eviscerates it completely. I have no problem with shonen anime/manga going into darker and deeper themes (that's one of the reasons why I love the Jinchuu arc from Rurouni Kenshin), but seeing Hunter x Hunter go down the grimdark path that so many other shows in recent years went down just never sat right with me. What really drew me toward this series in the first place was the fact that it was a light-hearted and fun shonen programme that still had the capacity to take itself seriously without losing what made it fun to watch in the first place. By the halfway point of the Chimaera Ant arc, the entire show just became tedious and boring to sit through to the point where I stopped caring about what would happen next. That's no exaggeration either. I honestly had no strong feelings one way or the other by the time that the Chimaera Ant arc ended and when the entire series ended as well. Sure, both the arc and the series had a fair enough conclusion but they still don't excuse the fact that this show has some really serious problems.

The world-building was mediocre and it really shows in the Chimaera Ant arc (given that there's so much expository narration), the storytelling repeatedly builds up your expectations only to fail completely at delivering something significant, and many promising characters end up being thrown to the sidelines. Nen as a battle system is intriguing as it's simple and practical, and yet the limitations of Nen are sometimes disregarded completely. For example, Kurapika's a conjurer but if his eyes turn red (and he's learned to change his eye colour on command), he's able to use the other types of Nen at full strength (can you say "asspull?").

Going back to the characters, I've found myself getting frustrated with them so many times. Gon was never really that good of a character to begin with, as he immediately struck me as an imitation of kid Goku but with the ability to differentiate between a man and a woman, but that was forgivable since I still found myself really liking him. Unfortunately, the Chimaera Ant arc had him turn into a complete and total psychopath as he threatened to kill an androgynous cat person/ant thing because it was in the middle of saving a critically injured blind girl. I know that Togashi was trying to show what happens when you let the pursuit of revenge get the better of you, but there's a fucking limit.

Killua on the other hand was quite a delightful character and when Gon was too busy being the bad kind of homicidal maniac, Killua was the one I'd turn to to get some entertainment value. His sarcastic demeanour and approach to virtually everything made the show that much more entertaining to watch, and what's more is that of all the characters in Hunter x Hunter, he's pretty much the only one who's changed in any significant manner from Episode 1 all the way to Episode 148. Whilst that's great for Killua, I can't help but feel like the rest of the time in Hunter x Hunter could've been better spent developing other characters.

Leorio was a character that I really wanted to see more of, especially given that his motivation for becoming a Hunter stemmed from the desire to save his (now deceased) childhood friend from a curable illness whose surgery cost an exorbitant amount of money. That's an amazing motivation to become a Hunter, and I get the feeling that he could've accompanied Gon and Killua on their adventures as a medic/mentor kind of character. Unfortunately, he just HAD to be relegated to comedic relief. Am I the only one who takes umbrage with the fact that comedic relief characters in most shows nowadays have awesome backstories and ultimately end up getting screwed over because they have to be the designated idiot? This is a trend in anime and manga that REALLY needs to stop because it's so fucking annoying.

The other characters in Hunter x Hunter are more of the same. We have countless awesome and likeable characters like Knov, Morel, Knuckle, Shoot, Bisky, and Palm (did I forget to mention that Palm's da waifu?) but the fact that they're all introduced and developed in the Chimaera Ant arc doesn't really feel right to me. To me, it seems like all of these characters should've been introduced in earlier arcs so that we could've had more time with them and then develop a greater attachment to them. I could easily see Morel and Knov being instructors during the Hunter Exam arc, among other things but that's hindsight talking. I swear, retrospect is the worst enemy of everyone, isn't it?

Going away from the story and characters, let's talk about the production values. I don't think it's any stretch of the imagnination to say that the Hunter x Hunter manga has some downright terrible artwork. I mean, Yu Yu Hakusho isn't anything to write home about from a visual standpoint but the piss-poor quality of Togashi's artwork in Hunter x Hunter is just plain inexcusable when we KNOW he can do much better. Thankfully, Madhouse took the piss-poor artwork of the manga and made it look good. Character designs were cleaned up or partially redrawn so they don't look like complete and total garbage, the backgrounds look much better with colour and shading, and what's more is that the animation across the entire show is quite lovely and remarkably consistent. Then again, this IS Madhouse we're talking about: their stories might be hit and miss, but their production quality will always be some damn good stuff!

Their sound work however could use some work. I have no problem with the voice work or anything of the sort. What really makes Hunter x Hunter annoying for me (at least from an audio standpoint) is the opening theme. I never liked it, and the fact that they kept the same OP throughout all 148 episodes is something I take umbrage with on so many levels because it just grates on my ears. What's more is that the all of the EDs that Hunter x Hunter had would've been PERFECT openings: they're all fast-paced, energetic, and just get you pumped to see the next episode! Seriously Madhouse, WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?!?! On the other hand, the rest of the OST has some rather nice BGM to it. My favourite track though would have to be "On Whale Island" but that's just my shit taste talking. There is no dub to speak of at the time of writing, but I wouldn't put it past a company like Viz Media or Funimation to license this show and then give it a dub since it's one of [adult swim]'s most requested programmes.

Final thoughts? Well, Hunter x Hunter is a show that definitely does get a lot of stuff right and it certainly is a cut above the more typical shonen programmes but it certainly isn't perfect. How this show got into the Top 10 here on MAL is beyond anything I can comprehend. Then again, this website has baffled me more times than I can count. As it currently stands, Hunter x Hunter is one of the many shows on my list of shows that I started out adoring the shit out of that ultimately ended up disappointing me. On the flip side, it's nowhere near as disappointing as Nagi no Asukara was but let's not get into that. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback is always welcome and with that, I'm gonna barricade my house so that the rabid HxH fans can't kill me. Peace :)

It would seem that feeling some modicum of emotional involvement whilst watching/reading something is all it takes to make a masterpiece these days. Whilst emotional involvement is always a great thing, it's not enough to excuse problems that a particular work in question has. On another note, it irks me when people say they "got the feels" from watching something because more often than not, it was something stupid/cliché/melodramatic. Maybe I'm a heartless sociopath or maybe it's because I've been through a lot worse in life, but I can't help but scoff when people tell me they cried like a baby whilst watching stuff like ... the first season of Clannad. Then enters Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso, an anime/manga series that plagues me with cognitive dissonance because there's a lot of stuff I truly do like about this programme but there's also a LOT of irritating crap that just got on my nerves.

The biggest reason as to why I got emotionally involved with Shigatsu is because of Kousei himself. Like I've said in some of my other reviews, my mother's dead and I know damn well where Kousei's at and all that stuff. To me, Shigatsu was less about the music and more about the story of a teenager learning to move on from past tragedies. Add into the mix that I'm a huge fan of romantic drama and music, and you'd basically have a recipe for something that would've been among my all-time favourites (alongside the likes of White Album and Solanin). Unfortunately, it wasnt perfect. The gag comedy was a mild annoyance that gradually turned into something cringe-worthy, the monologuing was a bit tedious and it just got even more ridiculous as the show went on, and as these two aspects of the show became more obvious, I found myself getting less and less involved with what was going on. If you're an avid fan of this show, allow me to explain myself.

I understand that levity has a place in storytelling, and what's more is that this show is aimed toward a mainstream audience that probably can't handle the intensity of things like Gong Ji-young's Our Happy Time or White Album 2. The problem is that Shigatsu's particular style of humour was grossly inappropriate for the subject matter that this show was tackling. This is a show revolving around a 14-year-old who has a dead mother who was extremely abusive toward him learning how to cope with past tragedies and learning to move on with his life. The last thing we need is a chibi-style cutaway interspliced with every dramatic moment out there. Stuff like that just takes away from the emotional impact of the story and just ruins the mood for me. If the humour was more dialogue-oriented like in Daria or in the Ultimate Spider-Man comics, it would've been more than enough to break up the excess tension that would build up and make the show uncomfortable to watch whilst also allowing for the show to play with your emotions without any interference whatsoever. Alack, hindsight's an anime studio's worst enemy and there's no changing what's already done.

On another note, the monologuing was nothing short of tedious and insulting. Monologues are a powerful tool and if used sparingly, they can strengthen the impact of various events that would go on in your story. The problem is that the mangaka (and A-1 Pictures by extension) fails to understand that more monologues does NOT equate to more emotional weight. I don't know about you, but I find it nothing short of insulting when an anime studio decides to tell us exactly what a character is feeling via long, drawn-out monolgues in almost every episode because it gives me the impression that A-1 Pictures thinks I'm some socially inept otaku with no understanding of how human emotions work. The strange thing is that all of the monologuing could've easily been omitted if the story actually decided to focus on Kousei and Kaori instead of bringing up the perspectives of people like Kousei's piano rivals and Tsubaki.

I don't know about you, but I don't give a rat's ass about Tsubaki, Watari, Emi, Takeshi, or any of those other people. They're side characters, so why even bring them up? The only characters that ultimately matter by the end of it all are Kousei and Kaori. All that time that A-1 Pictures spent on those characters could've easily been spent making fleshing out Kousei and Kaori's personalities. As much as I adore the two of them, I can't exactly say that I think they''re well-written characters. Let me put it to you like this: I've found several other characters empathetic in the same way I found myself empathising with Kousei (i.e. Tohru Honda, Tomoya Okazaki, Shinji Ikari) and yet those characters made more of a lasting impression in my mind than Kousei did, namely because I found them empathetic in many more ways than I could find myself relating to Kousei. I mean, outside of the fact that I was once a motherless teenager with the hots for a blonde chick, I can safely say that Kousei isn't exactly the most relatable of individuals. As for Kaori? Well... outside of the fact that I actually like her, she's no different than Nagisa from Clannad in that they're just there to be plot devices meant to evoke an emotional response out of the viewer.

Now those problems aside, another thing that never really sat right with me was how Kousei was treated by his friends over the course of the series. He's got a dead mother who was pretty damn abusive toward him. The last thing the bloke wants to do is play the piano, and yet he still finds himself drawn to it because you know... that was his thing. I understand his friends want him to just play the bloody instrument again and that 14-year-olds aren't psychotherapists by any stretch of the imagination, but the way they go about doing so is rather cruel to say the least. He's harassed and manipulated quite a bit over the course of the series and somehow, that's the solution to all of his problems. You know, Kousei would've had a mental breakdown if he was a real person because he'd be forced to re-live some nasty childhood trauma. I wouldn't really have much of a problem with this were it not for the fact that I've seen shit like this first-hand, and it *RARELY* works out. It also doesn't help that there was a lot of inappropriate gag comedy that was going on during these scenes where Kousei was forced to play the piano again, but let's not get into that.

I really don't want to pick on this show so much, but the problem is that these flaws make the show incredibly difficult to take seriously. When I get taken out of my moment by flaws in a particular programme, my critical faculties are automatically turned on and now I have no choice but to take the piss out of the show I'm watching because it failed to keep me entertained in the first place. This means that stuff I would've ordinarily let slide if I were actually invested in what I was watching (i.e. the simpering, stupid dialogue about "seeing the notes" and "colourful music") end up being another point lost in my book. If this were any other programme (like say Tokyo Ghoul or Fate/stay night), this wouldn't be a problem because half the fun in watching them came from making fun of what was going on in the show. However, Shigatsu falls in with Nagi no Asukara in that it was a show that I adored the crap out of that gradually lost my interest because of various factors (much to my own dismay, of course).

A lot of these problems could've easily been avoided if A-1 Pictures actually took the initiative to fix the problems that the source material had in the adaptation. An adaptation isn't supposed to be a translation of the source material verbatim into another medium. Adaptations can be viewed as a sort of "second chance" for the source material, so the most important job that an adaptation has to do is fix the various problems that plagued the source material in the first place. Unfortunately, that didn't happen whatsoever and the end result is a show full of wasted potential, poorly-timed gag comedy, tedious monologues, and a whole lot of farcical melodrama: just like the manga that it came from. Well, that's not entirely fair to say because Shigatsu does have a few redeeming qualities.

For a show that couldn't keep me invested in what was going on for more than five minutes at a time, I must say that the parts where I was actually into what was going on had me on the edge of my seat and despite that Clannad comparison I made earlier, this show actually had me invested in what was going on a lot more than the first season of Clannad could ever hope to. Despite the fact that the show is plagued with bad comedy, laughably pathetic melodrama, and annoying monologues, there will come a powerful scene every so often that would've otherwise left you in tears were it not for the inexcusably flawed execution. On that note, at least Shigatsu did a fair enough job of actually making me care about the characters throughout the entire show as opposed to some of the other things I've watched (i.e. Air, Nagi no Asukara) so it has that going for it as well.

The production values also showcase what A-1 Pictures is capable of from an audiovisual standpoint. Despite the fact that the animation quality hiccups every now and then, it's remarkably consistent and the amount of effort and detail they put into the musical performances makes them all the more captivating to watch. Speaking of music, the OST is lovely to say the least. I personally find myself liking the first OP the most, mostly because it's quirky, catchy, and makes me eager to watch more of the show despite knowing damn well what's in store for me if I do. I would say something about classical music, but I don't got that much knowledge in that department. I like violins and I like pianos. This show has plenty of tracks with violins and pianos and they sound good to my ears. Therefore, the OST is good. What more do you want me to say?

Final thoughts? Well... Shigatsu was definitely something I'll keep in mind for a while and whilst it was tedious to get through, it managed to do more than enough right to get a pass from me. With that said, I wouldn't necessarily call this show "good" because honestly... there are so many other things out there that do what Shigatsu does and better. I mean, if you want this particular show, go right ahead but I'd hold off on it for a while and try going for something like say...

a) White Album 2
- Another romantic drama with music that came out during the fall season. This show puts a lot more focus on the romance than the music, and what's more is that it actually keeps a serious tone throughout the eniter story! Kazusa is easily best girl, by the way

b) Clannad: The Motion Picture (and Clannad: After Story to a greater extent)
- Another story about a guy whose life was changed completely after a fateful encounter with a girl in spring. Within the span of an hour and a half, a story of love, loss, and coping with tragedy is told and is done to a much greater effect than it was done in Shigatsu for various reasons (namely the fact that the entire movie was told from Tomoya and Nagisa's perspective).

Yeah, that was a lazy way to shoehorn my alternate show recommendations, but that's what happens when I spend an hour and a half writing up a review for a show that'll probably get downvoted into oblivion anyway. That's all for now though. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)

***

For all you people craving some emotional music, here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaJoDAXkSMw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euJclp0g-2E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pootZMH1zFQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtuoEtohPv4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvFknfm2bEA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKW-N2ao8no
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmDlkdxoHCY

NOTE: This review encompasses the entirety of the Golden Age Arc trilogy of films.

***

Often hailed as one of, if not THE best mangas of all time, Berserk has earned itself a spot on many an avid manga reader's "must read" lists and for good reason as it's the quintessential dark fantasy manga and the ultimate story of friendship, tragedy, and the pursuit of self-destructive vengeance. This may very well be true in the manga, but Berserk's animated history isn't much to speak of. The TV series produced by Oriental Light & Magic in 1997 is hailed as a classic by many but its piss-poor animation ... along with its mortifying cliffhanger of an ending left a sour taste in the mouths of a lot of people (myself included). Unfortunately, this was the *only* adaptation of Berserk that ever existed... that is until Studio 4C announced that it would be releasing a series of films to adapt the Golden Age Arc of the Berserk manga. Are these movies any good? Personally, I say that they're great but I'm pretty sure that statement of mine just evoked the wrath of thousands of Berserk fans. Allow me to explain myself:

As fans of a manga, it's completely understandable that we'd want our adaptations to copy the source material verbatim, but the sad fact of the matter is that it's just not possible whatsoever. Despite the fact that mangas are basically pre-drawn storyboards for anime studios to work with, anime and manga are two completely different mediums with different demands and nuances to work with. Changes *must* be made for the sake of things like time, narrative consistency, budget, and all that other stuff. If you're going to get up in arms about how the adaptation lacks every single irrelevant detail from the source material that you adored the shit out of, do yourself a favour and stick with the manga because no matter which way you look at it, the adaptation will *always* be inferior to the source material so there's no use in complaining about it.

On another note, censorship is generally not an issue when it comes to manga because S&P boards aren't even a thing when it comes down to print media (well, I think they aren't anyway). Anime broadcast on television however need to abide by certain standards and given the content that Berserk has, there's no way it can last as a TV series without either suffering from extensive censorship OR butchering it to the point where it's a completely different show than what it was intended to be. Cinema on the other hand, doesn't have to put up with censorship (unless you're in a country with a turbulent civil rights history like Saudi Arabia, China, or Iran) and it's more readily accessible to a greater audience than it would've been otherwise had it been a TV series. Sure, Studio 4C could've easily made an OVA series like Space Battleship Yamato 2199 but ultra-violent GAR OVAs died in the late 80s and early 90s along with parachute pants, grunge music, and The Fat Boys. Also, I don't think a lot of people would be too eager to buy a full season's worth of one show on DVD/Blu-ray so there's that to factor in as well.

Now with all of that stuff out of the way, let's talk about the movies and how they actually are from a quality standpoint. Well I won't mince words here: each film in the trilogy is better than the one that preceded it with "Eclipse" being the best and "The Egg of the King" being the worst (by default). Now, that's not to say that the first movie in the trilogy was terrible because in all honesty, it really wasn't. It was a fair enough introduction to Berserk, the storytelling was fair enough (albeit rather clunky) and hey! We finally got a chance to see a battle animated properly (and in 1080p) instead of seeing blown-up watercolour stills so that's also quite lovely. The problem lies in the way the film itself was actually animated. It's strange to say, but that's the most succinct way to explain the problem.

Studio 4C is an awesome studio and they've got some great stuff on their resume like the short film "Magnetic Rose" from the Memories trilogy by Katsuhiro Otomo, Steamboy, The Animatrix, and Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (if you wanna include their collaborative projects with Warner Bros). Yeah, these guys aren't slouches when it comes down to the audiovisual department. The problem is that the Golden Age Arc of Berserk contains no shortage of large-scale battles that are incredibly difficult to animate in two dimensions. To mitigate this issue, Studio 4C opted to integrate varying degrees of CG animation into the mix in order to actually animate all those large-scale battles and it works absolutely beautifully in those situations.

Unfortunately, they decided to maintain the CG even when there weren't any battles to actually animate in the first movie and it just looks so ridiculously clunky to the point where there's something eerie about it. That clunky CG animation is basically what caused so many people to not even bother giving these movies a chance despite the fact that it actually does get better as time went on. I'm not going to lie, the CG is an eyesore but there's no denying that the animation across all three movies is a million leagues better than the barely-animated rubbish the TV series had to offer (do keep in mind I'm talking about the animation of the TV series, the story and characters are quite lovely). Hell, the third movie actually got the CG right and used it to great effect during the Eclipse (which I'll talk about later).

In regard to the story and characters, I must say that Studio 4C did a pretty good job (especially given that they were trying to cover 11 volumes' worth of content within the span of 3 films). The Golden Age Arc of Berserk is the ultimate story of hardship and sacrifice fuelled by the pursuit of one man's dream. We start our journey in the middle of a century-long war between two kingdoms. Midland, our country of origin was forced to enlist the help of countless mercenaries just to supplement their waning military forces. In the process, they enlisted two people: our aimless protagonist with no goals in life, Guts and the charismatic and ambitious Griffith and the rest of his team known as the "Band of the Hawk." Through circumstance, Guts ends up joining Griffith and his band of mercenaries and I'll just leave the rest for you to experience.

Yeah, there are a lot of things missing from these movies that the TV series had but Studio 4C managed to retain the "spirit" of Berserk throughout the course of the trilogy. Sure, some events are either implied or omitted entirely but most (if not all) of the important stuff from the Golden Age Arc remain intact and dare I say that these movies managed to portray these events much better than the TV series and even the manga ever could. I'm not even being hyperbolic or anything of the sort. A lot of the highlights of the Golden Age Arc just "take" to being animated and I can safely say that Studio 4C did virtually everything they could to make those highlights from the manga stand out and work much better than they ever could've if they were just black-and-white panels upon pages with no sound whatsoever.

On that note, let's talk about the Eclipse. If you've EVER spent any time around the Berserk fandom, chances are that you've heard of this event and have a vague idea of what it is. But for those of you who aren't well-versed in the ways of Berserk, I'll explain what it is. The Golden Age arc of the manga is first and foremost, a protracted flashback that lasted from Volume 3 of the manga to Volume 14. Berserk initially starts off with Guts in the present time in pursuit of Griffith for reasons that were never revealed until the climax of the GAA. The Eclipse is nothing short of a cataclysmic nightmare that seamlessly merged ghastly and surreal horror with heart-wrenching tragedy. A recurring theme throughout the course of the Golden Age arc is causality and the existence of free will. Throughout the manga and the films, these theme was always working its magic in the background and gave us hints and foreshadowing of the ghastly nightmare that we would later experience.

Unfortunately, the TV series lacked this sort of foreshadowing almost entirely. By the time the Eclipse actually happened, it just came out of nowhere. The impact of the Eclipse was lost completely because the themes of causality and the supernatural were downplayed heavily in lieu of putting more emphasis on camaraderie and friendship. Hypothetically, this could've led to a more impactful tragedy but the problem is that there was no foreshadowing whatsoever. Instead of making us crap our pants in pure, unadulterated terror whilst also making us cry like little bitches because of the fact that all of this horrible shit is happening to characters we've grown to know and love, it made us scratch our heads in confusion... oh, and that's not even getting into the appalling animation making the entire ordeal difficult to take seriously and how all of this actually ended in the TV series.

Thankfully, none of that was the case when it came down to the third Berserk movie and its portrayal of the Eclipse. In fact, it managed to perfectly capture the sheer intensity of the Eclipse as a cataclysmic tragedy in ways that both the TV series AND the manga failed to do. A lot of this can be chalked up to the fact that Studio 4C did an outstanding job with the animation. Did I forget to mention that the Eclipse is one of the bloodiest and most gruesome parts of Berserk to ever exist (because that's kinda important...)? The way Studio 4C went about portraying the Eclipse was so graphic to the point where people who actually saw this movie in theatres ended up having to leave because it was just too much for some people to actually sit through. This is the way that the Eclipse was meant to be portrayed from the very beginning. The third movie succeeded where the source material and its previous adaptation failed. I'd love to keep going, but I think that'll reach into some seriously spoiler-heavy territory and I think I spoiled more than enough at this point.

On that note, let's talk about how it ends. The TV series ended on what is undoubtedly the single most depressing point of the entire story, but the actual resolution of the Golden Age arc in the manga wasn't like that at all. Though the TV series left the overall story of the GAA is left largely intact, many alterations had to be made so that the entire story could fit within the span of 25 episodes. Because of this, the guys at OLM decided that it would be an absolutely fantastic idea to just omit the ACTUAL resolution of the Golden Age arc and just ended it on such a mortifying cliffhanger to the point where anyone who wasn't familiar with the source material would be shouting at the screen going "What the actual fuck?!" The movies completely and totally avoided this and I'm SO thankful that Studio 4C managed to get it right. All you manga purist Berserk fans can talk shit about the films all you want, but there's no denying that the way the third movie got right what the TV series got wrong.

Now, you may be wondering whether or not the movies do a good enough job of making us care about the characters. Personally, I think that the movie managed to do a great job but others may beg to differ because of the fact that the Golden Age Arc movies cut out a lot of stuff. While I can't really say much about the secondary/tertiary characters, I can safely say that the movies hit the nail on the head when it came down to our dynamic duo of Guts and Griffith which is what ultimately matters in the end. It's the dynamic between these two and the rest of the cast that made this arc of the manga so captivating to read in the first place.

Guts started out as a wandering mercenary with a brutal past, no friends, and nothing to aspire toward. His encounter with Griffith and the Band of the Hawk led to him finally knowing what it was like to have friends. What's more is that it was revealed that despite all of the horrible things that Guts went through in the past, he's got such a capacity for things like love, trust, friendship, and all that other stuff. At the same time, the GAA by and large is a tragedy and we all know that shit will end horribly for Guts and that he'll take up his sword in pursuit of vengeance no matter what the cost. I don't think it's any stretch to say that he is without a doubt, one of Berserk's greatest assets. The movies retain the very essence of this tragic character and makes it so that we'll always have a reason to root for him in the end.

That's not to invalidate Griffith, because he's just as great a character as Guts is. Griffith has evoked the ire of countless Berserk fans for his actions in the manga that I'm not at liberty to discuss, but don't let that make you think he's not a great character in the slightest. I viscerally despise everything there is about Griffith, and yet I can still find myself finding some modicum of sympathy for him (Kentaro Miura might be fapping away to Idolmaster these days, but there's no denying that he's more than capable of writing amazing characters). Many of us have larger-than-life ambitions, but Griffith is one of the few who actually makes the effort to chase after those foolhardy childhood dreams that we end up letting go of as we get older. Throughout the course of the Golden Age arc, Griffith is depicted as a sort of demigod and it isn't until he encounters Guts when his cool shell starts to crack as he and Guts end up becoming like brothers. It's this very bond between these two that provides the catalyst for almost all of Berserk's highlights and tragedies. If you want to know more, then you know what you need to do: watch the bloody movies and then read the bloody manga for context!

Before I wrap this review up, I want to take the time to talk about one last thing: the audio. The Golden Age Arc trilogy's OST and dubbing is absolutely spectacular. Say what you will about the animation, but there's no denying that everyone in the sound department deserves a gold medal for their work. On the OST side of things, every single track is absolutely spectacular and fits the mood perfectly... except one track during the climax of the third movie which makes me wonder if Griffith was wearing a top hat, a monocle, and had a thin moustache he was twirling around in one finger whilst waiting for an oncoming train to run over Casca (but let's not get into that). Of all the tracks that were played across all three movies, I'd have to say that "Blood and Guts" (the ending theme of the first and third movies) would have to be my favourite because it perfectly captures the tragic nature of Guts as a character (that, and it also sounds REALLY fucking awesome).

As for the dubbing, I really have to give props to Viz because they not only hired the bulk of the original cast of the TV series' dub, but they gave them better voice direction and also managed to sync up the mouth movements properly! Marc Diraison did a wonderful job in the TV series, but he really gets a chance to shine under Viz's direction. As for Kevin T. Collins, well his work as Griffith is absolutely spot-on and almost everything I've said about Marc Diraison can be applied to him as well. My only complaint however is the fact that there are no outtake reels on the DVD/Blu-ray release of any of the movies (at least from what I can gather). Come on, guys... if the guys at Media Blasters have the dignity to show their bloopers, you guys can do it too.

So, what else is there to say about these movies? Hm... well, I don't think it's a stretch to say that these movies are definitely worth watching. As an introduction to Berserk, these movies do an excellent job with acquainting any potential newcomers with everything whilst giving long-time fans of the series a properly animated adaptation that while condensed and short, manages to perfectly encapsulate virtually everything there is to love about this series. At present, there is no sequel to this film trilogy, so if you're new to Berserk and you just finished the third movie, you'll have to do one of two things:

a) Read the manga from the very beginning so that you can see what you missed out on whilst also learning what became of Guts et al post-Eclipse.

b) Wait for Studio 4C to release the next instalment of their Berserk adaptation. They have stated previously that they have plans to adapt the rest of the manga, but they've yet to release anything.

Personally, I'd recommend the first option, but waiting ain't half bad if you don't wanna buy volumes or put up with shitty scanlations. Anyway, that's all for now. Feedback's always welcome and with that, I'm out. Peace :)