This is a series of comedic shorts primarily about a group of boys attending an all boys high school. It’s very heavily comedy focused without anything else to it at all. There’s no plot at all, not even minor plot threads. There’s no character or relationship development, though there is a character who clearly has a crush that shows up from time to time. There’s no overarching themes or morals or anything like that. It’s purely just a series of gags.
The gags are pretty interesting too in that they’re basically just high school boys screwing around in an exaggerated fashion. High school comedy certainly isn’t rare when it comes to anime, but this was pretty unique. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s more realistic but it has more of a real world vibe to it. It feels less like a story but more so just a series of clips of a bunch of dumbasses when they’re being especially dumb as teenage boys can be. There are clear cultural differences between where I went to high school and Japan, but it seems there’s also quite a bit that’s similar because it still had the feel of when I was a teen and just goofing around as far as I remember it. So it’s kind of relatable.
The reason this tomfoolery manages to remain funny is due to the variety to the cast. There’s no one all that interesting or likable, but there are a lot of characters so in combination it just works. There are some interesting elements to how handles characters that stood out. For example, the ‘protagonist’ isn’t really the protagonist at all and eventually the anime breaks the fourth wall to make fun of how he doesn’t appear much at all. Also, there seems to be a rule that none of the main character’s sisters are allowed to have eyes. How it handles girls in general is also pretty interesting. Far from the moe that has become the standard, the way girls are generally portrayed here is in a way that is more in line with the perspective of boys that have no experience with them who find them impossible to understand and somewhat terrifying.
As is often the case with humor, your milage may vary. How funny I found it varied quite a lot, sometimes I found it hilarious, sometimes I found it somewhat funny, and sometimes it wasn’t funny at all. I think how much you like the first episode will be a pretty good gauge of how much you’ll like the series overall, as it doesn’t seem to change much. Things get a bit more interesting due to the increase of characters, but at the same time the jokes start getting somewhat repetitive so it balances out.
The art, animation, and designs, are incredibly dull but I suppose they fit what the anime is going for. The OP and ED are pretty solid in terms of the song and visuals and fit the anime well. The soundtrack also worked well enough but there’s nothing particularly worth mentioning about it beyond that. The specials are just more shorts not really different at all from the main series.
A comedy anime purely about high school boys messing around.
This anime takes place in Japan during the aftermath of World War II, and is about a group of seven teenagers that end up as cell mates at Shounan Special Reform School. The anime has two phases, each composing approximately half of the season. The first phase focuses on what occurs at the prison school. The guard and doctor in charge are both incredibly abusive, which makes it a hellish situation in and of itself. However, things get worse when one of the inmates is approaching their release date, and the guard and doctor begin earnestly trying to kill him and make it look like an accident. The core of this phase is how the seven form tight knit bonds that eventually allow them to work together and push through incredibly difficult situations.
The second phase takes place after a time skip and focuses on what happens to the boys after they’ve obtained their freedom. They each go about their own lives pursuing different dreams and goals. However, their lives are far from perfect. The shadow of Shounan and everything related to it continues to haunt them and results in lives that are full of hardship. Furthermore, the circumstances of the seven before they ended up at Shounan were far from ideal, and simply returning to that brings about it’s own set of hardships. However, once again with the bonds they’ve formed they are able to help each other out such that they’re able to continue moving forward.
The writing is good at fleshing out the main cast and establishing the bonds that form between them. It also does a decent job at getting the viewer invested in some of the cast, mainly Sakuragi, Mario, and Noboru. Though it also drops the ball pretty hard on a few of the cast making them really hard to get invested in. I also can’t say I’m much of a fan of the monotone narrator just explaining a lot of things. It makes things feel much more dull than they should be. The pacing is also felt pretty uneven, and how episode transitions are handled also felt bizarre at times. For example, the way the time skip flowed was pretty awful.
But the biggest issue I have with the story is that it’s overtly unfortunate. For the vast majority of the anime, it just doesn’t let the cast get any straight up victories. There is always a major element of loss associated with any wins they get. I certainly don’t expect their lives to be great and free of drama, but I feel that there should be a balance of ups and downs. Some arcs should just get happy ending and let the viewer be happy alongside the characters. For the vast majority of the anime this doesn’t happen. There’s always something or other that drags things down and makes things somewhat depressing or at the minimum bittersweet. It doesn’t help that logically it feels that there is no reason for most of this. The writing has to bend over backward to make things worse for the cast.
A core part of this is the way things are framed. Even if there are issues, depending on things play out and what’s focused on, the overall final note that an arc has can be happy. But here it felt like it was trying to do the opposite and try to make things as dreary as possible. It got really grating as things went on. There are certainly people that like stories like this, and from that point of view this is probably great as can be seen from the high rating. However, I really am not a fan at all. Things do start turning around in the final stretch of the anime and there’s a pretty positive atmosphere to the ending, so overall I would say I was satisfied with the ending to the anime and may read the manga if it continues with the same vibe. I still can’t say I enjoyed the anime overall however.
The art and animation are solid enough. It doesn’t look good, but the style and designs work pretty well for the story it’s trying to tell and the atmosphere it’s going for. The soundtrack also worked really well in the setting. The OP is great in terms of the song and visuals, but there’s only a single OP for the entire anime, so it did feel like it was overused. Especially as it also plays the song sometimes during key moments, such as the final episode which also plays the OP normally earlier in the episode. The ED is decent in terms of song and visuals, but also suffers from there only being a single one for all twenty six episodes.
A story about a group of juvenile cell mates suffering through life that’s full of lows and not enough highs.
This sequel season is more of the same for better or worse. If you didn’t like the first season this probably won’t change your mind. Though this changes things up just enough to stay interesting that I can’t imagine many people that liked the first season not liking this one. This season starts out with the introduction to Ilulu, another chaos dragon who gets into a fight with Tooru. Things are serious for a bit, but they quickly settle down into the standard status quo but with Ilulu now also living at Kobayashi’s. Based on the first season, this may lead you to think she’ll be a main character as all the other residents are, but she is not. After her introduction, she gets about as much focus as all the other side characters, if not less so. She’s still a pretty fun addition to the cast though.
The comedy is really similar to the first season in that it’s centered around pretty much all the same themes. Kobayashi is a work-a-holic. Tooru keeps pushing herself, and her tail meat, on Kobayashi. Kanna is an innocent, curious, and adorable little munchkin that Riko enjoys being friends with way too much. Shouta has a hard time dealing with Lucua despite her best efforts to get along with him. Takiya and Fafnir are still extremely otaku. And Elma still eats way too much. It’s just as varied, fact paced, and well written as the first season and thus just as enjoyable.
The parts with more depth I would say are a bit weaker. Here there’s less of a focus on Tohru learning more about humans and her and her relationship with Kobayashi, and more of a focus on Tohru’s past, especially her past with Elma. However, it didn’t really feel like it really went anywhere. It fleshes out both Elma and Tohru somewhat, but it doesn’t really seem to make much of any difference. It doesn’t really result in any emotional beats as strong as those related to Tohru in the first season. Ilulu’s story makes up for that somewhat as she has some really strong moments, though not completely.
The art and animation are still fantastic. Battles are animated way better than they have any right to be. Ilulu is a great new design and the reoccurring designs are great too. The soundtrack is decent enough. The OP is pretty great in terms of the song and visuals and the ED is pretty solid too in both regards. The mini-dragon specials are just shorts not all that different from the main season, though purely focused on comedy. Thus, they’re pretty good too.
This manga is about a guy named Manabu that is working hard towards his goal of being accepted into Tokyo University. However, his childhood friend, Megumi, is constantly distracting him. Mainly due to how she is constantly inadvertently showing more skin than she should. The problem with this premise, is that it starts out with both of them in their first year of high school. College entrance exams aren’t until third year, however Manabu is solely focused on passing the Tokyo University entrance exam from the beginning of the manga. Thus, he doesn’t join any club or much any of the standard high school stuff. And him being so focused on studying so early on results in him not being able to make friends either. There’s somewhat of a plot thread involving him seeming to have a crush on a girl that goes to another school named Mikawa, but its completely and utterly pointless and ultimately goes nowhere.
On the flip side, Megumi is the star rookie of the kendo club and over the course of the manga she starts taking kendo even more seriously, with the ultimate goal of trying to get into a good college through kendo. However, there too what matters most is her performance in her final year of high school, and thus the earlier tournaments don’t feel anywhere near as high stakes. Earlier on in the manga there is somewhat of a focus on actual kendo itself, but as a kendo manga it really just isn’t very good at all. Thus, as the manga progresses it shifts to skipping over the actual kendo and just focusing on the results. Megumi is much more social than Manabu so she has a pretty wide circle of friends, but none of them are all that interesting. There are lots of side characters that have a reoccurring presence, but none of them are fleshed out enough to really care about them.
As a result of not much serious happening, the period of the manga that covers the first two years of high school is essentially just really slow slice of life. It’s basically just a series of comedic shorts, the vast majority of which are ecchi focused. The ecchi isn’t all that good though to be honest. It’s very dense, but it’s really basic. There’s nothing particularly unique or interesting. It’s basically just Megumi not being good at keeping her clothes in mind and thus constantly getting into positions that show her underwear or something like that. It’s really repetitive and not all that fun. There are some heartwarming moments or especially funny moments here and there, and there is some character and relationship development from time to time. But this phase of the manga lasts about twenty volumes, so the good parts feel like drops in an ocean. It’s enough to build investment in Manabu, Megumi, and their relationship, but overall it’s just way too tedious and dull.
The manga goes through a major shift when they move into their third year. Manabu starts going to cram school and actually makes friends. Both of whom are well developed, interesting, and likable characters in their own right, especially Yukino. Megumi becomes the captain of the kendo club and starts taking kendo really seriously. Furthermore, one of her friends, Mio, takes much more a spotlight and turns out to be way more of a fun character than she had been before this. The stakes are high because this will be the year that decides their futures. But on top of that their relationship also comes to a head with a good amount of drama. The payoff is great and pretty thoughtfully written, and thus I would say I was pretty satisfied with the ending. I’m pretty conflicted over whether slogging through the entire manga was worth it however.
The art is somewhat mediocre at first but gets significantly better over time. The later color art is downright fantastic, but a lot of it isn’t included in the scanlations so I recommend looking it up on a booru or something. The mangaka uses minimalist eyes on everyone which is pretty unique as far as manga goes and took some getting used to but ultimately I think it worked well enough. Design wise Megumi and Yukino have great designs. Mio is pretty solid as well. Beyond that everyone has a distinct enough design that they’re easy to identify but none of them are particularly memorable.
An ecchi rom-com with a really solid final stretch but absurdly repetitive and slow moving before that.
This anime is about a completely normal office worker named Kobayashi that gets drunk and hires a dragon to be her maid. The dragon, Tohru, actually shows up at her doorstep, ready to get to work and though Kobayashi is reluctant, ultimately her big heart wins out and she agrees to let Tohru stay. However, Tohru knows nothing about maids, or the human world at all really. Rather, she has a pretty extreme view where she looks down on all humans other than Kobayashi who she is obsessively in love with. Still, over time she manages to learn enough about the human world to fit in quite nicely, and ultimately various other dragons that follow her do so as well.
The greatest strength of this anime is it’s interconnected cast. The main pair is definitely Tohru and Kobayashi, both of whom have a pretty amusing dynamic due to Kobayashi being really down to Earth and cynical while Tohru is pretty pompous and free willed. However, another dragon, a young girl named Kanna also begins living with them and makes it into an amusing trio. While Tohru is like a foreigner in a strange land, Kanna is more so just a young girl that’s learning more about the world. The writing manages to capture her innocence and curiosity brilliantly. The three play really well off each other. However, that’s just the beginning. Kanna makes a best friend at school that has funny personality quirks of her own. And most of the dragon friends that come after Tohru also end up living with a human companion, each pair with a very different dynamic from the rest. And all of these characters interact quite a bit, both at an individual level and as pairs, each dynamic resulting in somewhat of a different feel to things.
This anime is primarily a slice of life comedy without much of an overarching plot. The variety to the cast and their interactions results in a lot of variety to the comedy as well. As a result, this allows for the comedy to be pretty fast paced without getting repetitive at all. This combined with it being pretty solid in general allows the humor to land pretty well throughout. What I was more surprised by was the amount of heartwarming moments scattered throughout the anime. Over the course of the anime, Kobayashi becomes less of a loner and comes to appreciate other people’s company more, especially Tohru’s. Tohru becomes more human, and comes to appreciate things in a more mortal way. Most of the heartwarming moments are pretty light and subtle, but a couple were somewhat strong. The ending especially was a pretty nice place to end on. Still, ultimately all of these moments were centered around Kobayashi and Tohru. Going forward I’d like to see more of the rest of the cast get moments to shine.
The art and animation are fantastic. The style and fluidity of the animation fits the humor perfectly and makes it land better. The character designs are pretty varied and also pretty great. The OP and ED were both pretty solid in terms of art and animation. The soundtrack was decent enough and fit well but was not particularly memorable. The specials are hilarious. They’re basically a mini cosplay festival with a different theme each special. Most of it is chibi, but it has some pans in the standard art style showing off outfits, though they’re so quick you don’t really get to appreciate them much.
An amusing anime about a salary woman, her abrupt dragon maid, and all their friends plodding through life.
Shiin is a horror adventure game centered around the protagonist, Yashiki, dealing with what are known as Marks. When a human interacts with an evil spirit, a strange scar known as a Mark appears somewhere on their skin. Mark bearers slowly forget things and then ultimately die. Yashiki ends up at the Kujou mansion having forgotten most everything. Upon entering he discovers that the family head, Saya, was investigating the Marks. Unfortunately for him, she died before she could properly deal with hers. However, he does learn that the only way to get rid of a Mark is to defeat the spirit that created it, but due to his lack of memories he has no idea where to begin in searching for the spirit that gave him his Mark. Thus, he ends up working with a number of other Mark bearers in order to defeat all the evil spirits that come to his attention, with the hope that he’ll defeat the spirit that gave him his Mark in the process.
This game has six chapters, with five being a part of the main story and the sixth being an extra that was originally DLC, though it has been included by default in subsequent releases. Each chapter involves investigating a spirit in order to find out their background and thus the origin of the hatred that caused them to become an evil spirit. With that knowledge and items collected while searching, the player can either destroy the spirit or save it, each option resulting in a short story branch until the start of the next chapter. In order to get the good ending to the overall game, every spirit must be saved.
In terms of the main story, the writing on the individual cases felt very hit or miss. The first I suppose had the benefit of being completely new, and thus it felt the most interesting and exciting. The way the mystery behind the spirit was slowly revealed was handled well. The second felt pretty drawn out to the point it got kind of annoying and the mystery wasn’t that great. The third’s mystery was really simple but it flowed well. The fourth barely had a mystery, but did a great job at being really creepy. The fifth was pretty solid in terms of its mystery and atmosphere for the most part. However, the fifth was also where the overarching plot reached a conclusion. And that was really weak, being pretty rushed and the twists in general not being all that shocking. As a payoff to the overarching plot threads that had been building up since the beginning of the game, it was disappointing.
The biggest problem with the writing was how it handled it’s cast. For the most part, the supporting characters were only present in a single chapter and on top of that they weren’t fleshed out at all beyond their involvement with spirits. Yashiki wasn’t really handled all that well either. Despite the writing being in first person, it didn’t really providing insight into him or his thinking process at all. As a result he just seemed really dull. The story of spirits was handled somewhat better, in that their background got fleshed out to a decent degree. However, I feel the goal of this was to get the player to sympathize with the spirit, and I feel it was only really successful at that in the third chapter. As such it was hard to get all that invested in anyone, and thus hard to get invested in the plot overall.
The sixth chapter was a noticeable improvement over the previous five. The mystery was pretty interesting and it flowed better than any of the previous chapters. Furthermore, Yashiki actually gets fleshed out somewhat. There’s a lot of returning characters from previous chapters. And the spirit is well written enough to be pretty easy to sympathize with. It feels like the first five chapters were pretty unpolished, but they finally got it right with the sixth. This chapter also seems to be building up to the sequel, so overall it’s a great final chapter that leaves a pretty good impression of the overall game and makes me want to pick up the next entry.
Gameplay wise, it was pretty rough. Thankfully, the game does have a backlog, but it is missing a lot of the other standard features you would find in visual novels, such as controlling the text speed. What’s especially annoying is that unlike most visual novels where if you click again while the text is still appearing and it appears instantly, here you just have to wait for the text to slowly come in. The engine can apparently handle making text instantly appear as in certain parts of the game you can make the text instantly appear by pressing again, but for the majority of the game you bizarrely can’t. Selecting between different choices also felt kind of sluggish, which is especially annoying considering that they’re timed choices, though I suppose you have enough time that the timed element never really matters.
Exploration wise, it’s standard point and click but you can’t change the cursor speed and it moves pretty slowly. Moving around is somewhat like a first person dungeon crawler, but kind of disorienting because certain rooms have multiple views while others do not. Thus, sometimes when you enter a room it’ll change what way you’re facing, which can be annoying when you’re trying to move around quickly. The game also has bizarre boss battles where you generally have to assign characters different items for multiple rounds to weaken the spirit before you can finally use the actual item you want to use to defeat it. These felt pointlessly drawn out. The chapters that just involved making a few choices instead worked a lot better.
The art in the visual novel is great, though it’s clear that it was suffering major budget constraints. There aren’t as many CGs as I would expect from a visual novel like this. I did appreciate how there was a CG gallery though, as far too often games like this are missing one. There also weren’t enough sprite variants, and thus it had to use extreme emotional sprites even when expressing pretty light emotions. There was also essentially no voice acting in the main game, though there was a noticeable increase in chapter 6. The soundtrack was pretty solid, though somewhat generic. There were a few typos and bugs, such as character profiles not updating properly in the last chapter, but nothing too egregious.
Also, there are extra voice dramas that are absent in the English version but were included in the Japanese release that you can find the translation for on Youtube. They flesh out Yashiki and Saya a bit better though they don’t have anything too major. There’s also a separate drama CD that was also fan translated but I think that includes spoilers for the sequel VN.
A horror adventure visual novel with some interesting concepts and good art but somewhat weak writing and low production values.
“If you can’t solve this in one word, then use all the words you need. And if words aren’t enough to get the job done, throw in some actions. Use any words necessary, take any actions necessary. Let each of them become a dot to connect, and build them into your answer.”
Oregairu is a story about the various types of social dynamics that form between people. The first two seasons dealt with a myriad of types of relationships, and did so in a pretty unique and amusing fashion. This was because it was through the lens of the Volunteering Club, a club composed of the witty but incredibly bitter and anti-social Hikigaya Hachiman, the cold and sharp tongued but dutiful Yukinoshita Yukino, and the energetic and loyal but passive Yuigahama Yui. However, as season two progressed, things started shifting towards being less focused on comedy and more focused on drama, with a particular focus on the relationship between the Volunteering Club trio as well as the relationship between Yukino and her family. This season doubles down on that.
The first two seasons had a lot of depth to them, but in hindsight they could also be enjoyed if watching in a pretty casual manner. This is not the case for this season. It relies heavily on understanding the personalities, complexes, and motivations of the main trio. And this is really difficult because the three of them are terrible at conveying their true feelings. Hachiman and Yukino will psychoanalyze others and then use that to form intricate plans, but absolutely refuse to even try to put their feelings into words. They’ll have something that they want to do, but will come up with complicated and elaborate excuses to do it rather than just explaining what they’re truly thinking. They understand each other well enough that they can generally peer through the nonsense and understand what the other truly wants, however they won’t confront that directly but will instead go on roundabout word games trying to fit everything into the whatever façade they have going on at the moment. They are both an enormous pain in the ass. And that’s what makes them so lovable. Meanwhile, Yui may not understand the nitty gritty of whatever the two are doing, but she has enough emotional intelligence to get the general feel of things. And that’s enough for her to understand what they have is quite fragile which makes her afraid of doing anything that might break it. And thus all she can do is passively look on while doing her best to try to keep things together.
A common complaints about this season is that a lot of it could be resolved pretty easily if they just had an honest conversation. But that’s missing the point completely. They can’t do that. They’ve never been able to do that. And the little steps they make towards doing so takes a tremendous amount of effort and mental preparation. That’s just who they are. If they could just casually sit down and have an honest conversation whenever they wanted, they would be completely different people with a completely different relationship dynamic. And this anime would have no point whatsoever.
I’ve also seen people say that even if they weren’t able to do so at the beginning, they should have grown to the point that they’re able to do so by the end. But that too I don’t think is necessary. The growth they showed in the cast here is a lot more interesting than the type where characters have pretty much overcome all their faults by the end. Hachiman has definitely grown, and I would say he has definitely grown a lot, but he started so far from what’s normal that compared to that his character arc may look downright negligible. However, what I felt was more important than the growth itself was how he values his own growth, and how he acknowledged how easy it was for it all to slip away and to return right back to where he started. Yukino’s character arc is a bit more complicated and muddled in that she seems to be intentionally trying to force herself to grow in a certain way, though ultimately takes a different view on what it means to grow as a person and then goes in a different direction. Yui doesn’t have much of a character arc, but instead it focused much more on her relationship arc with both Hachiman and Yukino. And as a result of watching her emotional roller coaster and what she does in response, it becomes clear that she is indisputably a good person, and by far the kindest character in this anime.
This season also does a pretty good of highlighting a lot of the other characters that were introduced throughout the previous seasons. Most notably Iroha, Shizuka, and Komachi all get pretty solid showings. The focus is very much on the main trio, but how the side characters play into that also brings out the best in each of them as well. I would also like to note that Yukino’s mother and sister were a lot more likable than I expected. Hachiman has really good chemistry with all of them interestingly enough, and it really does feel like they all deserve each other.
As for the romance, it does reach a definitive conclusion. Rather, it kind of feels like it’s been pretty clear what the conclusion was going to be for quite a while, but early on in this season it becomes explicitly clear what direction things are going to go, though it takes a while to eventually get there due to the aforementioned issued characters have communicating. Still, in the end it results in a lot of amazing moments. It has the most dramatic non-explicit confession scenes I’ve seen in anime. Followed not long after by a really fun explicit confession scene. Which is then followed by another amusing non-explicit confession scene. And then another dramatic confession scene. Each of them are going for completely different emotional beats, but all of them managed to hit their mark pretty well and the end result is that the final stretch overall has a lot of emotional impact. It felt kind of rushed at times, but all in all it was a really satisfying conclusion to everything. The OVA is an epilogue that’s after all the drama, so it returns to the comedic tone of the first season, which was a nice note to end on.
The art and animation were pretty good, they’re pretty much the same as the previous season in all respects. The soundtrack hit a lot harder though. Especially the use of old tracks at key moments, such as Yukitoki, the OP of the first season, or Yui no Ketsui, which is based on the ED of the first season, Hello Alone. The new OP and ED were also pretty solid in terms of audio and visuals.
A brilliantly overdramatic conclusion to the character and relationship arcs of a very interesting trio.
Bokurema is about the protagonist, Hashiba Kyouya, waking up and discovering he’s been sent ten years into the past, right when he was choosing which college to go to. This was a major turning point in his life, where he had to choose between becoming a generic salaryman, or choosing the riskier option and pursuing a career as a creator. He originally chose the safer option, but came to deeply regret it. Thus when given the option to retry, he of course chooses to go to an arts college. Furthermore, it turns out the share house that he begins living at is full of creators that he admired in the future. Working with them, he hopes to grow to become an amazing creator as well.
This anime has a big emphasis on media creation, primarily from the lens of an otaku. It reminds me a lot of Saekano, which is similarly a light novel series penned by an author famous for their work in visual novels. The story in Bokurema has a lot more variety than Saekano though, in that while in Saekano the focus is entirely on making a visual novel, here it shows the development of a short film, a visual novel, and a gacha game. Still, a lot of it is the same in that the protagonist is the producer and has to manage an artist, writer, and musician, and in the process the viewer gets a look a the various aspects of media creation. Some parts definitely felt kind of wrong through, such as the part where they just swap game engines effortlessly, which was beyond my suspension of disbelief threshold. I will also note that both are full of references to other otaku media, including each having a cover of a song from a classic anime.
Another similarity between Bokurema and Saekano and is that it seems that the entire main cast is in love with the protagonist. The rest of the main cast in Bokurema is composed of: Shino Aki, an airheaded artist that very clearly falls in love with Kyouya; Kogure Nanako, a hesitant and easily embarrassed singer that very clearly falls in love with Kyouya; Kawasegawa Eiko, a cool honors student type that turns out later to secretly have fallen in love with Kyouya; and Rokuonji Tsurayuki, a talented writer and a guy that trusts and respects Kyouya so much that his fiancé gets worried that they’re secretly having a homosexual affair (they are not). The dynamic is very different from Saekano though in that most everyone is much more open about how much they love the protagonist, which gives it a very different from most school rom-com harem. If I had to say, I’d say it reminds me of an isekai harem. I think it does a great job at that, though you’ll have to be someone that can enjoy harem genre stories to appreciate it.
Another way this anime resembles an isekai is that the protagonist has very strong gary stu energy. Kyouya is able to push through and solve problems effortlessly to an absurd degree. It honestly gives the same sort of vibes you get from overpowered protagonists in isekai at times so if you enjoy that sort of thing you’ll definitely find those moments really satisfying. However, what I was really impressed by was that in the last arc of the anime, it uses Kyouya being so competent to add quite a lot of depth to the narrative. It explores some pretty interesting themes, such as how people can have impact well beyond their intentions or how facing adversity and making mistakes is a core aspect in the development of creativity. It went in directions I really didn’t expect it to go in but I really enjoyed. Thus overall, I felt the final arc was a fantastic arc. However, it leaves a lot unresolved and ends on a cliffhanger so I can’t say I was entirely satisfied, but it’s a partial adaptation of a much larger story so I don’t really hold that against it.
The art and animation in this are pretty solid. The character designs are pretty great and varied for the setting. The OP has a pretty good song and the ED song is decent, but what really stood out was that they have great visuals that show off the characters really well. The soundtrack worked well enough but was not particularly memorable.
An anime about trying to become a creator with a surprisingly overpowered protagonist and surprisingly more depth than expected.
This is a remake of the first two games in the Langrisser franchise, which were originally released on the Sega Genesis way back in 1991 and 1994. In terms of gameplay, it’s a top down grid based TRPG with a heavy emphasis on commanding a large quantity of units. There are various named commanders that are important to the story that act as the main characters, but each can have a number of generic units of various classes underneath them called mercenaries. As such, the battles can get quite large with dozens of units on each side. And to be clear, all of these units are individually controllable, so things can get quite complicated.
Compared to other TRPGs, I felt there was a larger emphasis on large scale positioning. By that I mean you’re not just trying to get a few units into the right positions, but rather trying to form fronts essentially that you use to push through the enemies fronts. Killing a commander also kills every mercenary underneath them, so there’s an emphasis on protecting your commanders while going heavily after the enemy’s. The separation between commanders and mercenaries also results in the game being balanced around the mercenaries being very dispensable. It’ll be pretty common to finish levels with the vast majority of your units wiped out, which is pretty rare for TRPGs in my experience. These factors result in this playing pretty uniquely.
However, I wouldn’t say that’s entirely a plus. While it was certainly interesting at first, eventually it just feels like it’s getting way too cumbersome and slow to manage so many units. There are techniques you can use to have the mercenaries under a commander operate automatically, but the only one that felt useful was the ‘Defend’ command that tells them to surround and protect the commander. And just in general things feel like they’re moving too slow. There’s an option to skip battle animations, which I started doing pretty quickly in both games, but even with that things felt like they were moving too slowly. What was especially annoying was that at the end of each turn, the game goes around and shows each unit that didn’t move and isn’t going to automatically move being put in standby which felt like an enormous waste of time.
The game has a pretty complex growth system for commanders. Each commander has their own class tree where they gain different stat boosts and skills as they class up. The different classes don’t just have different stats and skills in the commanders, but also allow the commanders to command different types and quantities of mercenaries. However, once a class is gained by a commander, they’ll have access to the skills and mercenary types of that class even if they switch to another class, though the stats and quantity of mercenaries only applies when using a specific class. Classes are gained by spending TP, which are given to the VIP of each level at the end or gained when a commander levels up through gaining enough XP. There are also equippable items, which can be purchased through the shop or found on maps. Both items and mercenaries require money, which is obtained through killing enemy units. Money can be a constraint at first, but just from playing the game you’ll quickly have so much money that it’ll become a complete nonissue, which feels like strange balancing.
Story wise, for the most part the game is pretty basic and not particularly well written. What makes it somewhat interesting is that there’s actually a branching story that can vary tremendously. The canon route is a generic story about defeating demons and an evil empire that was working with or wanted to work them them. However, it can branch such that the protagonist betrays their allies to join the empire, join the demons, or just betrays everyone to become a lone wolf. As mentioned none of these are particularly well written, so the crazier they get the more interesting they are. The options where the protagonist betrays everyone are the most interesting because they’re just so unique. Especially in the first game where things can get completely insane. It’s also interesting seeing the same group of characters both as enemies and allies, though none of them are really fleshed out at all.
A big issue though, is that there are way too many routes. In the first game there are eight routes, but each pair of two is incredibly similar to the point it’s probably not worth doing both. I would recommend only doing the bottom of each pair, meaning do B, D, F, and H. The second is a bit more complex in it’s route system and has thirteen routes, but I also feel like those could be cut down. It’s not as clear cut as in the first game though, and thus harder to recommend how to do it. Still, I would recommend playing A, E, H, K, L, and M.
The game has two different art styles and soundtracks, modern and classic. The changes to art affect everything, meaning both the character art and the sprites themselves. I think the community in general prefers the old classic art. I agree that it’s definitely much more unique than the modern art which is more generic. Still, overall I much prefer the modern art. Even if it’s generic, it’s pretty high quality and the character designs are pretty good. The unit sprites I’m not as much of a fan of, but I still prefer them over the pixelated classic style. The soundtrack is decent enough either way, though the big issue is that it gets repetitive.
Though that gets me too what is the biggest issue in this collection of games, how repetitive it is. Despite their being two games in this collection, I’ve very rarely highlighted the differences between them. This is because the two are incredibly similar. There’s major asset reuse from game to game, in terms of art, music, etc. There’s also not any evolution at all in terms of gameplay mechanics from the first to the second. They play exactly the same. And furthermore, there’s a lot of reuse of maps from the first in the second. With each game already being repetitive in and of itself, both games also being pretty much the same results in them being incredibly repetitive and a completely slog to get through by the end. So I would recommend not playing them back to back and only playing the routes I listed above.
A pair of TRPGs with relatively unique gameplay, a pretty weak story, and lots of content that gets incredibly repetitive.
This film is a sequel to the Gaiden film, and thus takes place several years after the main series. The focus here is on the relationship between Violet and her major, Gilbert Bougainvillea. Many seem to be upset that the end of Violet’s story goes back to focusing on Gilbert and call it a step back in her character arc. And I can see where they’re coming from as a core part of the main series was Violet growing to be an independent person that no longer simply followed orders but acted on her own desires and beliefs. Still, overall I’d have to say I liked that this is the direction that they took with things.
Violet being desperately obsessed with Gilbert at the start of the story wasn’t really all that romantic. It was simply a result of her being empty and having nothing else to care about, and thus directing her entire being towards the one person that she did have. However, over the course of the anime series she grew to be a complete person living a fulfilling life of her own. Thus, that she’s still so incredibly in love with Gilbert has a completely different significance as compared to her feeling at the beginning of the anime. It’s not like her character development got reversed or weakened in any way, but rather that her love exceeded even that. I found that really romantic, and really heavy. And thus the emotional beats hit really hard and the climax was incredibly impactful and memorable. I do feel the epilogue was a bit weak though and would prefer something that was more straightforward. And no, the short after credit scene was not enough. Still, overall I was satisfied with the ending.
I did think there were issues in the film in terms of focus. There’s elements of it jumping back and forth a bit between Violet’s story and a girl in the future looking into her story which I felt was somewhat pointless and contributed nothing in terms of plot or themes. There was also a side tangent involving Violet writing letters for a sick boy that had some plot significance and also played into the overarching themes, but I feel that the same effects could have been achieved easily while staying focused on Violet and Gilbert. The main anime was also pretty scattered and meandering in terms of focus at times, but it was much more bearable with short episodes. With a film that’s almost two and a half hours long it feels like much more of an issue.
The art and animation are still excellent as with the rest of the series. Though to be honest, I feel there wasn’t really anything in this one that felt new and interesting visually. There was a repeated visual motif of letters flying around in the wind which I feel was meant to have some deeper significance beyond the obvious, but I didn’t really get it. The soundtrack was great, and made good use of the ED from the original anime. The ED was the standard white text on black, and the song was solid enough.
A fantastic, though somewhat messy, ending to Violet’s story.
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