Jeoffrey

So now we are going to mess around with time and pit a couple of important figures from Japanese history against each other. Could this be interesting? For example, Drifters did something similar and it was quite interesting, even though they had a broader range of characters than just well-known Japanese figures, and the narrative (or rather, the beginning of it) was probably a bit more straightforward and a lot more insane than simply messing about with a chronometer watch and trying to take over the world. Drifters had interesting characters, a collection of weird psychopaths and madmen. In this show, however, the characters are not anywhere near as interesting, they are just kind of boring. Well, boredom prevailed throughout the first three episodes, where I was basically just forcing myself to watch yet another episode, waiting to see if there would be an interesting and surprising twist or a great fight scene, in other words, something to keep me engaged. There are some surprises, however, and sometimes there are fight scenes, although not enough to stop me from laying there motionless and unaffected. So neither my favorite characters from the end of the Edo period (which I loved so much when parodied in the Gintama anime series) nor even the likes of Sanada Yukimura and his ilk (it is surely just a matter of time before Oda Nobunaga shows up, in my opinion) were enough to keep me going... Dropped after the third episode and I am awarding a maximum of 3/10.

Okay, so we are halfway through season three, and the rest of the season is supposedly coming out in six months, so why not review this first half of the season now, and then review the second half of season three in the spring... Before I even started watching this third season, I had heard from a few people that the Royal Government 'Uprising' arc was bad. I didn't really get it, because usually a bit of a political power struggle and some internal feuding adds some kind of depth to the narrative, which I think is a good thing as it balances out all the fighting... Yeah, although it is all about the timing! The biggest problem I have with the whole first half of the third season (and this means the Royal Government 'Uprising' arc), is that it is a beautiful example of the meaning of "anticlimactic". What does that mean exactly? Well, here is another of my great “romantic” analogies for the sake of comparison. Imagine that you have a beautiful partner (a lady in my case) who is almost everything you desire and even her personality is attractive, so you decide to “go for it" as they say. So you are fooling around, get down and nasty, let us say “getting to know each other better” if you know what I mean? Everything is going just great, and then as all the foreplay gets you to that place, when you are already as hot as a car roof in the middle of a hot summer day (going for that big "storyline"), out of the blue, your sweetheart starts telling you about the risk of STDs. Sure, it is related to the subject matter, it might be interesting and informative for some (if it is presented well), however, at this point, just when you are expecting something a little different, it kills the mood and dampens all the enthusiasm you had, and so brings you crashing back down to earth (or in the worst case, underground). So what was going on in this part of Attack on Titan instead of actual titans? Well, perhaps some informative scenes regarding the world on the other side of the wall, the introduction of some more interesting characters, or perhaps finally unraveling the mystery around the basement and the key? Well, actually there was a big boring history lesson (regarding the Reiss family)! There was also a pretty boring military coup. Then there was the discovery that the toughest people around do not go by the name Norris (because Chuck), they go by the name Ackerman, and they are just everywhere like they have been breeding like rabbits, in every nook and cranny. There are some action-packed scenes like the Levi bar scene which is easily the best scene from all the first eight episodes. There is also one very strange titan, plus a bunch of lore around it, and it concerns things I had been suspecting for a really long time. I consider it a positive thing that Eren is not as hysterical and a lot more of a thinker now. Armin has finally stopped crying... but what exactly is the point of Armin now, and why was he even there for this part of the season?!? Oh, and Mikasa is just all about "EREN", so not much has changed there, although she was in a scene during the final episode where I thought she was kind of cute for a minute or so (when the guys were fighting). Unfortunately, only the last two episodes reminded me of why I think this anime series is actually very cool, mostly because of these series "Severus Snape" (the elaborate subplot from the penultimate episode...), the happy and emotional party where Sasha was once again very entertaining, and the departure itself, which I found quite emotional, and I did smile contentedly when Erwin raised his one and only hand at the end. I am not going to say it was a let-down, because it was still quite interesting at times. It is just that somehow it has dampened my spirits, and I am starting to get the impression that the cool and five-star story arcs that manga readers have not been sleeping on for a couple of years now are only going to come when, in the Game of Thrones, winter is really coming to Westeros, and frankly speaking, both are dragging on now... The first half of season three - 6.5/10. EDIT 01.07.2019 - THE SECOND HALF OF SEASON THREE. I am very glad that this time the fans were not lying and that, unlike other anime series where I am always hanging on for some great scenes (like with Sword Art Online), there were some moments that were really worth five stars. The entire second half of the third season is action-packed and intensely dramatic, plus it also has some rather poetic and philosophical moments. It provides most of the answers the audience has been waiting for (and some of which they may have already partially guessed). The action-packed scenes are good, it is sometimes a bit too dramatic, but so be it. The poeticism in contrast to all the action and drama is pleasing, and the philosophical element of the show? Some important decisions are bound to inevitably cause rifts, and not only between the characters themselves. Plus, like me, perhaps you are going to disagree with some of the paths the narrative is going to take. However, I guess that is the point: a well-written production is supposed to provoke the audiences to show emotions, encourage thinking and lead to a discussion! So even though I am maintaining my position, and I could go on about how everything is not as I would like it to be, I am going to move on and embrace manga artist Hajime Isayama’s vision. This means that the second half of season three could have been awarded five stars, and so the final rating would end up somewhere around 9/10. However, that would not take into account the fact that there is still that first half of the third season to consider, and that part did not really grab me. So, I am definitely not going to go higher than four-stars as the rating for the whole of the third season, although it is a strong four-stars - 8.3/10.

Somehow I just cannot think of anything of real worth to say about this anime series. It had a pretty decent narrative, some interesting characters, a completely unnecessary romantic subplot (I did not get the main female protagonist and her contribution), and a pretty acceptable ending. In other words, this "animated Underworld" was actually pretty good... 6/10.

Season three of Overlord follows a similar course to that of the previous season in my opinion. The beginning was kind of lackluster, full of unnecessary crap (because I really needed to know that there was a virgin succubus, for example) and filler. I thought the first episode was more like bonus episode (OVA) material and definitely not an introduction to a new season. I did not find the whole Carne Village Arc all that interesting, even though on the other hand it was at least more relevant to the storyline that followed than the Lizardmen Arc (sorry, but I just cannot get them out of my mind) in the last season. The second part with the invasion of the tomb by the adventurers was better, much more interesting with a very good ending that reminded me that the main male protagonist of this show cannot be described as a pure character (he is more like a villain here). What about the ending? The season builds up brilliantly and it is an example of what it means to be truly OP, and that it can be awfully appealing under certain circumstances. I was once again feeling on top of my game during the last few episodes, I really enjoyed them, and I am now looking forward to the next installment. One thing I want to say is that the way the seasons starts up is always really weak (but I get, that even these parts are part of the source novels). 8.2/10.

At the beginning, I liked this show a lot, I thought it had the necessary amount of suspense, and the sport itself was very well portrayed. Every badminton match and training session looked really good because of the well-animated movements of the characters and the shots of the shuttlecock flying through the air. If there had only been the drama on the court, or if they had managed to make the off-court narrative interesting, I would have probably given this a much higher rating. However, as it is, this show is just an ordinary "MAMA drama", even though only the main female protagonist experiences it to the fullest. She was suddenly like a total psychopath, going from cheerful schoolgirl mode to serial killer mode in a matter of seconds, if only she could have just had a nice talk with her mom... Unfortunately, that is not how shit goes down at Ayano's house, and even the mom did not attract any great sympathy from me, and, rather the opposite. Unfortunately, this dramatic element somehow makes not only the much more interesting character of Nagisa but also the game of badminton itself get overlooked, and even the ending, while offering them a way to resolve the problem, does not provide the audience with any great sense of relief. Actually, I am kidding, it does - relief that this is all finally over... All that is left now is to explain to the neighbors that what I have just been watching was not pornography, even though it might have seemed like it was, due to an insanely long (and utterly stupid) sequence filled with nothing but the tired sighs and moans of the two main protagonists. 5.5/10.

This is definitely the best season of this anime series so far. Again it features some great scenes, featuring two epic fights - "All for One" vs. "One for All" (it makes you wonder what else someone could accomplish using the basic story of Dumas' The Three Musketeers...) and Midoriya vs. Bakugo. This time it is extremely emotionally charged and suspenseful - it is really more interesting than the first two seasons. There are a few answers and a lot of new questions, and it even manages to act as a promotion for the upcoming movie (OK this is not that cool...). Another reviewer Toren wrote that this show is "the best that modern shonen has to offer" and I agree - both the narrative and the atmosphere are definitely very good. In addition, as the fight scenes pack a punch, the characters are still quite relatable (the main protagonist especially gets more bearable from one season to the next), I have to pull the highest rating out of my hat this time. It was extremely entertaining, so 8.8/10. P.S. I would recommend that "Nyanta" look to cleanse her soul by watching the anime series Black Clover because it would help her to realize that Deku is definitely not the worst main male protagonist out there. o.0

If, after watching the first few episodes of this anime series, someone had told me that it would end up for me being the most successful romantic comedy anime series of the anime season Summer 2018, and probably even of the last few years, I would have laughed in their face. This is because at first, this anime series seems like nothing more than a very obvious advertisement for some old and maybe even new computer games. Please believe me, it is true... For anyone who was born in the eighties and therefore actually lived through the computer game boom that came in the nineties, this is going to take you back, and you are going to be riding that wave of nostalgia and start reminiscing about your first experiences with both arcade machines and game consoles. So if it was just about the video games and the gaming rivalry, I would not have awarded less than three stars, because this show is incredibly close to my heart, and it brought back a lot of great memories. This is because the producers really know how to portray the passion of playing video games, to show the enthusiasm not only for the games themselves but also for the gameplay. It also helps the audience find the character Yaguchi more believable! However, it is that strong romantic undercurrent that makes Hi Score Girl something much more interesting, powerful, and unforgettable. I have not seen such a good, effortless and heartwarming romantic comedy in a long time, and there are at least two episodes (the one with Oono's departure, and the one where Oono is running away from home) that are worth a solid five stars in my book and could easily warm up my otherwise very cynical and cold heart. In general, I personally find Oono an incredibly charming girl. This is probably the first time that I actually feel that the description of the character as "silent and mysterious with a strangely sublime aura" really fits how I perceive the character. Oono is not a character that needs to talk, she expresses her feelings very clearly just by the way she looks, gestures, or by the way she acts... The problem is that there is the other girl in the show Hidaka, who is not too bad either, in fact, she is very nice and supportive... So now you have to choose, dear audience! I managed it, and I believe Yaguchi could do it too, even though we are only going to find out the answer to the riddle of this love triangle in the follow-up in 2019. I simply cannot wait for the next season now after watching the last episode of this one, which has the most anticipated and also the worst cliffhanger ever. I thought that Hi Score Girl was the biggest surprise out of all of the anime season Simmer 2018 releases and shows how an anime series can be on the right side of heart-warming, romantic, and nostalgic. It also shows how it can promote old computer games, new video games, and the eventual second season without being extremely irritating. In addition, this show features peculiar and atypical animation that really grows on you. 7.8/10.  ----------- EDIT 17.05.2019 -  I thought, unsurprisingly, that the three-part OVA continues the high standard set by the original anime series. Once again, it is really heart-warming, and, in my opinion, the perfect romantic comedy - oh, and there is more gameplay too... The characters are still the same, Oono is amazing even when she is not speaking, and she has those big sad eyes and a tragic backstory that makes you feel for her and take her to your heart even if you are not fully aware of it (just like the main male protagonist). Hidaka’s character is a close second for me, a remarkably personable fighter, and I was rooting for her too. Oh, and Haruo is still just as entertainingly tragic and knows nothing except gaming - probably like Jon Snow. In my opinion, this is still one of the best, funniest, and most heartwarming romantic comedies, hidden away where you perhaps would not necessarily expect to find it. It succeeded in making me quite emotional and it made me smile. Admittedly, I could easily criticize how much everyone here is now pushing Haruo to understand, because he is very dumb, what is really going on. I could also be dissatisfied with the fact that after the massive climax at the end of the first season, everything was dug up again to be intensely dealt with in the OVA (although I was actually satisfied). This is despite the fact that in the end, nothing was really resolved (although I can actually understand that), and so I feel like we are back to where we were before the big admission. We are therefore just now waiting to see what is going to happen in season two. Yes, there will be a second season this fall, and I am looking forward to it. After the three-part OVA, I am going for 8.2/10, because perhaps like a good RPG game (which at least maintains the plot to a certain extent throughout), the more you play (watch) it, the more you enjoy it and the visible flaws and mistakes fade away - at least that is what Todd Howard supposedly said... EDIT 23.12.2019 - The second season started off a little less dramatic and interesting than I expected. I did not find Haruo and his rebellious period or the fights between the video game gangs all that entertaining. However, there is the conclusion, when the love triangle is finally dealt with. Everything builds up dramatically in a very suspenseful way towards the ending which I had expected, and I guess the only thing that I found a bit irritating was that they used the same storyline again, meaning the journey to the airport… However, what the hell, since everything is beautifully evocative, just like the first time, and I thoroughly enjoyed the last few episodes as intensely as my mother enjoys watching the conclusion of a storyline in her favorite soap opera. I mean, it managed to move me, shake me and it also warmed my heart - the ending was a truly five-star experience and I enjoyed everything and fully understood why I love this anime series and its characters so much. So, riding on the wave of these emotions and satisfied with what I saw and how it was presented, I am raising my rating for the last time and going to look for that damn ninja who was slicing onions in my room somewhere during the last episode... The second season gets 9/10 - overall the entire anime series gets 8.6/10.

"Some people are broken. You and I both know it, and that is about all there is to it..." sings the Czech rock band Kabát, and I have reached the conclusion that there are a lot of broken people in this anime series. The human psyche is a rather fragile thing and it is not that difficult to damage it, just like the glass depicted here so many times (which is a rather perfect metaphor). I have met some broken people in my life, people who have been affected by their environment or even just one important experience, and a lot of them still carry that inside them and constantly struggle through life. However, what are we really fighting for? For ourselves? For those we love? Each one of us is trying to find something that will fulfill them, looking to fill their empty glasses (I find this metaphor is also perfect), and can find comfort and fulfillment in different things, people, and narratives... People are different, they have different personalities, different experiences, different desires - so it is very difficult to generalize and evaluate them without full insight into their minds, souls, and backgrounds. Certainly, we can say that the collection of characters in this narrative are quite repulsive, twisted, and disgusting, although I should also perhaps add that I thought that the exposition regarding the way the characters ended up the way they are is realistic, warts and all. We have the chance to get to know the characters, their motivations, their origins, and their experiences. These are all inevitably horrifying, of course, and logically nothing much good could come of it. At least it is horrifying for a person like myself, who has had a stable background, a decent upbringing, fairly normal values, and who is currently filling his own empty void living vicariously through watching other people's narratives. I think the world out there is dull and grey even though at the same time it is also full of interesting and strange people and their narratives... This was interesting too, a narrative with a sophisticated psychological aspect, and so I could get my head around most of it, and sometimes had to try and figure out how it all worked... The anime’s creators gave me food for thought and I appreciate that they offered me situations, problems, and solutions that I thought were both shocking and repulsive, even though they still made sense to me. In addition, there is the ending, which is the logical conclusion of all those rather extreme ideas about love and a happy sugar life. At the same time, there is also another subject for further reflection - what is going to actually come of Shio after all this... So even though I did not really enjoy it, still, it gave me the chills, and sometimes I felt disgusted, but there was a point to this because I was not thinking about it in terms of being a bad anime series, just that "some people are broken..." and especially why... 5/10.

Open the Depress Gate and the fun will really be 0 most of the time. The story of how everything had to return to the way it was and exactly how that happened is full of sad crying, resignation to fate, and negativity that I just would never recognize from the original Steins;Gate. This is why I cannot say I like this version whatsoever. Okabe's biggest problem is Okabe himself, and it takes an incredibly long time for that to change. Oh, and when Hououin Kyouma finally shows up in what’s probably the strongest and best scene of the entire anime series, it is already too little, too late, and a shadow of what I had gotten used to. Until then, it goes from depressing part to depressing part, finding more reasons to explain why it cannot be done, figuring out things that the attentive audience has long expected, and filling the spaces in between with extraneous nonsense and occasionally even fan service. The original concept behind Steins;Gate is still intact, and the ending was pretty good, too (in other words, the last three to four episodes or so were even quite entertaining). In the end, I am not going to say how disappointed and depressed I am with what I have seen and push the rating down, because even if it was somewhere else in spirit (or perhaps even without spirit) compared to the original show, I still cannot bring myself to say that it is a bad anime series. It could well be a bad experience in certain parts considered to be poor perhaps, although as a whole it still holds up thanks to a few engaging scenes, and I am even going to award it 5.5/10, and this is because of the original concept behind this show.

Tuong Lu Kim from South Park was right - damn Mongolians, every time an Asian builds a big wall, the Mongolians show up to destroy it! This time, the Japanese knew it... They had such a nice wall around their native settlement on Tsushima Island, so the Mongols just had to come and break it down... However, it was an interesting spectacle, full of strategies and battles, where the mission to keep the Mongols on the island eventually became a mission of survival. I enjoyed it, and even the bittersweet conclusion was quite satisfying in the end... 7/10.