3S Review no. 79 (short, simple and salty/sweet/spicy)
So, I am the kind of person to save the best for last, and when it comes to every anime season, I save the most hyped show to watch it after everything else, now, that strategy really backfires cause most often than not, the over hyped series are nothing but golden laced mediocrities and this one wasn’t different, yet I’ll keep doing until the day comes that the show I saved for last will actually be amazing, will that day ever come? Unlikely. Will I ever learn my lesson? Unlikely. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, you can’t make a new and amazing show if you follow the same old reliable boring shounen recipe, and you can’t stop the anime community from being blissfully oblivious.
Story, so, I watch the first episode and what do I realize, that I have watched it many times again, just different iterations of it.The kid has it rough cause his father left him only but debt, he is as good as dead but conveniently a pork chainsaw demon thingy (which is cute as hell btw) appears, they do an impromptu contract apparently, the kid is barely keeping afloat by killing devils with his porky friend repaying his never ending debt to the yakuza (his father left him) passing by with eating a piece of bread on a good day. Then in an unexpectable turn of events they yakuza decide they want more power so they become… zombies, yup, zombies by forming a contract with a zombie demon, because… well because they are really bright, then for no apparent reason they lure in our protagonist to kill him, they do just that, they tear him to pieces and throw him in the garbage, they didn’t eat him for some convenient reason even though as we find out later demons just wanna eat humans. What happens next you ask? Oh something even more unexpected, the piggy offers its life merging with our protagonist, Denji, and he becomes… well.. special of course, what else, neither human neither demon, and really strong obviously. Then it gets even more typical, there is this organization fighting the devils, they pick him up and use him to kill devils.
Now, do you see the similarities? Of course you do (at least I hope), the story plays like every other typical shounen, we have the “special” protagonist, the organization, the team that is formed by special cases such as Denji and another fiend we meet later, nothing exciting, nothing you haven’t seen before. Everything plays out really conveniently, and not just in the pilot where if you are lenient you can excuse it in order to make a kickstart, later on as well. Like in the hotel episodes, everything is so terribly forced that it’s laughable. A lot of stuff don’t even make sense, like how they treat Denji and Power at the start when every devil hunter has a contract with a demon apparently. In general, the drama is forced, the suspense is forced, fan service is forced, only some dark humor appears to come naturally at times, ofc at times that is very forced as well. There are some good stuff about ti as well though, it has some nice pace so far, the backstories are implemented in a nice way and it follows a recipe that you already like, it tries nothing new, so it cannot fail. And no, having a lot of gore, blood and sex does not make it mature. Also the protagonist’s dream being that he wants to caress some boobs doesn’t make it a parody, every shonen’s protagonist dream is equally shallow no matter how superficially valiant it seems. Also there are some nice themes presented, like the fulfillment or lack there of that comes when you achieve something you thought you wanted, all this dopamine related sensations and the subjectivity of how important or insignificant one’s goal may seem. They are not greatly explored or anything, but it is a nice touch non the less.
Characters are on the same boat as the story, you have seen them all already, our protagonist is your typical thick as pigshit, dense shonen prototype, yeah he has some quirks to him, like being unintentionally kind, that doesn’t change the fact that he is kind, and him having a dream that is not so major or grande but that doesn’t change the fact that he is fighting ruthlessly in order to achieve his dream while screaming from the top of his lungs. And no, the fact that he was living a life of slavery, only to continue living a life of some kind of new slavery doesn’t make him tragic and so far it absolutely means nothing, except making the audience like him cause he is unfortunate or laugh at him cause he is being treated like a dog. We also have the silent and gentle senpai type, we have the strong and wacky annoying female lead. I like the concept of Makima, who is not the typical frightening boss, she is more the femme fatale manipulating type, which is way, way more frightening. Now, how good is all this going forward remains to be seen, cause as of now is just another excuse for fan service, cause she could be the exact same character but way less explicit it would be exactly the same, if even more scarier. Now, all of that being said, the more adult and serious tone that the story and the characters have, even if it just a dress, it is still better than the more typical shounen and ofc I prefer it that we don’t have a tournament arc and I hope it stays that way.
Animation… oh boy the animation is good, you know, it is Mappa, doing Mappa things. Yeah they have perfected by now the Nintendo trick of making something look better than it actually is, but that doesn’t matter as long as it looks good, and it does, look good. The action is great, the choreography and movements are great and some designs are nice, I mean the dude has chainsaw sticking out of his freaking forehead, that is cool, some of the demons though look very bland. My only issue though is that it has a lot cgi use, and yeah said cgi looks good (especially if you compare it with cgi from other shows) but still, I find it excessive for no reason. There is also some nice cinematography, some nice angles, some nice shots, and some nice attention to detail that unfortunately at times is forgotten, like Aki walking with his katana on the back, then later on without it, or the car starting moving forward with the gear stick being pulled back.
Sound is also very very good, the music is great and fits whatever is going on the screen, the voice acting is on point. Opening is quite good and the crazy people even made a different ending for every episode. Some of them are better than others of course, but still, that is madness, or it is love and passion coming from the production team, whatever it is, I appreciate it.
So, is it worth a watch? Well, yeah, it is worth it, unless you absolutely cannot stand the shounen formula, then no, this not a show that breaks the box, it is not innovative, it is nothing special, it is by no means a masterpiece. If you are not a shounen hater though, it is an enjoyable show, yes it is not reinventing the wheel, but it has a more adult and mature tone to it (as superficial as it is) than most shounen, nice action, good pace, spectacular production values, some good humor at times and of course fan service, all of these make it entertaining. I prefer the feeling the show has over Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen, even though if you strip it down it is kind of the same thing, a typical shounen dressed in the priciest silk.
P.S. If my opinion changes as the show continues, i will update my review for better or worse (same goes for my other rreviews). And no, reading the manga does not change anything and is by far the stupidest comment that everyone makes in this forum, this is a review about a show, not a manga, not a video game, it is irellevant.
Update: If anything, right now i am tempted to drop the story grade even lower, cause you know, shounen happens, overpowered enemies appear out of nowhere, motives are completely uknown, stuff play out conviently as always, and in typical shounen fashion as long as it has shock value, fuck proper build up, fuck hinting, fuck proper pacing, fuck the intelligent viewer in general. On the contrary there are at least some nice character moments, but once again, the lack of proper build up and complete absence of any kind of knowledge or premonition makes them feel very flat. But, i'll wait till the season ends.
End of season update: Well, yeah, middle finger in the face of the intelligent viewer seems to be the trend. We still didn't find out any motives even after we took the bad guys down, the katana guy decides to talk it out with Denji first just to waste a minute of our time with making 0 sense whatsoever, we are haphazardly introduced to new characters for the first time (for some reason even though they belong in our squad) in the typical shitty shonen infodumping fashion, Plot armor saves the day once again, don't know why the girl would even use Ghost instead of her way stronger snake, or why it stopped chocking Aki, and while you can say that it is kind of implied, Aki explaining how the Ghost moves means absolutely nothing, it could have meant something if we had some knowledge about it, but saying out of the blue that his senpai told him that at some point simply makes it plot armor and convinience. Speaking of convinience the future demon would rather get to watch free gore porn than actually getting something in return, even though he could have gotten something in return anyway, it is not like Aki had any leverage in the deal. The fucking constant cgi and the stiff robotic walking movement really got to my nerves afterall. Makima does seem interesting and frightening and the whole boob caressing scene offered nothing other than belittling her authority. So yeah, story section score lowered, character section only slightly lowered cause it got salvaged by the lets say revenge that was a anice momment for the characters, animation slightly dropped cause as i said the fuckin cgi just got to me at the end, and honestly i was about to lower the sound section as well, cause in the second half of the season, when i needed the music to really hit the spot at some specific momments, it really didn't, but listening to Kenjirou Tsuda's god damn magnificent voice, as well as looking forward to the different ending every episode just couldn't let me do it. Overall the season was okeyish, but i am really hoping that the story and characters become better next time around, and that the cgi will not be getting abused so fuckin much.
Also, now that i think of it, since we got this whole explanation that humans will get turned into zombies if they get bitten by one, how comes Denji wasn't turned into a zombie, i mean in the first episode, a horde of zombies tore him to pieces and threw him in the garbage, but not a single zombie bit him once? Not even a nimble? Just a tiny little nimble? Like, the fact that the demon didn't eat him wasn't enough of writing convience already, we also had to add the fact that not a single zombie bit him on top of that. But... coulnd't the second part just have been avoided if you didn't go out and say that zombies turn humans into zombies if they bite em, you could have just implied that only the zombie demon can make zombies out of humans, was it that hard? Or you know, skip the whole zombies all together since it had no other point other than to "introduce" (and that is a very kind use of the term) to us the other squad 4 memebers, an introduction that had exactly 0 reason to happen in this specific point of the season, let alone in such a shitty way, and keep Power occupied (another scene that made no sense) because we specifically wanted Aki to fight the girl and Denji the katana guy, nevermind the practical stuff of where did they have the zombies since Denji should have killed all of them already, or how they actually transported all of them, just so much fuckin convinience everywhere.