ArsonicToad

Kinda Spoilers and Minor language: I haven't watched any trailers or even read the description of this show and entered with no biases or opinions whatsoever. I was a bit excited when I saw the main character was black and then was shot down by the Americanized Animation in the first episode, until the 'fight scene' which was actually super detailed which neutralized the scoring. The story had a huge amount of potential, but the way the Story unfolded did feel more like a 'the power of friendship will always prevail' sort of stylistic which was a show turnoff for me, but I watched it on an 10 hour airplane trip so that also cancels out. With Characters, I am in LOVE with the design element of the characters, especially the main character and the 'supposed' antagonists, but mainly the MC, finally, after years they give us a Black MAIN CHARACTER that isn't a lighting user, or poison/snake charmer, like wow, and a Samurai at that. And the way they created the backstory for Yasuke was incredible. I do feel that power balance wise througout the characters could have been more balanced as it made it feel all the power was in the secondary main character, and I would have ranked the category just a tiny bit higher but I lowkey despise Saki I think her name was. And for Sound, *chef's kiss* the way how they managed to compose trap music into a more hestorically styled show and managed to slide in an entire BARI SAX! Amazing, the Bari even had an entire piece I believe in the second episode and it was so good I forgot I was watching a show and don't remember what happened that episode. Overall, It was for the most part pretty good, it's just the minor things that they could have done to make the show way better, but gawd dayum that Bari Sax has me bustin.

Edit: With Characters, I was really impressive with the design of Yasuke and the fact that he had multiple and realistic hairstyles throughout all of them instead of slapping white strait hair onto him.