Herohades

Horimiya is a slice of life that's just as much about the day-to-day of being in a relationship as it is about the exciting lead up to one. And I frankly love it Its initial presentation will be very familiar to anyone who's been around slice of life anime before. A top of the class high school girl has a chance meeting with a loner high school boy, shenanigans ensue, and eventually they smooch. A dozen other shows fit that same description, and while Horimiya is a bit faster in overall pace than most of those, the overarcing plot never escapes the comparison. It never takes on the worst aspects of the... See full review

I honestly kinda feel bad reviewing Tokyo Ghoul. It's the classic case of a pretty good show being ballooned by it's fanbase until it had a media profile far bigger than it could handle. So will reviewing it possibly hurt it's fanbase by admitting it's not really the massive hit it's advertising seems to think it is? Absolutely. Will I review it anyways? Absolutely.  Tokyo Ghoul centers on Kaneki, a high school boy who gets attacked by a flesh eating ghoul, and through a somewhat ridiculous turn of events becomes one of them. He must then learn to live amongst the terrifying ghouls, survive amongst... See full review

Violet Evergarden is the kind of story that will either leave you emotionally drained, yet overwhelmingly satisfied, or it'll leave you unimpressed, and vaguely disappointed. Which is unfortunate, but a necessary part of telling a story as solid as this; not everyone can be your target audience.  Violet Evergarden, the titular main character, is a girl who grew up in war as a human weapon, and has known nothing but fighting her whole life. After a battle that leaves her armless ends the war, Violet has to learn how to be a normal person, and fit back into civil society. To this end she gets a job as a... See full review

The easiest way to figure out if you'll enjoy High Rise Invasion is to watch one of the longer Metal Gear Solid cutscenes. High-Rise has such strong parallels to the franchise that I constantly think I'll see Kojima's name on the show's wikipedia page.  The parallels start with the inciting plot, which is absolutely derailed, but in a way that almost makes sense. A ton of people wake up in a world that consists only of the upper floors of a ton of skyscrapers, where a bunch of brainwashed people in masks are trying to kill a bunch of people not wearing masks. The overarcing plot has the same tendency... See full review

Godzilla SP is so batshit insane that I'm not entirely sure how to handle it. How do you review something that goes from long-winded debate about the nature of time to massive kaiju punch up with the ease and flow of a combine harvester? To be fair, SP is really more of a few different stories mixed together, sometimes to great effect, and sometimes to disatrous failure. The first is the classic Gojira story; strange natural anomolies lead to clues of even stranger massive creatures with deadly powers, eventually leading to one of them, this time Godzilla himself, destroying Tokyo. This storyline is the... See full review

Quick Disclaimer: Spoilers for Fate Zero in this review. If you haven't seen that, go watch it before you start Unlimited Blade Works. Unlimited Blade Works stands in the less than enviable position of being the first Fate/stay night adaptation following the small dumpster fire that was the orriginal fate/stay night. And yet despite that, UBW stands tall not only as a worthy adaptation of the story line, but a mighty peak of the franchise as a whole.  Every single aspect has improved since the first Stay Night. The characters are far more interesting and nuanced, the action is powerful, the animation... See full review

I have a hunch that the orriginal plot of Beastars is the result of some writer trying to take furry fanfic and turn it into something people would watch. Because shockingly, Beastars isn't a complete and total disaster. Just mostly one.  The core premise is pretty basic, and familiar to anyone that's been on the internet for a while, as is the overarcing plot for that matter. All sorts of animals exist in a big society, vaguely reminiscent of Zootopia's world, where carnivores have to contain their desire to eat everyone else and herbivores live in subtle fear that the carnivores around them will... See full review

A couple disclaimers before I start this. For one, I'm assuming you've watched Stay Night, or Unlimited Blade Works already. If not, watch one of those first. I'd recommend Stay Night, but at least one of them is essential before you watch this. Also I'm reviewing both parts of Fate Zero, cause they're the same storyline and I don't wanna type the same thing twice.  So, you've seen Shirou's storyline, run into the plot twist, and now you're ready to see the grand story of his father. Which is unfortunate, cause of the only major failings of Zero is that it doesn't really touch on Papa Emiya very much... See full review

Fate Stay Night is bad. If the only thing you wanted to know is whether or not to watch this one show, then the answer is no, it's not worth watching. Stay Night is plagued by aggravating characters, mediocre animation, and a plot line that half the time felt like it was being made up on the spot. No amount of justification can make me recommend it on its own.  If, however, you're trying to get into the wider franchise, its a different story. In that case I not only recommend you watch Fate Stay Night, I also recommend watching it first. See, most of Stay Night's problems are with pacing and... See full review

Guilty Crown is an examplary demonstration of how important good sound design is.  Pretty much every aspect of this show rips off other more competently written shows, most strikingly Code Geass and Gurren Laggan. From Code Geass it steals the setting of a vaguely authoritative Japan currently in the midst of a major rebellion, and from Gurren Laggan it steals the not only the characters themselves, but also their whole arcs, interactions, and to some extent the plot itself. Although there's no point when MC Shu uses a galaxy sized mecha to punch the universe in the face so I guess the comparison... See full review

I think the best analogy to use for Parasyte is that it's like an ancient philosopher waltzing around a market while in disguise. You first approach it, and get the feeling you're talking to a common peasant, but then out of nowhere it reveals that it has depth and a cataolgue of interesting characters and ideas. And then, to complete the analogy, the philospher then stabs you in the heart and laughs at your pain.  The whole "peasant look" thing comes from the basic outline of the plot. I mean, "Teenage boy that with lacking traits but a good heart gains powers that allow him to become... See full review

I can't help but feel bad for Kanon. Even a moderately high quality show would pale in comparison to a behemoth as big and well known as Clannad. And for a show like Kanon, which has a passing relationship with quality, that comparison crushes any real chance at getting better known.  Kanon is the second of three visual novels by Key that started with Air, and so far has ended with Clannad. All three have been given anime adaptations, or in the case of Kanon, two adaptations, to help perfect the formula. The problem Kanon faces is that the formula for these adaptations wasn't really perfected until... See full review

Let's get something out of the way straight off the bat. Bleach is not a show. It's a monolith, a towering structure full of monsters and demons, and other things that want you to die, at the top of which some people claim is a beautiful prize. Despite several attempts, I myself have never completely finished Bleach, but that certainly won't stop me from reviewing it.  See, Bleach isn't just a shonen, it is the shonen, as in the show that basically started most of the trends. So although it will forever live in history for it's impact on the medium, it's also what started many of the worst... See full review

Let me set a scene for you: you're watching a comedian you quite like, and after getting up on stage, they make a joke. It's pretty good, so you do a little snort, while you wait for the next joke. But instead, the comedian tells the same joke again. You're a bit confused. The joke was okay, but they already told it, and it's sure as hell not getting better with age. And now they're telling it again. And again. The same joke, same delivery, over and over again, until you begin to consider plucking out your own ears as a good alternative to hearing it again.  This is, essentially, the experience of... See full review

I'm torn when it comes to reviewing Kokoro Connect. It does so many things right, so perfectly correct, but then it tops off this power house of great quality by sucker punching me and laughing at my look of betrayal.  The show centers around a group of five people who are chosen by a deity-like being to undergo a series of team-building exercises. And by that, I mean that a bored god puts them through a series of strange scenarios, purely for the sake of his entertainment, in what I like to call the "up yours" style of plot development. So this is how the group finds themselves... See full review

On the off chance that you're the kind of person that consistently reads reviews by the same people on as obscue a place as Anime Planet, you may remember that when I had reviewed Science Fell in Love, that my biggest complaint was that it fell apart when it started to take itself seriously. Well, now here's a show that does almost all of the same things, but actually manages to pull it off far better.  Kaguya-Sama is both the name of the show, and one of it's two main characters, a high school girl that comes from a big imprtant family. Now, obviously Kaguya is too proud and important to ask out any... See full review

Alright, bear with me for a second, cause this is gonna get a bit weird.  So there's this being that, for strange nebulous reasons decides to blow up the moon. Not all of it, mind you, just most of it. It then descends down to Earth, and declares that he wants to teach a class of near-failed students. Oh, and that unless they manage to kill him by the end of the school year, he'll destroy the Earth.  Now, for anime, that's not all that weird of a plot. But see, normally, the weirdly convoluted backstory is just the setup for a few setpieces that are a bit weird, like school kids... See full review

Let's get something set aside straight away. There are a lot of comparisons between this show and things like Angel Beats and Clannad, saying this show is that same feeling of soul-crushing tragedy that still manages to feel good by the end. Plastic Memories is not that kind of show, simply because it's far far more devious.  See, the show is set in a sorta near future in which androids have been created, but they aren't perfect. They have normal human sentience for a handfull of years, before their minds start falling apart, and they need to be reset, destroying the memories they built up in the... See full review

One of the advantages of writing a mystery is that you have an automatic way of connecting the protaganist with the viewer, as both know pretty much the same amount, and learn more about the plot together. But what if you, being the savvy expectation flipper that you are, wanted to flip that basic idea on its head? Obviously you can't make a mystery that the viewer doesn't engage in, as that's just boring. But what if you make a mystery that the protaganist doesn't engage in? And that, in essence is the plot of Golden Time. Tada Banri, a college freshman, is not only a business major, which is a... See full review

Science Fell in Love is the a sort of quitessence of the seasonal anime, in that its passably good while its around, gets a few laughs here and there, and slips from your mind as soon as its gone.  The story centers on Himuro and Yukimura, both of whom are "science-types", as the show puts it, either cause they didn't know the word scientists, or as a subtle jab that data science doesn't count as a true science. One day Himuro admits that she thinks she's in love with Yukimura, kicking off a long attempt by the both of them to determine the base conditions of love, in order to prove that... See full review

Looking at everything related to Your Lie in April, you'd be forgiven for thinking it's just another show trying to follow in the footsteps of shows like Clannad, by being a tear-jerking romcom that'll be quoted as "Just so sad" by every who watches it. This, however, is a lie, first told in April, but carried on for way longer than that.  Although the synopsis of Your Lie is markedly similar to that of Clannad, i.e. a guy locked in internal torment from a troubled past meets a girl who shakes him out of his comfort zone, the show I think it more deserves being compared to is Plastic... See full review

Never before have I been so mystified by the community reaction to a show. Angel Beats is another one of those shows where people will constantly bang on about how it was a tearjerker, and a feels-heavy show, when, aside from maybe one scene, all of the saddest parts are layered with a sort of irony that I think was supposed to be poking fun at the shows Angel Beats is now grouped with.  You see, the entire cast of Angel Beats is dead. As in they already had their tragic high school mishaps, and are now residing in an afterlife, where they can live out their high school lives enough to feel... See full review

We all know that one person who always thinks of themselves as a very smart person, despite the fact that most of the times, they don't really seem to know what they're talking about. Beyond the Boundary is the epitomized show version of that person, a show that, while not really all that bad, is not nearly as clever as it thinks it is.  Beyond the Boundary is one of those shows that is a bit too action-y to be called a slice of life, but has far too much down-time to really be called a shonen, a genre which I will hereby try to coin as Slice of Shonen. The plot revovles around a group of spiritual... See full review

I would love to give you a nice overview of Darker Than Black, and be able to talk to some extent about the wonderful intricacies of the plot. But that would require me to first figure out what the plot is going on about, which is way more complicated than it sounds.  I get the feeling that at some point the writer played through Dark Souls, and immidiately leaped out of their seat, yelling about how they have found the key to their next plot. So nearly all of the world-building of Darker Than Black is done in the very Souls-like style of not really explaining anything, instead letting the... See full review

One of the biggest tragedies of our current generation is how this show is perceived amongst the community. Because although Clannad certainly has its moments of sheer depression, there are also times of happiness, and joy, and so many other emotions that make the entire affair worth it.  Clannad tells the story of Tomoyo Okazaki, a high school senior with no motivation in life, who lives just to get through the day. That is, until he meets a girl, named Nagisa Furukawa, and suddenly finds his life a whole lot more interesting than it once was. And also way more supernatural than one would think... See full review

I've oftern heard this show likened to Game of Thrones, a comparison that I believe never quite did Akama Ga Kill any justice, even before the Game of Thrones crapped out in its final seasons. Whereas Game of Thrones is more like a deadly traipse through a jungle, where every few steps are halted by someone losing their leg to a python, Akame Ga Kill is more like the story of Icarus; everything is great and majestic, until it is suddenly and very violently not. So yes, people die a lot in Akame Ga Kill, but seeing as how I like to avoid spoilers, I'll focus more on the starting plot rather than how it... See full review

There are some shows that you watch for the deep and well built narrative, that likeable and complex character, and the gorgeous animation, blended in with the powerful music. And there are others that you watch because Samuel L. Jackson voices one of the characters, and you really can't pass that by. Afro Samurai is the latter of these.  The plot basically revolves around these two headbands, one of which makes the wearer nearly a god, the second of which gives the wearer the power to kill the wearer of the first headband. The current wearer of the number one band killed the father of the current... See full review

There are a lot of shows that lean very hard into their whole "This is really sad" element of their plot. Shows like Clannad and Plastic Memories have become infamous for the pure destruction they waged on the emotions of their viewers. So a few writers came along and said, "Wait, if people like being sad, lets give them sad, and nothing else." And hence, Anohana was born.  The plot of the entire show is basically that there were a bunch of friends, who were not sad at all, until one of them dies, making them all very sad. One of the former friends, our MC, can now see the dead... See full review

Absolute Duo is one of those shows that is really really not very good, but you almost feel bad for it, because you know that it is at least trying. Underneath the cliches and fan service, there is a decent setup for a not half bad plo. Its just a shame that plot has already been done far better elsewhere.  Basically, the show takes place in one of those infamous anime weapon academy, where everyone is able to manifest a weapon out of their own spirit. But, low and behold, our MC, a tragedy-striken dude trying to move forward, discovers that his manifestation is, in fact, a shield. Hijinks, and a... See full review

There is a scene in the cultural touchstone that is Pulp Fiction, in which one of the characters is sent to assassinate another, and decides to make the situation more entertaining by messing with the soon to be dead guy. So there is this five minute scene of the audience watching as this dude screws around with a guy we all know is going to be shot to death, waiting for the moment when the shoe drops, so to speak. 91 Days is basically just that scene, but extended over several hours.  The classic mafia story, in which one family betrays another, occurs, leaving the MC, a lad named Avillo, as the only... See full review