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Sheex

  • The Old Site Reviewer Retirement Home
  • Joined Jul 11, 2007
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GATE

Jun 9, 2020

Story:

When deciding to watch a show, I generally aim to have as little information going in as possible. Usually the synopsis, title, cover image, and average user ratings are the extent of what I expose myself to upfront, leaving my expectations completely open to whatever gets thrown my way. As my quality compass has honed a bit over the years, I am fairly apt at picking out “decent” series these days, and on occasion stumble across the good or the great. GATE puts me distinctly at odds with my intuitions: is this series decent or is it good? As an odd conglomerate of several... See full review

7.5/10 story
7/10 animation
7/10 sound
7.5/10 characters
7.3/10 overall

Beyond the Boundary Movie: I'll Be Here - Future

Jun 8, 2020

Story:

Having not seen the original full-length series, I watched both the condensed prequel and sequel movies of Beyond the Boundary in isolation; my thoughts on the complete work are presented here. Within the first few minutes, Beyond the Boundary carves its identity out using several layers of tropes and archetypes that connoisseurs of action anime will readily recognize. Haunting visages of Shakugan no Shana and Kaze no Stigma, two series which had a great... See full review

6/10 story
8.5/10 animation
7/10 sound
6.5/10 characters
6.5/10 overall

Parasyte -the maxim-

Jan 30, 2020

Story:

After recently watching Shiki, and finding myself most impressed with an impeccable delivery of a cliché in terms of both story and characters, I have discovered a newfound interest in highly-rated horror stories. The gore and bloodshed does little to fan my interest, but the willingness of these types of stories to “ignore the rules” and brave sadder, more dramatic paths increases the likelihood of encountering a legitimately well-done series. Of course there is the other end of the spectrum with shock-value... See full review

8/10 story
7/10 animation
7/10 sound
8.5/10 characters
8.2/10 overall

Deadman Wonderland

Jan 21, 2020

Story:

As the years have rolled on, I have been ever vigilant to find just that one shounen capable of letting me say, “Okay, Fate/Stay Night, you are officially free from having the worst shounen lead in all of anime.’” Deadman Wonderland, in all its clownish glory, is that anime. The show starts simple enough, with our ordinary protagonist living an ordinary life, only to soon be gifted with the arrival of the “Red Man” who massacres everyone around him in an ocean of gore. Shock value, check... See full review

4/10 story
5/10 animation
5/10 sound
4/10 characters
4.5/10 overall

Shiki

Jan 17, 2020

Story:

There is certain difficulty in working with cliché stories and themes that may not be readily apparent to those without a bit of a literary background. One might think “aha, that’s easy!” when it comes to formulating a story around a cliché topic, as the underlying content and framework are already prepackaged and easy for an audience to absorb. Yet, there is an important flaw in this assessment: where an author might otherwise rely on a unique premise to offset some poor execution in an original work, the inclusion of the cliché requires a... See full review

9/10 story
6/10 animation
8/10 sound
8.5/10 characters
9.1/10 overall

The Ancient Magus' Bride

Jan 14, 2020

Story: Every so often, one stumbles upon a story that just nails the aesthetic of a “hook” at a single glance. Tolkien has his hobbits, Star Wars its lightsabers, and Mahou Tsukai no Yome its cow-skull-headed magician. One pass over the title and the characteristic image of Elias, and the average fantasy/romance consumer is going to grab this title in a heartbeat. Indeed, the hook of Mahou Tsukai no Yome is spectacular, not only in static presentation but also in that of its first episode. The series opens with a dead-eyed, red-headed girl being paraded in front of auction framing her... See full review

5.5/10 story
7/10 animation
7/10 sound
6.5/10 characters
6.6/10 overall

Orange

Aug 19, 2019

Story:

At times, I seem to have a weird love-hate relationship with the shoujo genre. The genre tends to have to balance a handful of tropes quite delicately – for example, creating romance that evolves and faces hardships without being melodramatic – and as such carries a very “hit-or-miss” feel to many series. Series that balance complcated romance-drama parallels, such as Just Because, tend to step out of the shoujo mold despite carrying a wide range of overlapping concepts and themes, which leaves the... See full review

7/10 story
6.5/10 animation
8/10 sound
7/10 characters
7.2/10 overall

Your lie in April

Aug 6, 2019

Story:

Many moons ago, my mother was a pianist of such talent that she was teaching adults by the age of 14. Pass a few more years along, life dolled out its misfortunes, and ultimately she was left unable to play. For a time when I was younger she encouraged me to follow in her footsteps, but my lack of musical aptitude left me frustrated and I never picked it up. Though more recently I’ve grown a certain fondness for all things piano and have considered trying to once again learn, it’s still a bit of a personal thorn that I have not been able to remove. Thus, when I stumbled... See full review

8.5/10 story
7.5/10 animation
8.5/10 sound
9/10 characters
9/10 overall

Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

Aug 5, 2019

Story:

For a host of reasons, I should have liked AnoHana. After all, the series has glimpses of interesting drama and romance, paralleled by a tragic story of loss, grieving, and unhealed wounds. Follow my reviews on here long enough, and you’ll see these genres are almost slam-dunks for a “good” evaluation from me, even if they have a lot of flaws. Oddly, though, AnoHana decided to open with a weird scene – namely, it starts with an overbearing and loud Menma rubbing her rear end all over an adolescent boy’s crotch in some weird attempt at innocent ecchi... See full review

6.5/10 story
6/10 animation
6/10 sound
6/10 characters
6.2/10 overall

Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku

Jul 31, 2019

Story:

It is a bit strange, as someone who has been watching anime for over 20 years, watching the push and pull of the Japanese medium evolve over time. In some sense, there exists a stigma that anything animated is for children, and therefore anime as a whole must be targeted toward children. Countless generic shows are reproduced and repackaged to keep the scene fresh for an ever-revolving door of youth;  for example, the marvelous trash of Green Green which I was unfortunately exposed to during my teenage years could... See full review

8/10 story
7.5/10 animation
7.5/10 sound
9.5/10 characters
8.7/10 overall

Violet Evergarden

Jul 29, 2019

Story:

“What makes a good story?” Ask a thousand people, and you will undoubtedly receive a thousand and one different answers. This question has been asked since man first began the art of writing, and the answer is so fundamentally ingrained into human nature that it’s impossible to express in words. Good authors are able to tap into this inner intuition, alchemizing a concoction of sweat, tears, and time to piece together masterworks that objectively span the test of time. When parsing the "good" from the "great" authors, one of the most telling skills... See full review

5/10 story
10/10 animation
10/10 sound
6.5/10 characters
7.2/10 overall

Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash

Jul 28, 2019

Story: Following the several years I’ve been out of the loop with anime, my recent return started with watching some of the more prominent shows. Chief among these was the infamous Goblin Slayer which, despite all its undeserved negative press, turned out to be a fantastic balance of drama, parody, and action set in an ostensibly “MMO-style” world. To that point, in the wake of Goblin Slayer I’ve been noticing the “MMO-turned-anime” genre seems to have exploded in popularity, and the once-unique... See full review

4/10 story
5/10 animation
7/10 sound
7/10 characters
6/10 overall

Just Because!

Jul 21, 2019

Story: Every so often, I stumble upon an anime series that just seems to get it. The show will be written in such a way that it knows precisely what story it wants to tell, understands the span of time it needs to fill, figures out a proper scope of characters, and then turns all its focus into the execution of story and the growth of its cast. This level of polish does not have to be genre specific; great examples across different styles of work would be Clannad, ... See full review

7/10 story
7.5/10 animation
9/10 sound
9/10 characters
8/10 overall

Our love has always been 10 centimeters apart.

Jul 19, 2019

Story: Romance anime, in general, tend to follow very formulaic patterns: there are a handful of permutations of the "stock and standard" archetypes, and studios make little effort to differentiate a series from the herd. It's understandable to a certain degree, as the goal of an anime series is to maintain a viewing audience and to make money – if it’s not broke, don’t fix it after all. Yet, even when a series sticks to these archetypes, a good story writer can turn the mediocre into the entertaining, and that’s precisely where Our Love Has Always Been 10... See full review

7/10 story
5/10 animation
8/10 sound
7/10 characters
7/10 overall

Golden Time

Apr 22, 2019

Story:

Golden Time is, in the most ironic of fashions, a romance/comedy series with a fundamental identity crisis. As a well-versed connoisseur of the romance/shoujo sphere of anime over the years, I've seen the full range of what the genre has to offer -- and unfortunately, most times you roll the dice on a show, you come up short. Thus, when Golden Time opened its first episode showing just how awkward and cringey it could be, I actually ended up going into things with a fair amount of hope. Unlike a title such as Bokura ga Ita... See full review

7/10 story
6/10 animation
7.5/10 sound
6.5/10 characters
6.8/10 overall

Saga of Tanya the Evil

Feb 25, 2019

Story:

It has been many, many years since I've written a review on this platform. Since I stopped reviewing about 7 years ago, I honestly have watched only a handful of anime series, mainly those that friends have carved out from me from the banal mass of seasonal series that seem shotgunned out of Japan's production queue. Thus, when a series like Youjo Senki managed to explode out of the mechanical anime mold, I found myself more than pleasantly surprised. Many of the reviews written here, likely by a younger audience, don't capture the gravitas and nuance that the author has written into... See full review

9/10 story
9/10 animation
9/10 sound
9/10 characters
9/10 overall

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0

Aug 27, 2010

Story
As someone educated in structural engineering, I happen to know a thing or two about what earthquakes will do to buildings. Thus, when the writers made a point to preface Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 with a statement lauding its realistic portrayal of an earthquake, I must admit I was looking forward to shredding all the series’ little mistakes. Unfortunately for me, I soon discovered there was not a lot of shredding to be had; instead, I had to settle for an an engaging, dramatic storyline and a splendid set of main characters. Generally speaking, I tend to be a fairly dry face when it... See full review

7.5/10 story
6/10 animation
9/10 sound
9/10 characters
8.3/10 overall

Meguriau Sekai

Jun 14, 2010

Story
Chair! Plant! Telephone pole, shoe, chalkboard! By your randomness combined, I am Meguriau Sekai! Before you get any ideas, Meguriau Sekai isn’t some spastic comedy anime – it’s a Shinkai-inspired romance. I think. Actually, I have no idea what the hell it is; I just know that for fifteen minutes there were a bunch of unrelated pictures all over my screen, and that some girl was talking about some boy and the sky. Oh, and when she mentioned the sky there were pictures of clouds. Sometimes with birds, too! And airplanes. I like airplanes.   I guess... See full review

2/10 story
3/10 animation
2.5/10 sound
2/10 characters
2/10 overall

Time of Eve

Jun 8, 2010

Story
So a human, a robot, and an android walk into a bar… …and make a damn good anime by the name of Eve no Jikan. While many sci-fi titles of this nature tend to swing too far with humanizing robotic creations, this particular series strikes a delicate balance between realism and idealism to forge a surprisingly intriguing watch. Indeed, the premise itself is hardly original or breathtaking, with the story taking place in a generic era of technological progress where androids have begun to look, think, and feel like their human counterparts. Insert a societal fear of these... See full review

7/10 story
8.5/10 animation
8/10 sound
7.5/10 characters
7.2/10 overall

When They Cry: Rei

Jun 4, 2010

Story
Hey there, boys and girls, it’s time again for everyone’s favorite gameshow: Does This Anime Suck?! So, time to play – let’s start with the first question! Which of the following is a more intelligent decision: watching Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Rei or skydiving out of a plane without a parachute? Hopefully you guessed skydiving, because that’s sure what you’ll feel like doing after wading through this OVA’s attempt at a plot! If you thought Higurashi Kai’s mediocre... See full review

3.5/10 story
4/10 animation
6.5/10 sound
5/10 characters
3.8/10 overall

Spice and Wolf II

May 16, 2010

Story
After hearing that Spice and Wolf was to be followed by a sequel early last year, I was hesitant to consider a second installment worth watching. Even after having Clannad: After Story blow me away in terms of sequels outdoing their predecessors, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was just a fluke and I would be setting myself up for a great deal of disappointment if I decided to give it a shot. Of course, as irony would have it, not even sixty seconds in, ... See full review

7.5/10 story
9/10 animation
8/10 sound
9/10 characters
8.5/10 overall

White Album

Aug 3, 2009

Story
Were there a Greek god for bullshit and mediocrity, his name would be White Album. While the series flaunts a strong premise and a unique method of conveying moods, it stumbles around for thirteen episodes without the faintest clue how to handle its content. Despite setting up an intriguing core story, it dances around with a bloated cast of side characters in a manner that would rival the original Kanon, and slowly corrodes away its potential in a boiling vat of failure. That said, White Album still manages to thread the viewer along at a steady pace. By incorporating an... See full review

4/10 story
5/10 animation
6.5/10 sound
4.5/10 characters
4.7/10 overall

K-On!

Jul 23, 2009

Story
Having spent most of my summer engulfed in the world of engineering, I figured a series based on music would be a great distraction. Tack on some hyper-energetic high school girls and a slice-of-life setting, and K-On’s light-hearted charm naturally piqued my interest. This premise is undoubtedly what makes K-On so captivating. As a whole, the show never attempts to step beyond its means; it sets itself out to be simple fun and undoubtedly succeeds. Despite operating off a number of base gags and jokes that find themselves revisited from episode to episode, the series never... See full review

7/10 story
7.5/10 animation
7/10 sound
7/10 characters
7.2/10 overall

Clannad After Story

Apr 21, 2009

Story
I have, with quite good reason, always been skeptical of anime sequels. Too often I find myself watching and enjoying a series, only to be disappointed by a sequel whose only redeeming quality lies in its use of the franchise name. This most certainly was the case with Clannad, as the series ended both poignantly and with a certain level of closure. Try as I might, I could not envision a follow-up being anything more than filler-driven fluff, especially at a twenty-four episode length, and thus stalled it for as long as I could. But then I actually sat down and watched After Story, and you can... See full review

8/10 story
9/10 animation
9/10 sound
9/10 characters
8.7/10 overall

Oseam

Mar 23, 2009

Story
While I have no particular like or dislike of eastern philosophy, I find myself put off by the attempts of many anime to brazenly thrust it toward the viewer in an in-your-face fashion. These incidences always end with a general collapse of the anime as a whole, as they disrupt the natural flow of the story and discard their characters for pseudo-metaphysical set props. Such mishaps too often verge on catastrophic, and have thrown countless should-be-great titles onto the garbage heap of mediocrity. And yet, despite the numerous renditions of philosophical failure surrounding it, Oseam reminds... See full review

8/10 story
9/10 animation
8/10 sound
8/10 characters
8/10 overall

Hoshizora Kiseki

Feb 28, 2009

Story
What do you get when you mix an airtime of thirty minutes, a title with part of its name as "star," a lone boy and girl as main characters, science fiction, and long distance space communication? Hoshi no Koe, right? Well, yes, but somehow you also get Hoshizora Kiseki. Thematically, the OVA attempts to clone Hoshi no Koe's presentation at every possible juncture, even down to the physical appearance of the main girl; without Shinkai's poignant touch, however, it never truly gets off the ground. At its core, it tries to work Hoshi no Koe's story in reverse with two desolate people at the start... See full review

5/10 story
6.5/10 animation
8/10 sound
6/10 characters
6.5/10 overall

Lunar Legend Tsukihime

Feb 18, 2009

Story
First and foremost, I am aware that there is a huge Type-Moon universe surrounding the Shingetsutan Tsukihime franchise and that the anime supposedly only scratches its surface. That said, I have yet to touch it in any fashion beyond its actual anime adaptation, and thus my opinions are solely reflective of my viewing experience and nothing more. Keeping my bias (to the fanboys) or lack thereof (to the non-fanboys) in mind, let me say this: Tsukihime is a decidedly average show that sits at the top of its class. While certainly having flaws, including customary pacing issues and a mediocre... See full review

5/10 story
8/10 animation
8/10 sound
7/10 characters
6.8/10 overall

Kimi ga Nozomu Eien ~Next Season~

Feb 8, 2009

Story
Customary Disclaimer: As can be expected, this OVA is a follow-up to the actual series and spoils much. In context of proper discussion, this review will do so as well - read at your own discretion. That said and done, Kimi ga Nozomu Eien ~Next Season~ is a rather "interesting" take on the main series, as it touts itself as an alternative ending without actually portraying a different set of events. The opening sequence, at the very least, makes little to no initial sense, as it starts with Mitsuki bidding farewell to a happily-paired Haruka/Takayuki couple - a certain non-sequitur to the main... See full review

5/10 story
7/10 animation
6.5/10 sound
5/10 characters
5.5/10 overall

ItaKiss

Feb 1, 2009

Story
Call it strange, but for some reason I seem to have missed the "teenage girl" phase of my adolescent years; instead of having fantastical romantic dreams, swooning over dashing and charming men (well, save for myself), and giddily pairing together ideal couples, I spent most of my time plugging away in an old, dirty warehouse. After 500 minutes of skidding through Itazura na Kiss, however, I can say with certainty that my days were well spent - through it alone, I was injected with enough shoujo fluff to last me for a lifetime. Not hollow, frivolous fluff, mind you, but sappy, feel-good... See full review

7/10 story
7/10 animation
7/10 sound
7/10 characters
7/10 overall

Minami-ke Okawari

Jan 24, 2009

Story
In perfectly simplistic terms, Minami-ke Okawari is a direct sequel to Minami-ke; in more complicated terms, it is the exact same anime with a substantially warped facade. Much like Black Lagoon: The Second Barrage, there exists little permeable variation between the two seasons, as the events in the second flow seamlessly into those of the first. Yet, be that as it may, one key issue plays into the picture: Okawari is animated by an entirely different studio. While to some this might seem trivial, it speaks to a much greater concept - perception - and thus manages to stem beyond a simple... See full review

6.5/10 story
7/10 animation
7.5/10 sound
8.5/10 characters
7.3/10 overall