autumn 2018

1/12

when I heard 'dark fantasy' I thought 'Berserk, Claymore, Made in Abyss...' and got quite excited. sadly, this is unapologetically mediocre and the dialogue is painfully boring

2/12

this is like a soap: person A is sulking because person B is looking at them funny, person B is sulking because person A didn't guess what they wanted without them saying it. fascinating stuff

3/13

I expect the 2nd series of a beloved anime to up the ante (think Mob Psycho 100) but Zwei didn't. her majesty is not best pleased with your effort

1/13

I hated the character designs and how tropey it was. shame

summer 2018

1/12

intensely mediocre. Avi's sword looks really stupid. once I noticed how the MC just stands there until sm1 pulls her away or shouts 'you should run now', the show became funny

1/12

very sharp edge. I like though how it's immediately apparent this is a game adaptation

1/12

wow, a historical anime that's NOT about Oda Nobunaga! I was pretty invested until I realised they made the only female character 16, because it's very important to go up and down her naked body, instead of having an interesting character, some1 who has as much life experience as the MC and, even misguidedly, could rival him intelectually on strategy, for ex: he has experience in large-scale military operations but she knows the geography of the island like the back of her hand and is good at limited-resource management (if your answer is 'shut up and deal with it, she gets development' - get in line)

6/24

I can't with this anime anymore. Ash goes through THE MOST but in a preposterous way. he is raped repeatedly when he is 7 y.o. his father knows about it and does NOTHING to stop it. also the whole town does nothing about it. the police suggest that 7 y.o. Ash might have seduced the rapist himself. but then other children's scheletal remains are found at the rapist's house. the police don't suggest that all those dead children seduced the rapist as well. but the townsfolk are still not happy with 8 y.o. Ash for some reason.

when the other characters meet father-of-the-year, no one has anything to say about his unique parenting style. in fact the anime portrays the father-son reunion in a positive light, like he does 1 heroic thing and that's fine, ah he really loves him after all, even though he abandoned him as a child. are you convinced by my tragic story-telling yet? it's as if the plot was written by AI. technically all the tragic things may happpen to one person but then make the people doing them act in a way that makes sense, please

1/12

great premise but the execution is lacklustre. Asobi Asobase is better

1/13

a good sports anime would've been great, especially since: 1. badminton is awesome! 2. good, non-fanservice sports anime with female leads can be counted on 1 hand, making this all the more disappointing. 

it's so overdramatic from the get go, to keep raising tension everyone will have to burst into tears and sweat non-stop by the end. it looks like some1 watched a few sports anime and took meticulous notes without getting the point:

1. take everything too seriously, a sense of perspective is for losers

2. sport is not for fun, go to the nationals or go home

3. raw talent vs hard work as the only possible narrative

4. boohoo my secret backstory so sad

5. schoolgirls therefore perv jokes

sadly this formula doesn't go down so well when the characters are shit and formulaic too

1/12

they really beat you over the head with the Holmes gimmick. the MC is annoying but a drop of humanness was added at the end when it was revealed what she did. making silly impulsive decisions is the prerogative of teenagers and making them feel safe is the responsibility of adults. quite boring overall though

2/12

the pacing's all wrong. most of this show is dull, lenghty proze so I found myself tapping my foot waiting for the punchlines to come around

1/12

I checked this out on the strength of its cover art but the episode itself looked quite shit. for me to enjoy these supernatural detective teamwork shows, there are 2 elements I need:

1. detective MCs usually have a quirk of some kind but it must not feel like a tacked on USP. equally crucial is their chemistry with the sidekick

2. the magic system/ rules of the supernatural world must be consistent. NO ASS PULLS 

1/12

oh my stars, an interesting harem MC. she actually reacts, acts and is proactive, to danger for example, you know, like a human would. sadly, the bishis are a bit shit

1/12

this has all the Kunihiko Ikuhara visual calling cards but they don't seem to be in the service of any themes. for ex: when I 1st watched Utena, and I saw the slap in that 1st ep, it was so shocking, and every interaction between characters served such a clear purpose, that I immediately understood 'this anime has themes, THEMES'. watching the 1st ep of Revue Starlight all I think is: this looks pretty, oh and there's the 'mysterious childhood friend comeback' cliche.

maybe it's unfair to judge Tomohiro Furukawa through Ikuhara's lens, he is his own person and has his own vision, even though he's paying homage to Ikuhara. but when deciding what seasonal anime to keep watching, I can only judge based on what an episode shows me and tells me

what's that coming over the hill? it's the plot and twist that are so obvious they can be seen from miles away. I had to drop it at the point where the girl walks in on the boy changing and does the standard anime 'blush and overreact' and that's played as FUNNY

6/26

a hard sci-fi for children? yes, please. but, oh my stars, does it drag. also, I had presumed all the characters were sexless bcoz they are insects/other creatures in a children's show but NO, an hourglass bee is introduced later, clearly meant to be a girl. that's right, in the year of our lord 2019 sausage-fest shows with only one girl to represent all girlhood are still made

1/12

so in Touken Rambu: Hanamaru we had bishi swords and in Senjuushi we have bishi antique guns. they are practically the same show but Touken Rambu had more flair and the dialogue wasn't as stilted when introducing the procession of characters

1/2

I guess it works as a fantasy, especially without the shoved-in emotional stakes - all aboard the consequence-free happy fuck train choo choo! but I cannot abide censorship. what's the point? half the planet has willies and the other half has seen them and survived the encounter.

the worst offender of this I've seen in anime is Beserk 2016 and 2017. depictions of gruesome troll rapes are fine but an erect/floppy dick or two might trigger the Apocalypse back in the real world. people will spill into the streets, rabidly searching for cocks, burning cars and smashing shop windows, their offended sensibilities rising to the heavens like in End of Evangelion

spring 2018

2/12

Tsurezure Children exists and is miles better, so there's no need for me to watch this

7/12

this was bad in an entertaining way for quite some time, you can point at it and laugh at how similar to Twilight it is, I guess, but it wasn't enough to carry the show to the end (I had dropped the manga as well and it was better too)

credit where it's due: even though the main romantic duo are cringey stereotypes, they do talk to each other, explaining their perspectives to clear misunderstandings and looking for solutions to their issues, you know, like real people in a relationship would. and in a romance anime that's outright miraculous 

2/12

ah, if only this anime had kept my interest on the strength of its art and designs alone (which are delightful), but I don't care about gif potential and would rather watch an ugly anime that says something I haven't heard before. this basically starts the same way as Gunbuster, or every mecha anime thereafter: hard-working, eager candidate is passed over for a at-first-glance-useless-but-ultimately-chosen-one main character zzzzzzz, queue pervy 'jokes' about revealing uniforms zzzzzz n round n round we go

1/12

neat premise, but before I had a chance to care about any of the characters, the sad violins kicked in. it seems like a poor job either way because the characters came across as obnoxious. I did get a craving for dim sum though, good scene

1/12

maybe I didn't appreciate this because I know fuck all about baseball, but I don't think you need to be familiar with the sport to appreciate a good sport anime. for ex: I'd never heard of karuta before Chihayafuru, and after Chihayafuru I vowed to learn Japanese so I could one day read the 100 poems. ditto the Slam Dunk phenomenon in Japan, with lots of people who didn't previously give a shit about basketball, taking it up after reading the manga. in conclusion: Gurazeni = meh

4/50

this is pretty competent but because I don't play the game, it's unclear what the parameters of the world are. thus, when you're following clues to solve a mystery, the number of solutions increases exponentially if fantastical things are also possible. it's all a bit confusing

1/12

just sexy girl tropes, acting as the trope dictates they should

4/12

I love mahou shoujo parodies n this one's alright too. I simply dropped it at the most boring episode - 5. mileage varies with these things once I cotton on to the plot and jokes: we've got gender bending - excellent, farcical love triangles - OK great, dodgy n dark pet side-kick - OK seen those. right, now what? oh it just stalls. OK then

2/7

don't know, not feeling this series as much as the previous 1, I'm confused by all the tearjerking: the soppy childhood friend routine, really now?

4/11

wow this is about otaku AND relationships. how relatable, it refers to stuff I do too. and that automatically makes it a good anime! except it doesn't. it treads water, the art and animation are bare-bones and nothing happens. I learned nothing. I got nothing out of it. I'd rather watch tumbleweeds be blown about

winter 2018

3/12

it's my own fault for hoping josei quasi-hentai would be any good. I deserve everything I got watching this. I'm a bad, bad girl. unlike the damsel in this snoozefest

3/12

it takes itself too seriously for a show whose every character and situation I have seen in other anime before. oh, and just fuck off with the female-only fanservice already. either have everyone bend over and wear crotch hugging clothes to work or off you fuck

1/12

another 1 to toss into the pile of 'rapey gay anime that can't be bothered thinking up a credible premise, so rips off the tons of other rapey gay manga that couldn't be bothered either'.

I'm new to yuri and was hoping it's better than yaoi (a very low bar to set) but this anime taught me to know better

1/24

good art and designs wasted on this every-cliche teenage-mecha anime. they were falling over themselves to get the heroine out of her clothes within the 1st 5mins, so that if you're beyond the age when getting laid seems like a mystical dark art, you'll know to drop this anime because it's lame

I watched it on a long flight but even though I was trapped in a flying metal tube for a day, this film couldn't hold my interest. I completed the live-action Gintama 2 instead - it was fun and goofy

3/26

it's very boring, unfortunately. the premise is neither here nor there, so it's up to the characters and dialogue to pique my interest but that pot of hot porridge is the best character so far, unfortunately

dropped twice

3/12

many characters are doing many things, it's all happeing, but why should I care? 3 episodes in, I don't care about any of the characters or the world, as it's poorly presented/ explored

1/12

I was not charmed. also, I watch anime as relief after doing chores. watching someone else do chores boringly does nothing for me. please don't make me sad by comparing this to Made in Abyss. arigatou gozaimasu

3/17

it's not for me, the contrived positivity. there's a bit of dancing in every episode so at least it passes the minimum requirement for an idol anime for me

1/12

I hate this with every fiber of my being. I have no chill when it comes to the DUB, all I can hear is them acting instead of talking. the actual camping elements are great, the copy-paste goofball character is not, please come up with your own characters. do you know what I would have watched 12 episodes of? the MC camping on that lake shore alone in near silence. oh, and at the end it turns out they are high-schoolers. ha ha no, you lost me. I watched an episode of K-ON straight after (because I am determined to complete a CGDCT anime in this lifetime) and they did right everything this 1st episode got wrong, the goofiness works because it doesn't feel gimmicky

2/12

there are better short-form cat anime out there. Mitchirineko happened in the same season

1/24

the cover art advertises this as an every-fantasy more preoccupied with fan-service than being any good, but I optimistically gave it a go anyway, and it punished me, by not being any good

1/12

I'd rather take my chances in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where I'm the only fertile female left alive

1/12

I'm cute! I'm cute! I'm cuuuute!

and yet, empathy prevents me from enjoying others' frustration or suffering (same goes for Himouto! Umaru-chan). also, it dragged on

2/13

luckily there were enough hair details and shirt creases to make watching this less of a drag. fuck precious, repetitive light novel adaptations.

on rewatch, this is still emotionally heavy-handed and the costume designs are still ugly.

dropped twice

6/13

what kept me coming back was the premise: 2 guys try out a new job in each episode. but the tone it strikes is odd: there's not enough humour for it to be a comedy, so you just end up listening to very pedestrian conversations

dropped twice