kilrazan

An endearing, but ultimately mediocre little comedy/romance. It has a decent enough premise, and all the trappings of a fair comedy, but it didn't quite grasp me like I wanted it to. I can't quite put my finger on what specifically I didn't like about it, but I found myself watching the episodes at 2x speed just to stay engaged enough to keep watching. Story - Our 2 MCs are a couple of salarymen who've been best bros since their school days. One day, they get Isekai'd to a fantasy world where they're heros, except one of them has humorously been turned into a cute girl, and they've both been... See full review

What a wild pick for this studio to go with for their breakout animation. I have to wonder if perhaps they were going for visual style and outlandish appearances more than storyline just to try to make an impression, without really understanding how underwhelming this was going to end up. To be fair, every single problem I have with this anime comes down to the writing - Studio OZ did an amazing job with this season and I strongly look forward to their next project. Spoiler warning here - I won't avoid some major plot elements in this review as they're critical to why I feel the way I feel. Story - To... See full review

Man, it's really hard to give a proper evaluation of this season because I have so many mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, the production issues that delayed the final two episodes along with some personal issues I take with the story make me want to rate it low, but on the other hand this season had one of the most emotional finales I've ever connected with. Spoilers for Season 1 ahead and light spoilers for this season, btw. Story - 86 Part 2 takes a page out of the Aldnoah: Zero handbook, and decides to undo everything that the season 1 finale set up. Season 1 leaves us with an emotional... See full review

Standing tall over most other shows this season, not only in popularity/meme-ability, but also quality, "My Dress-Up Darling" is a refreshingly real show full of excellent character writing. I don't even usually like romance shows, but this one had me gripped from start to end, and left me hoping for a second season. Story - We follow Gojo-kun, a Hina-doll-maker's apprentice who lives with his grandfather and spends most of his days studying and practicing his craft alone in his room. He has no social life to speak of, largely because he keeps to himself after he was made fun of as a youth for... See full review

This is quite possibly one of the greatest viewing experiences I've had with anime. Redline is absolutely dripping with character in all of my favorite ways. From the art style, to the presentation, to the character designs and attitudes, and everything in between, this movie is damn near perfect for my tastes. Story - Our Protagonist JP is a racer in the distant future. Pitted against a colorful collection of other racers, he defies expectations and odds by being the only racer to drive a "normal" (albeit suped-up) TransAm without any weapons, in a race where the only rule is crossing the... See full review

An interesting premise that checks all of the right boxes for the big-brain protagonist trope, and a cool take on a fantasy magic system. Pair it with some good animation and you've got yourself a decent Isekai. Story - A man who spent his whole life as a tool for an assassin organization has never known anything but the art of killing. On the day he's supposed to retire, he is offed by his own organization and finds himself before a goddess who informs him that he's being given the opportinity to reincarnate with his memory intact and a set of skills of his own choosing on the condition that he performs... See full review

A cute, but forgettable little slice-of-life about a girl who suddenly is able to see evil spirits, and has to pretend she doesn't notice them so they don't bother her. It has an interesting premise that works in a lot of ways, but unfortunately the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Story - We follow our Main Character through a series of short occurences wherein she is faced with a scary spirit that she must try to ignore. Accompanied by her oblivious best friend, they visit various places such as an abandoned shrine, a fortune-teller shop, and an old parking-garage-esuqe building. Being... See full review

An intriguing premise with excellent execution, sadly burdened by the fact that it's a glorified ad for a video game. I enjoyed it for what it's worth, but the story is ultimately unsatisfying and clearly contrived to push the game. Story - After a disaster a few years ago brought "D2"s to earth - an alien threat impervious to normal weaponry and posessing a hatred for music - all of humanity has had to abandon music lest they draw the D2s to them and face destruction. A scant number of talented individuals have been able to rebel against this outsider threat by becoming tag-team duos of... See full review

Carrying on from the First Season, this show is a wild ride that continues to set the bar for Isekai and for Fantasy-world storys in general. Story - About a year or so has passed since Rudy and the gang started adventuring under the Dead End banner, and they're finally making progress towards their goal of getting of the Demon Continent. We follow their struggles as they try to find safe passage across the ocean, as they find themselves in social/political struggles at every turn, and as they even confront familiar faces in unexpected ways. It's hard to really give this a proper evaluation in its own... See full review

A beautifully odd show that feels like what would happen if Studio Ghibli decided to make something Shounen/Seinen instead of their usual fare of kids' shows. Story - We follow our Main Character Caiman through his journey of discovery and remembrance as he tries to find the spellcaster that turned his head into a Lizard head and made him lose his memories. Accompanied by his favorite restaurant-owner and only friend Nikaido, together they track down Sorcerers and look for clues to Caiman's past. Now, the story itself here is actually fairly bare-bones and straightforward, as far as stories go; it's a... See full review

This is a very cerebral show, best watched while paying a lot of attention because it's not the sort that you can follow passively. Even then, you might be at a loss for what the story is really saying. Story: We follow a group of classmates who have found themselves (and their school building) sent into another dimension. Not only that, they've all been given some kind of special power. At first, we follow their initial squabbles and exploration as they get used to their powers and the rules of this strange new world, but eventually the show shifts gears into a very high-brow/abstract look into the... See full review

Samurai Girls is a perfect example of a decent idea that was given a poor execution. I found myself invested in the *concepts* of the show, but I was extremely bored most of the time I was actually watching it, and I was frustrated by several plot developments that felt far too rushed and/or cliche. Story: The MC is assigned to a dojo somewhere in Great Japan (essentially just normal Japan but the focus on traditional Shogun/Samurai/etc. has persisted into the technological era). Things get weird when a naked girl appears in the sky and falls into his arms. He kisses her, and discovers that he is a... See full review

A strange and yet perfect encapsulation of the weirdness of 90s-era romance OVAs. It has the complete ensemble of bad character writing, mismatched soundtracks, and janky screen distortions. I have a real soft-spot for this kind of terrible show. This one has the somewhat unique prestige among its peers by having a full cour of 12 episodes to the OVA series, where most other OVAs of its ilk only got maybe 2 during that era. Something to note before I break down my review - the summary listed on this entry is a bit disingenuous. Not sure if it's the official synopsis that came with the OVAs (in which case... See full review

A classic Harem-esque show, but with a twist of questionable legality. Looking past the MC's appearance, there's a somewhat endearing show here that's a fair sight better than a lot of other Harem/Ecchi out there. Story: It's a Harem show. There's not much to explain here. The MC suffers a classic Anime-Protagonist-Backstory where he loses his family and basically everything he ever had so that the story can start without any baggage, whereupon he is taken in by a small all-girls dorm and given the opportunity to work as their "Dorm Mother" which, for the purposes of this show, is just a live-in... See full review

I'm always intrigued by these kinds of shows that provide an interesting twist on traditional mythology. Not all of them manage to do anything with it, but Vanitas manages to capture a beautiful blend of setting and storytelling that had me pining for each episode week after week. Story: We follow two main characters in this show - Noe, a white-haired and tan fellow who is rarely seen without his white tophat and cat, and Vanitas, who is in a lot of ways the visual opposite of Noe with his black hair and cape as well as his pale skin. They don't always see eye to eye, but Noe is determined to witness... See full review

This is one of those feel-good shows that has very little in the way of substance, and is entirely just centered around being a relaxing and enjoyable moment. It fits into a similar role as shows like "How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift?", where the story is secondary to the main goal of encouraging people who might be leading sedentary and/or stressful lifestyles. As such, every episode ends with a clip wherein the viewer is addressed directly. Story: As I said, there's really not much to go with here as a primary story focus. The Main Character is a down-trodden salaryman who works far too... See full review

The show has a fairly strong opening and a decent premise, but it struggles to keep the energy going through the full season. It's easy to draw comparisons to KonoSuba, as they're both a sort of parody of the Isekai genre - albeit in different ways - but where KonoSuba's strong suit is in the episode-to-episode character interactions and it's weak point is developing any meaningful plot progression, Combatants is sort of the opposite with relatively weak character dramas from episode to episode but has a plot that actually develops toward some sort of conclusion. Story; We follow Agent Six as he and his... See full review

Man, what a way to tank a decent premise for a show. Season 1 may have been a bit by-the-books in a lot of ways, but it at least had a little something special going for it. This arc with Lumachina basically threw all of that out the window. Story: Where normally a season 2 picks up the reins off the plot of the first season, this show decides to just do it all over again with an entirely different target; everything earned and learned from season 1 is left behind as the MC and his two side-pieces follow the Head Priestess of the Church on a wild-goose-chase of a story that ultimately feels disconnected... See full review

This is such a mid-level anime, it really blows my mind that it got so popular. I frankly find the story and its characters to be near the bottom of the barrel in terms of quality. There's nothing redeemable about this Ghoul society, and it makes it hard to care about the narrative built around them. This show soundly falls into my sadly ever-growing list of shows that think being Edgy is a replacement for quality writing - who needs believeable narratives if you're too distracted by how gory, grim, and/or dark the show is? At least it's not as bad as Angels of Death... Story; (I won't be avoiding... See full review

Link Click is absolutely a contender for Anime of the Year, for me. It is a stellar presentation on all fronts, and frankly has me excited to see other Donghua coming out if they're going to be this good. Story; It's hard to sum up the story without giving massive spoilers, but I will try. We follow the two main characters as they use a mysterious power that allows one of them to jump back in time through photographs while the other can see a limited scope of the events that occured around the photo-taker. Together, they attempt to glean certain information from these photos without changing the... See full review

86 absolutely blew me away. I didn't have very high expectations for this show but it went far beyond anything I'd hoped for, and while I won't claim it's the best show of the season, it's absolutely worth watching. Story - 86 gives us parallel stories with two main characters whose lives and choices impact each other significantly. Major Milize is a strong-willed but naive woman who spends her days within the safety of the walls of her city as a Handler, giving instructions remotely to the "Unmanned" drones her government has sent into war against the automated enemy known as Legion. She has... See full review

A real sleeper hit of a show that is easy to overlook if you just judge a show by its cover. I know I had never even heard of it and would have passed over it if not for a recommendation I got. Luckily, I did decide to watch it and what I got was an incredible ride from start to finish that I'll not soon forget. Story - We follow Odokawa through a series of seemingly disconnected events that all happen to - or as a result of - people he's driven around town. Over the course of the series, we see these disparate events and characters start to interconnect with each other to culminate in a story that... See full review

It's half Recap episode and half Music Video. It doesn't tell enough of the story to make any sense if you didn't already watch the original series, and if you did then the only reason to watch this is to just see a montage of clips from the show set to songs from the OST with Matsumoto talking to you. Don't get me wrong, It's not bad at all. It's exactly what it says it is. There's just not much reason to watch it unless you're really into this kind of thing.

VIVY is a standout title among its peers, with beautiful visuals and a stellar blend of emotional storytelling and action-packed scenes. It's easy to overlook thanks to the obvious Musical trope that makes it seem on the surface like your bog-standard Idol Anime, but I assure you it's anything but that. Story - Diva, nicknamed Vivy by one of her fans, is an AI songstress who is given the directive to, "Make people happy with your singing. To do this, you need to sing from the heart". As she steps on stage day in and day out to sing to a near-nonexistant audience, trying to figure out what it... See full review

Ergo Proxy is, like a lot of other Psychological shows, a tough nut to crack. It requires you to pay attention to little details, and connect some of the dots on your own. And, again like other Psychological shows, by nature of making you think about it this deeply the ending always ends up less satisfying than whatever your imagination had come up with. Story - We follow the lives of Re-L Mayer and Vincent Law, two inhabitants of a ultra-future city-dome that are about as different from each other as two people can get in this city. Re-L always held a disdain for this supposed Utopia, and finds herself... See full review

BTOOOM! is squarely in the ranks of shows like Angels of Death and Calamity of a Zombie Girl where the author thought that maximum edginess was a substitute for actual plot. Boring storylines, bad characters, and loosely construed settings all put together for the sole and exclusive purpose of creating gratuitous amounts of violence. The worst part is that this kind of story always presents itself like the author feels so proud of themselves for going beyond the pale and presenting such high-brow/adult content, yet fails at even being decent at it. You want a good gore-fest with violence and dark themes?... See full review

This show is hard to properly rate. It's effectively two separate stories being told at once that slowly build into each other. The first/main story is great, and I enjoyed basically every moment of it barring a small handful of moments. The secondary story is the exact opposite; I barely cared about it the entire time and, barring a few special moments that were cool, I never enjoyed a moment of it. Frankly, if you could just cut out the side story I think it'd be a much better show overall. Story: We have two stories here. Story 1 follows the life and trials of a girl who got Isekai'd into a spider's... See full review

I won't break down a full review of this OVA as I feel it's sort of just an extension of the main series - the majority of the points in my main review apply here for character and story. I will say, however, that watching the Noblesse TV series before watching this OVA really impacts my opinion of it - I would likely have given it a more comprehensive review if this was my first introduction to the story. Coming from the main series as my first experience with the franchise, there are a few things that stand out to me about this OVA. The overall theme and tone of the music and sounds felt a lot more... See full review

Noblesse is a fantastic adventure that knows how to play with its tropes and do them right. It takes everything you remember being excited about from shows you probably think are cringy now, and executes them properly in a way that makes them cool again. A note - there was a 2016 OVA that's the actual intro to this series, but it's not necessary at all to be able to pick up and understand the story. Story: Noblesse is an amazing take on the traditional tropes of Vamipirism without actually dealing with Vampires. In fact, the so-called "Nobles" are an incredible deconstruction that takes all of... See full review

It's not very often I come across an anime that resonates this well. The author clearly understands how to write a story that targets an adult/mature audience without just being porny. More than that, this work stands out above the others of the Isekai genre by taking itself seriously and using the new world as a genuine new start for the main character. Story: The MC is a nearly 40 year old self-described good-for-nothing-bum who's spent the last 20+ years of his life hiding from the world doing nothing but stereotypically Otaku stuff in his little apartment. One day, he dies saving a couple of... See full review