For supposedly being the dark horse of the season, Nippon Sangoku didn’t strike as that dark to me but it did have its fair share of horseshit in it. For all the praise I’ve seen of it from both casuals that checked it out of curiosity, and critics/elitists as the hidden gem/best show of its season, I expected a lot more and thus consider it my disappointment of the year so far.

Most of the criticism I have with it has been said somewhere else already. The beginning is pretty meh, the setting has some inconsistencies, the main character didn’t act according to his characterization at first, the characters are kinda plain, and the finale is super rushed. For most of those, we will take a look extensively at the first episode.

This is a retrofuturistic post-apocalyptic Three Kingdoms in Japan of sorts, so yeah the premise is amazing, but the setup is a bit questionable? Or at the very least limited. We know that the superpowers unleashed a nuclear war and that’s how Japan split in three, meaning there’s a whole post-apocalyptic world out there that we’re not seeing but ok, the author chose to focus on a specific place from the setting, within the scenario he created, so it’s ok.

As has been stated, the technological reverting of Japan to such an era isn’t totally explored, why that one specifically and what happened with all the present day technology? It isn’t explored nor explained much nor very well at first. Eventually we do see some modern buildings and even cars that are used for field tactics, but until that happens, the setting feels like quirkiest of the year, and that’s considering that there was a bad CGI Hokuto no Ken remake airing at the same time (the CGI is bad, not the show itself). At the very least there are jobs and activities that drive the economy and funds and resources are addressed and become a plot point used in story for the military tactics, reminiscent of actually existing ones that were used in real life, character roles and dynamics, and buildup for some of its themes. So although more quirky, it does make a little more sense than the alternative. If the explanations and the scenario make sense in a post nuclear apocalypse setting though, that’s a thing for anyone to think about themselves. But still, for the most part it feels like the setting exists the way it does mostly so every few episodes there can a reference to something modern, or some modern day technology or building, a manga or something otaku being mentioned, or quirky villains making silly poses, plus an opening that combines traditional and contemporary music, yet because of the in-story post contemporary regression to traditional, those things don’t feel anachronistic.

For how rational the protagonist is supposed to be, he did a big oversight that could have potentially not prevented the tragedy perhaps, but it would have been better to see him at least attempt to. He knows the officials in his land are corrupt and tyrannical, he knows they are executing people for every pitiful excuse, and knows well his wife offended one of them, yet did nothing about it, didn’t even try to in fact. Well he was very young and tried to avoid conflict as much as he could, a book smarts guy more than a street smarts guy, so maybe the disbelief can be suspended regarding that.

But then there’s the villain, who let him go by the end of the episode, something very common for arrogant villains that underestimates protagonists and that comes back to bite them in the ass later, but the one in here isn’t presented like that. He is arrogant for sure but his impression of the main character wasn’t of someone that posed no threat, but rather of an interesting individual. You could probably say well maybe the antagonist planned to use him? No he didn’t. Well he eventually did something about him but that doesn’t come until the very end of the season and out of screen.

As for the issues in the following episodes, for a show with a premise such as this, the tone isn’t very serious. Like I’ve been saying, it’s very quirky and a good chunk of the characters are as well. Basically the main villain, every minor antagonist or secondary character, and even the supposed deuteragonist, acts or talks silly most of the time, and that clashes a lot with what’s supposed to be the serious dark horse show of the season. About the Movements of the Earth, this is not. It’s not comically homoerotic and over the top like an actual historical title like Golden Kamuy, nor action heavy and manly that’s supposed to come off as cool like Hokuto no Ken either. It’s a weird middle point that makes it for a niche audience.

So after all that, it is safe to say that this show wouldn’t have passed the 3 episode rule as far as I’m concerned. It’s from episode 4 and 5 that the show starts displaying some level of quality, and most stuff afterwards until the second to last episode, the eleventh, it’s pretty good and elevates the whole anime. It’s when another nation and faction and antagonist are shown and made part of the plot and divide the narrative between two perspectives, that the series becomes pretty good. We see internal conflicts between different factions on both sides, inside infiltration and invasion plots from Seii to Yamato, side characters sacrificing themselves and dying, actual field tactics that are direct references to Three Kingdoms are employed, better characters are introduced, like Ryumon, Kaku and Wajima, the latter which is a better character, though not a better antagonist, than Taira, and even some secondary ones like the son of the latter and the emperor either change perspectives or grow a little bit of balls. It’s also when the narrative follows more characters than the protagonist, and he and the deuteragonist are built up to eventually replace Ryumon and Kaku. The aforementioned issues didn’t exactly go away, but are now mixed up with some actual pretty good stuff.

With that said, the deuteragonist is kinda forgotten by the narrative for the most part, and his inner monologues don’t exactly help him either, what the anime did with Kaku wasn’t bad, but did feel unnecessarily sudden due to lack of proper build up. I also have to wonder why don’t the characters that can kill the villain, at least try to do it? Maybe he’s secretly super strong and will show it later. I mean he has a lot of people under his command, true, but kill him off and all that falls apart, at least from what was shown in the season.

And also, when they finally fought on the battlefield, the Yamato side completely stomped on Seii, thus it feels like the only reason why they weren’t winning early was because of the inside enemy, and that there was a big difference in levels all along, and that the narrative is picking a side. Even the strategies and the arguments of the protagonist have been questioned somewhat. Logh, Ravages of Time or Ad Astra, this is not.

And as good as they are as plot devices, and as well as they fit a certain role, such as a Deku-like romanticist analyst for the protagonist, mentors for Ryumon and Kaku, antagonist and the other side of the coin for Wajima, who also wants revenge and follows her idea of justice and unification of the nation in a dictatorial way, contrary to Misumi, at least as far as the narrative is concerned, the cast is still very plain. Again, Logh or Ravages of Time, this is not.

What’s indisputably mishandled is the finale, sorry but that was plain bad. Up until the middle point it was an ok conclusion, but the second half of the final episode had a whole season worth of plot points happening and new characters being presented at an insane speed and weren’t even properly shown but more like told by the narrator, leading to a semi cliffhanger, that was not a good ending at all.

Due to the in-story post contemporary regression to traditional times of the setting, the combination of traditional and modern music for the opening fits the series, and the visual sequence isn’t exactly bad, but the song itself kinda sucks for me. The ending was a lot more static and typical, but the song itself and the voice singing it aren’t bad, the detail of the letters going under the shoe and feet is neat, and the whole sequence reflects the motivation of the protagonist quite well. The background music is better and also features quite some chorus. The sound effects are also good and the voice acting, well, it fits but it’s not that big of a deal.

The real star of the presentation is the visuals, I don’t know what the style is called but the aesthetics seemed manga-like to me and the anime pulled it off like no other title, plus polished artwork, backgrounds, motions whenever it doesn’t use minimum motions for effect, and even good special effects. Even the very obvious CGI was used well for impact here. The directing and storyboard excel, did I praise Akane-banashi and Atelier for that in my reviews of them? Nippon Sangoku surpasses them, something which I did not expect to see in this year, at least regarding the latter, so at the very least, the director is one to keep track of. The transitions, perspective shots and lighting he displayed in this season were unmatched. The only complaint I have is the character designs for its androgynous looks for the main characters and the facial repetition, that would make me mix them with the women if they didn’t talk. Even the older characters have similar facial hair, thus even the characters that look different than the main ones, are similar to each other.

Bottom line, I did not enjoy this anime and don’t really think I’ll be following the next seasons, unless someone told me that all of my issues with the first were fixed or something. Besides my own enjoyment, the beginning was meh, the middle pretty good, and the finale bad, so I think the series is not as great as its reception made me think it would be. Despite all of its flaws, its strong points and the moments it was good, barely managed to save it and make me consider it somewhat worth watching once, but anime of its season, of its year, or a great one, for me, it is not.

There’s this Discord server I’m in where I said that Akane-banashi was a show without much to tell but a lot to write about. Afterwards I proceeded to write 7 word pages about it in the course of three days. Awajima Hyakkei is kinda the opposite, on paper I should have lots of things to talk about it but it doesn’t leave me much to write about. So hopefully this should be one of the short ones. But why does this review even exist then? Well because I already reviewed both previous adaptations of its author so I might as well cover this one too.

This anime wasn’t even under my radar initially and judging from its quantity of viewers it is safe to assume that that was the case for the vast majority of people, which is kinda funny considering how it could appeal to certain niches. It’s the same for everything this woman does and although the previous two have managed to gain some kind of cult niche classics between LGBT themed fiction audiences, this one is just too recent and short to have had the same luck, maybe in the future but not for now.

Anyways, when it comes to Takako Shimura works, I didn’t like Aoi Hana, so that wasn’t an incentive to watch this anime, but I did like Hourou Musuko, so that was an incentive. So the tides were tied for me to watch this title, it was like tossing a coin. Then I have seen and read people comparing it to Kageki Shoujo, which was one of the few 2021 anime that I liked and that were good, so yeah, I had to watch Awajima Hyakkei at that point.

Like that third aforementioned show, Awajima Hyakkei certainly is also about a girls school specified in theatre, stage plays, dancing, singing and everything that comes along with it, but it’s more about the drama of lots of girls attending there, even across many generations. Thus, when it comes to flesh out its characters, it sort of gives everyone a backdrop and a resolution I guess, even if it never manages to give them a strong presence nor personality. At the very least, those personalities are well founded because of those pasts each one carries. In Shimura’s trademark, this work is a lot more toned down compared to anything akin. Despite being about the toxicity of the theatrical world, much like Glass no Kamen or Revue Starlight (both of which I did not watch) or Kageki Shoujo, but it follows the approach of the latter and its author of toning down the characters and make them easier to empathize with at least to a point, even the pettiest and ill intended characters and actions are nothing compared to what you can get on plenty of other anime and fiction in general.

The constant switches in time to show a girl from a different generation and some facial resemblance across some of them makes it somewhat complicated and challenging to follow up to a point, but on the site I was watching the anime, someone shared a Japanese chart which detailed every generation and relation amongst the characters. Not that it helped me one bit but it was a nice detail.

The themes are about people not always getting what they want, in fact that’s the norm in this anime, it’s as if nobody could get exactly what they want, which I guess it’s valuable in itself to talk about how more often than not life takes you to different places or through different ways than the ones you expected. Also, about how a person, any person, is more layered and different with and from the perspective of different people, basically that no one is as simple as you can see and that everyone is a different person than you might think. Also, that you might walk different paths than a close person to you from one moment to another. There’s also a lot of focus in upbringing, even the shittiest character in the show might be the result of the life and family they had or that they left behind for reasons and tried to get away with it. There’s also lots of unrequited love as usual, another trademark of this woman. Unrequited lesbian love at that, so yeah this anime is closer to Aoi Hana in that regard.

As can be noticed, the themes extends to the characters, but again there are no outstanding personalities here and because of the constant switches in narrative from one to another in a segment or anthology-like manner, there’s no real development nor catharsis, especially not because almost no one achieves what they want. On top of that there’s no real closure, or rather, a clear path to a closure, for any character, in the same episode or some following one you get to know what happened to them, but nothing in between. Say what you will about the previous adaptations of this woman, but they had smaller and more focused casts.

And despite there being themes, there’s clearly no plot whatsoever, the narrative moves from a character to another with no clear end goal until the last two episodes and…like, 5 minutes of another one? And it’s the publication of a book and a certain play starring several girls seen throughout the show. One would probably think: well that was the slowly prepared end goal that would tie everything together, but spoilers, not all of the highlighted characters are important for it, and it is never shown in the anime. Unlike its older sister series, this show has an ending, but it doesn’t feel like one, so you might as well consider that it is as unfinished as those other two.

In fact, as far as a theatrical show goes, Awajima Hyakkei is also lacking in that regard, as there’s almost no stage play being played in the series. Imagine making an anime about arts and not showing the arts, and yes, the medium suffers quite usually from that. Even aesthetically Awajima Hyakkei is not all that. It clearly tries to mimic the visual style of Aoi Hana and Hourou Musuko, and although it has a more polished artwork and completed backgrounds with no overdone lighting, it is also quite lacking in the artistic sense compared to those. The special effects are quite lacking for what they intend to do, the blushing one in particular is laughably dated, which is an issue in anime since at least the last decade, and the character figures are as usual simple and with facial repetitions to the point of confusing you, even with the characters chart at disposal. At the very least they have realistic figures especially for their career, and they visually age as they get older throughout the years.

As for the voice acting, it isn’t as realistic and natural sounding as in its older sister series, it’s more typical, and for a show that’s supposed to be about acting, Kageki Shoujo has it beat in that regard. The sound effects are good but the best audio part is the music, which is still quite absent and forgettable after you finished the show. Despite that, even the lowest and slowest theme fits the anime very well. What I said does not apply to the opening and ending sequences, which although helped by the visuals, are the best ones I have seen and heard so far from this year, especially the outro.

In conclusion, I can’t really say that this anime was worth watching nor is it worth recommending, but at the very least it helped pass some time. Managing to handle as many characters as it did and with that type of narrative is worth mentioning, but the sheer amount of the cast didn’t leave it to flesh them out as well as needed and there’s no real sense of plot progression nor closure whatsoever. Is a competently made big whole, but at the same time a big hole of nothing. Both previous works from its author pulled off better results exactly because they had smaller and more focused casts of characters, Kageki Shoujo beats it in theatricals and fleshing out a sympathetic cast, and even in this year, Akane-banashi and Ikoku Nikki are better female led shows. But if you have watched those, or feel like watching something mature with an ensemble cast, this might work for you as a time passer.

Note: Light spoilers ahead. In summary, the protagonist, the directing and the messages carry an otherwise typical, simple and unexciting story and a support cast made up of plot devices rather than full on characters.

Akane-banashi was a surprise in various ways, with the biggest one being that it became my third liked anime of the year, something which I did not expect before watching it, but probably should have, as I didn’t dislike any rakugo or kabuki anime I have watched until now.

But beyond that, what surprised me about Akane-banashi was how it felt almost like an anachronistic work of some kind, and the most conservative in nature anime I have watched in years. I will get to that later.

Even though I was aware of Akane-banashi being a Shounen Jump property, it is easy to forget that the moment you sit down and watch an anime. But then I begin watching it and yeah, a shounen through and through. It follows all the basics of the formula, training, revenge plot, tournament or competition of sorts, antagonistic organizations, rivalries set up early on, getting a high rank or level of something as an objective, semi cliffhanger ending setting more training and potential antagonists or rivals.

And yet, despite following the formula, it likes to mess around with it to some degree. I will not call it a subversion or deconstruction or any fancy word like that, but I find its peculiarities worth noticing and mentioning. First and foremost, in the main magazine aimed at young boys, and following its basic formula, Akane-banashi stars a girl. And no, unlike plenty of other contemporary anime, it does not sexualize nor objectify its main character in any way, so it is not like starring a female main character is just a cover up for the male gaze. It is also about a traditional art such as rakugo, a very rare subject for its main audience. It applies the formula in a slice of life and coming of age kind of way instead of high octane action.

It is certainly not the first shounen with an uncommon topic. Bakuman was about mangakas and was doing its own thing, but was also made by two big authors. Shokugeki no Souma is closer to this anime than any fighting shounen, yet it was imitating them to a tee in very over the top ways for a freaking cooking anime. And for those of you that still remember it, Runway de Waratte was following the formula within the fashion industry of all things, and featured a main girl and a main boy who were a model and a designer respectively. It never felt like a fighting anime but it was trying to build up tension like a sports anime like crazy.

Akane-banashi kind of does the same but without any kind of stakes. Although it never happens on shounen anime, on paper, a mangaka can fail hard to get published, struggle, and go broke. A chef can hurt themselves in the kitchen, and people in the fashion industry…well there are no high stakes over there either, but they could find some cuckoo petty rival out of their way to hurt them and suffer all kinds of gossip on mass media that would affect their lives. What kind of stakes are in rakugo? At most they could get expelled.

In fact, that is the starting point of the anime, the protagonist wanting revenge on who is presented as the main antagonist, for expelling her father six years back. And yet, to that, Akane-banashi says, the man went on with his life, to do something else, see? It is not the end of the world. After that the main character gets motivated to become a rakugoka herself and avenge her father, which in this context means to confront the old man, so it is a revenge plot without edge. That is why the series is also a next generation type of show. It is not that uncommon for shounen these days. Think about Boruto, Mokushiroku no Yonkishi, Yashahime, and even Dodge Danko is airing right now. Oh and there was Saint Seiya Omega more than a decade ago. Those came out way after their previous installments finished, and usually crapped on them. Akane-banashi on the other hand sets itself up to be a first and main series, and that kind of sequel, at the same time.

Did I say parents of the main character? Yes both of them are alive, crazy I know, and somewhat present, quite rare. Do they at least oppose her idea to prevent the same thing happening twice? No, they know about it and support her, also quite rare.

The training in this case implies the protagonist managing to mix well her activity of interest with the rest of her life, it is not that she disregards all the other things completely. Thus, following her fellow older apprentices and teacher’s advice, she works at a bar, decides on her career while mixing it with an apparition on a tournament for students, and even learns the history around one specific performance she has to present. This way the side activities are connected in a way to the main one, and the support characters provide actual good advices, lessons and counseling that are related to what the main character is going through. Thus, there is a feeling of the different pieces falling into place to make a coherent whole, and that stuff is happening and things are progressing even in a “slice of nothing happens” show. Plus, the way the series compares and connects a job based on serving and teaching in a classroom to grabbing the attention of an audience and caring about their enjoyment during the performance made sense and was cool to see.

Those that are presented as the main opposing forces to the protagonist are not even villains nor even actively antagonistic. As we follow the perspective of the main girl, the initial image we have of them makes sense, but as we get to see them outside of said perspective and get to know the tiniest things about them, we learn that they are not like she pictures them as, there are no cartoony nor petty characters in here, and even the closest ones to that are still very sensible, level-headed and grounded for the genre and demographic.

Despite its typical core, I did say that Akane-banashi feels kind of like an anachronistic work, and to justify that I will start with the concept itself. As far as I know there are four rakugo anime and one about Kabuki. Joshiraku uses rakugo just as its premise, it is otherwise about the characters saying fuck you to physics in cartoony ways and making social commentary through puns, it was all in service of the gags with rakugo being just the setup for the setting, not even fully a concept. Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and My Master Has no Tail both use rakugo as means for something greater and more profound. In the former, it was something for the characters to fix their lives with and confront the passage of time and change in eras that was actually endangering their art and profession, and was also a catalyst to face their regrets in life head on. The latter does not do a very good job about it, but it was using rakugo as a form of regaining connection between humans and animals, humans and nature. And both of them were historical titles.

Akane-banashi is set in contemporary times and was honestly kind of a relief to see that the art that the characters from the previous shows were scared of disappearing, is actually still preserved in some way or form. I mean Kabuki-bu was doing a similar thing, as it was about a modern day school club about kabuki, as the name makes it clear, yet that was all there was to it. This anime on the other hand has the preservation of the art in current times as its central theme, but only from the perspective of the antagonists, as the protagonist wants to become a top rank rakugoka herself, and honor the name of her father, something which is noble but nowhere near as grandiose as what the other characters want. In a meta way, it is what the author is doing as well, by making a manga about rakugo now, and I find that commendable.

Even on an aesthetical level, Akane-banashi feels like a show that does not fully belong in our times. The artwork is good and does not suffer from quality drops but not as detailed as other top popular anime tend to have, I mean look at Atelier from its season to compare. The colouring and lighting in this anime also stands out, it is not warm like the anime that imitate retro aesthetics like My Status as an Assassin, Magical Destroyers, the currently airing Sayonara Lara and the likes. it is not dark in an also retro way like Orb or Pluto, but it is also not as bright as anime series are in general now. The special effects and the color speed lines that at times replace the very well made backgrounds for impact effect look like a decade old, yet somehow everything fits together very nicely. The motions are not much because the anime prioritizes impact effect, yet at around the half mark in the last episode it is clear that Zexcs could have filled the series with warm special effects like that striking sunset scene, and detailed body motions like that one where the head down Akane kept moving around while her rakugo teacher was walking around the room to show her her new name. What is done the best is the storyboard, focusing on the details of the expressions and body language of the characters, both performers and audience, while the fiery special effects serve to compliment that aspect. It is a case of good directing making up for limited production values, and well directed rakugo is always a treat to see.

I mean look at the opening, it is not very good because the first half features Akane jumping around and surfing against some kind of wave meant to represent her struggles in sequences that feel like they belong in an action series, while the second has the characters dancing, like almost all openings today do, yet the song is a slow rock sung by a middle age deep masculine voice, it is almost comical how the two aspects do not really fit together. The ending feels even more retro, by going over sceneries in a beach to show one final frame of Akane’s face, with similar vocals on the back, what are these videoclips doing in a 2026 anime?

The audio department is good thanks to the sound effects and voice acting for all the different rakugo performances, and I am particularly surprised by Anna Nagase voicing Akane and nailing all the nuances in rakugo while being so young, but the music is…not even there? It is really forgettable and unlike the other rakugo anime, there is no shamizen accompanying the performances here.

Narratively Akane-banashi is kind of odd as well by going through training, rivalry setups, a competition and ending with a satisfying conclusion in one core, all while featuring rakugo performances taking a good portion of the episodes, not like lots of action series that either spend a whole season in training, like Boku no Hero, end in a complete cliffhanger giving its cour no sense of closure, like lots of series but Bastard!! comes first to mind, or Atelier which suffers from both. In that sense it reminded me of my favourite franchise Hibike! Euphonium which ends each season with a competition and a graduation for the third year members of the club every time, with this anime having the advantage of not sacrificing performance time for training or teen drama like over there. It does not rush through its content either like I don’t know, Jigokuraku, Hokuto no Ken or worst of all, Golden Kamuy, from its year alone. It hits a balanced middle point between the dragged on retro that now feels like a slog to watch and the rushed modern that ends episodes on awkward moments instead of impactful scenes. It is kind of rare for a long and ongoing manga of our times to get an adaptation with a pacing like this, especially in such fast moving times and the era of scrolling, reels, short duration content and entertainment.

But more importantly, did I not say that Akane-banashi is the most conservative anime I have watched in years? How is that possible when it is about bringing a traditional art to modern times, a next generation type of series, and it stars a girl in a shounen? Well, though to its approach in writing and messages.

First, because of its subject matter itself in this era. Second, for both the design and characterization of said girl. Akane might talk in ways that might come off as rude and might not be afraid to hit some guy if needed, but she is not a fake tomboy the likes of which anime is full of. She is very pretty, with her earrings, purple eyes, black and pink hair and ponytail while performing, and is shown to take care of her image, clothing and rakugo etiquette, even while using casual clothes similar to those of Earphone Jack from Hero Academia. She is not a fake gyaru the likes of which are common these days either. On top of it all, she is not a girl boss either, which makes me think that a certain annoying type of fans would have liked her and her anime, if they cared about the subject matter one bit. She learns from all her older fellow apprentices, all of which are men, and respects all of them a lot. Heck, half of her motivation itself is to honor her father, both by confronting the man that expelled him, and by showing him that she is going to be a top rakugoka with that same rakugo from her father that the old man dismissed at the beginning of the story.

Like I said before, nothing in the anime objectifies nor sexualizes the protagonist. Look at her, she is pretty but has realistic proportions, none of that overblown exaggerated figures around here. The rest of the cast, whether cute or not, female or male, fares similarly as well, there’s a lot of variety in character figures in here and all of them fit together nicely. But more importantly, no male character belittles nor underestimates Akane while teaching her something, nor at any other moment. It is traditional, it is conservative in nature, yet not rooted in misogyny, good job.

But most importantly, it is so because of how it handles its formula and messages themselves. I mean think about it and compare it with other titles. An era just finished of fake underdogs like Deku and Asta, that are supposed to have their whole settings against them because they don’t have super powers nor magic respectively, they are given a power or happened to have the perfect counter power, and the first one even got it from the canonically most powerful and important guy in the world, talk about succeeding thanks to connections and luck. And this becomes equally bad if not worse when we think about the big three protagonists, but that was already talked about enough to bring it up in here. I have read defenses of the likes that the point of an underdog story is that the main character eventually stops being an underdog, and to that I say well, there has to be some balance, or else you end up with the Spider-man situation, condemned to be miserable and rebooted forever. But still, Joe Yabuki, Hanamichi Sakuragi, Kaiji Itou, Akko Kagari and even Coco from the same season as Akane, are some examples of people who get small victories without things going their way and their world conveniently working around them.

You would probably think, wait, it is not right to compare action shows with non-action ones. Well then, let's limit it to competition-like series. Hibike! Euphonium did it half right by making the main school lose tournaments a couple of entries despite giving them small victories, because although the main characters are really good at playing their instruments, the same can not really be said about the orchestra as a whole. It would have been better if other schools and performances were shown half as much though, but no, time was needed for teen drama.

From the bad side of examples. Shokugeki no Souma had Souma Yukihira being a “break the norm” and “go against tradition” type of character, what with his unorthodox recipes and always defying the system. Despite being in a non-action anime and manga, he was plot armored with things going his way, avoiding being expelled several times just because, even during rigged matches, getting power up-like moves during his cooking battles, and gaining powerful connections despite being a supposed underdog. Let’s look at Runway de Waratte too, where Chiyuki and Ikuto were at disadvantage within their discipline and setting, essentially being underdogs, yet the anime ruined it by being rushed, having things going their way conveniently, and spoiling its ending like Hero Academia does. You would probably think but well, that is just how real life is, you need connections in order to get somewhere regardless of how good you are at something. Yes, that is not the issue, the issue is that these aforementioned anime are not open nor honest about it, and work conveniently and through nepotism for their main characters.

Now let’s look at what Akane-banashi does through that Karashi Neriyama dude who modernizes rakugo stories and is a people’s pleaser to get results, and that Hikaru Koragi woman who is a pretty voice actress trying to broaden her horizons in order to get more popular and successful…through…rakugo… They are ambitious and want to break the norm, in other anime they would be the protagonists and winners of the competition they participate in during the season, but in this one they are not. Akane is not an underdog, and certainly does not have things going her way just because of connections. She has some but they do not make things easier for her, and the biggest people she knows are against her, through her eyes at least. More importantly she is talented but has also practiced and trained and learned and fixed her rakugo performances since she was little, as we see both in present time and through flashbacks. For a protagonist of her era, and a girl at that, and after the big three 00s era, she feels closer to the Kenshiros, the Seiyas, the Kenshins of old, to a much lesser degree of course, and she also does not only want personal success and not only thinks about performing well, but cares about her audience first, and does something for her father as well, so that goes against the western female leads with daddy issues of now. I tell you, if the annoying conservative chuds would have given a crap about this anime, they would have loved its protagonist.

But also, and more importantly, in an era of short duration and fast paced content and entertainment, and filled with fiction the kind of what I already wrote enough about, what this anime tells the audience through both the protagonist and antagonist, is that just talent and fame will not get you what you want, you need to work hard and consistently for years, not care just about you but also about those around you, both family and partners in career, and to keep alive tradition, history and arts in modern times and against all other kinds of entertainment, in modern ways if you want but respecting what made them what they are in the first place, their essence if you will, and with a respectable level of quality. In the times of cheap productions, remakes that often do not measure up to the originals, and above all, fucking generative AI used in big productions everywhere, I find those messages even more commendable.

But wait, that kind of sucks, does not it? Is Akane-banashi telling the audience that you cannot catch up and that you will not get chances in a type of art or discipline if you do not start up from early on in your life? Well no, as both Karashi and Hikaru get or search for new offers from big schools and masters and room for improvement at the end of the season, despite falling short compared to Akane.

But after all those nice things I’ve written about Akane-banashi, it is not like it is a great anime, and there is also a need to criticize it where it fails. First of all, it definitely tries hard to make the unexciting exciting. Look at all that presentation of ranks, the silhouettes of the rakugo masters, all the other ones and their schools presented at the end of the season, the fiery special effects used from time to time, trying to build up hype and tension around rakugo, and it does not work, it does not hit because it is rakugo, there are not stakes whatsoever. It would be hypocritical of me not to point that aspect out as well, given how it is a common criticism of mine amongst my reviews.

I have nonetheless somewhat praised and rated well enough slice of life shows that also lacked stakes throughout the years (Usagi Drop, Aishiteruze Baby, Ikoku Nikki from this year, to name some). Well those had either more complex and important topics and plenty of explored characters for me to consider them worth watching and reading, some even featured permanent changes and somewhat psychological moments, like Blue Period. Despite its messages being delivered even in some meta ways, Akane-banashi is not really on that level of substance, and no side character is as good as the passionate protagonist, on top of everything else I have already said about her. They at the very least are used very well as plot devices nonetheless.

Another issue is that Akane-banashi still has a very anime and more prominently, shounen problem, the exposition. My man we really do not need all that talk and presentations about rakugo ranks and stories and what the performers are doing and what the audience is feeling, especially not when the directing and storyboard are already doing a good job at that. It is inefficient and redundant. Despite that, I have to say that the exposition done through appendixes in the form of the chibi-like sketches at the end of the episodes are done well, even mixing real life footage for a more interesting visual presentation, and having a different character interacting with Akane each time, sometimes learning from her and sometimes being the ones that teach her something, thus maintaining and respecting characterization and character dynamics. For comparison, My Master Has no Tail from 2022 had the tanuki protagonist all alone, thus with no interesting interactions, retelling details from the same story performed in the same episode, which was definitely redundant, and despite being a seinen title, she was all cutesy and talking in her high pitched voice of hers, what made it feel like she was talking to a younger audience.

The exposition problem even affects the rakugo performances themselves. Even though Akane-banashi is overall better than Hibike! Euphonium at showing the other characters performing, it is still not quite on the level of Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu and even the best times of Uchi no Shishou wa Shippo ga Nai as far as the rakugo itself is concerned, because its cuts the performances short, or interrupts them with flashbacks or exposition. As long and tedious some found the rakugo scenes in Shouwa Genroku ten years ago, that one aspect was done better and with a better directing focusing on angles and facial expressions over there. Also no shounen tricks nor exposition. But oh well, like the anime itself says, a performance could last 15 or 20 minutes, and we cannot possibly have that, especially in current times, and would be a pain in the ass for the studio to pull off something like that.

And despite lacking all that power ups, conveniences, silly hype, referential comedy and fanservice nonsense, which makes Akane-banashi better than its peers, it is also what makes it hard to believe that it would be popular and successful among an audience that expects exactly that. Just like I wrote about Aoi Hana some years ago, what gives it a certain level of quality is also what makes it hard for the title to grab the target audience. And for that reason I am genuinely surprised the manga is as big as it is. Long, ongoing, successful and popular, despite everything working against it on paper. Runway de Waratte did not have such luck. I have been informed of some other popular arts and performances with female leads shounen mangas of the moment, so maybe we are in the rise of a female-focused, shounen school coming of age arts era? That would be interesting to see.

And I am also, well not worried nor scared, that would be too much, but a bit concerned perhaps, about something in the season finale, which presents and setups lots of rival schools, rakugokas and alongside something that spoiled myself from the manga, makes me think that Akane-banashi could devolve into something more typical going forward. But at least for the time being that is not an issue present in this season.

Bottom line, normally I would probably not consider this anime more than a well made average title, but due to its protagonist and messages, going against its peers, twisting the formulas enough and well despite respecting them to their core, conveying its message even in its availability for free on YouTube in the era of big companies at the top of their greed (something I did not know about and for what I have to ask for forgiveness of), and for being extremely relevant for its time, without even needing to be topical like Yoru no Kurage wa Oyogenai was some years ago, I will raise the score probably a little more for the anime than it truly deserves and consider it somewhat worth watching at least once, as a product or better yet a piece of entertainment and art more so than a good story, and hopefully a proof and lesson for a lot of producers and fans out there that you can have good, well intentioned instead of mean spirited conservative in nature fiction, shounen titles that do not need stupid edge, power ups and conveniences and fanservice and objectification of its cast, primarily the girls, to be successful and popular, and that good directing and storyboards are more important than flashy and super detailed visuals and animation.

This anime is based on a work by an author that has previously published a renowned work such as Violet Evergarden, it actually lasted for longer than it so although that could happen even if it was more niche, it also would mean that there is enough public for it to keep going as much as it did. The anime was in charge of a famous and beloved studio such as Wit, the staff was involved in recent fairly popular and praised shows, and even Kensuke Ishio was part of it, who’s a popular and respected composer of our times. It is visually well done and also combines fantasy, contemporary settings, action, comedy, romance and even some queer bait. On paper, it should have had all the ingredients to become an instant success. Well I don’t know how it fared in Japan, but it doesn’t seem to have caught up that much in the West. It’s not that talked about nor promoted and its rating is not that high on any site you search it up, why is that, what seems to be the reasons for that?

1-Too long for it to come out

The light novels and mangas this anime is based on have begun publishing while Violet Evergarden was finishing, so it’s not an issue as far as the source material is concerned. The anime however came out six years after its older sister ended, and as much as that one was one the most beloved and praised anime of 2018, if not the most, it had the misfortune of ending right before lots of more people got into anime during the pandemic.

2-The previous work seems to have fallen off from grace

Despite having some of the most streamed anime openings and endings of all time, Violet Evergarden itself wasn’t exactly hype material to lure newcomers in. You would probably think that it was very dramatic for it to get a lot of traction, but not even that level of cryporn seems to motivate people enough to check it out. Basically what I’m saying here is that people who watched that show as it was coming out still remembers it fondly of course, but for newer viewers, it had become a faded memory of its decade with not much legacy behind it. I blame the movie finale for that, which although it was mostly positively received, it met enough contrarian opinions for its reception to count as divisive, not exactly a glazed piece of entertainment to get more people to watch it.

3-Wit lost people along the way

What was once debated as the best studio of all times by casuals alongside Ufotable and MAPPA due to their animation and involvement on famous works, has lost a lot of respect after delaying and eventually dropping Shingeki no Kyojin and not adapting the second season of Vinland Saga, nor continuing any of their other famous anime from the last decade. In the meantime Kabaneri was mocked as a weak rip off, Great Pretender never managed to become mainstream as it was West flavoured and was initially review bombed by Shingeki’s fanboys, and also the sequel sucked ass, Ousama Ranking met divisive opinions near its end and came and went as far as popularity and praise goes, Vivy met a similar destiny, and Bubbles was one of the few times where pretty animation and famous names wasn’t enough to fool people about underwhelming writing. Their other more contemporary shows were Shikanoko, of which people got tired of, Isekai Suicide Squad, of which you only need the name of it to know it is bad, and Moonrise, which was considered a very disappointing series.

4-Their remaining worthy shows are very different

What carries the studio now is Spy x Family, not exactly a series for action junkies or fans of drama. Its combination of brief action scenes and mostly wholesome family comedy and Annya’s antics helped making it popular and viral exactly at the right time it needed, and even that one has met some more negative opinions since then on its following seasons and source material, and after it was revealed or at least rumored that its author doesn’t even like it nor doing it. Agents of the Four Seasons doesn’t promise that, it promises action, politics, romance and a lot of drama, not necessarily exactly a pleasant time. The other one is the fourth season of Honzeki no Genkokujou, and even then it is not as praised as previous seasons, it is the first season that the studio is working on, thus inevitably being compared with the previous ones, and has met criticisms for using AI in its production.

5-Wit is still not KyoAni

The fans of all the aforementioned shows follow those specific franchises, not the studio itself. It’s what happens with a still relatively new and inconsistent studio. KyoAni on the other hand is older, has a loyal fanbase, a distinctive style and is consistent with its frequency and quality (or lack thereof as far as I’m concerned wink wink). Plus, without intending to romanticize the arson incident caused by a madman that they went through, the fact that they came out from that and finished all their previous works and started other brand new ones while retaining their visual quality, provided them of a very inspirational image and story, thus gaining even more respect from the community, you WANT to support them, even with more with their undisputed visual quality, which brings the next point:

5.2-Wit is still not KyoAni. Visuals

The only thing Wit has KyoAni beaten on is in variety of styles in both visuals and premises. Otherwise KyoAni has a recognizable style, far more polished artwork and detailed motions and body language, not polemic use of CGI, and the likes. Let’s keep the point about visuals going to bring up the next point.

6-Too much competition

As far as visuals and animation go, and despite being an overall good series in that regard, Agents of the Four Seasons doesn’t compare to the level of polish and quality of contemporaries like Frieren or Atelier, nor works with distinctive visual styles like Dorohedoro 2, Jaadugar, or the retro-styled anime that are airing right now, like Ghost in the Shell and Sayonara Lara. And well, there’s Red River too but that one is considered mostly bad on every front. Heck, even a josei show from a previous season like Ikoku Nikki had a very atmospheric style for a slice of life show. Agents of the Four Seasons has a lot more going on but its presentation is more limited and boring somehow. And although I began this point talking about animation, this anime also has too much competition as far as its core elements are concerned. What genres did I say that it combines? Action, fantasy, comedy, romance and drama, in a year with all the aforementioned options and many more, like a new Re: Zero or the dark horse Nippon Sangoku which won the serious and mature anime title of the season, and all the other actual romcoms that Spring 2026 was so full of.

The previous points explain why Agents of the Four Seasons didn’t manage to become as big as it should have been on paper, but doesn’t say much about its actual quality, could it be that despite all of that going against it it is in fact a good show? Well, if my score was to be an indicator, the answer would be no, and that’s because of poor handling.

Not in terms of visuals though, since despite not comparing to the aforementioned competition, it is still a very solid production. The artwork does not suffer from quality drops, the motions are fine, the backgrounds and special effects are well done. The issue is that nothing stands out. Despite the combination of hair colors and clothes, the character designs and figures don’t stand out much, the perspective is so focused on them that you don’t see the sceneries all that much, the action sequences are good but few and scattered, and the seasons theme is underutilized not only in writing but also artistically, how many scenes do you recall where the agents affected the land with their seasonal powers? 10 throughout 14 episodes or something? And even then those are more abilities than change in sceneries and do not always reflect their season all that much nor affect their users in any way. Katanagatari played around with the seasons more and it used the theme as nothing more than a running gag for the backgrounds. So yeah the directing wasn’t the most captivating.

The sound is also ok for the effects and voices but the music is far from Ushio’s best, it’s mostly there. The in-story important songs appear once or twice per agent, that makes 8 times total at most, so it’s another underutilized aspect. The opening and ending are typical jpop stuff, I listened to the full versions a few hours ago while I was writing this and didn’t feel them much, I even had to listen to the opening a second time because I couldn’t remember anything from it after the first time. I prefer the outro by the way, because I don’t like how high-pitched the voice gets at the chorus and end of the intro. The animated sequences for both are fine and they are pretty looking.

The problems come in the form of the writing and pacing and once again underutilizing the genres and elements, and even more during the initial episodes. Although initially the anime appears to follow the semi episodic structure of its older sister series, there’s actually a clearer plot progression in here after the third episode. Solve this one issue here, go there, survive an attack or two on your destination, go on and do your things, which is bringing the seasons across the country but, again, happens on screen like once or twice per agent, thus not even the main element of the story is used much.

There isn’t much of an end goal to claim that there’s progression either, and even if there was, the pacing suffers a lot in the middle to final episodes because like half the series is flashbacks, the main characters remembering a tragic event, which for a rational person isn’t even that tragic because the characters are alive and well and a lot happier in the future, the present time in the anime, essentially coming off as cheap emotional manipulation. Showing sad character backdrops is one thing, filling it with scenes about the characters wanting to die because of how they are mistreated and manipulated, while the audience knows that they will be fine, is another.

Speaking of which, the tone during the initial episodes is quite light at times. The anime uses shoujo-ish comedy and chibi-like artstyle for comedic scenes, about the guardian of the main character being more than honoured to be alongside her agent in a suspiciously more than platonic way, or the quarrels of two sisters. It clashes a lot if you expected non-stop drama like in Violet Evergarden. The middle episodes are a lot more dramatic, too much I would say, with the characters crying and yelling all the time, which doesn’t work on me because I know they are fine and silly in the future.

The series has some really gay lines for two same sex pairs of characters that would make fujoshis and whatever the yuri equivalent of it is go crazy, but then chickens out by forming two cishet couples…with like zero chemistry and on-screen interactions, besides the flashbacks, on which still they barely interact with each other and don’t sell you on their relationship much. Like many romance anime and fiction in general, the actual romance isn’t the main appeal, it’s the yearning, and in this case is freaking boring and scattered.

Even then the series ends with a line so lesbian not even the yuribait moments of KyoAni combined can match. Something along the lines of “despite the love for a boy that I have for him, you’re the girl I love the most and that I always will” or something like that, while the characters hold hands…so what’s gonna be? Are they cheating on the guys? Are they bi? Are they in a polyamory bisexual threeway relationship? Did we forget that the protagonist said she considered her friend her sister 9 episodes before? Are they in a disgusting incestuous relationship? Spiritually and emotionally I mean, not biologically obviously. If so bring out the doujins I mean no, it’s all bait, it’s just the yurishippers on suicide watch for the nth time for wanting LGBT stuff on a bait of a show instead of supporting actual LGBT fiction, as there were some varied examples of in the same season.

So the series with action, romance and queerbait isn’t about anything of the like, and the powers of the characters are underutilized. Is it worth watching for the comedy? Well no, it goes away in the middle of the show for all the drama, which in turn is not impactful because you know from the start that the characters are fine. Plus, as much as we are told (keyword) that the characters suffered a lot and wanted to die because nobody wanted them to live, not only do we see them alive in the future/present, there are no visible effects on them.

I mean the protagonist is heavily traumatized for almost (I think) getting raped, which affected her speaking and made her talk almost like the fucking annoying witch from Goblin Slayer if you remember her, but this girl sounds cutesy, not like that woman that seemed to moan and exhale all the time. But compare that to Violet, who was also a human weapon, and lost both arms, had to learn to use mechanical ones, and was so broken inside that couldn’t even socialize in normal ways, she seemed more like an android than a human. In here, because of how she acts in the present time, whatever happened to Hinagiku does not impact the viewer in the same way, the tearjerker isn’t tearjerking. But I gotta say that’s probably a good thing on her case, poor girl.

But what about the politics? We are told the different ways the villages handle their agents and what they intend to do with them or even if they plan to abandon them, it is supposed to make us think that the agents are used as dehumanized human weapons and make us feel sad but again, the four affected characters combined didn’t have it like Violet. Noticed how I said told instead of shown for a second time? That’s another thing, most things in this anime are told instead of shown, the people behind the villages don’t even get names nor faces, they aren’t given screentime on their own. Whatever we get to know about Sakura and Hinagiku’s families is the same, told instead of shown, and not given much exploring.

Not even the terrorist groups are fleshed out. As ridiculous and pretentious and far worse the terrorists in Darwin Game were, we get to know a lot about them, not in here until near the end, and only for the leader, who by the way gets a reasonable reason to hate the world and men in specific, but whatever compelling backdrop the show tries to give her is lost the moment she speaks pretentiously about killing a god, inexplicably seduces and manipulates men, and worst of all did those horrible things to the protagonist. But ok not every villain needs to be understood, some just want to see the world burn, quite literally in this case, but even so she lacks presence and screentime and her showdown lasts very little before ending and for the buildup as a mastermind she had, she was played around the whole time without even noticing the out of nowhere last moment save until it was too late and couldn’t do anything.

The actual writing is kinda bad and the established rules aren’t consistent and the pacing is too fast in the last episodes. The agents travel alone with their guards, the other security is far away or pretty much useless, the agents need to sing and dance to use their abilities? No, just recite, actually don’t even do that, what for? The character died and is replaced as an agent like it was previously said? No, they get revived within literal 5 minutes. Also near the end there are new plot twists and hidden terrorists with changing motivations at every episode, there’s just no organic presentation and follow up to anything.
The ending is solid for the conflicts presented but the novel is quite longer which makes me question what more is even left to tell, not show.

I already talked about the characters but they are defined by an archetype and have sad backdrops and that’s it, forget about any kind of development. There’s no long term objective to say there’s any kind of catharsis either. On a deeper level Hinagiku has some sort of personality disorder and Sakura is conflicted about her capabilities and feelings, but it’s not like either thing is looked into much, and the latter was hard to watch for most of the duration, until she realized how childish out of jealousy she was but still didn’t get over that as we see at the end.

And that’s how we ended up with a show that isn’t horrible but still pretty bad, and that despite that, it feels like it should have been a success, but ended up on a middle point in the scale of popularity, at best. The only thing I ever liked from this author in anime is the divisive Violet Evergarden movie, and most likely because I watched it back in 2020, when it was easier to like anything that meant doing something that wasn’t an obligation and let you focus on something else than the pandemic, even more so if it was an emotional product like that. But aside from that, I think this author goes into my (not literal) black list of authors not worth checking out anymore and this series is one of my most disliked anime in quite a while. My not enjoyment aside, I still think it’s not worth watching nor remembering because of how much it fails to appeal in any way and how much better competition is out there, without even having to go that back to find it.

Note: some light spoilers in here


This cartoon was presented to me randomly on a Discord channel and was wrongly summarized as a version of Haibane Renmei with avatars, basically the afterlife, which of course was completely off. It was the same person that recommended Frieren to me as similar to Mahoutsukai no Yome, so yeah I no longer take recommendations nor summaries from that guy. What surprised me at the time was that in just two weeks of being released, the show had an insane amount of views, fan arts, porn, fakes, and a bunch of theory videos. Man I know Glitch has had plenty of fans since their early days and series and more since Murder Drones and that there is an audience for indie shows, but that level of attention with just one episode sounds crazy to me. And the thing is, early on the show only has the aesthetics and concept going on for it so I genuinely don’t know how it got that crazy so fast.

Leaving that aside, I found it to be aesthetically interesting but otherwise boring and a nothing burger show that despite causing a storm in the world for a few years, now seems to have disappeared without a trace, seemingly with no explanation whatsoever. Like yeah, it ended, but there should be more for that to happen. I also don’t understand how anyone could find these characters sexy. I read people rightfully criticize the weird proportions of anime girls, and here there are thousands of people lusting over toy-like characters that spawned kid friendly brainrot man WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? I mean fanmade content will do their thing but the originals? To quote Pomni WHAT THE @#w~4 IS GOING ON??

But anyways as far as aesthetics go, the show is clearly inspired by 90s early 3D videogames and as its name suggests, circus-like setting, despite it being underutilized (more on that later), but mostly in the beginning. Later on the artwork is a lot more polished and the designs changed a little, so the main aesthetics are a bit lost after a while, in order to gain better looks. With that said the show also implements different art styles from time to time, 2D, a sanitized prejudiced look of slice of life anime, glitched out 3D for setting reasons, old CGI for some fishes, and at the very end even live action. The designs are toy-based like I said, a jester which fits the circus setting, a rabbit reminiscing of old school cartoons, a ragdoll, a ribbon with a theater mask, a chesspiece, a mouth with eyes but no head on a suit, that also flies, and a…eh…a toybox all mashed together I guess. Very cartoony but kind of unique and as would be revealed later on, the designs would reflect the inner traumas of the characters, so there’s some kind of storytelling attached to them.

There are more characters of course and they are tied to the backgrounds, not the circus where the main cast resides obviously, but the episodic one time game adventures and worlds that the characters go to. One inspired by Mad Max and Candy Crush, so every background character, building or element is either a golosine or a dessert. Another one that mixes Luigi’s Mansion with Resident Evil, so it’s pretty good at comedy horror. Another one that satirizes McDonald’s, you get the deal. Motions, expressions, body language and fluidity is on point, and the special effects were done with a lot of care as well. The problem is perhaps that the main background is rather limited compared with the episodic ones, and despite the cartoony looks of the characters, the downtime moments for opening up, and their physics defining abilities, most of the time the cast is sitting down and talking, thus quite static on screen.

The music and sound effects do their job fine but are honestly kind of there most of the time, some sequences are remembered because of their songs, but they are all from previous material, not original, such as Daisy Bell or Isn’t She Lovely. I’ve watched three different versions of the series, of which I prefer the original English overall, very good voice acting. The Latin American one is very solid but I don’t like some of the voices, the performances are otherwise good, especially for Pomni and Jax. The third one I watched was Japanese, and as usual with their dubs, it feels weird to listen to them, when compared to anime, it just doesn’t hit the same way, I don’t know why but the Japanese dubs I have checked tend to do poorly. This one isn’t all that bad, but it doesn’t compare with the previous two.

The series is about six people trapped in a virtual reality after they put on some VR helmets, and having to go on games-like adventures made by an AI ringmaster. And that’s it, that’s the whole series right there. Eventually the show is more about trauma dumping than having a plot, as it utilizes a semi episodic structure and the characters visit a different (or multiple) world each episode, so there’s no real progression until the last two episodes. There are themes and messages about accepting yourself, opening up to people, confronting reality, trying to escape to the real world, hurting others unwillingly due to shutting oneself to others, body dysphoria, depression, lack of self esteem, dysfunctional families, mommy issues in specific, transgender and non-binary representation, living or existing without desiring it, suffering routine and endless torture from an evil AI due to having an immortal body, finding out your reality is not what it seems but rather an invention by and for someone else, and probably a bunch more that don’t come off the top of my head like all of these, at the moment. So as you see, the plot is simplistic in scope and premise but it is still heavily charged thematically.

In terms of execution and presentation, however, no topic gets much screentime before moving to something else, the comedic tone of the first half of the series didn’t allow for a deeper look into any of them, and most stuff is told rather than shown on screen. I assume part of the issues come from the limited amount of episodes, runtime, though the episodes are quite longer than those of an anime, for example, and the last two were even converted into a movie, but ok, and the episodic structure which didn’t allow for tighter plot continuity. It also doesn’t help that the cast remains either mysterious or amnesiac about specific things, thus they aren’t explored much until late in the series. We get to know bits about them from episode 3 onwards but still, everything is told, almost nothing is shown. And the revelation in the last episode rendered even that limited information about the characters meaningless.

The consistency and credibility of the whole thing is also questionable due to various reasons, such as Kinger not trying to do anything anytime he was in the dark before episode 8, Pomni not telling everyone about that before episode 7, Caine going through a whole character switch up in that episode. And yes there was build up of him slowly becoming mad, but nothing quite the villainous level of episode 8. Then again what exactly happened to Cain at the end of episode 8? Doesn’t matter because it’s undone by the next episode, on which Caine goes back to how he was before snapping, essentially going through a character rewrite and regression. Plus it’s weird that the characters couldn’t nor wouldn’t ever use their physics defying cartoon powers, or if they did they didn’t know how, right until the second to last episode, except for Jax. Also what happened to Bubbles? It is implied so I’m not going to include it as a flaw but it also came and went out of nowhere. And why do the characters abstract anyway, and why can’t the abstracted ones be reverted by the end of the show? It's a metaphor I suppose but lacks in-story reasoning.

The characters begin as stereotypes, even pointed out by one of them. Pomni is the clueless protagonist that’s nice to people and thus gets them to open up to her, Gangle is depressed, Zooble is grumpy, Ragatha is friendly to everyone, Kinger is seen as insane due to lack of memory, and Jax, probably the most popular character of the show, describes himself as the funny one, yet I would label him as the annoying trickster one, as would lots of people that watched the show.

Yet as the series progresses, hints of backdrops and character relationships are told to us (remember, not shown) that expands on them beyond their stereotype. Pomni is not afraid to speak her mind and even throw hands if needed, Gangle slowly becomes happier alongside Zooble, and is shown to literally have put on a mask before, and she’s also a frustrated artist. Zooble has had a couple of jobs and despite presenting themselves as strong willed and uncaring for the adventures, is one of the characters that desires to leave the most, and also becomes happier alongside Gangle. Ragatha turns out to be a people’s pleaser with a lot of mommy issues on her back, Kinger is not crazy as he has memory issues, result of his mind being sabotaged, and Jax is mean as a way of coping with the endless reality of the digital circus, and also tries to push people away in order to protect her backdrop and identity and to not feel the despair after someone dear abstracts, also has mommy issues on her back. There’s a lot more that could and was analyzed about these characters, but that exceeds the intention of the review.

As far as dynamics go, Pomni befriends everyone over time and tries to give Jax her wake up call. Zooble and Gangle support each other, and likely some more stuff, Kinger is like a stepdad to everyone else, but mostly Ragatha, being the oldest and all, but again, how and why did he not do anything for all the time he has been on the circus, and throughout the episodes, despite having been in the dark at points, Ragatha does get to be a genuine friend of Pomni, and Jax…well, watch the latest episode. I have to criticize the way Jax was handled in the last episode, as Gooseworx the author intended and has posted on social media, that Jax is basically a warning about how someone, after a hurtful rejection and mockery by a loved one, shuts themselves closed and keeps developing toxic relationships from there in order to not let themselves be vulnerable and get pushed away due to their identity again. The character is also a statement, trans people might have had a bad past due to their families, but that does not excuse them from victimizing themselves and being bad people. Yet the scene showing the consequences of how she destroyed her life and everyone’s around her has a song that says Isn’t She Looovelyy? And like, no? Is that not the point? Also the other characters, and sometimes Gooseworx themselves, refer to Jax as a he.

You would probably think that getting to know more about the cast means that it develops, but that’s not true, as they don’t really go through major changes organically, whatever information is known about them is told instead of shown, and the revelation at the end renders everything pointless, as it turned everything knew about the characters thus far into a lie and it’s even convenient that the people shown at the end all know each other. Also there are details about the setting, both the virtual and the real world, that are yet to be known. And all the staff Jax goes through? Mostly unimportant all things considered. It’s not a bad revelation, by itself could be a big plot twist and lead to some interesting developments and existential crisis for the characters, but there’s no follow up to that afterwards because the show is about to be over. For the same reason, there’s no real catharsis nor ending either.

It’s not like there isn’t room to continue the show, some comment on YouTube came up with different concepts to deal with after the finale of the season, and they all sounded like interesting ideas, but would require the show to become far more serious and losing part of its identity, and seeing how Gooseworx got fed up with their childish, toxic and spoiled fandom, I don’t see that happening.

At the end of the day this show is not something to watch because of the plot, which despite its themes, it is simplistic, semi episodic, rushed at the end, and lacks a proper conclusion. You are not watching it for the characters either, as whatever is known about them is revealed to be a lie at the end. At best you are watching this for the aesthetics, but I still think that the circus itself ends up being underutilized and has boring looks. So at the end this series came out, shook the world, but now is gone and most likely forgotten and there’s really like no legacy behind it.

I personally didn’t like it, but enjoyed the phenomenon happening around it, the reactions, the VN fan games by allhailthequeen, the cast streaming stuff together, that kinda deal, the show itself I didn’t like at all, and I don’t see any reason for revisit it nor recommend it to others. Not bad but not something I consider worth watching nor recommending.

Now for some excused scoring

VISUALS 8/10

Artwork 2/2 (Polished)
Character designs 2/2 (Original and well done)
Backgrounds 1/2 (Well made but underutilized)
Animation 1/2 (Well made but underutilized)
Special effects 2/2 (Well done)

AUDIO 7/10

Sound effects 3/4 (Good)
Music 2/4 (Ok)
Voice acting 2/2 (Well done)

STORY 3/10

Premise 1/2 (Semi interesting)
Pacing 0/2 (Goes nowhere for most of its duration and when it goes somewhere it’s hella rushed)
Complexity 2/2 (Lots of themes)
Credibility 0/2 (None)
Conclusion 0/2 (Everything is pointless)

CHARACTERS 4/10

Presence 2/2 (Memorable archetypes)
Personality 2/2 (Well founded and deconstructed archetypes)
Backdrops 0/2 (Ruined by the ending)
Development 0/2 (Non-existent)
Catharsis 0/2 (Non-existent)

VALUE 6/10

Fame 3/3 (Became mainstream almost immediately)
Memorability 2/4 (There’s some memorable moments and stuff in it)
Rewatchability 1/4 (Some to see how stuff is building up, but the lack of progression and the ending takes away a lot of it)

PERSONAL ENJOYMENT 4/10

VERDICT:

It must be complicated to make a magic based setting nowadays because of how commonly used it is, even more if you want to be somewhat original about it, yet Atelier manages to do it somewhat by mixing it with arts, as in its world, it is a common energy present anywhere that anybody can use by literally drawing the magic circles of the spells, but for the sake of it not falling into wrong hands, its way of functioning and using remains hidden and controlled by the “witches”, which in this case it encompasses wizards, mages, it is all the same thing.

Yet the protagonist, a little girl named Coco, finds out how it works and uses a spell indirectly taught to her by a, later known, dark magic arts user, working as the main antagonist of the series of sorts, and accidentally hurts her mother, thus getting a Spider-Man like motivation and hero’s calling of sorts, and she ends up being an apprentice of a certain witch.

Being a novice and an outsider, Coco is shown to be logically and realistically incompetent in the use of magic, and met with a lot of prejudice from the more experienced users, which are almost every person she meets from the second episode onwards.

So what we have here is a break the norm/defy the status quo story, theme and main character, as well as our young protagonist trying to right her wrongs and also prove herself of being capable of learning and improving, against her low self esteem and tendency to overthink stuff. Such types of characters can be easily misused by eventually making them inexplicably broken and doing things that inexplicably no one ever tried in their settings. Yet in this case it works because she and a colorblind boy rationalize their approach to doing things in uncommon ways for their setting and combine them with their own strengths, thus somewhat managing to surpass their shortcomings. That’s a keyword here by the way, they are not treated as specials with supposed disadvantageous settings somehow working around them, it’s them fighting their self pity and finding their ways to work around within said setting what makes them not spoiled and a good handling of their archetypes and tropes. The protagonist is an outsider and a novice, thus constantly messes up, and the other is a disabled kid thought incapable of doing certain somewhat basic things within his setting, which also explains their lack of confidence on their own.

As far as world building concerns, there’s an effort in explaining and establishing how everything is supposed to work. For example, one could ask, how did no one ever try what Coco and the colorblind kid did? And the answer is that the setting is so restricting and that there’s no need nor consideration to do things differently. As the teacher Qifrey himself says, necessity is what leads to innovation/invention (I don’t remember the exact word), and even in our reality, the most common knowledge was some big discovery at some point. Plus the spells have some mildly scientific reasoning behind them at times, at least as much as they can get in a show based on magic and drawings, so it’s not just let’s draw whatever and make anything happen. There are also several exams and schools, each with a logic behind, which establishes the hierarchy of the magic system as well as permissions, obligations and restrictions for the witches, based on their level. Even the dress code of the characters are thought of as part of the setting and to preserve the magic system, as the cloaks help the witches to draw circles without being seen, and the hats are meant to represent their status, schools and based on what we learn from Tettia, even the type of magic and personality of the witches themselves.

With that said it should be noted that Atelier does not make sense completely. It is true that we see that Tartah colorblind kid reverting powder to different kinds of plants, without the show making sure to let the audience know that they are, or should be, different types of powder. It is true that doing a magic circle on a boat risks being found out, it is true that the squad that takes care of arresting witches using spells on public and casting forbidden spells…did use magic in front of commoners. It is true that the main antagonist lets Qiffrey go mostly unharmed despite being chased down by him, like, won’t you do something about him? It is true that not recognizing Tartah as a regular boat user between islands, despite not having his hat, was contrived for things to happen. It is true that a hospital not labeling its flasks makes no sense whatsoever regardless of the excuse they try to give about it. And the memory erasure spell used in the series to make sure the workings of magic remains a secret makes me think that it contradicts the “spells aren’t used directly on people's bodies” rule, although it could be argued that it is cast on someone’s mind, not body, but still.

However, the main problem within the story is that there’s hardly any plot progression and steady pacing in it, which makes sense as far as Coco is concerned, since she recently became an apprentice, thus it is logical that she struggles to learn, and her main conflict won’t resolve in the first season. But that also takes away any sense of urgency, as I doubt the anime will kill off her mother while she trains. As far as the other stuff goes, it is still mostly shrouded in mystery and didn’t exactly progress in any way.

As did the character Qiffrey, the show wants to make you doubt him by having him do stuff against the law, and thus suspect him, but he remains mysterious throughout most of the series, and is a wholesome character like most of the rest during his screentime shared with other characters, so it’s not like he is a really fleshed out character. Coco on the other hand is passionate and curious about magic and happy to learn about it from the beginning, thus you want her to succeed. And she’s also kind of a klutz, so she comes off as cute, and it’s tolerable because she’s young. Despite being mostly cheerful, the anime did show a nightmare of her where all her guilt hunts her, both about what she did to her mother and all the inconveniences she brings to people around her, so that was a neat detail.

As for the other apprentices, Agott is very hard to like because of how mean she is to Coco for no good reason. Eventually a bit of her backdrop is shown to explore why she behaves like that and why she is in a hurry to go up the witches ranks, but man it is hard to tolerate her in the beginning. Richeh is the second most relatable character for me after Coco for refusing to change her ways in order to fit into what a witch is supposed to be and do, but it is easier to forgive her for it because she is a child. She also finds a way to express herself through her magic, and defy the ways of old in a way, the recurring theme of the anime. Tetia is the character I liked the most here, because the other two hit way too close at home. I’m not one to like goody happy genki characters like her, even less if they have high pitched voices, like her, but she’s not gloomy, mean nor childishly stubborn like the previous ones, plus who doesn’t like a positive friendly character that’s also capable at what they do and with a noble goal in mind? The beginning of episode 9 was great downtime, for setting up different goals and character arcs for the different girls and colouring them way more than all the previous ones. But still, the character immersion ends at a setup for character growth because of the short duration and open ending of the season, and it’s not like the cast is the most elaborated either.

The weakest part of the anime is the audio. I have no real complaints about the voices and performances as others did, I have listened to way more annoying voices, and I think the casting and delivery are mostly fine. The sound effects did their job fine and the opening and ending sequences were alright. The background music was typical and fitting medieval fantasy stuff, but not a single scene was elevated because of the music.

The visuals had everybody mesmerized at every episode which isn’t surprising since this show ranks among the tops of the year in that regard. The character designs may be simple but the logic behind their clothes and even hairstyles added bonus points to them in the storytelling department. There are some semi chibi shoujoish comical moments, but eh, they don’t take much from the whole. The rest is top notch, from the polished artwork, the beautiful backgrounds, the expressive and detailed body language, which surpassed the Frieren season of the year in that regard, and the occasional directing tricks with darker colouring and lighting, even imitating the colorblind vision of Tartah for about half an episode, as well as cool dynamic movements for the scattered but very well presented action sequences.

At the end of the day, the issue I have with this anime is that it’s mostly a setup season for both story and characters, with not much really going on per episode for me to consider it worth recommending. Maybe it features more interesting stuff in upcoming seasons, but this one didn’t exactly leave me waiting for more nor gave me motives to watch more of it, maybe to see more of Tetia but…meh, I don’t think she’ll get as much focus as the rest of the girls anyway. But other than that, it was a mostly polished and decently presented series, but I would be lying if I said that I was engaged with it for more than two or three episodes. It needed that extra step of something actually happening for me to consider it worth watching and recommending, but other than that, it was an ok way to kill some time once per week.

I’ve been saying this on forums on occasions already but this is the fourth adaptation of the same story which makes its existence itself questionable, like what is the necessity of it? Like yeah it’s fiction and entertainment, not really necessary in itself by default, but why would you redo the same story the same way for a fourth time? If it’s a different take like cartoons and movies do with their retelling and remakes of stories I would understand it, but it’s that the case for anime, and particularly this one? Well let’s find out

The first adaptation from 1984 partially rearranged the early events of the manga, thus it made several minor antagonists be minions of the first major one, and also delayed the first major showdown because of that. As a result, that villain and fight had more buildup and anticipation, and the amount of minor enemies between the first two major ones was reduced, so that’s a good call from that show. Unfortunately it also had a lot more minor non-challenging villains and pointless filler added in it, but that early rearrange worked in its favor. To this day I think of it as the best version of the story, but only for the first season, more on that later.

The 1986 movie was honestly a rushed and incomplete job and even had two different endings across two different versions, thus it obviously affected the already not high quality of the script considerably, but it also focused a lot on Kenshiro being this savior-like figure in this desolated world, and actually made Rei having a part in taking Jagi down, so he got his deserved revenge. Plus it was the best looking and animated version of them all, especially because it had the gore that the tv series censored or toned down. Thus despite all of its shortcomings, I think it’s worth a watch.

The third version was a pentalogy of films released throughout the late 00s and honestly had the best looking artwork amongst every version, but everything else was half-baked, from special effects to music to actual animation and man those main voices what the hell. The story was condensed in a few movies with a lot of material straight up skipped, but at least was completed this time, well, as far as the first part goes at least. But for some reason Raoh got two new underlings and there’s a lot of focus on their perspectives and I never got the reason why for that, it didn’t add anything important nor interesting, thus it only made it more tedious and boring as a whole. It didn’t help that it also added extra backstories for the main characters, that either weren’t all that interesting on their own or at times contradicted the main canon dynamics. Thus I don’t think that version is worth watching as a whole.

I guess I should mention the Legend of Heroes as well but that was just a short of the third Kenshiro vs Raoh fight done in just a few minutes and with outdated CGI, thus not even worth mentioning or be counted as another adaptation.

There were more prequels and sequels set in this universe, but that exceeds the content of this entry so luckily there’s no reason to talk about those here, and for the better, honestly.

And then we get this one, which aims to be the most faithful version of all, thus automatically winning over some manga purists fans despite all of its shortcomings. The obvious first one is the visuals, where it automatically loses against all the three previous versions, but wins over the unworthy of mention short and previous infamous CGI disasters like 2016 Berserk and Souten no Ken Regenesis, despite some claiming that this series is equally bad or even worse in that regard. My guess is that muscular bodies are very hard to draw and even worse animate, thus every major manly action manga is animated in CGI to make the task easier, to which I say JUST CHANGE THE DESIGNS A BIT IF YOU NEED LIKE THE OLDER VERSIONS DID MAN WHAT THE HELL, THESE BODIES LOOK LIKE AWFUL PLASTIC IN CGI, and it doesn’t help that they also move very awkwardly, thus defeating the whole point of opting for this style and technique.

That’s not the only issue with it but the rest are either a mixed bag or minor. My guess is that the team responsible for this anime wanted to empathize that Hokuto is the most serious fighting shounen ever, and they wanted to reflect that in the visuals, opting for a dark toned colouring, consisting mostly of gray and brown, resulting in very lifeless aesthetics. I mean I guess it fits the setting right, but the series is still mostly rule of cool and has a lot of tragicomic moments due to the over the top deaths and dramatic tone, it is still not that serious to need this kind of dry style, but I guess it isn’t all that bad for it. The other one is that at times the series features moments in 2D which clash a lot with the rest but most importantly look fine as fuck, like a more refined look of the 00s pentalogy, which makes me wonder WHY DOES NOT THE SHOW JUST LOOK LIKE THAT THE WHOLE TIME INSTEAD?

Not everything is bad though, as this version features the second best gore in the franchise so far, surpassed only by the 1986 movie, but even then the gray colouring makes everything look weird and unlike the movie, this is not the most remarkable show in its year in that regard, as the second of Dorohedoro already bested it at that, not only for its brutality but also for being made in better CGI and having actual colour.

The audio department is alright, might be the best part of this. The BGM is quite the rocker, despite lacking the energy of the retro one. The opening sucks ass, it is not really pop nor really rock, it sounds very laid back and low energy and lacks a lot of balls for this type of anime. The ending song is another cover of the iconic Ai wo Torimodose opening of the first anime, more commonly known as YOU WA SHOCK for its opening line, but it seems that the song is doomed to sound worse in each passing version, unlike the Cutey Honey takes, nothing matches the original when it comes to this. The voice acting is good, a middle point between the over the topness of the original and there’s actual voice talent and good casting in here, unlike the rest of the franchise. I never liked Saori Hayami much, and it got tiresome to have her in every anime out there now, so I’m not fond of how Yuria sounds here, and I can’t listen to Bat’s fucking Deku voice, but as for others like Rei and Shin, I prefer them over any of the previous versions.

But oh well, I have praised poorly animated shows in the past because I don’t think bad visuals are enough to ruin a show, unless they were so bad that they affect everything else, and that’s not exactly the case here. The story and writing aren’t exactly worse because of the visuals, but with that said, the action is, and Hokuto no Ken is a rule of cool action series first, and theme exploration and character dynamics come second. So even though the anime is not ruined because of the animation, it is considerably less of what could have been.

I mean despite the simplistic story and structure, there’s some substance and credibility to be found in the plot and setting. There’s a post-apocalyptic wasteland where strong tyrants enslave the weak in order to monopolize the little resources, food and water there are, and the setting is the result of a nuclear war between incompetent world leaders that bombed each other, thus destroying the world as a result. That was a very strong aspect when the original came out, during the Cold War paranoia, and it’s even equally relevant today because there are more superpowers with the capability of just nuking each other, as they even baited to do if pressed, just some years ago. In such a dire scenario, the protagonist roams around the desert that the world has become and helps the innocent people from sadists and is seen as a saviour, almost Jesus-like figure because of it, which is funny if you know Toki. He protects people that help others and want to rebuild life in this destroyed world by growing plants and planting seeds that will become food throughout the years, while also killing the bad guys.

And yet that plays out mostly by having the main character exploding the minor one dimensional assholes villains that kill others for fun. I mean I guess in such a deserted wasteland it makes sense that there will be power abuse, I mean look at our world, and the lack of proper food and water will result in lots of literal retards roaming around in such an intoxicated environment or something. But then you consider the functioning weapons and vehicles they have, the amount of huge and muscular dudes there are despite not being well fed nor hydrated, that there is a lot of people that can think and speak normally, the fact that no one covers their skin and faces or anything, Bat somehow knowing enough stuff to spit exposition every two episodes, and every minor gang leader knowing about the hidden deadly martial art of the Hokuto Shinken, and yeah, the series is not that believable anymore. Let alone everything regarding Kenshiro´s abilities.

Even the politicians that appear in the show are presented in a laughably evil manner. As idiotic as our world and reality had become and everything that can be said about several world leaders like Trump, Kim, Putin, Jinping and more, none of them ever actually attempted to do anything of the sort of what’s done in this series, despite all the crossing threats, for the better of course. I mean I guess the ISDF is as evil as the minor villains in this series, if not even way more, but that still doesn’t count as the best characterization, you know.

And yeah there are more themes to talk about in Hokuto no Ken, the different ideologies of the important characters in what and how to do in that world to make it a better place based on their ideas of righteousness and justice, whether to protect people with compassion or rule them and eliminate every conflict by force, whether to adopt the fight or flight mentality and position in this setting in order to survive, how a former idealistic soldier became the same thing that he despised about his leaders, and the spiritual arc that Kenshiro goes through, that even becomes a part in his growth in power at the end of the series…the problem? Almost one of that is present in this series, or goes by quickly and presented very simply, which leads to the next issue:

The series is incomplete, which is of course to be expected in a first season of a show adapting a hundred chapters manga, but that’s where the comparison with the oldest version comes in. Say what you will about the filler-filled adaptations of old, but in this case it meant that the best part of the manga, the first one, was fully adapted in one series, whereas this one lacks all the aforementioned themes in the previous paragraphs, plus all the character dynamics and important fights yet to come.

And also, criticize the abuse of padding and cliffhangers in old fiction all you wish, I rather take that over the fast pacing of current shows where nothing has an impact. It’s a criticism I have with series nowadays, it is fine that they don’t drag on and can be finished shortly, but the transitions between scenes go rather quickly and a lot of the time I at least don’t feel much while watching them, and the episodes end in whatever scenes, not impactful ones. This series is an example, the second season of Jigokuraku is another one. Other times the pacing is so fast it affects the writing itself, as was the case with Golden Kamuy’s NOT final season and all of its skipped content. In this case, the fight between Kenshiro and Shin went by so fast and everything afterwards didn’t feel as interesting, thus leaving me with a very uninterested impression.

But I also have to be honest about Hokuto, I was never big into it, even the best parts of it have weak elements like Souther leaving Kenshiro on the floor and leaving despite Hokuto being the famous high stakes no plot armor fighting shounen, Shin and to an extent the Nanto fighters being retconned once the four Hokuto brothers are introduced and explored, and everything past the first part of the manga being far weaker. I don’t know if this anime will get to that part, as the opening finishes with Raoh, and no other adaptation after the first one ever bothered to get there, but that, and what comes in the manga after the end of the second season of the 80s anime, that’s even way worse, really lower the overall quality of the source material.

But let’s not think about that for now and hope that the next season of this adaptation covers the major fights and themes and hopefully uses more of its 2D instead of its 3D…wouldn’t that be nice? I don’t know if I’ll be there watching it, but that would increase the level and quality of this adaptation considerably.

Note: This will cover both seasons

In a dystopian cyberpunk-like setting, a fantasy premise unravels through an amnesiac man with an alligator head instead of his own, hunting down magic users to find out who the hell did that to him, and inserted another man on the back of his mouth. Even though the show is mostly wacky violent action, there’s an underlying (but far more evident in the second season) theme of class difference, seeing that the sorcerers, or people that can use magic, live above the slums and transport there to use their powers on the common citizens for reasons, and they are also fairly wealthy, if not directly live in mansions. The other group in turn do all sorts of criminal and common jobs just to survive the day.

At the centre of it all there’s the amnesiac protagonist who despite that, manages to have a strong presence and personality, a rare thing for protagonists with his condition, I would say. But because of that, it also means that he has no initial backdrop, and finding the tiniest thing about it and of him takes time, as it’s shrouded in mystery. His female partner in crime also has a strong presence and personality, as a semi dynamic female lead, that actually has a secret power and a backdrop, that chooses to hide herself. Eventually it is revealed that the latter has had some implication on the situation of the former, but by that point their bond was so solid, that the development and catharsis of the main character was prioritizing that over finding out more about his past.

The antagonistic group is hunting down some crossed eyes gang for backstory reasons and a certain power, which the woman MC happens to have, so they’ll hunt them down. Unlike those two, these aren’t shrouded in mystery, and their relationship and backstories are most of what carries the show, instead of the plot itself. I’m not one to care about couple ships or anything related, but these two pairs have enough charming chemistry and cool fight choreography together, that you can probably find yourself rooting for them, both as items and as a group of characters. Pretty rare for a heavy brutal action show to make you want to see both sides win, even when one side’s objective is to hunt down the other.

Notice how I said antagonists but not villains? Well, despite being criminals, they are basically just doing their job, and even the protagonistic pair themselves go around and kill a lot of people in brutal ways. There is no clear good or bad side in the first season, as morality basically does not exist in such a rotten setting. The second season throws more clear bad guys to the mix though, and I can tell you from what I looked up from the source that there will be more down the line, so there are actual villains in this title, we’re not just not quite there yet.

As I said, the characters are what carry the show instead of the plot itself, which because of the objectives, is shrouded in mystery, and since the needed and wanted information is revealed slowly, and not actually close to the main explanation, it is also partially going in circles. The second season is better in this regard, as there is a more clear plot progression and revelation of the identity of the main character, how he came to be, what happened to him, which characters and powers were involved in it, and even the antagonistic group of the first season gets to face off against the group they were searching for in the previous entry. It also explores the backdrop of Nikaido in more detail, and sets up the importance of her power and a possible character arc for her to develop in future entries.

Despite that, the actual writing doesn’t make the tiniest bit of sense, partly because of the wacky nature of the show itself, and partly because of its setting, where magic lacks any sort of rules, thus anything can happen at any moment and for whatever reason, and a lot of weird creatures can and do pop up, resulting in an eventual complete lack of questioning but why does something happen?, but also a lot of questioning of but why does something not happen, you know?

This randomness of the show is what lots of people found appealing about it from the beginning, but also what can make its first season feel inconsistent in quality and slow in progression. The second season fares much better in that regard, but it still contains its fair share of what feels like random side content about side characters.

Another flaw is that the main characters from both sides have strong plot armor, whereas for being close to immortal or for having broken healing powers, thus you feel the lack of stakes for the whole first season. Eventually there seems to be a striking and surprising permanent effect in the second season, but that carries another issue, which is, for plot reasons, two of the main characters being taken away from the story, and the rest losing screentime to the more uninteresting side characters. Thus, although the second season is more focused and starts and fares stronger and better than the first, it also loses steam near its end, and it finishes with a big cliffhanger and unnecessarily cruel finale to one of the most wholesome characters from the show, which I guess is fine for reminding the audience of the bleakness of the setting, despite the wacky tone of the series.

The visuals are fine to good, the CGI is not the best but looks better in the second season, and although it is not as memorable and raw looking as the minimalistic artstyle from the manga, it still manages to convey the wackyness and dirtiness and bleakness of the setting just fine, the backgrounds in particular look pretty neat thanks to it. The actual animation is another thing that got better in the second season, more fluid and with better fight choreography. Also, the second season ramped up the brutal content to the point of outclassing the second season of Jigokuraku and the Hokuto no Ken third remake in gore in the same year, which is quite the feat. What sucked in the newest entry was the abuse of swipes for the transitions, which made me feel like I was watching Star Wars every ten minutes.

The music is just absolutely not of my taste at all, but it is also frenetic and fits the nature of the show just fine, thus I can appreciate what it does for the show, and the opening and ending sequences that go along with some of its tracks. The voice acting isn’t quite great obviously, but everyone fits their role and did their job just fine. Sound effects were good I guess, whatever.

Due to its craziness and weirdness, Dorohedoro manages to be a somewhat memorable show down the line, but due to its constant randomness, it is also true that some of its content will just inevitably escape your mind, even more because of how long it took (so far) for a continuation to come out. I don’t think it is top material, I did not enjoy it myself, and what I spoiled myself from the wiki and manga ending does not make me want to keep watching it further, but at least its first two seasons are fine worthy watches, at least for a one time experience, even though some rewatch might help in noticing or reminding details of how the mystery is slowly unraveling.

Darwin Jihen was simultaneously the most interesting anime to follow from its season but also one of the silliest for me, which is why I was somewhat engaged with it at the beginning, but lost interest and got bored by it as it went on.

The premise is definitely weird but for the same reason interesting, as it could potentially elevate to topics regarding science, ethics and philosophy. Instead, it chooses to focus on sociopolitical aspects and perspectives, mainly vegans versus, well, non-vegans, but also people advocating for animal rights. It could perfectly work with those themes as well, and on paper the discussions provide some food for thought and are interesting to follow.

On execution, however, the theme exploration falls flat on its face because of how extreme and over the top it is. The anime pretends to be multi-layered and neutral by presenting different perspectives, and to its credit it does have some neutral people, vegans or not, but it mostly relies on crazy characters and monologues to present its points. The bullies at school playing the victim and blaming Charlie in front of everyone, that one kid that became a murderer, the antagonists who are either cold as robots or complete madmen, especially the main villain who seems more insane the more he talks. Besides Charlie’s foster parents who are normal vegans, and the congresswoman who wants to use him for the sake of animal rights, everyone else makes it hard to take the themes seriously with how crazy they talk, sound, and look.

Theme exploration aside, the writing can also be very questionable, mainly due to the either crazy or illogical reactions of the characters, or lack thereof, to everything that happens, and by that I don’t mean just the crazy facial expressions and yelling that I already mentioned. Charlie is a sentient non-human living organism, it’s crazy to think that there wouldn’t be laws regarding his existence, that he wouldn’t have any lawyers, that he wouldn’t have the mass media all over him, that his house would be left alone by the police after the attacks it suffered, that his parents would be so dumb to keep living in there. More instances can be seen in the backstory, such as kids being left completely alone and unattended by a pool, where a tragedy could happen, and in fact, it almost did.

Part of the premise is hard to accept in general because what do you mean terrorists for veganism and animal rights? Did something remotely similar ever happen and I’m just clueless about it? It feels like a bad attempt at criticizing progressive ideas and activism. And also, at some point the villain is searched internationally, how can he go around so freely and where does he get his resources from?

Without spoiling, the final twist was somewhat anticipated if one considers a certain information from the early episodes, but kind of makes no sense when you think about it. Why did the villain organization search so crazily for Charlie then? And the character himself seems so petty.

Want to talk about characterization? Everybody that is an antagonist or against Charlie is or seems to be out of their minds, and most people from the side of Charlie are passive to everything. The protagonist himself, although he is more proactive, sees everything from a logical standpoint to the point he seems to be unaffected by anything, and even when is affected by something, he remains almost expressionless in both his face and voice. He does show emotion sometimes but it’s mostly thanks to the directing and sound design than the character himself. In action scenes he is always at advantage, since he combines intellect and strength of both human and chimpanzees, and he even powers up near the end of the season.

Since there wouldn’t be a point in using Charlie for explanations and discussing perspectives, the series smartly introduces Lucy, a seemingly normal girl that enters his and his parents' lives, and is occasionally attacked by the villains. She is there to help, question everything, be in need of rescue so Charlie has an excuse to go into action and look badass, and eventually become the love interest. Oh yes, the anime starts to become that kind of story, and you may already know how I feel about interspecies relationships. The issue with this girl is, why the hell would the rest tell her everything, in the case of the support cast, or leave her be, in the case of the antagonists? To have someone in series to excuse the exposition, that’s why.

The only character that somewhat changes is a police officer that’s initially an antagonist and later becomes an ally, but even then he only changes perspectives, no personality.

Visually the anime is fine to good. The artwork and backgrounds are mostly solid, though sometimes they look plain. The lighting and shading are well done and the anime knows how to display scenes in darker sceneries and times of the day. The problem is that sometimes it uses questionable CGI for smokes and vehicles. The character designs are kind of unique, they combine a semi realistic look and kind of crazy expressions, with vibes that make them seem like they came out of Banana Fish. And also, well, in what other series will you see a human/chimpanzee hybrid? The actual animation is a bit whatever a lot of the time but fine in the action scenes, although those don’t really last long, as the protagonist is clearly stronger than everyone else. Also, shot out to Ilutv for appearing in here.

As for the audio, the sound effects are good, the voice acting is ok, even though the villains sound crazy and Charlie sounds monotonous, and the music is fine, it has that needed thrilling vibe, but it can get a bit repetitive and used in a bit of unfitting ways for the scenes that are playing. The opening and ending are strangely upbeat in a way that doesn't fit the anime. The former is a funky jpop song, and the latter is a slow, soft spoken almost to the point of being whispered pop song with some parts of rap in I don’t know what language in it. Although the anime has some, in my opinion, bad light moments, it’s mostly thriller or sociopolitical drama, what are these songs doing in it? Their lyrics are also romantic and that creeps me out, should have seen the romantic element coming I guess.

Like I said in the beginning, the anime is interesting in themes and ideas, but the execution and presentation of them leave a lot to be desired, and the characterization doesn’t help the series either. One to check out for its weird premise and ambitious topics or to see what madness is going to happen next, but not much else. There’s nothing quite like it, that’s for sure, but even then I would pick up other series about terrorism, and perhaps Parasyte for part of its themes instead.

Note: There are some minor spoilers in here

This anime fails in a kind of peculiar way. It’s less that it does things badly, and more like it doesn’t do what it sets itself up to do. In a way, it’s like K-on! promising to be about music, yet playing out like a cute girls doing cute things show where they mostly just casually have fun and eat cookies and drink tea. This series starts with the premise of a young witch trying to prevent her incoming death in a year, yet most of the show is not about that.

On an emotional and thematic level, this premise is used for the protagonist to go out and help people so she can gather those tears of joy she seeks to create that seed of life she needs to prevent her death. So she does good deeds for those around her and seemingly takes a proactive role in both not giving up and fighting for prolonging her life with a positive attitude, and learning the importance of emotions and value them for that they mean for the people that feels them, and not see them as a commodity and just a mean to live longer. This way she comes to realize how important every person is and how much she loves her town and its inhabitants. So if you just stick to those messages and feelings and the wholesome episodic stories, you might be pleased, have a good time, and consider this a good show.

However, if you look at it from a critical standpoint, the series is really messy, starting off with the premise being mostly abandoned throughout the show. There are several things happening in the setting, most of which with the protagonist taking some part in them, that go beyond what she needs to do. That makes the world feel expanded and not just centered around her on one hand, but also diminishes her goal, makes it seem unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and since both the anime and main character focus more on those other plot points, the supposed main one gets completely sidelined. The main girl collects two to four tears in the early episodes, gets around forty somewhere in the middle, and by the end of the season she has collected a lot of them off screen.

It’s not that it’s not understandable that some content would be skipped, there was no way that we would see the one thousand tears being collected, in the same way that not every fragment of the Shikon no Tama was collected on screen in InuYasha, that would probably require a huge amount of episodes that’s no longer the norm in the medium, and would likely get repetitive and boring fast. But over there that was still the main plot, while here it gets almost completely abandoned.

We see the protagonist stuck in the same city with the same people, and promising things to them for the future, thus adding an extra motivation to keep on living, yet mostly not collecting the tears, then when she occasionally goes to other places in the setting, she takes part of events that are completely unrelated to her goal. The finale sets her up for a mission around the world, thus promising to expand the setting even more in a possible sequel, yet that also means more stuff for her to do other than collecting those tears.

This is as easily fixable as simply not setting up a premise that you will otherwise not focus on, why not just simply have the protagonist help people and go on missions as part of her training as a witch? Ok that way there wouldn’t be a sense of urgency, but it’s not like there’s any real sense of urgency to begin with. The main character doesn’t take her goal very seriously, doesn’t seem that preoccupied for most of the episodes, and the tone in general is initially very light, with the characters joking a lot, and the protagonist quickly responding the most absurd and often perverted things, hitting on about a third of the female roster of the show. To make a comparison, Mahoutsukai no Yome also focus a lot on the stories of the side characters, thus exploring the setting and its magical creatures more, but that always is tied with the training of its main character, which is supposed to be the plot, while over here that’s not the case.

Ok so we established that the main plot is not the focus of the show, does the series make it up with quality side stories then? Well, if you just accept what happens and get emotional with them, then you’d be pleased. If on the other hand you think about how quickly the episodic stories and characters come on go and how sometimes we know nothing about them besides their specific drama for that one episode, and thus we end up not caring about them much, then it’s hard to call them quality material.

The writing and characterization in general is very questionable. For example, there’s this kuudere witch with a tragic past that hates magic, yet dominates spectacle magic that makes people happy, and goes from a complete stranger to one of the best friends of the protagonist and feeling sad for her incoming death, while also coming to appreciate magic for her newfound bound, in a single episode. Then the next episode the two girls encourage an interspecies relationship, something that I will always be against.

Then we get another one where the protagonist has collected a lot more tears out of screen after apparently finding out which targets and situations are more likely to produce more tears, and she is forbidden to use magic to learn the importance of each of them and basically not use people for her benefit I guess. I get the message and the supposed growth of the protagonist but she always seemed to care about each person she helps, so this change seems weird, and also understandable. She has to collect a thousand of those in a year or she will die, she’s gonna do whatever she can, and it’s not like she’s scamming people, she’s still helping them and doing good things, so I don’t really get the issue here.

Around the middle of the show is when the premise is practically abandoned to explore more of the setting, so there are episodes where the protagonist goes to some other places to meet another one of the Seven Sages, basically the seven greatest witches or mages in this world, all of which the main character is either their student, future assistant, friend or whatever, very fighting shounen like in a way.

Then the show gets more serious near its end, but the writing is still questionable. There’s an episode about a family cursed by a demon, so the protagonist wants to help even when her mistress/mother figure said not to get involved with, which of course the main character disobeys and ends up being saved by the same teacher at the last moment, who gets hurt in the way, very fighting shounen like in a way.

Then in the next episode, the protagonist is conveniently accompanied by one of the Seven Sages as a tree goes wild due to accumulated magic. Somehow that spawns a spirit that only the main character sees, but it is hinted that is not a spirit, thus its identity is never resolved, and conveniently the main girl gets a huge sudden power up that elevates her power a lot from how little capable she was in the beginning, and resolves everything with an emotional spell that somehow never occurred to anyone before.

Then the next two episodes they explore that concept to help some girl, and I’ve gotta say that it’s quite corny and follows fighting shounen logic, on top of being unbelievable that no one ever tried what the protagonist does, that emotions empower spells. But oh well magic is no science and it’s not the first time it happened in magic centered settings and fiction. They combine formulas with sudden emotional magic outbursts and solve the problem.

Good thing that there are plenty of top mages around because then a huge wave comes threatening to wipe away the whole town, only thing they do nothing and it’s the protagonist with her emotion spell that saves the day.

And in the last episode the shows resolve the little mystery bait it builds around a gloomy looking witch and her connection with the protagonist, where they give them a Uchiha like backdrop and conflicted relationship in a hurry. Very interesting lore wise but the dynamic kind of makes no sense and the revelation is done in a hurry to move on to the finale of the season and the setup for what’s to come.

It’s not like everything in the writing is bad though. Despite seemingly being an episodic anime, many early presented plot points and stories are not forgotten. The emotion spell is based on something that happens in the first episode, the tree that goes crazy was already anticipated in the second, the final witch appears throughout the whole series, the climate problem from the third episode gets mentioned again in the middle of the series, and some more. And plenty of side characters reappear throughout the series as well, they don’t do anything but at least are not one off episodic people.

Also, to help the kid from the tenth episode, they use the emotions of the sage with the strongest connection to her, and not the ones from the protagonist, which wouldn’t make sense. Then the spell of the next episode only worked because of residual magic left in the town by a very powerful witch. The war lore from the final episode is very interesting in itself, expands the setting and adds a sort of sociopolitical aspect to the anime, too bad that it’s told in a hurry, like many things happen in the series.

The protagonist gets a backdrop, an excuse for her unique ability and design of those eyes of hers, and learns a few things along the way. I can’t really say she changes much though, and every other character progression besides hers feels rushed and unconvincing. Besides that, most characters remain one note, there’s not much to write about them.

The presentation is rather weak. There are instances of good artwork and pretty backgrounds, but most of the time the visuals are basic, simple, and sort of outdated. The few action scenes are short and not that well animated, the special effects look a decade old, no design besides the protagonist’s is very interesting, but at least there’s some variety here and there, the backgrounds are mostly plain looking. The voice acting and the sound effects are fine, the music is typical orchestral strings, not memorable but does its job. The opening is a cute upbeat jpop song sung by Maaya Sakamoto and the ending is a ballad so somber it makes me think it was done based on the premise alone and not the actual mood of the series, but it’s the best thing in the anime for me.

In conclusion, if you don’t mind series not using their premises and don’t care much about convenient writing, this is a rather passable episodic show with some pretended emotional moments and sweet messages, with some interesting expansions of the setting, lore and some character growth scattered here and there. Writing, plot progression, characterization and presentation are otherwise very weak, which combined with the rather short and not very interesting side stories, make me drop its potential passable score a little.