Reviews by Fernando Leonel Alba

The best thing about Usagi Drop is that everyone knows about it and its finale thus you don’t necessarily have to hold back in what you say when you talk or write about it, but I’ll try to do it anyways while I cover both versions.

There are a good bunch of manga and anime about someone taking care of a child all by themselves but Usagi Drop has the unorthodox approach and quick progression of having a thirty years old man adopting his illegitimate 6 years old aunt, the kind of stuff that makes you raise an eyebrow and check the source out of curiosity alone.

And then you get a sweet and wholesome slice of life and coming of age feel good type of series centered in how the life of the adult, Daikichi, changes completely now that he takes care of a child, from small changes like doing a little more excercise or changing a bit his diet, to more drastic changes in his daily rutine and even changing his job in order to spend more time with Rin and take care of her properly. There’s also a good focus on his own insecurities (as well as others’) as a father figure and how he deals with stuff while he learns from other parents he interact with, as well as he actually tries to communicate with Rin’s mother.

As for Rin, she begins as a melancholic child, sad, silent and distant child because of her backdrop but learns to open up to others rather quickly, this results in a character that is both adorable due to her fondness of bunnies (which remind me of Yuzuyu from Aishiteruze Baby) and other kids things she does, yet at the same time is quite mature for her age, making her a very likeable character, even if her characterization definitely does not represent a typical girl of her age.

There are more characters of course but none of them gets as much focus as the main pair, they all have some backdrop stories, their own way to deal with parenting, and all are lively and likeable in their own way, but their role in the show is to further enrich the dynamics between Daikichi and Rin more than providing something on their own, and their backstories are mostly told instead of shown.

The quick and rather unorthodox setup and all the stuff that happens, along with the character dynamics are what make the show worth the watch instead of the actual plot, which is basic and simplistic and has some issues which I want to adress here. First, the message is that, despite the fact that now your life has changed completely and that now you have to make a lot of sacrifices, all of that is worth it if you manage to make your child happy, which in turn will result in your own happiness. That is sweet and all, no problem with that, but why does the series makes it sound that Daikichi’s life outside of his role as a father is now…kinda…completely over?

This is an issue I have with anime and teenagers’ mentality, you’re not old at your thirties and your life does not necessarily has to be completely dedicated to your kid, you can still have stuff and time for you alone…I mean Daikichi and Yukari are single so it makes sense for them to be completely dedicated to their children but what about the other parents that are married? They sound as if their lives are completely the same as Daikichi’s when it should not.

And seriously, does not the author and any teenager knows about people in their thirties that still go outside sometimes, begin a new family, or a new career? They would be shocked to see what thirty, forty and even fifty years old people are like in my country. This issue only grows stronger in the second half, after the time skip, but I want to leave that for later.

And I have to point out this about Mariko’s story, she is in a relationship she doesn’t want to, and in a family she doesn’t feel part of, for her daughter’s happiness, yet I don’t think a child can possibly grow happy in a family like that. This portrayal in particular wouldn’t be accepted as proper theme exploration in our times, but I guess it’s a japanese story after all, and was made a while ago, and there are women like that, so I’ll have to accept it, but I wanted to point this out. She still left her husband in the second half out of screen so all of this was pointless though.

Another thing with the setup is that, despite Daikichi feeling and saying that his life has changed completely, we don’t actually see any of that previous life he talks about before we see him as a father figure for Rin, as with most characters’ backdrops, it’s implied or told instead of actually shown thus it’s hard to actually understand this supposed big change.

And finally there’s the fact that, as a wholesome and sweet feel good type of everyday life story, Usagi Drop has no conflict to make the plot and subject more compelling, Daikichi has it a little easier than the rest because of Rin’s rather mature side, he gets all the paperwork needed for the adopting and the inscription on kindergartens and schools all too easily and stuff, there aren’t any different takes on parenting and conflicted characters about parenting (as it was the case in Aishiteruze Baby) nor any sense of urgency (as it was the case in The Pursuit of Happyness). This doesn’t mean that Usagi Drop is a bad show nor does it handles its theme poorly, is just that it does a good job for its genre, but does not takes an extra step to be even better.

Compared to the anime, the manga has obviously slower progression, some differences in how some things play out and I think Daikichi has more or at least longer internal monologues, thus I found it to be slightly better than the anime up until chapter 24.

As far as the production in the anime adaptation goes, it did a wonderful job in traslating the story to its medium, the manga has a serviceable art style that becomes better as it goes on, but the artwork remains simplistic all the way to the end, and the backgrounds are often absent. The anime has basic and simplistic designs with facial repetition among its characters, but the artwork is far better, the backgrounds are breathtakingly beatiful, and it of course benefits from its lively body language, fluent motions and pastel special effects that are used at times. It’s so rare to get a slice of lice series that wasn’t made by Kyoto Animation that pays so much attention to detail and artsy elements in its visual presentation.

As for the sound, both the opening and ending are made to sound as innocent and pure as possible, and the background music is made up almost completely of sweet piano pieces. Nothing really memorable but all of it fits the tone and feels the series was going for pretty well. The sound effects are appropiate and the voice acting is spot on, every character has a voice that fits them well, there aren’t that many famous voice actors but those that appear in the series does not sound like their typical roles thus they managed to stand out amongst the rest of their very similar roles (Kana Ueda), everyone did a good job, even the children who were voiced by actual kids.

Thus despite its actual quality being way too exaggerated, Usagi Drop is a fairly well made feel good slice of life series with an interesting premise and an acceptable portrayal of its theme within its genre, as well as loveable characters with good interactions between them, and a much better than needed presentation. And for once, leaving it incomplete worked in its favor because the second half of the manga dropped the ball so hard it made a hole in the ground, good job IG.

After chapter 24, the series makes the common mistake of relying on a big time skip which in this case skips the process of how parenting changes along the years and makes the characters change a lot out of screen, both in body and personality.

What follows after that is a boring and uninteresting high school drama romance that is not about the initial subject anymore, nothing feels important, the character dyamics changed a lot out of screen as well, the biggest conflicts now are that Kouki used to have piercings and red hair, and that Rin and Reina want boyfriends now, who cares about all of this?

I don’t want to sound like a hypocrite, since Aishiteruze Baby also has high school drama and romance, but over there it wasn’t presented after a big time skip, it served to develop the characters and their relationships, and the author more or less tied it up with the main subject, over here it feels like the author didn’t know what to tell anymore.

It’s not that I’m against the idea, I’m against having elements that have nothing to do with the initial hook, on top of being far less interesting. Showing parenting now with teenagers instead of kids could be interesting as well, but that’s not the focus here. And now the message is lost even further, now the kids are not kids anymore yet the adults are still reluctant to find happiness on their own, why? It doesn’t make sense anymore. Showing Daikichi and Yukari having feelings for each other, not getting together because of their kids and then having her marry a random guy that is not shown even once was pure bullshit. I already complained about this “you’re now too old to live your life” mindset and this second half of the manga only made it way worse.

But despite its lows, the adaptation could have been continued a bit further, because there’s a whole volume about Rin wanting to meet her mother, which makes perfect sense, and the manga shows how she finds her name, all the procedures she goes through, little discussions with Daikichi because of that, good stuff. The only minor complain I have is that the reunion itself was very lighthearted, but I’m willing to say that it was still ok because of Rin’s mature attitude, fitting with her personality, and because of her realization that she does not feel that woman as her mother and that Daikichi and the rest are her actual family.

I’m in favor of this type of message, although the people that gave birth to you is undeniably related to you, that doesn’t mean that they are your actual family, especially if they abandoned you, family is the people you grew out with and that cared about you, blood related or not. Thus I think that the anime could have shown the time skip and avoid the silly high school drama to adapt the 7th volume up until chapter 43 and this message, which would have make a perfect ending for this story.

But then the author pissed all over her own story, themes, message and characters from chapter 44 onwards by changing the series completely to a disgusting romance with incestuous vibes, even using the tropes of not blood related relatives, parents that aren’t biological parents, and betraying her own messages along the whole series up until even the exact previous volume. This was a story about parenting and all of a sudden turned into a disgusting telenovela with all of its stupid tropes and plot twists, with rushed revelations to make it even worse. On top of that, after the manga was finished, the author decided to release an extra volume showing stories that take place between those ten years, that only added more salt to the wound. Some of them were shown in the anime specials, but they mean nothing on their own, they are short side stories that don’t add much. In the manga, they only aided in reminding you of what could have been shown instead of the stupid highschool drama, and how good the series was before it was ruined, they show some characters backdrops along those ten years but what does it matter at that point? That should have been shown earlier to make people care, not once the story was over.

And that’s how a perfectly serviceable heartwarming story was ruined because of its author just to be original (although it wasn’t) and to subvert expectations, betraying its premise, setup, character dynamics, development and themes along the way. Shotout to Production I.G for realizing this bullshit and deciding to stop the adaptation midway, now go consume Aishiteruze Baby instead…and Koi Kaze if you happen to want more of that other stuff.

Anime 6/10
Specials 5/10
Manga 4/10

I wanted to watch this title since I watched Usagi Drop in 2017 because it was recommended as something similar in any database you go to but I didn’t because I was watching a lot more things. Anyways I finally watched it last year and read the manga two weeks ago and I’m very pleased with what I found in them. This review will cover both versions.

The first thing that needs to be clarify about Aishiteruze Baby is that, despite being compared with Usagi Drop, it doesn’t have a father-daughter relationship and instead features a high school playboy that all of a sudden has to take care of his five years old cousin, which is more interesting because it can lead to much more character development.

And it does, throughout the show, Kippei gradually turns from a playboy that does nothing but fooling around with different girls and is a complete disaster at school to a caring man taking care of Yuzu the best he can, learning things about her and parenting along the way. His change is so drastic it even surprises the rest of the cast. It will perhaps feel sudden for some people but I didn’t have any issues with it.

As for Yuzu, what can I say? She’s a five years old girl that was basically abandoned and still tries to stay positive while she learns lot of things in her everyday life. Unlike Rin in Usagi Drop, Yuzu is not mature for her age in the least, she views everything with a simplistic mindset and often misunderstands what happens and people’s intentions. At the same time, she’s an emotional mess since she was abandoned and is thus very emotionally dependent of others, which is something she more or less learns to handle along the way.

The show also spends some time in building an emotional connection with some of her belongings that were left behind by her mother and how she eventually grows out of them while also showing how she slowly starts to forget her mother as a consequence of being apart from her.

At the same time, she has some comical quirks as expected from a girl her age, such as imitating the way bunnies jump from time to time. In other words, her characterization is very solid, she’s both adorable and somewhat tragic, grows along the way and really feels like a five years old kid, except for the annoying moments that every kid has at that age, if something can be criticized about her characterization, that would be it, but I don’t think anyone watching the anime or reading the manga would complain about that.

The show does not stop at the wholesome semi big brother-young sister relationship between these two and features a bunch of secondary characters to deal with the subject matter even further. On one hand, this means a lot of secondary characters are also fleshed out, which is a plus but on the other hand it also means that almost every single person but the main family in the show has family issues. It is necessary for theme exploration but man does it feel kinda convenient that lots of characters go through similar problems at the same time. I still give it a pass because is basically the series telling you that in reality there’s no perfect parenting, but it can become a little repetitive for some.

I can at least appreciate the different takes of the subject through them. There’s of course Kippei who has good intentions but messes up most of the time because of his inexperience, there’s Yuzu’s mother who, despite being an adult, is completely unprepared for such role, there’s Kota and his abusive mother, who thankfully is portrayed as a conflicted person and not a one dimensional evil mother as it was the case with a certain once famous show about time travel that deals with a similar theme in a way that feels ridiculous and impossible to take seriously.

And then there’s Miki, by far the lowest point in this series. Her introduction is very sudden, her interactions with the other characters is not bad but her backstory is completely ridiculous and edgy. It may have made a little bit of sense almost twenty years ago when the manga was being published and the anime aired but even then, it was very over the top and by now is the type of stuff that makes you drop a show and label it as ridiculous. I would put it almost at the same level as the stupid backtory of a character that I’ll just name as chocolate girl from that certain other show. Thankfully she disappears after a few episodes.

Then there’s Kokoro’s case, by far the most similar to Yuzu’s and the one that strikes the most as kinda convenient (for having two people knowing each other and both of them with similar cases) but that is what makes them undestand each other in the end and thus it works well in terms of interactions between them. The best thing about her is that, despite having her father with her, he’s absent, thus showing that even when a parent is there, it doesn’t necessarily means that they are doing a good job.

With all that said, I have to admit that the series explores the theme on a basic level and the resolutions are always simplistic, not bad nor superficial but definitely not in a way that feels mindblowing, or revealing/eye opening, is a wholesome slice of life series first and a human drama after. There are some things that come off as a bit melodramatic and are hard to take seriously (what happens with Yuzu’s crayons at the beginning of the show) and you have to suspend your disbelief a little with this show, but outside of Miki’s backstory, it never reaches a point where it breaks your immersion.

Kokoro also brings the romantic element of the show as she’s the one that, along with Yuzu, turns Kippei from the mess he begins as to the young family man he is at the end. The relationship between them develops along the series and although, yes, is highschool teenage drama, is never exaggerated nor melodramatic. I kinda did a spoiler there, didn’t I? Well, in my defense, the show spoils it in both the opening and the ending so it doesn’t make much difference, and the outcome is kinda obvious anyway.

Then there are some more secondary characters and they also have a bit of their own storylines but are not related to the main theme, they are there to flesh out the secondary cast and flavor the series but not much would be lost if all of that wasn’t shown.

In terms of presentation, the manga has a very typical and simplistic shojoish art style that improves a little by the end and the anime makes a good job in translating it faithfully to its medium but its quality is very by the numbers, even for 2004 standards it was very average leaning a little to a below average level for its time and by now it looks like shit. The character designs are generic, quality drops are ever-present, the backgrounds are not finished at times (quite often, I must say), motions are as simplistic as they can and there are rarely any effects that stand out.

When it comes to the sound, the music works well for the type of show and helps to make some scenes a bit memorable but is not really amazing and the sound effects are…there. As for the voice acting, is to the most part just plain awful. Whether they were newbies or veterans, none of them did a convincing job. Yuzu’s voice actress can be forgiven because she was literally a kid but not excused, a decade later Rin from Usagi Drop, Naru from Barakamon and Tsumugi from Amaama to Inazuma were all performed by girls in her tens as well and they all did a much much better job.

And even leaving Yuzu aside, the rest have no excuse, especially Kokoro’s voice actress who sounds bored and emotionally absent all the time, making her emotional scenes lacking a little bit every time.

And now for a short comparison between the two versions:

-Since the chapters of the manga are about 30 pages long each, the conflicts in the beginning are resolved in one of two chapters at first, so the anime stretched them out a little to last between two or three episodes, aside from obviously making the scenes to last longer than one or two panels. It makes them feel more important without slowing the pace much. Miki’s backstory was more tolerable in the manga though.

-It gives some secondary characters a little more spotlight, it was unneeded but welcomed. At the same time however, the manga has some other secondary stories that were mostly or completely absent in the adaptation (mainly the sister’s) but even then, the manga doesn’t focus on them that much, sadly.

-It makes Yuzu’s mother less unlikable by skipping something but at the same time it never shows the resolution of her “character arc” (which happens mostly out of screen anyways).

-It changes a whole arc from the manga by skipping it almost entirely, on one hand, the arc was a bit melodramatic so keeping it out of the picture was perhaps for the best, but it was also a major point in the development of Kippei and Kokoro’s relationship that even has a big impact in the next arc and the ending, and it doesn’t happen in the anime.

-Both versions have different endings and neither of them are completely satisfactory, but not bad either. The anime ends by adapting a litte from a certain volume and mixing it with the final volume but is to the most part an open and ambiguous finale that feels like a “and they were happy” one. The manga has a more complete resolution but it came out almost out of nowhere, making it seems like the manga was doing poorly before rushing the resolution as quickly as it could before making a time skip that doesn’t show most of the characters.

Unexpectedly, three kinda similar show came out last year and none of them are on par with this one or Usagi Drop. Somali to Mori no Kamisama has a feel of adventure and tragedy but its theme of racism is very superficial and is incomplete, Kakushigoto fools around for most of its duration before trolling you with a non tragedy ending and Taisou Zamurai didn’t have that much father-daughter relationship and was filled with random stuff. Compared to Amaama to Inazuma, this series does not reduce parenting to just feeding a child and that’s it. Heck, Aishiteruze Baby is even better than Usagi Drop in my eyes for doing a lot more with its theme, fleshing out more characters and for not going the same disgusting path during its second half in the manga. And I have watched Kurenai recently and the less I talk about that mess of concepts and themes the better.

Thus, despite looking and sounding like shit and not being anywhere close to amazing, it manages to be the most meaningful and best show of its kind that I watched up until now (I still have some similar shows to watch, such as Akachan to Boku) despite being the oldest, for being longer and more focused, and for fleshing out its characters far more than the rest.

2020 was a really weird year in every aspect, even when it comes to short length anime. A few years back, almost nobody cared about them and thus it was normal for them to get a decent rating because only a few people checked them out and thus they were given these shows positive ratings.

But in the last year, almost all, if not all short length shows received very poor ratings, meaning not even these people were giving them good ratings. Natsunagu! is the only one I watched besides Heya Camp so I’m here to comment about this peculiar case. What is strange about the poor reception this show received is that is about a sad waifu, thus it would normally get a good reception.

Compared to most other short length anime that I watched (Fastening Days, Sengoku Choujuu Giga, Pupipo!, Ani*Kuri15, Bikini Warriors, Digital Juice, the first IGPX, Inferno Cop, fucking Teekyuu, fucking Urda, fucking Pupa, fucking Abunai Sisters, fucking Master of Torque, fucking Netsuzou Trap, and lots of specials or extras of normal lenght series, usually with chibi art styles) it has a sort of plot with continuity, somewhat likeable characters and is even decently animated, so what happened?

The set up of the story is pretty stupid, no one would buy that the protagonist and her online friend would change their addresses but not their cell phone numbers and she even talks to the screen to tell the viewer that she had not other option, why? It’s not explained, it happened that way only to begin the plot, nothing else. And she didn’t even got her actual address, just a drawing, to make all of this even sillier.

Personally, I also have problems to buy all of this because I am from a generation where you would normally make friends from face to face, in the real life, and even then I’m not the type of person that considers every person they talk to as their friends, but I recognize that younger people that grew up in the digital era and make lots of online friends they talk to every day could relate to the conflict and buy the premise, unlike me.

Anyways, after the first episode the protagonist travels to a somewhat faraway place that suffered an earthquake in order to meet her online friend she met on a videogame without even knowing what she looks like and along the way she meets other people and ask them if they know about her and where does she lives. She temporarily lives with them, gets to know them, becomes their friend and gathers information regarding her friend along with them until she finds her.

Leaving aside the crush a young girl has on an older policeman (which I find weird), the people from that prefecture remind me of the cast of Flying Witch, all of them are kind and friendly, most of the time they are happy, very nice people to tag along and the main girl has cute interactions with them, nothing more, nothing less.

Eventually all that travel is rendered meaningless because the show hints a tragic ending that doesn’t happen, and the two final episodes change the tone from a relaxing and happy one to a melodramatic one with the two girls screaming at each other before getting the most simple and underwhelming resolution there is. What happened to the girl wasn’t that big of a deal and even if you can say that it was, all it took was for the protagonist to cheer her up for two episodes (about 8 to 10 minutes) and tell her that everything is gonna be fine, and that’s it, that’s how everything was resolved. Lame, what a waste of not so much time.
Visually, the show looks and sounds cute and relaxing, as it should, and there’s really nothing else to say about these aspects, the voice acting is fine, the soundtrack, whenever present, and especially the ending song, warms you up, the backgrounds are beautifully drawn, everything here is ok.

Now, the main issue of the show is not the crappy resolution, but rather that it failed at what it was trying to achieve, it’s a promotional series done by the Kumamoto prefecture itself, which is why is visually pretty and all of the characters are very likeable, but the thing is, you don’t get to see much of the places themselves, because the main conflict wasn’t allowing that, thus it fails to capture the attention of potential turists.

And I even find it to be kind of insulting to the victims of the actual earthquake that happened in the real place, imagine everything they might have lost, and this series chooses to represent them with a girl that didn’t lost much, and whose depression goes away with extreme ease and just by talking to a girl she barely knows, if I were one of them I would find this to be even offensive.

In the end, Natsunagu! is unexpectedly beautiful to look at and it gives you a calming and relaxing time for 9 episodes (the first was stupid, the last two were painful to watch) but it fails at everything that tries to do and its own messages backfire to it because of their poor handling. It is still among the better short lenght shows that I watched, because most of what I watched are complete garbage, but it has nothing to do against Heya Camp, which aired at the same time, and even less against Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko, which I consider to be the only worthy short length anime I’ve ever seen. Honestly, the best thing you will get out of it is the awesome cover.

But I think that at least we can all agree that it’s a much better disaster series than Japan Sinks, man did I hate that dreadful show.

TL; DR: PROS: -Interesting concept, pretty great and very fleshed out protagonist, decent main girl, reasonable and understandable logic, good directing and visual representation of the subject matter, anti escapism message.

             CONS: -Underwhelming villain and side characters, erratic pacing, rushed and convenient outcomes.

             VERDICT: Positives and negatives are equaled.

Despite being fairly ignored, ID: Invaded has a rather good rating wherever you find it and is not really surprising since it feels uncommon for its time, nowadays isekai with harem vibes is the trend and here we are with a murder mystery show about chasing criminals in their subconsciousness in virtual worlds.

On a personal level it is also a show that you get to enjoy and understand more when you rewatch it and it will always be engraved in my head as a reminder that you should not write something about a show you don’t remember all to well or else you end making shit which you can’t back up too well once you are confronted about it.

On paper it combines elements from three highly regarded anime such as Paprika and Psycho-Pass with bits of Ghost in the Shell. What it misses from those anime are the mind fuckery visuals and directing to convey an anti escapism message from Paprika, the dynamics between the main duo as well as the memorable antagonist and the sociopolitical themes from Psycho-Pass, and the excused infodumps for detailed explanations of how everything works from GitS, thus coming off as an imitation of the three. And I’m not fan of two of them, which means I didn’t like this show either.

Actually there’s an anti escapism message presented by the protagonist running away from his tragic past in the well and some of the criminals hiding their real reasons behind made up ones, but it all gets lost under the mystery and the cases up until the end. And although the system used in the series as well as the security it uses are explained, they still feel like incomplete explanations with boring visual presentations.

Despite having a similar main duo of rookie police/detective and former criminal now used as an agent as Psycho-Pass, the protagonists here don’t interact with each other well into midway in the show and thus don’t influence each up until the end. Well the girl wants to enter the virtual worlds just like the man but is not because of him, she’s curious about it from the very beginning.

Up until that point you have them both solving seemingly episodic cases on their own, and I’ll give credit to the show for showing the minds of the criminals as destroyed places such as a whole city burning or…whatever that first world on the first two episodes was, basically showing how messed up they are, even if they are nothing compared to the dream sequences of Paprika.

Another thing I’ll give credit to the show for, is becomming full psychological, promoting an anti escapism message as well as a message about not giving up on life despite how hard it might be and even blending reality and subconsciousness near the end, but not exactly at the end thus making it feel unimportant as a certain mecha show did. Also, unlike Paprika, the finale here doesn’t feel like something that just came out of a fighting shounen.

Another mini plus is having the balls to show violence without censoring and without being too edgy or gruesome, it keeps the dark and serious tone while exploring the subject and without becoming sensationalism or a spectacle.

In my older review I wrote this:

“Now, despite having an explanation for how that works, what I don’t understand is how do you have a device to enter the minds of criminals who you don’t know where they are in the real life, nor do I understand why would anyone connect people to a messed up mind without having any form of security in order to protect them that isn’t just disconnecting them, which in turn surprises me that it doesn’t have any secondary effect on said people.”

There’s an explanation but the issue lies in its fundamentals, the mechanism seems possible but what is lacking is the definition of what are these crime particles anyway and how are they actually detected.

An element that will feel weird at first, like in every science fiction show that has a society that seems to be just like ours but with advanced technology like a mind being seen as a sort of hollogram and a machine that can detect particles, is that is hard to accept such things in our present time and day and how convenient they are. I can still kinda overlook all of that, since we need a premise to make the show start.

As for the security, there’s the memory eraser in the virtual world, which otherwise offers nothing in the real world, and thus the real people. Again, GitS was much more detailed in this regard.

I also have issues on the fact that the mechanism treats people with suicidal thoughts or sudden killing intentions and serial killers equally, I guess other people with different points of view regarding crimes and human rights as well as people from different countries with different justice systems and different penalties will feel different about it, but this is my review. I have a similar complain with Psycho-Pass, and I have it here as well, in that show it was questioned and somewhat explored, but here it is not.

Another minus in the show is having the same silly monologues of “I’m the great detective” whenever they enter these mental worlds, doing it once or twice would be fine but when you have the characters doing that all the time it comes off as silly, even more on a series that tries to be serious and dark as this one. Did I mention that they also have simple looking avatars that are way less cooler than how they look in the real life and that they also have silly quirks and personalities while they are there?

Anyways, during the first half of the show you have these people solving episodic cases which seem to be unrelated with the others at first and entering the minds of these criminals who the viewer never gets to really know something about, besides how messed up they are and their sadistic or emotional reasons behind their murders. And the agents can die and revive how many times they want in there so there aren’t really much consequences. Supposedly, every death has an impact on their real bodies but nothing major ever happens in the series regarding that, and their memories reset with every new logging so here we are with a circular pacing where they repeat the same thing, with the same silly monologue, often making the same mistakes, before finding and capturing the criminal with clear but not that anticipated resolutions.

Eventually all these seemingly unrelated cases are tied together through a same mastermind that manipulates people to turn them into criminals, so the main mystery is built on the background from the beginning, just with a slow pacing. And the show has the same issue as Erased, there’s no point in trying to build a who could it be mystery when you have one clear suspect, who in turn lacks screentime and presence throughout the show.

Unlike Erased though, the responsible and how was he hiding and what are his motives once he’s found out are found and explained in details, and it has nothing to do with killing people because of illusionary spider webs. But his reasons aren’t really much better, he’s a typical villain with a God complex and a morbid sense of justice. Light in Death Note was cool because he was explored, questioned, had a clear counterforce and ends up paying the price in different ways.

The villain in Paprika had somewhat pretentious monologues about the body supressing the mind before getting crazy and turning into a monster. Shogo Makishima had pretentious monologues as his excuse for making the people revolt against the system and he also had a clear connection to the main protagonists of the show, he was also killing people himself in ruthless ways and all of that made him a very memorable antagonist. And do I even need to talk about the antagonists in GitS? They had all of that as well as his political and philosophical ideal explored. This guy here have none of that and thus come off as a very forgettable and unimportant villain.

And the logic behind this worlds within minds change completely at the end when the show changes its rules completely with absent or rushed explanations and convenient outcomes, all of a sudden there are wells within wells, minds mixing with each other, more than one brilliant detective, effects from reality affecting the virtual worlds or viceversa, and more stuff like that. All of which ultimately leads to the resolution in a somewhat unsatisfying way. I still give it a pass, because the whole mechanism is almost brand new so it makes sense for them to not exactly know all about it, but if the show was actually longer it could introduce these just discovered aspects without feeling like the rules are being rewritten in convenient ways.

The resolution itself is not bad, it’s actually ok in terms of themes, the system they used is somewhat questioned and seen as bad but neccesary for good reasons, just like in the anime it takes inspiration from, where the status quo in maintained at the end. Rather, the problem lies on the rushed and convenient way it unfolds and how they captured the main villain.

At least there’s a very fleshed out protagonist, showing his mentality and how he’s slowly affected by everything, as well as his tragic backstory, and being a former agent and later on a criminal himself, it makes sense for him to know about all sorts of stuff regarding crimes in both their makings and their solvings, and he comes off with very reasonable courses of actions, thus he’s a capable and well established character. He can also be ruthless, which is rare for a protagonist nowadays. He’s so good he can use pissed coats with a serious expression and still remain cool.

The main girl is an oddball, despite being a moe looking petite girl with a pink hair clip, she’s actually 23 years old, is very curious about the mechanism, is actually smart, wants to look even in her own subsconciousness and even threatens or kill people at times, yet she also blushes when she gets kissed and have more moe traits in her. Thus she comes off as a kinda weird character that is kinda all over the place yet serviceable as a plot device and as an atypical legal loli with actual personality. As for the rest? Who cares about them? Outside of the main villain they do their job fine as plot devices but otherwise offers nothing in terms of characterization. They get to relate to the others in some ways but that is still not very looked into.

Visually speaking, the show has good looking backgrounds with creative directing and acceptable effects, and no real quality drops, and the actual animation is also well done, even better than expected for this type of show. The problem lies in the awful CGI and the horrible character designs, I already complained about the avatars but the actual designs suffer from bad in-between that constantly makes them go off model and when you are constantly watching at close up shots of deformed faces, it becomes very distracting, not on par with Magatsu Wahrheit or Japan Sinks, but still pretty bad.

The sound is good in every aspect, good sound effects and good music that sets up a good atmosphere and there are good insert songs with surprisingly good english. Both the opening and ending are fine, especially the latter, but they aren’t exactly memorable. The voice acting is well made, with every seiyuu fitting their characters just fine and there’s a very well made distortion effect for a certain virtual character, but seriously, having Kenjiro Tsuda as either a fucked up villain or a typical tough cool guy when he is not voicing a villain is used so much these days, it’s getting old by now, he may have sucked balls when he started as Kaiba and Aoba in Naruto, but at least he had more variety. It’s not bad, but it feels typical and unimpressive.

As a whole, I see nothing in this show that wasn’t already present and equally or better presented in the anime I compared it to and even if it stands out from being different than the trends of today, Winter had lots of episodic or semi episodic mystery shows at the same time (Pet, Kyoukou Suiri, Jeweler Richard, the last episodes of Babylon), so even in that regard, it is nothing special, nor it feels like it, and for that it won’t really be remembered. It’s not exactly bad, and it’s better than its contemporaries from the same season, but nothing that can’t be missed either.

Magatsu Wahrheit is a mobile rpg game which I tried to play but since my cellphone is crap and mostly filled with apps that I need, I could only play the prologue before I had to uninstall it. From what I could play, the game is a generic rpg with generic plot, generic characters, generic gameplay and a generic no name no face self insert protagonist so why would anyone bother with its anime adaptation? Especially when anime based on videogames aren’t exactly good, King’s Raid from the same season is an example of that.

Another reason to pass on this anime is the studio in charge of it, it’s pretty new and they did nothing of value as of yet, heck, the more famous work from them is Miru Tights, a short episodes comedy dedicated completely to a fetish.

Something that caught my attention while playing the game is that the setting was more medieval than the anime, which combines fantasy elements with an european like setting with contemporary technology and clothes (not present day technology and clothes of course). Combining that with how different Leocadio looks in the game made me think that the anime was going for its own completely different story, well that’s because I don’t know german and thus I didn’t know that the Zuerst in the title means the first or beginning, meaning, it’s actually a prequel to the game.

Anyways, Magatsu Wahrheit combines several elements from other shows of its season and year to grab attention, is based on a mobile rpg just like King’s Raid, it has an european like setting and messed up nobels like Moriarty the Patriot and a dual protagonist focus, just like…well, many other shows from this year (Moriarty, Deca-Dence, Runway de Waratte, BNA, to name a few).

Its downside, I have to admit, is not being exciting, it plays out like a mystery instead of an action adventure and thus it has a lot of talking and investigation which are not going to thrill many viewers.

On top of that the visuals are nothing like in the PV, they are weak in the beginning and downright pathetic towards the end, making it even duller to watch, the setting is pretty good looking, the backgrounds are well made, but almost everything else in the visuals falls apart completely. The character designs are terrible despite standing out a little from the norm, they lack detail, shading, lightning, they are not even completely drawn at times, and the qualily drops are making things worse, the characters barely look good because the artwork is weak and the in-between is poorly made and keeps giving them deformed faces in all of the episodes, especially the second and third to last.

The motions are ok in the beginning, there’s a good fight in the first episode with a good choreography, but as the episodes goes on, they become worse and worse, the movements are very sloppy even in moments in relaxation, so just imagine how bad they are whenever there’s action.

The special effects are overall ok when it comes to shots and magic but I have to admit that there were pretty looking moments such as a certain thing beneath the Capital and the explosión in the last two episodes which reminded me of Watchmen, blowing up everything and even showing the horrors of having people being dragged on by it. In general, the last episode is better animated than the rest, but not by much.

I really should stop talking about the sound when I have nothing to say about it, voice acting is ok, nothing particular about it except for the fact that the distortion effect for the monsters is good, but there are at least 4 soldiers voiced by the same guy and his voice is weird and his acting not really convincing, sound effects are pretty good and impactful, the music is fine too, the ending is fine and the opening is pretty great, too bad modern audiences don’t seem to be very fond of instrumental or opera openings, don’t miss the 8 minute full version of it by the way, it has different sections and it’s completely different from the minute and a half version.

The big plus of the show is having a conflict which is interesting yet simple on paper but multi layered on execution, here there are monsters appearing near the city and villages and killing people, the military have to take care of them on the Capital of the Empire and the Diet orders that every city has to protect itself however they can, thus they are unable to protect other places, which obviously makes the citizens and villagers unhappy and hostile towards them.

There is a group of rebels that want to help the people to take down the monsters, there are episodes showing how the monsters attack the different places, as well as some episodes showing people about to die from a decease which they also try to find a cure for, there is the Diet that controls everything and they lead some sort of plan to take the Empire and they are also making experiments with people and turning them to monsters, with the idea of it being a next step in human evolution or something generic like that and the series does not shy away from showing some of these people losing control and attacking others, including their loved ones (like in Fog Hill of Five Elements) without censorship and there are double agents and traitors on both sides, which are of course shown investigating or plotting.

All of the above as well as the way they are connected and the cause of it all is shown with a proper pacing and without much exposition, despite featuring lots of terms from the games, it’s nothing like other videogame adaptations where there are lots of exposition through talking nor complicated explanations of complicated terminology, everything is shown by the characters’ actions and interactions and the world building.

Another plus is how neither side is shown as completely good or bad and how most if not every character seems to have their own agenda and doing something both on their own and as part of a group all the time. There are evil nobles like in Moriarty that rape their maids, get them pregnant, mistreat them and even lead them to suicide (this reminded me of Journey of Elaina by the way), as well as others that are part of the rebels and genuinely want to help the people. There are soldiers that are messed up in the head and are shown as ruthless and sadistic, and they like to torture, kill and beat others, as well as good soldiers that genuinely want to protect the citizens and becomes allies with Headkeeper once they learn the truth.

There are characters such as the father of the red haired girl who seem clueless to the whole thing but they are actually doing something behind the scenes with also good reasons for doing so. And as I said earlier, there are traitors and double agents on both sides, that makes neither side to have complete advantage over the other nor be incompetent and there’s a somewhat high level of tension because of it.

Another good thing is having two protagonists and having the narrative jumping between both of them and showing what both of them are doing all the time. Leocadio begins as a naive soldier with an idealized vision of the military and his learning about the shady and corrupt side of it, before deciding to practically turn against it, kill a superior, and stop the plans of the corrupt government alongside Headkeeper. Innumael is a normal worker who gets dragged by the whole thing by accident in a mostly believable way, beginning as a coward who only cares about his safety (which is understandable) before actually becoming a proper member of Headkeeper and wanting to help others, kinda like the protagonist of Akudama Drive, even becoming a wanted criminal in a similar way. Showing a bit of their backgrounds, their families, how they get involved in the conflict, the change in the interactions between the two of them as enemies at first and allies in the end was also a nice way to flesh them out.

I have to admit though, that aside from them, every other character that seemed to be important at first gets a secondary role or disappear in the second half. The red haired girl is the prime example of that, she seemed to be a central part of the conflict at first, even showing a bit of her everyday life when they get back to the city, and then she gets kinda tossed aside in the final episodes, there’s a blonde guy who disappears after the fifth episode before sniping someone in the head in the last episode out of nowhere. There’s a kid that we never see again and so on. At least every death feels important because the show follows what everyone does most if not all the time.

This has to do with the weird pacing the show has, it may feel slow in the beginning because it is not exciting but that was allowing for mostly everything to make sense and feel organic and believable with proper build up and treatment.

That, and the fact that the amount of episodes was unknown until the show was two weeks to end, made me think that the series was going to be at least a two cour show ending in March of next year but that wasn’t the case, the series clearly speeds up in the second half and it starts using silly resolutions such as last moment saves from characters appearing out of nowhere with lazy explanations or the rebels easily infiltrating different places and posing as soldiers. This, alongside the book from the second episode and some unexplained things in the last episode, such as Leocadio’s seconds of power and Innumael’s plot armor, among other things, affect a little the credibility of the whole thing.

With that said, there’s some sort of excuse for all of that, which is basically the Diet playing around with them because their plan was practically unstoppable and because they were basically setting a trap for them and capturing them for their experiments, yet I feel like Headkeeper should have known that, if that thing was beneath the capital, then the real light would appear there, making the explosion near the end somewhat avoidable. That’s why the finale will feel weird and unsatisfying, aside from being incomplete, it could have been avoided, and will definitely feel rushed, heck, the PV showed a fight between the two protagonists which never happened, so there’s definitely stuff that was cut off from the main series.

That said, the finale is uncommon and somewhat refreshing for the side that wins in the end, as well as anticipated early on, but it’s definitely not a good one. Being a prequel to the game is not an excuse, for all the criticism Rogue One can get, the ending made sense for sending off the events of the original Star Wars and felt satisfying for everything that happened in the movie. Heck, in anime there’s Gundam the Origin which is an amazing prequel to the original series and fits almost perfectly within the timeline while still having a solid ending for its own story.

In the end, Magatsu Wahrheit is basically the Deca-Dence of its season, a somewhat worth watching show, especially for being based on a videogame, with a mostly decent plot and a mosty decent cast of characters that was overlooked by many (if not most) people that sadly didn’t last more to tap all of its potential. I thought it was going to be the best show of the year but it’s definitely nowhere near as good as it could have been if it was longer and better paced. Being better animated and a little more exciting and memorable instead of making me rewatch it from the beginning once I finished it in order to write something about it definitely would have helped too.

And now, a little breakdown of each aspect for a little more justified rating

VISUALS - 4/10

Well made backgrounds and effects but very bad artwork, character figures and motions.

SOUND - 8/10

Good music, very good sound effects and acceptable voice acting.

STORY - 6/10

Interesting and well presented conflict with proper pacing and logic in the first half but not so much in the second, with a pretty bad finale.

CHARACTERS - 7/10

Proactive and well established cast of characters that stay relevant throughout most of its duration with very fleshed out and evolving protagonists, but some of them are completely forgotten by the end.

VALUE - 3/10

Mostly unknown and very forgettable title. Rewatching it definitely helps to notice some things that can go unnotice on a first watch but it’s something most people would not do for the show is frankly not exciting and on top of that it’s pretty badly animated.

ENJOYMENT - 7/10

What can I say? It was the only show from its season that I actually liked, especially during its first half, and I also liked it the same if not even more when I rewatched it a second time.

I’ll try to keep this short, since I never cared about donghua in general and this title is the first I completed and man did it make me want to watch more of it or something similar. I first knew about it some years ago where a tech demo of sorts was revealed showing an amazing fight between two men that controlled fire and ice. Then these three episodes came out this year and sadly that scene is not present in them.

If you are like me and thus are accostumed to japanese anime, the artwork will feel different and refreshing, yet very polished, there are some intances where the character figures don’t exactly match the backgrounds but they are a few and not very noticeable. The character designs resemble traditional stories a lot, and most characters are tall and muscular manly men and without any facial repetition amongst them, giving it a more than welcomed retro feel to it. The backgrounds are beautiful to look at.

The most important and well known aspect of the show in this regard is obviously the actual animation, which is very weak when the character talk, walk or do simple movements in general, the mouth and eyes movements are kinda sloppy and the same applies to every other bit of body language. On the other hand, during the action scenes, when the show needs to have good and fluent motions, it’s simply spectacular, every single motion is practically perfectly made, and what do you want me to say about the special effects? They reminded me of those used during the most impactful scenes in Demon Slayer, which is always a plus.

There’s also very good camera work, following every fast paced action scene perfectly, unlike, let’s say, Dragon Super Broly, where the camera becomes really crazy at times and don’t let you keep track of some action sequences.

So, great and distinctive artwork, great character designs, mostly good animation and superb special effects which constitute a perfect mix of awesome martial arts with epic super powers. There are some things that could be more polished but as a whole the visuals are an impressive job, especially with very few people working on them.

The sound design is not as good, the music is ok, a generic traditional chinese soundtrack which fits the story and setting well and when it comes to the voice acting, well, I have to admit that I’m not familiar at all with chinese voices and voice acting, but what I heard here felt just right, every character had a fitting voice and good interpretation behind in every scene, from the comical to the tragic ones. The sound effects on the other hand are pretty weak in both the relaxing moments as well as those when there are fights and they make those scenes lack quite the impact.

Even when the show cares mostly about the action, there’s a serviceable plot with serviceable characters behind, nothing groundbreaking of course, it’s just some guardians that can use the elements as their powers that fight against demons that threatens humanity, so it’s basically a combination of The Last Airbender with Demon Slayer, only with manliness and epic fights taken from Asura’s Wrath.

The first episode really lowers your expectations because is mostly silly comedy with wacky facial expressions, which reminded me a lot of Golden Kamuy, but then the second and third became a lot more tragic and serious without ever losing that tone. The power scaling in the show seems to be pretty high as the first demon alone was able to fight toe to toe against the protagonist, and he was incapable of saving most of the people from the village.

And the many deaths shown here weren’t just for showing the horrible powers of the demons, as there are enough scenes with the villagers to make the audience somewhat care about them when they die, although obviously not the point of getting emotionally attached to them, for they lack lot of screen time for that, and the way they die is genuinely tragic and almost heartbreaking.

The demons seem to be evil and kill humans just because at first, but as the last episode reveals, is actually a revenge against them for a horrible thing they did in the past, which in turn was not something done for sadistic pleasure, there’s a very good cause regarding a mortal decease behind that course of action. Very good conflict and very well presented with an appropiate tone.

Now for the negatives which prevent me to rate the show a little higher at least for now, the characters are serviceable as plot devices but none of them have much information revealed about them to let you get emotionally invested, and the plot, on top of simple and straightforward, is just a prologue, a kind of demo for more episodes to come if the small group of people working on it decides it’s worth it to keep going. That’s why it has no actual ending despite hyping you with the different agendas everyone has and the invasion of, I have to say, way less interesting demons, seemingly about to happen.

Besides that, it was a very serviceable promotion that did its job way better than, let’s say, Burn the Witch, for presenting an actually interesting conflict, with a serious tone, and mostly amazing visuals. I really want to see how the story continues, if it does, and if you happened to read this and know more about chinese series that you think are equal or better, please feel free to come to my profile and reccomend them to me, especially if they are similar to it.

18/08/23 update: 

The second season improves on what the first was good at. The visuals are more consistent, as no longer some elements look like they don’t match well with others in some scenes, and the animation during non-action sequences has improved.

The big improvement of this season was the sound effects which were mediocre in the previous one, and are now good. The music and the voice acting retain the same level or at a bit better, since now more demons appeared and they all have cool and differently sounding and well mixed and edited voices. A big change I noticed where the opening and ending, as the ones from the first season where quite inferior and more relaxed, and the ones from this one are slow but powerful rock ballads with traditional Chinese music vibes, very appropriate.

The fights didn’t have the same spectacular level of destruction of the ones we’ve seen so far, but had a bit better choreography since the newer characters added a bit more to their fighting styles and techniques than just an element and martial arts. The guardians use the environment far more than the protagonist, and in general the fights are no longer one against one and involve more teamwork and a bit more of strategy.

The downside has to do with the plot, since despite the first season ending with what seemed to be the setup for a big conflict, there was veeeeery liiiiittle progression from the point it left off, and the big expectations led to…nothing special, just a setup for the next and final season, as things just keep moving slowly.
There is even a problem with the writing which is the demons being unguarded. They are sealed alright, but letting them without someone watching them is plain dumb, that’s how one of them escaped in the first place. Also, characters bump into each other casually or appear out of nowhere for a fight or to save someone at the right time.

At least this season bothered to show a little more of how its world works, and gave the protagonist a backdrop story, an objective, and a strong connection with another character. By the end of the previous one, every secondary character had something they wanted to achieve, but he had nothing, he was just a badass plot device, so this season turned him into a bit of an actual character. With that said his background was shown weirdly, in the middle of a fight, as the demon itself pointed it out. Another cool aspect is how there seem to be shortcomings for using his power, as it affects his body and energy and makes the fights harder for him, and he even needs the help of others.

As a whole, if all you want is action and cool visuals, this mini franchise still keeps being a blast, but plot and characters are still very basic, mostly absent, and barely progressed much, in a far longer season, so I still can’t openly recommend it, but it is ok enough to kill some time.

It’s crazy to think that two shows that reminded me of Danganronpa came out in the same season, one was Akudama Drive, which was brainded but kinda fun, and the other was Munou na Nana, which was braindead and not really fun.

To its credit, it’s a really easy watch and there are enough things happening in each episode to maintain the average viewer hooked if they don’t think much about what is happening and honestly, if more comes out, I’ll definitely watch it because I want to see what happens next.

Visually is serviceable, the artwork is ok, the character designs are akin to those in My Hero Academia although not as creative or unique, the backgrounds are simple but well made. The effects aren’t bad at all but the show abuses a lot of using a certain filter with a certain color for when a character is having internal thoughts, depending on the person, pink for the protagonist, blue for Kyoya and such, and gets tiresome rather quickly. It also does the same as Moriarty the Patriot and about every anime with dark overtones that comes out today, it splashes red all over the screen for when a murder happen or it’s about to happen and it also gets tiresome because it looses impact the more it’s used, overuse work against intention.

As always, I have nothing to say about the sound, both music and effects are serviceable and have enough impact but are not exactly memorable, both the opening and ending are fine, voice acting is also serviceable but nothing special.

Now that all that filler is over, we can talk about what really matters here and say that Munou no Nana relies heavily on having similarities with other works and subverting expectations, to the point of being able to fool unexperienced viewers into thinking it’s original, without adding much (or nothing) on its own.

The premise, the first episode and the first promotional material (both videos and first poster) makes you think that it will be a literal clone of My Hero Academia, with his own version of Deku, that has a very similar design, the same personality, and is equally bullied. He is also presented as someone with seemingly no powers and has a very similar name to the actual protagonist of the show, further making you think that it will be about him. And then the episode is about to finish and the series changes completely.

Basically, all of the above was brilliant marketing, making you expect something derivative that cashes in on a popular series, and then proceeding to give you something completely different, which is basically like Danganronpa by having a school student trying to kill all of their classmates. It was also lucky to come out close to the very similar flavor of the month (despite being two years old) videogame Among Us, thus being seen as the anime version of it.

Anyways, so we have this girl going around, gathering information about the powers each student has and then killing them off. The good thing is how each ability has actual weaknesses that the protagonist can, and does reasonably take advantage of, making her seem smart, the bad part is that every other character is so dumb and fall on her traps and schemes so easily that it kills the illusion that you are watching a well thought out series about murders and how the culprit is gonna do it and how is she going to get away with it.

My first real issue with the show, aside from the dumb characters, is how lucky the protagonist is that no student here is strong, I mean seriously they all have very specific powers that makes her act in a certain way in each episode, and lets her plan something specific in each episode (something pretty convenient) but they are otherwise very weak and are taken off easily. They are supposed to be the saviours of humanity that fight against dangerous enemies but they otherwise die the same way every normal person would do, and don’t receive any training in the school that is supposed to prepare them for doing that in the future.

And I just have to point out how convenient it is that everyone buys her lies about her fake talent, it has an in story excuse, since every power has its strenghts and weaknesses, but when the protagonist comes with a different excuse of how it worked or didn’t just when it was needed, and everyone eats that crap everytime, it becomes unexcusable and a clear sign of bad writing. It also abuses it a lot, doing it once or twice would be convenient but acceptable, but when is overused like this, it becomes unacceptable. In JoJo, Joseph can guess what his enemies think and that conveniently throws his opponent off a little, enough to give him time to come out with another plan, but it’s not abused as much and is presented as dumb in a series with an over the top tone, here it’s presented in a serious manner and that only makes it lame.

Anyways, having a character going around killing other characters in each episode in somewhat convenient ways with very convenient outcomes would get formulaic and boring very fast, which it does, and thus the series introduces a main antagonist who looks like a combination of Bakugo and Todoroki and sounds just like Gray Fullbuster from Fairy Tail. What I’m trying to say is, this character was planned to be the one to confront the protagonist from the get go.

From there, they play a Kira and L cat and mouse game where they know exactly what the other does and are constantly trying to make the other look like the culprit (in case of Kyoya) or themselves innocent (in case of Nana). But just like with everything thus far, everyone around them is so dumb they don’t believe what Kyoya says, even if it makes sense to the most part and is often supported with actual evidence.

On top of that, these people are acting all friendly when they live in a world where something is supposed to be out there ready to kill them on the spot. Heck, even when they are getting killed off each day, they still don’t suspect their classmates (especially the students who just transfered) and still act all friendly, just like in Danganronpa. Bad shows copy even the worst aspects of other bad shows it seems.

I’ve seen people defending the show saying that is understandable for the characters to be this stupid because they lack the information the viewer has, which is true. I’ll expand on that later but now I’m gonna say that, just like it happens with Moriarty, having a Mary Sue protagonist in a series about murders and cat and mouse game kills all the tension and makes the show very dull to watch.

And Nana is not even consistent in that regard, for example, Moriarty is a Gary Stu but at least is presented as such in his own series, he is more consistent than Nana, who constantly messes up yet still gets away with it simply because the script says so and everyone else is seriously dumb, instead of doing that with actual wit.

Even if someone still manages to defend the show in this regard, there are instances where someone else than Kyoya finds out about Nana but doesn’t expose her for stupid reasons. It makes sense for the necrophile girl to remain silent but what valid excuse does the guy able to seen the future has for not doing so? Why he wanted to fuck Nana, that’s why, Such stupid reasoning and it made him look like a one dimensional ugly bastard rapist you would find in a doujinshi instead of a shounen series. No, there are no valid excuses for this episodes, the show is just lazily and badly written.

And I also have to point out how having an inmortal antagonist who is also mentally unbreakable ruins all the tension and fun even further.

A common criticism about the series, which I agree with, is how Nana kills the only guy with the capability of nullifying others’ powers, who would be helpful later on, and constantly keeps doing something similar, killing off characters that could be helpful if used against others. I mean, the first guy was already kinda exploitable if you think about it, try to put him against his bullies and convince him that those fuckers are the enemies and done. But oh well, if he’s exactly like Deku then he would consider his bullies as his potential boyfriends, I mean best Friends, so it would be pointless.

Still, for an agent that is supposed to have been trained her whole life in stealth and assassination, as well as someone that is constantly acting like someone she’s not, Nana sure rushes to kill off everyone instead of trying to manipulate them against the others, which would make the series less formulaic and tiresome and actually somewhat smart, and not leave her exposed every single time.

Another issue with the show is the mood whiplash, as it’s constantly throwing random silly comedy in the middle of serious moments that are supposed to be suspenful and intense, doing it once or twice would be forgiveable but when it happens all the time it becomes a serious problem. And it’s not because the series is a shounen, Moriarty is a shounen series as well and it never trashes its tone like that by throwing stupid comedy just because.

Even Kyoya, who’s supposed to be the serious and smart character and counterforce of the protagonist, has silly quirks such as wanting friends, crack jokes in inappropriate moments and even wanting to play with Nana’s hair, what a way to kill the characterization of even the only actually interesting character of the show.

The theme present in the show basically comes to down to discrimination based on previous events, just like in Moriarty, the other muder mystery show of the season, and just like that series, it fucks it up in its presentation for the same reason, it presents the conflict in a simplified good vs. bad way. Only one side of the conflict is explained and it gets really hard to accept their ways of reasoning and acting when they have innocent high schoolers being killed off for doing absoultely nothing, it’s completely one sided, victimizing and unjustified that it ruins the whole theme exploration.

And finally there is the issue of the nonsensical setting, it’s almost impossible to accept that no one finds it strange that there’s only one school to train the future protectors of mankind, and it’s located on an isolated island in the middle of nowhere, even My Hero Academia is better in that regard. The show tries to excuse that by basically turning the setting into a Battle Royale clone midway, but that only makes things worse. Are you telling me that all of humanity agreed to send kids on an isolated island in hope of everyone killing each other? Talk about a one sided conflict. And you are also telling me that this has already happened before? And no one found it strange how all the future saviours of humanity died together on the same island? Many times? Hello? And it also turned the show from something with pretences of intelligence to a generic death game you can find everywhere these days in both anime and western entertainment since the success of Fate/Zero in 2011 and The Hunger Games in 2012.

Heck, now that I think about it, another strange thing is how no one finds it weird that the stories about the enemies of mankind are basically legends for there has not been a case since forever and are you telling me that only the talentless people know about the incident in the past? How is that possible? Are these kids taught different history depending if they have abilities or not or what? Even when they go to the same school before the latter are sent to an isolated island?

I don’t even understand how do these kids even have families back in their home, if this school has been doing that since who knows when, their parents should all be dead as well…or that would be the case if it was genetic as in My Hero Academia, but it’s not. And that only raises the question on how do these people even get their powers from, it also makes me think that perhaps their parents themselves sent their kids in order to get killed on that island and that only makes it worse.

Finally, aside from the characters being dumb, only two of them have background stories, one is Nana herself and is just a generic revenge plot past, and the other is Michiru or whatever that dog girl is called, and is a generic I helped someone once and began doing it ever since type of past, boring. I can give the show credit for developing Nana a little by becoming genuinely attached to her, and not only because of her healing powers, but it comes to down to being reluctant at first and then attached to someone just because they are kind, with yuri overtones included.

No, her actual development is slowly wanting to know the truth behind all things and even that is nothing much.

In conclusion, Munou na Nana is a show that you can easily watch if you just accept everything it throws at you at face value but the moment you start thinking about it, it falls apart completely, the setting makes absolutely no sense, the themes are rarely explored and when they are, the presentation of them is pathetic, the plot is full of conveniences to the point it becomes unacceptable, the tone is a mess and the characters are absolute garbage. And I will still torture myself to watch more of it if it gets more seasons because I want to see how the plot unfolds, even when it takes all of my stamina to not fall asleep while doing so.

When Akudama Drive was announced and its premise revealed, I thought we were going to get the most stupid attempt at social criticism through the two japanese prefectures present in the show, especially because the man behind it was responsible for Danganronpa. Then it was released and I began watching it and it didn’t have any pretence of seriousness and was 99% a dumb action series, which is a plus.

Whether you like the show or not, I think we can all agree that it’s completely nonsensical, it lives and dies purely by the rule of cool, it cares mostly about its style and very little about its substance. The setting combines elements from different cyberpunk stories, it partially takes the executioners and authorities from Psycho Pass, as well as their ideologies, it partially takes the public executions to please the people from The Running Man, and its aesthetics are very close to those of Cyberpunk 2077’s, even if it came out earlier.

Combine all of that with a Suicide Squad tier of plot and characters and what you get is essentially a schlocky ova from the ‘80s, stretched to last for a whole one course series. The good thing about the show is being self aware and conscious about that and never trying to be really serious or deep. Its crappy writing support that idea. The fact that the episodes are named after movies and more of them try to imitate their basic plots in a simple and schlocky way is a clear indication of that. In specific:

-In Se7en the criminal responsible for the most gruesome murders is freed and pursued, like in the movie, minus the detective work and the religious overtones.

-In Reservoir Dogs, the gang is altogether and discuss the next course of action, like in the movie, but replacing the more elaborated narrative and the outcome with action.

-In Mission: Impossible the heist kicks in and is full of plain stupid action, like in that silly franchise.

-In Speed, the gang gets on a train at full speed and confront the executioners, like in the later half of the movie of the homonymous film.

-And The Shining becomes a slasher film with a character finally losing the little sanity he had left and chasing other around and trying to kill them, obviously missing a lot from the movie of the same name.

I won’t talk about Dead Man Walking, Brother, City of Lost Children and Death, for they have major plot points that I can’t spoil, as well as Black Rain because I don’t know a movie like that, and War Games because, outside of the hacking, the plot is completely different to the one in the movie and of course Akudama Drive because is it not named after a movie and it’s also the last episode.

Ok, there are some classic themes from sci-fi stories such as:

-An oppressive and incompetent government, people raising against it because someone made them realize that and the authorities breaking their own laws and going full tyrannical;

-A civil war with ever growing technology that destroyed the surface and even the moon in the past and made some parts of Japan completely uninhabitable;

-Experiments with artificial humans, all of them more or less clones of each other, some of them leaving the labs and slowly getting emotions;

-The search for immortality or eternal longevity by a mad scientist and the replacement of bodies in order to live and remain as a computer with one and only conscience that combines everyone’s, before entering in one or two inmortal bodies and more stuff.

All of the above is presented in such a superficial, dumb and over the top way, it’s impossible to take any of that seriously. They are just background excuses for the mindless action to happen.

The first episode alone is an indication of bad writing, everything happens through accidents and conveniences, with the unnamed protagonist bumping into all these crazy people and events by accident just because she was pursuing a cat.

Then you get six or so episodes dedicated completely to the action, the group almost never stops going from one place to another and blowing away everything in their path while killing every random person they encounter, except for the executioners who are so powerful, two of them can deal with 5 top level criminals and boy do we get some great fights here, combining hand to hand combats with different martial arts between Brawler and Master and all sorts of crazy weapons, to Courier’s super advanced motorcycle, to Doctor’s drugs and poisons, to Hacker’s drones and Cutthroat’s…well, he’s a living weapon himself.

This non stop action makes the show entertaining and spectacular on one hand, while setting a proper tone, but in the other it makes the crappy writing too obvious, outside of the nonsensical action and all the plain impossible stuff that happens, spending half of the show in just mindless explosions, forces the series to reveal its plot twists so close to each other to the point it looks like the show is pulling them out of its own ass.

There are other unexplainable things such as:

-The blown out moon;

-A train that for some reason still goes to an uninhabitable place;

-Why and how is every common citizen just walking around in a city full of superhuman criminals that runs around at will;

-How is Swindler exposed as an Akudama when buying but not Courier at the beginning;

-The fact that outside of the first two executioners that have to be taking by five top tier akudama at the same time, the rest fall like flies;

-The way characters keep disappearing and reappearing out of nowhere, and so on and so on.

And there are also small segments of two chibi stuffed mascots explaining stuff in a silly voice at the screen with silly voices in a completely different art style, later revealed to be an educational show in this world but in ours is just an excuse for infodumps that are never even truly complete. Also, they are directly taken from the Monokuma’s Theater segments in the Danganronpa games after each trial.

The Danganronpa influences don’t stop there, every character carries some sort of title or class and does not have their names and backgrounds revealed before they start falling like flies, at least their interactions are somewhat important and affect them somehow.

The protagonist, posing as and later actually becoming Swindler is basically like Rock from Black Lagoon or Edamame from Great Pretender, the only normal person around here with some resemblance of morals as she tries to keep the damages at mínimum and becoming some sort of mother or older sister figure for the kids as well as being the person who helps them being more aware of their goodbeing and suffering, and how important they are to each other, as well as not treating their wounds as nothing and ultimately she’s the one that makes everyone around her to become a little more…human.

She can become a little preachy at times but for her type of character and her role, it’s somewhat excused. Well, just like the two examples I mentioned, Swindler slowly gets affected by everything that happens around her and by everyone she comes across, realizing things about the society she lives on and siding with the Akudamas before becoming a pure criminal herself, leaving the moral high ground behind and doing what needs to be done while still keeping her as the only somewhat human person around here. And she becomes a semi proactive character to the point of starting a riot.

The little sister changes as well but unlike Swindler, her change of behaviour is too sudden, she begins as a mostly silent, almost a shrine maiden type of character who is always behind her older brother’s back and she becomes like a…like a little Swindler. It happens from one specific episode to the next which makes her development completely unbelievable.

The only other character who has some development is Hoodlum, a minor criminal who just like Swindler, gets involved in all of this by accident and survives by lying his way before he gets influenced by his “brother” Brawler and grows some balls because of him.

The rest are never truly explored, they are just character archetypes with no information about them and remain as such until the end of the show or until they die:

-Hacker is just your typical nerdy genius better with advanced technology than the whole government;

-Brawler is just your typical thick headed tall and muscular guy who solves everything with his fists and puts strenght and manliness above everything else;

-Courier is just your typical serious and estoic guy who just wants to get it all done as fast and effective as possible;

-Cutthroat is just a typical psychopath that kills for silly reasons and the more the show goes on, the more he goes full slasher film antagonist, especially when he becomes Swindler’s stalker;

-And lastly, Doctor is a take on the mad scientist type of villain in the form of a typical bitchy woman who seduces naive young men and then plays with them and their lives however she wants in order to get what she wants before ruthlessly killing everyone.

One look at their designs and you understand these characters completely and know exactly what to expect from them, and maybe even how they will die, but I obviously can’t get into details concerning that, all I will say is that at least the show spends some time with them before killing them in an epic or ironic way, unlike in Danganronpa where you don’t give a crap about who dies because you don’t see them much on screen, and their deaths are so silly and random you mostly laugh at them rather than being shocked or sad.

Now that I mentioned Danganronpa, did you notice how the cast here can be summarize as the batshit crazy version of someone from that franchise? Hacker is a criminal Fujisaki, Brawler is a sociopath Nidai or Owari, Cutthroat is just a male Genocyder Sho on steroids, and Doctor is a criminal Mikan. The only character who can’t be summed up this way is Courier and only because he’s so boring, there’s no character in Danganronpa that is that serious to compare him with, there are only Byakuya and Ishimaru but even they are completely different to this guy.

Heck even some designs remind me of the Danganronpa cast, Swindler looks like a fusion between Chiaki and Ibuki and Brawler is the child of Sakura and Hagakure, the only difference between this show and the Danganronpa anime adaptation is that here actual money or effort was placed in order to make these crazy designs justice and not whatever the Danganronpa anime was, where everybody was ruined, even Kirigiri, how can someone dare to ruin Kirigiri’s image like that? Unforgivable. Another difference with that show is that here there is not stupid pink blood…but there’s a lot of censoring.

Aside from the designs, the visuals are practically perfect as far as I’m concerned, consistent artwork during most of the duration if not the whole of it, detailed and well made backgrounds, fast paced action with ever fluent motions, and well made effects with well rendered CGI, outside of the stupid censorship present in later episodes, I have no complains here. It’s unbelievable that it was made by Pierrot, nobody would have expected that.

The digital coloring has the looks you would expect from this setting and with the people making it, very colorful but still with dark tones, it really is like watching an anime version of Cyberpunk 2077 but without all of the bugs and glitches and the drops in frames. After this, I don’t even want to see what Trigger is going to make based on the game, especially after the big disappointment it was in just a week after its release.

As for the sound, the music is kind of a letdown, neither the opening nor the ending stand out and I even already forgot them, and the soundtrack in the show goes completely unnoticed. The sound effects on the other hand are plain fantastic and immersive, is like watching a Hollywood action film. The voice acting is well done for this type of series, is just like it’s obviously not amazing by default, with all the silliness it has. Shotout to the almost unrecognizable voice of Megumi Ogata as Doctor, it was a refreshing performance from her.

Down to it, if you shut off your brain and tolerate these sociopaths, you’ll probably have a blast with this one, with all of its crazy characters and plot twists and all the non stop superbly animated action, I personally didn’t enjoy it much because at one point I wanted at least some downtime to learn more about the characters and take a breath from all the fast paced explosions and fights, but I can’t deny that I was expecting to see what crazy event was going to happen in the next episode when it was airing and was fairly entertained while watching it, had I watched this one ten years ago, I would have most likely loved it almost as much as I love Hellsing Ultimate.

Burn the Witch is the definition of a cashgrab that relies purely on the fame of a previous work of its autor in order to sell and it otherwise offers nothing of value. It’s supposed to be some sort of spin off that takes place in the same setting as Bleach but it has absolutely nothing in common with it.

I didn’t make a review of Bleach because there is no point in doing that, since everyone and their mothers already talked about it both positively and negatively, but I will make comparisons between the two.

First thing to notice is how it takes place in a different country, nothing wrong in that, and it goes for a urban/contemporary fantasy and magic realism type of story, meaning the normal people is more or less aware of everything that happens (in one side), unlike in Bleach where neither the Hollows nor the Shinigami could be seen by people with weak spiritual energy…at first, something that changed completely later on.

This would be pretty interesting if said normal people would get a role in the story but as of yet they don’t do nothing of importance, heck, they are not even allowed to interact with the monsters, which here are presented in different form than they had in Bleach, as dragons. Another thing where is weaker than Bleach is having a much lighthearted tone.

Although Bleach has lots of silly comedic moments from beginning to end, the first episodes have a creepy atmosphere with a haunting soundtrack at times, something which was completely lost here.

For something positive, the Soul Society here works completely different, it no longer follows a military logic with clear borders that separates the japanese elite from the poor and miserable foreigners (cough) but instead works as some kind of company where the Soul Reapers are some kind of employees that hunts the hollows in pairs for credits.

Believe or not, this is a good thing, in Bleach, the Reapers sent on a mission could be a single soldier or both the captain and lieutenant of a squad which was kind of sily if you think about it. Why would you send a single person on a mission, or why would you do that with the two biggest authorities of a squad, leaving it behind without leadership and boy was the Gotei 13 lucky that they never received an attack at the same time. Also, I never understood why the captains have only one lieutenant and only one squad under their supervision. And the ranks were complete bullshit, with stronger people serving under weaker people at times. None of that nonsense is present here, as everyone has the chance to get a higher rank just by working a lot.

Also, the Gotei 13 is presented much sooner and they already began moving in order to capture some sort of legendary weapons/creatures which are seemingly going to be important later on. What I didn’t like is how the place feels like a school, is there really a need to have a school in everything, especially if it involves magic?

Anyways, the premise is more or less the same as in Bleach only less interesting because of the lack of a creepy atmosphere as I already said but also because the characters here are complete shit. The black haired girl is the only one who is completely serious about what she does and does not take bullshit from anyone, but she’s also so serious she’s just boring to watch. The blonde one is just Hiyori from the Vizards in steroids and man is she annoying.

And still not as much as the guy, he’s so stupid, he ruins any attempt at seriousness. And there’s also a yandere type of antagonist who has a crush on the blonde girl and just like with the guy, I was expecting for the moment both of them die on screen, which obviously didn’t happen because they are going to be main characters later on.

Another problem in the show is how the spells are totally boring, they are just light beams of different colors and that’s it, nothing like in Bleach where they had all sorts of shapes and functions and I need to point out how the characters keep pulling powers out of nowhere, in fact that is how the anime ends, leaving any sort of closure completely open for it is just a prologue which exists only to promote the manga.

That is another issue it has, it’s too short and silly to make anything feel important, and on top of that, since it clearly wanted to promote the manga, it skipped the pilot chapter which shows how the main characters get together and are connected, none of that is present here, which could have worked as a bit of their backgrounds.

It also feels uninspired, with the dragons flying around it just feels like you are watching something made by Hiro Mashima, and the two sides from the same city, which seem to work as some sort of parallel dimensions connected to each other (I’m only guessing, it’s never explained), is basically taken from Harry Potter, with the only difference being that the “muggles” know what happens here and can move from one side to another under certain circumstances.

I like how the legendary weapons/creatures are based on classic fairy tales, I’ll give it that, but even then it’s nothing I hadn’t seen done already in Read or Die, in a much more creative and fun way.

Ultimately, what everyone who watched this really cared for was the action and the visuals, and I have to admit that they are not bad, but when they are praised beyond the point they deserve, I have to point out how neither of these elements are that great either.

By comparison, in the same season, Majo no Tabitabi and Akudama Drive came out and Burn the Witch just pails before them. And in the same year we got the likes of Tower of God, Deca-Dence and Fog Hill of Five Elements, all of which are also far better and more spectacular than this show in these aspects.

Another thing that was praised about it are the character designs and I don’t understand why, Kubo knows how to draw his stuff but he also tends to repeat the faces of his characters a lot, in Burn the Witch, the black haired girl is basically a mix between Orihime and Bambietta from Bleach and as I said the blonde is an aged up Hiyori. The same thing can be said about every other character, they resemble the characters from Bleach a lot and the artwork lacking in details does not help them either. There is a character with a somewhat original design, but he has the same problem as Mirio from My Hero Academia, he resembles a famous character (Luigi) a lot and the chances of liking his design are gonna be divisive because of that.

The special effects are not bad but for a show where they throw magic left and right, they could and arguably should be better, the best things in the visuals are the backgrounds, the city looks really good. The motions are fine but nothing really surprising, again I feel like they could have been better and at times they felt kinda sloppy. They feel consistently fluent and fast paced but it’s mostly because of the camera work, which follows every movement the girls make with and without their brooms. And as I said, Majo no Tabitabi did it better.

I have nothing to say about the sound, the sound effects lack impact, the voice acting is one of the same you can hear everywhere, the music is alright but nothing really memorable.

And that’s it, there isn’t really much else to comment about it, it’s short, it’s just a prologue, it’s mostly silly and nonsensical, poorly written, it has trashy characters, it feels disjoined from the series it’s supposed to be related to, it feels derivative in some elements, everything it does has been done before (for better or worse) and it’s not amazingly animated, it also had the bad luck of airing in 2020, the anti hype year, and thus it didn’t caused as much impact as expected, but I guess it served to remind the audience that Bleach will get a sequel soon, let’s see if this one still retains its audience and manages to sell once that adaptation of a somewhat hated arc is over.

To be honest, I wasn’t planning to watch this series for I am kinda biased against it. Anime based on western products? The ones I watched were bad. London as a setting? The one I watched was bad. Also, based on Holmes’ stories? The previous anime version was a family oriented episodic comedy with talking animals. Also, I’m not very familiar with the books nor other adaptations, I watched the movies starring Robert Downey Jr. and I didn’t like them. Also the poster has this combination of brown and red that instantly made me think that it was going to be edgy garbage.

Yet wherever I go this series has a rather good if not high rating, and it’s also very different from the works I talked about so far. The shows based on western properties I watched weren’t based on classic literature and the World Masterpieces Theater is highly regarded so why not giving this one a chance? The series set on London that I watched was a reverse harem with an amnesiac protagonist and silly supernatural elements thrown in just because while this one is a crime mystery with sociopolitical overtones. I didn’t watch Sherlock Hound but this one has humans and it is not focused and the action as the movies from the last decade.

So I watched the first two episodes and my suspicions were confirmed. To begin with something positive, the artwork is pretty well done and it practically has no quality drops, is very consistent in this regard. The backgrounds are beautiful to look at and resemble the time and place it takes place in pretty well.

The rest, however, is not as polished, the character designs are very generic and everyone is a bishounen which gave me serious fujoshi bait vibes. And boy does the series attempt to make everyone look young and attractive, just look at Holmes’ companions for Pete’s sake. Motions are serviceable for this type of story, nothing really wrong nor bad there. The effects are not bad but when a crime happens, the series uses a filter with this same combination of brown and red ever present in edgy anime nowadays when it tries to be thriller or horror and it fails miserably at it because there’s nothing scary nor much tension in it.

I don’t have much to say about the sound department, the music and sound effects do their work just fine and fit the setting, the voice acting is ok but nothing special.

Now, despite being promoted as a crime mystery, the series is not that, for there is no culprit to find and murder to resolve, you are explicitly shown who the responsibles are and how they kill their victims. It’s closer to a psychological thriller, where we see Moriarty taking advantage of people’s hatred towards evil nobles that constantly mess with their lives if they didn’t ruin them yet, and leads them to killing those bastards, that’s it. Moriarty is basically like Johan from Monster but since I didn’t watch that show, what reminded me of was the antagonist from Babylon and that made me want to drop the show before I even began the second episode.

Also, for a series attempting to tap into discrimination based on social status, the handling of such topic is completely ridiculous. Every noble we see on screen is the worst scum of the Earth, we’re talking about Akame ga Kill! level of characterization here, if one whole side out of two in a conflict is presented as complete garbage then the theme exploration is reduced to a simple good vs. bad type of story with clear sides because one of them is completely demonized while the other is always victimized, which is the most simplistic and silliest way of dealing with sociopolitical topics.

The only exception as of now is the oldest brother and only because he killed his whole family. It’s very hard to accept this killing for a greater good excuse of the protagonists when they sadistically plan ahead how to drive both the nobles and their killers mad and anticípate the deaths of the formers.

And don’t get me started on their backgrounds, completely ridiculous, victimizing and preachy. Aside from that, Moriarty is a Gary Stu, for he’s good at eveything, outsmarts everyone and plays with them however he wants, does absolutely everything he wants, and the police somehow don’t notice how many nobles are being killed or disappear so close to each other, nor do they search for clues and weapons used in the murders. If the protagonist has no competition whatsoever then there’s no tension at all.

I dropped the show on its second episode but picked it up again later on and I can summarize the first half of the series like this, simple exploration of a serious topic with a huge scale, horrible characterization, and tensionless episodic cases. Holmes appears in the sixth episode to make things a little more interesting, but the case on the cruise was easily the worst and most ridiculous of the bunch and even he couldn’t save it. The culprit wasn’t even doing anything until Moriarty started to drive him mad, like Freddy Quimby in The Simpsons, he was a horrible but innocent person, until he snaps and kills in an over the top way and gets exposed and killed rather stupidily.

Thankfully, the last 4 episodes are way better not only because they adapt A Study in Scarlet and some other case but also because they focus on the cat and mouse game Moriarty and Holmes play with each other, it is not Light and L but still alright to the most part, and they focus on how Holmes is slowly getting corrupted by Moriarty’s schemes while showing how ruthless the latter can be, if I can give credit to the show for something, is being consistent with this character so far, showing his manipulations and preparations in detail and how he never doubts when playing with the lives of people at his will, he’s basically a blonde Shogo Makishima. Also, finally some detective work.

Honestly, this dynamic between Holmes and Moriarty and the similarities to Death Note is what made me want to watch the second season when it comes out the next year, if the whole series was like that, I would have given it a higher rating, but when you spend 7 out of 11 episodes reminding me of series such as Akame ga Kill! and Babylon, then you leave me no choice. Oh, and it was still better than Talentless Nana, because it has a far more consistent tone. But that is a story for another time.

UPDATE: From this point I talk about the second season, with some spoilers here and there

I already covered the first season so I won’t go over the basics again but I will compare the two for a bit to better stablish why I think the second season is slightly better, there are spoilers but who cares, everyone already watched this show.

In terms of visuals, the second season got rid of the stupid red and brown horror like filters and features more action scenes with ok enough motions. In terms of sound the opening and endings were better, albeit still pretty forgettable.

The best aspect of the second season was reducing a lot the amount of purely evil one dimensional nobles that ruined the first and focusing more on the cat and mouse game between Holmes and Moriarty with high stakes, even attempting to deal with the birth of the nation and a woman’s life at stake in a conspiranoical way…for about three episodes before going back to the same thing, and the woman changing gender thus being a transgender man in 1800’s London because I’m sure that was a thing back then.

A complaint I’ve seen from others that I agree with is that this season feels like it’s throwing references to iconic names just as fanservice, here is Jack the Ripper, here someone names himself James Bonde, Bond, without the e so it’s not too obvious, although not a major problem.

The bad things implemented in the second season that weren’t present in the first were more comical scenes and cool action. The former were supposed to add a bit of personality to the main characters and give them some scenes to interact between them in a relaxed way to make them more likable, but they clash a lot with the overall serious tone and approach of the series, not fitting into the whole thing, plus a character changed his personality completely between episodes and the fact that he can adapt different personalities and looks with ease does not let these moments feel genuine. The latter were supposed to make things more exciting but they are short, over the top and feel way too improbable within a more or less realistic setting in a show that takes itself seriously to the most part, kicking a coin at a ridiculous speed to make a bullet bounce? Come on now.

Anyways the show got rid of the one dimensional evil nobles to the most part, thank God (besides a completely absurd flashback episode) to focus more on the gang trolling them and getting important information of them while presenting more enemies and people with ideals similar to William’s along the way, thus becoming more political, which would have made things more interesting if they were handled properly. More seemingly capable enemies would have add more tension but since anyone’s still playing under William’s rules, that doesn’t happen. There are even fights among two gangs of assassins and you can barely see them.

No major complaints about the other guy, but he was too idealized and threw away his ideals way too easily, before becoming a tragic figure in a rather preachy manner and disappearing from the show completely in a couple of episodes.

Eventually the major issues within the show were, ironically, the elements that I expected to save it at the end of the first season, the interactions between Holmes and Moriarty and the conclusion, which was rushed and contradictory. Regarding the former, for a show that was supposed about these two geniuses going against each other, making one of them being completely fooled by the other was a major disappointment, but making them respect each other and even become friends with major fujoshi vibes ruined it completely, especially with the finale, which did the right thing of not being the exact same as the original, but it was too different, a very lukewarm alternative to it. I recently watched the 1995 “Heat” and the 2004 “Collateral” movies where, respectively, a cop and a criminal and an assasin and his hostage come to respect each other while trying to get rid of the other and they don’t become friends, because their very line of work and positions in the conflict make it impossible, and the finale of those movies were a lot better while still keeping the dynamic between them.

The second aspect was seriously bad for several reasons, first it tried to pull a Lelouch without comitting itself completely to it, second it resolved the major conflict very easily, all it took after all the killings was a two minutes preachy speech about the ways of the past and how the former nobles were different to resolve everything and last but not least, both Moriarty and the series desperately tries to paint him as some sort of villain and a necessary evil, yet almost every new character he encounters treats him as a tragic hero and one of them even says something like “you’re the man this country needs to change”. Excuse me, what? We’re talking about a mass murderer here. As much as I dislike the V for Vendetta and The Dark Knight movies for being too silly and too improbable and forced at points, they still did a good job when it comes to present both of their criminals as the villains who are clearly wrong, even if somehow they ended being supported by the majority of their audience.

Apparently the manga still goes on but what’s the point? The main character accomplished what he wanted, the main objective of the series and the themes already got a conclusion, sure, it was terrible, but it was there, going on with it is just stretching it at that point. That is why I won’t keep track of the franchise anymore, there’s no point for it to keep going and what I expected to raise its level was terribly handled. With Death Note, I guess Monster, Heat, Collateral and perhaps even The Dark Knight around, there’s no reason to watch this one.