Reviews by Fernando Leonel Alba

I’ll try to keep this short, since this title doesn’t really have much to talk about. This anime has some veterans within the medium behind it and one of the most interesting premises in a while, so it seemed like a worthy title to follow. There were some early red flags though, such as a very minor studio that has produced nothing but garbage doing the major work and a very so-so director in charge of it. It was a semi interesting series until, suddenly, it ended.

The overall plot structure is nothing special, just a road movie type of adventure where one of the two protagonists has to go from point A to point B, but happens to meet a lot of secondary and minor characters and learn about the world along the way. Meanwhile, the other main character studies how to develop weapons and learns more about the past that led to the present time of the show. Basically, everything they do is a way for the viewer to learn more about the setting and lore of the anime, but there’s not much actual plot in it.

Basically, what made Hikari no Ou semi interesting to follow wasn’t the story, but the buildup and a promise for a war to come, while almost all the time of the show is dedicated to explore its world. It takes place in a future with seemingly steampunk like technology, there are arranged marriages, dragons that guard villages, creatures from the forests that cure others, other creatures from the forests casted away from society, magical and natural fire, a tribe referred as spiders that manipulate said natural fire and wants to use it in a war against humans, shadow like black fire creatures that act as spies for the gods, who in turn are separated by elements and clans and are going to be part of the war, something such as paper is so valuable it’s the only way to communicate with those gods and can have a direct impact in the upcoming war, and there are hunters with any kind of dogs as hounds. Meanwhile in the capital they are building a cannon powered by lightning to fight the spiders. And there’s also a satellite coming down to Earth, and a human vessel for some prophesized star child I think. Everything is interesting but presented through infodumps to the two main characters, which makes for quite a challenging viewing experience to sit through only for an acquired taste. Also, it may sound like it is complicated, but in reality it is not, it’s just that the series explains everything in detail to look like everything is organic and makes sense.

Although there are things that I don’t exactly buy such as a chihuahua as a hound, and how easily Touko the female protagonist can use a weapon the size of her body at first try. Also, there are several lucky encounters throughout the show when she needs them. Anyways she eventually reaches the capital and accomplishes her goal in a so-so way, parting away with Kanata the dog and getting the weapon of the fire hunter that saved her was done well, but the reunion between Kanata and its actual owners was anticlimactic.

The other plot point was the war between humans and spiders but there’s no closure for that, as the series ended out of nowhere in its tenth episode, which really affects the overall. All the previous episodes were acceptable as slow yet interesting on their own, because they were building something big to come. They didn’t have much in them, but the anticipation of the next thing was done well. Well, with no ending, every episode was a buildup to nothing. Ten episodes worth of buildup and exposition through infodumps for nothing, come back in the second season.

And it’s not like you are watching the show for the characters either, the two main characters are there to learn about the world, and the others are there to explain them everything the audience needs to know. No one stands out that much, no one has a very interesting personality, only two characters have some kind of backdrop which are more told than shown, and no character really develops. Touko becomes braver and Koushi learns that people die when they fight, that is all, they don’t change, they just come to know about stuff.

As for the presentation, the sound effects are good, voice acting feels mature and done well, the music is very good and atmospheric, the opening is quite interesting because it goes from being very slow to very fast yet flowing organically, and the ending is another beautiful song by Maaya Sakamoto as usual. First episode aside, the visuals, however, are very weak, the artwork suffers constant quality drops, the characters go off model all the time, the motions are sloppy even during relaxing moments and frankly quite pathetic during the few fights of the show, and as for the special effects, they are fine, but there is some ugly CGI in here. The backgrounds are the best part, but even them have some crappy CGI sometimes.

The directing is weird as well, throwing visually completely different illustrations during some moments in very random ways leaving you confused more than impacted, and using a black screen with the name of the characters that are going to appear whenever the series switches from the villages to the capital city. I don’t need to be reminded of the characters’ names every half an episode, and I hope no viewer is.

So, Hikari no Ou is a series that focuses entirely in its atmosphere and world building, with not so much actual plot and characters in it that would be worth a watch if it had an actual resolution to all that build up, but it doesn’t. As for what’s in the upcoming season, this one makes it seem like only the war is left to shown, but if the visual quality of the second season remains the same, the fights will look ridiculous. The trailer for the continuation, however, makes it look like there is going to be even more world building, what’s even left to talk about in this show? The actual fire hunter and that star child thing or something? I don’t know frankly. It is hard to recommend the show because of its dull and visually weak presentation and because there’s not much actual content in it, since it is just an anticipation of a second season that might look really bad. So, it’s a series only for those who seek something with a mature tone that feels different from what’s currently in the medium. Otherwise Shinsekai Yori in lore and setting and Seirei no Moribito in characters and some of its mythology have everything that you could want from this show, only done much better, and with actual worthy resolutions.

17/03/2024 update

“As for what’s in the upcoming season, this one makes it seem like only the war is left to shown, but if the visual quality of the second season remains the same, the fights will look ridiculous.”

I wrote this at some point on my review of the first season and it looks like I was mostly right, except for the fact that the visuals somehow became way worse. There are almost no moments when the artwork looks good and there are a lot of inconsistencies in the character models, the backgrounds were improved from the previous installment, as they no longer have the bad CGI from earlier, but that is still present for some special effects. The actual motions, as I implied, are a lot of worse now and makes every fight look ridiculous, and even the ones during scenes without action are done very poorly. The moments with special looking stills are used less randomly at first, but are just as prominent as the series moves forward, and it’s even quite obviously used to save some animation, plus they kinda moved to have an AI assisted look instead of the almost painting like from the previous season. They look good however, not like the AI horrors you can find out there, but the difference from before is worth pointing out. The directing keeps doing its thing but can’t save the visuals much, especially because it seemed like it got rid of the black screen moments with the character names spelled out on them, only to bring them back at some point.

What didn’t change was the atmosphere of the show, which remains the same from the previous season, with soundtrack, sound effects and voice acting being as good as they were before. The only thing that’s worse is the opening and ending songs, which are inferior compared with the previous ones, but still good on their own.

As for the plot, there is still some world building going on but it’s nowhere near as much nor it has the dull infodumped presentation from the first season, most of the story now is all the parties involved in the war doing their own thing. The good part is that previously passive or mysterious characters are finally doing something, and on paper everything is epic when described since after all the humans are setting on fire the spiders, who in turn lead a full on attack onto them, the gods move around kidnapping hostages for making them their host for their ultimate goddess or something like that, and the tree people go around and below the capital city trying to save as many of their own as they can. It doesn’t stop there as the series also bothers to show common people as refugees and even some humans siding with the spiders for their cause against the deities, and this way the conflict doesn’t feel limited to just the important cast.

On execution, however, since a lot of things are happening at the same time, the transition from one thing to another doesn’t feel very organic, especially compared with the previous installment, and it becomes questionable if some things were properly introduced or anticipated in the previous season, or even during this one, with the answers to that being mostly negative.

As for the characterization, well, Touko becomes more involved with the conflict, Akira reluctantly and slowly accepts what she has to do and Koushi has his own Oppenheimer moment after he realizes the effects of what he has done ever since the first season and what it led to. But just as it happens with the aforementioned elements, the character focus might feel, ironically, unfocused, because of how jumpy the plot became, with scenes dedicated to them coming off as short or too apart from each other through the series, before moving to something else completely different. As for the rest of the cast, some old faces reappear in very awkward ways, literally to say hello before disappearing from the show once again after a short scene, or to tell the others about their backdrops and motivations all along in equally awkward ways.

As for the resolution, it was ok I guess but it also felt quite easygoing and done after a lot of infodump and lacking in impact, the world goes back to how it was and all the enemy parties reach an easy agreement after so many years at war, leaving you with a “ah, that’s it” kind of feel at the end.

As a whole, the whole series is kind of interesting to follow for feeling like an anime from another era and the people making it, but in terms of execution it’s not really something I consider worth watching nor would openly recommend outside of people wanting something kind of different.

Since this film came out it either got praised as the best thing ever or panned as the exact opposite, at least on the Internet. There is almost no in-between with this title it seems, so I would like to do exactly that.

Since this is a documentary and not an actual movie we don’t have to talk about the way it looks and is filmed and there are no actors obviously, the camera goes from the face of a person to another to show how they are dealing with the discussion, with some animated illustrations at some points. There’s some music but is just there, it might as well not be and you wouldn’t tell the difference.

Anyways with that out of the picture, let’s focus on the important. Unlike what has been written about this documentary, it is not unbiased, no documentary is. How could you say it is when the author is a well-known conservative and transphobic person that even published a book mocking transitions? And he included that in this film, and even a fragment where he explicitly calls transgender people sick freaks with mental health issues that want to corrupt children and tells them “we’re going to fight you” to their faces.

And there’s also a more subtle instance where he cuts the testimony of a humanities professor to make you think that he does not get to the point, you can even see on his face that he was getting impatient. I understand that you never use everything that a source tells you on an interview, but to cut exactly the part where, in your narrative, you show one side of the debate’s definition of the central topic you are handling?

If you can still say that this documentary is unbiased despite all these moments, then you are just as biased as it is. Walsh clearly takes a side and promotes an agenda. You could probably discuss whether or not it is a good agenda according to what you think is right or wrong, but to say that this documentary does not promote an agenda and is unbiased is simply a lie.

Another issue with it are the sources. Since Walsh wants to discuss the positions regarding gender in the States, it makes sense to go to both professionals and common people from both sides of the argument. Nothing wrong with that, but then he decides that asking people from his country might not be enough to cover the topic correctly, he decides to goes to some other places, and this is where the issues begin.

He goes to some countries in Europe, talks with like two sources and decides, this is what Europe has to say about gender. Excuse me, the whole European continent? He also goes to talk to ONE TRIBE on ONE COUNTRY in Africa and decides, this is what Africa thinks about this topic, ONE TRIBE equals Africa as a whole apparently. And don’t you love it that he deliberately goes to a far more conservative country than this own to ask about this? Why not come to a region that, for now, stands on a middle ground between progressive and conservative, like the rest of America (continent)?

Oh, the documentary also features Jordan Peterson and the author’s wife. Surely the inner circle of the maker are valid sources to trust, I wonder what they would say? Why is Ben Shapiro not in here? For the reaction video about it that they made together afterwards, that’s why.

There are also some really lame attempts at comedy where Walsh tries to annoy the people he is interviewing, and are so bad and fall so flat that they got a smile or a little chuckle out of me because of the awkwardness. Also, what a great interviewer to make his sources uncomfortable.

I did enjoy What is a Woman? In the end, in a so bad it’s good kind of way because of the failed attempts at being funny and the obvious bias, but I would never think of something as worth consuming because of how bad it is. And I do think this is a worth consuming product, despite all the things I said about it, but not for the reasons the man behind intended to.

The only actually good part of this thing that makes it worth watching are the questions, deliberately formulated from the point of view of the other side of the spectrum, even using their vocabulary, to try to make the interviewees fall for it, and using the Socratic method to make them fail in their arguments. This comes to prove that the right has pretty closed and simplistic points, while the left…don’t even have that. Every person from the left wing ideology either gets emotional quickly, can’t back up their points for more than two questions, ends up falling into circular reasoning, or all of that at once.

So, ironically, despite Walsh trying his best to show that there is no point to this debate and it is closed, the reason why I think this documentary is worth watching is because of the exact opposite, it shows that the topic needs to be more thought of and discussed from both sides, at least until they can formulate some actual arguments to back up what they say, specially the left, which this perfectly captures how bad it can be on the States.

A rather typical series, it has ninjas, assassins, samurais, it begins as a typical battle royale and later on mutates to a typical fighting shounen.

Aesthetically it takes place in an appropriate time period and setting, and features conventional representations of its factions in fiction. The ninjas try to sneak attacks directed to vital points for a quick kill, they also use elemental techniques, along with close combat and illusions, all similar to what was already shown in Naruto, heck they even use that body replacement jutsu, but since the power scale never goes too crazy in this series, no ability is broken. Also, unlike that franchise, the characters here don’t have crazy hair nor they wear visible colors, all of them wear black clothes and masks to cover themselves. They are also pretty dehumanized, trained from kids to be ruthless killers that get the job done quickly with almost no emotions, no talk no jutsu here. They also can sacrifice any of their companions at any moment.

The samurais have conventional clothes as well, black, white, black and white, nothing crazy with them either. They are dehumanized in the sense that they give themselves completely to the orders given by their clan and Shogun, and fight with honor in battle, they also do that thing of posing before an attack and going for the kill with one quick strike. Nothing that really stands out here, since samurais are better treated than ninjas in manga and anime in general.

As for the actual visual quality of the manga, it’s overall good but it definitely becomes worse during some moments, the backgrounds are usually good but sometimes absent and they also become a little repetitive because almost the whole story takes place in an island. The effects are very good, as are the character designs, quite different from each other, with not much facial repetition, proper clothes as I already said, and the antagonists are either monsters that look like they came out of Gantz or hermaphrodites sex fluid no gender plant/human hybrids with regenerative abilities that also can turn into Gantz monsters themselves, so they are visually more impressive and stand out more than the protagonists, some of who get close to become monsters themselves at some point and it’s visually cool to see their bodies change during those moments. The final bosses do share faces but there’s an in-story reason for that.

Speaking of the story, let’s get into that. There is not much that stands out here, like I said, it’s a typical battle royale in an island full of monsters to try to get a McGuffin that it’s supposed to grant immortality, later on it mutates to a typical fighting shounen where the characters learn to use elemental techniques based on Ki/Qi/Chi and grow more powerful to beat the big baddies of the manga, who are typical villains that see themselves as gods that are way above humans and think of them as food that helps them grow more powerful in turn. Nothing new here. There are also some typical issues of fighting shounen with it:

-Obviously the fights defy all logic and the characters grow more powerful and overpower thousand years old experts conveniently fast.
-There’s some silly comedy that clashes with the overall serious and violent tone.
-There’s a lot of exposition and not very much of it is needed, the characters over explain the power system, which is rather typical and is basically a combination of the Chakras in Naruto or for a western equivalent the elemental Chi in Avatar, with the strengths and weaknesses against other attributes like in Hunter x Hunter (although not nearly as complicated), and the quick increase or decrease of power used in Dragon Ball. It’s not nearly as complex as it tries to make you think it is and thus it doesn’t need that much explanation. They also over explain their techniques to their enemies sometimes, stop doing that, why would you give away your advantage like that?
-Also, there are some flashbacks of the characters or the planning before a fight during said fight, which interrupts its flow and pacing. Also, as much effort is put into the pre-planning, if you show said pre-planning during or after a fight to caught the reader by surprise, it will still feel like an asspull to some degree, those things need to be shown before the fight, like in Fullmetal Alchemist or the Castlevania cartoon.
-There are some mysteries and reveals during the manga but they are pretty basic, nothing here will come off as a big plot twist.
-There are several different factions with hidden motives that seemingly adds more complexity and makes you think that there will be a three or four way war, but due to circumstances ends up being not exactly that.

But still, there is some good stuff within the plot, such as:

-The switch from a battle royale to a fighting shounen was well done, making the characters realize that they need to cooperate in order to survive.
-As an extension of that, despite the characters growing stronger, no one becomes ridiculously powerful to defeat a major enemy by themselves, every fight has teamwork and some sort of strategy in them, and even then no fight is won easily. Also, they are far more violent than their counterparts on most of the shows of its kind.
-Unlike the action shows that I compared it with, there’s no broken ability or in-story logic or rule defying technique, transformation, alternate source of energy, attribute manipulation, or last minute deus ex machina or power up.
-Despite having mysteries, this is not a mystery bait story, everything is properly revealed in time, and there are no surprise reveals near the end of the manga that go against everything that was previously shown.
-The comedy is never present during serious or dramatic moments, so there’s no mood whiplash.
-As I already said, proper integration of ninjas, samurais and Japanese mythology in it.
-Also, somehow it managed to incorporate sex with an in-story reason and not in a very explicit or exploited way.
-At some point near the end there’s a prophecy that is seemingly going to ruin the whole manga, but it manages to fulfill it and trick it at the same time.
-The fights have increasing stakes, and there are some deaths in here, and no obvious plot armor that I remember.
-No time is wasted, everything that happens is either important to the plot or the characters, also no fight lasts more than needed, as does the overall manga, which is fairly short compared to the big mainstream titles, also no very different second part for an already finished story like Chainsaw Man, Dragon Ball, Hokuto no Ken, etc.

There are other two things that stay in a middle ground between being positive and negative:

-There’s nudity, some of it has an in-story reason or is symbolic, some other is gratuitous and unneeded, or typical comical ecchi moments, meaning, fanservice.
-For such a bleak story, the finale sure felt way happier than expected, it definitely needed to be more bittersweet with more deaths. Also, probably not that many readers will be happy with the resolution of the final showdown, which was far more emotional than epic, maybe more mature to some but definitely corny for the target audience.

In the end what makes this manga worth consuming is the characters, they fit an archetype at first but no one remains static, every major character gets their tragic backstory and go through some sort of change to a proper conclusion or at least gets explored in a basic level. In specific but not in detail:

-Gabimaru begins as an edgy suicidal white haired shounen protagonist, he becomes a tragic dehumanized figure and learns love and compassion as well as to value his life and being a human being later on.
-Sagiri, a woman samurai that begins as a quiet badass fighter but also learns compassion along the way. She loses a lot of that badassery that gets replaced by naivety later on unfortunately, but at least has a female empowerment theme going on, and although it is told in your face, it is handled properly by having her being equally mansplained and respected by her fellow samurais. Ends up balancing traditionally feminine emotionality with traditionally masculine physical strength in a fine enough way to please both open minded and conservative readers. Also, the most serious character and voice of reason among the cast that tries to solve everything with less casualties as possible.
-Yuzuriha, a sexy, seducing, treacherous kunoichi that fools around a lot. Shown to fight for a dear one like Gabimaru, and learns camaraderie along the way.
-Shion, the character I liked the most, a typical badass blind swordsman, a teacher during most moments and fond of bad jokes usually regarding his blindness, ends up having the closest fights and a much closer relationship with his students than it seemed at first. In a way, is the serious Kamina of this manga. He also becomes a father figure for Nurugai, even if she wants something else. Unfortunately this Nurugai character doesn’t evolve past her background story.
-The Aza brothers, the older, Choubei, begins as a super edgy and self-destructive ruthless killer, is shown to be more cunning than expected and loves his brother a lot, learns a bit of camaraderie. The younger, Touma, learns to be less dependent of his brother.
-Jikka, a drunk and lazy swordsman, is revealed to be far stronger, manipulative and cunning than expected.

I would like to say more about the secondary characters and the antagonists but it would make this review far longer and I would have to explain each one more in detail, falling into spoilers. As long as you get that each character has more individuality and things going on in them than what initially looked like, fine.

As a whole, despite not being great in any particular way and more straightforward than it could have been, Jigokuraku uses typical premises, plot devices and elements and developments along with some other unusual plot elements with decent enough execution and handling, good characters that enhance the overall quality, while avoiding most of the issues of its bigger more mainstream counterparts in terms of duration, pacing and power scaling, and proper aesthetics to boost. So, out of the modern fighting shounen, I say this one is the one that’s worth getting into the most, and ranks among the better titles in its genre in general.

Note: This covers the whole animated franchise up until 2023.

Unlike with Amaama to Inazuma I was fully prepared to tear Amanchu to pieces but I decided that wasn’t fair so I rewatched what I watched back in 2017 about it, and continued with the sequel. And I’m glad I did that because the show wasn’t at all like I thought I remembered it to be. Learned a good lesson to rewatch the show you are going to talk about in order to talk about it correctly, for a second time.

Anyways my first impressions about Amanchu! back to six years ago was that it was a plotless, super slow, melodramatic, tryhard moe show with no explorations of its themes and elements, constant changes between a sad and a tryhard happy mood, with one of my most hated protagonists of all time that was constantly crying, along with one of my most hated co-protagonists of all time. With an ova sequel that was a completely melodramatic throwaway episode about a high school girl accepting that her friend now has more friends. What do I think about it now?

First of all, Amanchu! is as plotless and slow as any moe slice of life out there really, in fact, it has more plot and progression than most I’ve seen, in the second episode it already introduces the scuba diving which is the main element in the show, and from there it progressively explains more about it, and it also introduces new secondary characters and a teacher that are part of the club. The main idea behind all this is to show how the protagonist, Futaba, grows from a crybaby with first world problems to…well, not that, as she learns to dive and not be dependent of her new friend and co-protagonist Hikari for everything, or at least that’s the intention.

The show is certainly not tryhard moe but it is however tryhard funny, which to me usually misses the mark in any show or movie or whatever that tries that. Amanchu! desperately makes its characters overreact to every little thing changing its arstyle to a chibi one as well as changing the faces of everyone in order to make you laugh. Some will find it funny, some don’t, I belong in the second group. And it’s not a problem really, because unlike what I thought in 2017, Amanchu! is a completely lighthearted and relaxing show (or at least that’s what it amounts to) that shouldn’t be taken all too seriously, it’s not that it presents stakes and serious themes and then ruins it with constant comedy as plenty of anime and the MCU do.

Sure, Futaba sighs a lot but she’s not sad or crying as I thought she did, in fact she only cries twice in the whole show, one even happens in a flashback. The reason why she feels so down at first is because she moved from another place and is overwhelmed by the completely different new town and people, and misses her old home and friends. Something which I thought was stupid back then, but can now understand and empathize (although not relate) with now, especially considering she’s just a teenager, speaking with teenagers from different countries during these six years helped me a lot with that.

Also the teacher who I remembered being super childish, in fact is not, as she has some moments where she acts like an adult and gives advices to the teen characters of the show. Sure she is happy and having fun a lot of the times, but since when is that a problem? Being an adult doesn’t mean you have to be serious all the time, although this may vary depending of the place, country, culture and people around I guess.

There are however issues within the show. Futaba seems to have a bit of a social anxiety going on with her, yet because of the lighthearted nature and tone of the show, it comes off more as her being extremely shy instead. Also, although there is some exploration in the show, it is true that the series reaches a point where it has nothing else to show and thus, instead of showing the protagonist learning to swim and improving herself, it proceeds to have five episodes about typical slice of nothingness happening that lots of slice of life anime have. Is during these episodes when the pacing and themes go to die and the characters fool around doing anything but talking about diving or swimming, including the teacher. And it doesn’t even lead to a satisfying conclusion in the last episode, since despite all the things Futaba learns in the season, she still needs the help of everyone around her, especially Hikari.
I mean I guess she couldn’t do it perfectly at first try, but what was the point of the whole show then?

As for characters, I still include Hikari within my most hated characters of all time, nothing very wrong with her in the way she is written I guess, she is the typical happy and very energetic character in a slice of life show. It’s just that she’s the reason why I had an issue with the show in the first place, she fools around all the time doing silly faces and trying hard to seem funny, that I found her irritating and wanted to kick her head open instead. I remember back when the show came out and people were debating if she is autistic and a proper representation of people from the spectrum, it was that bad. She is not, by the way.

Then there was the big sister, whatever her name is, I didn’t remember her much, but during my rewatch I couldn’t stop thinking how much of a bitch this girl is towards her brother for no reason, she just likes to beat him all the time I guess. Hey people, when a woman is violent towards a man, is not abusive, is funny, didn’t you know? Off to my most hated characters she goes, taking what was Futaba place there before.

Oh, and visuals and sound are fine I guess. The former are basic but serviceable, people had a problem with the school uniforms back then, I couldn’t care less about them, the only thing that stands out visually are the backgrounds, very pretty and based on actual places in Japan. As for the latter, the sound effects and voice acting do their job just fine and the music is relaxing like the shows intends to, with the opening and ending being very cute.

The ova that comes after is indeed about Futaba’s friends visiting her, and one of them is jealous of Hikari, but there’s no problem in it, it is not presented in a melodramatic way, is all lighthearted and she gets over it by the end of it in just twenty four minutes or so. There’s nothing wrong with it so this is actually the best of the three animated installments, it’s just that it feels like it should have been the last episode of the season instead of being released on its own, milking the Japanese I guess.

Then came the second season which remained more or less the same in terms of visuals and sound. The opening and ending are not as good as the first ones but they are still fine, as is the soundtrack in general. There is however some CGI in this season and it does not look good, as usual.

This season is nowhere near as beloved as the first one and it is because of the plot. On the positive side, it has the undisputed highest points of the franchise, with Futaba finally developing as she was supposed to do during the previous season, while also introducing the very likeable family of Hikari. The problems with this season are everything else, as follows:

-There was a bit of fanservice, very little actually, but definitely unwelcomed on a previously very clean and pure show.
-If the previous season gave reasons to ship the characters thanks to some dialogues, this one leans harder on the yuri vibes by making Futaba jealous of a newly introduced character that likes Hikari, only to do nothing with that and not change the relationship between the characters in any way, it was all bait.
-Speaking of which, said new character is thought of as a girl when he appears, but turns out to be a boy. Unlike Hikari’s family, he adds nothing, he makes the show worse by making everything more childish, and his whole personality isn’t likeable either.
-Something like four episodes are wasted on dreams. There was dead time on the first season as well but at least the characters were actually in the actual setting. This third of the show felt like complete filler and nobody could defend it. There was an in-story reason for these episodes but that only led to a bigger problem that deserves its own paragraph which is:

-The Peter Pan arc. Ladies and gentlemen, Amanchu presents what’s most likely THE SECOND WORST, MOST STUPID LOVE TRIANGLE OF ALL TIME, after that thing in the Twilight movies. Nowhere near as messed up for sure but it still comes off as a bit creepy and purely nonsensical and unfitting within a setting and show like this, and to think this was the reason why the dreams were in the show all along, to asspull a solution during this arc. Also, two versions of the same character that defy all time and space logic coexist in the same place, somehow. Also, the big sister character turns into a completely out of character childish, girly, easy to fool and manipulate version of herself. Also, it ruined the teacher by giving her a terrible backdrop, also, what kind of a love triangle has a student involved? Unless the show is a hentai, and if the author is not a creep, it is obvious that the two adults will end up together. Only thing they don’t, because the series does nothing with them just like with the other romance bait and yuri bait episodes, and it even gives amnesia to every character except the three involved, precisely because IT WAS ALL A DREAM.

Some tried to defend the show by saying that these episodes were about showing the magic that can be found in everyday life, a message that the series tries to convey, and that every other Kozue Amano work has some fantasy-ish elements (and water settings) in them. Those are terrible justifications because Amanchu! is not those other works, it is its own thing with its own setting and rules, this is not another planet in the future like in Aria, it is contemporary Japan. And also, if the show tries to tell that even everyday moments in everyday life can be magical, throwing out of nowhere magical elements go against that message, precisely because those are not everyday elements, even more so when they end up having no impact whatsoever on the plot and characters by the end of the arc.

Thus, Amanchu! ends up lasting for at least double the amount of time it needs to, if the show was just episodes one to six and twelve of the first season, the ova, and episodes three, five, ten and twelve of the second season, Futaba would fail at a midpoint in a whole show instead at the end of a first season, regain confidence in the ova (now episode 8 in this scenario), and achieve her goal and grow by the twelfth episode of a single cour anime. But unless a fan makes an edit that turns it into a watchable slice of life with a satisfying conclusion or something, here you are with a show that ends up being worse and more disappointing than the average nothing happens moe, because it makes you think that it will be about something, only to pad the runtime with unrelated random goofing around and out of place elements that go against the themes and messages, and be about nothing like most other moe shows by the end. So, the best thing to do with Amanchu! is to read the Aqua and Aria manga instead, which are more creative, make a better use of its water based setting, does not have out of place elements, and has six much better explored characters than Futaba here.

I played the three original Tekken games when I was a kid and I really liked them back then, years later I bought Tekken 5 for the PS2 and I wasn’t as fond of it, not because of the game itself, which was pretty good and had a lot of content, including those three games, but because I came to prefer more over the top fast paced 2D fighting games instead. Some years ago I also played some local multiplayer Tekken 7 and watched like two different complete playthroughs of it. What I’m getting at with this is that I know enough about the franchise to speak of this series as both a product by itself and as an adaptation.

Bloodline is, to my knowledge, the fifth Tekken based fiction, three of which are anime, and despite being a failure and a demonstration that they should give up in trying to make adaptations out of this franchise, it is so far the best of them. Let me talk briefly about those before getting to the main topic.

In 1998 there was a low budget movie based on the first two games made by Studio Deen, it looked really bad, had barely any action, a way more than needed serious tone, the plot was, as expected, really stupid, and there were a lot of characters with barely any screentime to get fleshed out on a basic level, it’s the second worst of them all and the worst of the three anime.

In 2009 there was a live action movie and although it more or less covered the basics of the main plot and tried to give the characters a similar look to the games, it was also full of HollyWood nonsense such as forced romances with no character dynamics, a needlessly serious cyberpunk setting that only made the dumb plot seemed worse, and it was obviously nowhere near as exciting as what you could do on the videogames, or animation based on them, overall it was better than the previous movie and other live action fighting game adaptations, but still really bad as a whole.

In 2011 there was Tekken: Blood Vengeance, a full CGI movie which supposedly takes place between Tekken 5 and 6, visually it was pretty cool and the final fight had great battle choreography, but it came out with a needless original bullshit plot which was very simple and thin, had a cop out ending, and didn’t really have much connection to the plot of either game. It was also needlessly slow paced as most of its duration had Ling Xiayou and Alisa Bosconovitch fooling around doing high school girls nonsense, I can’t really say if it was better or worse than the previous installment.

Then in 2014 there was Tekken: Kazuya’s Revenge, which, despite its name, was a direct to video prequel of the live action movie focused on, well, Kazuya, it had a completely original story and characterization, unrelated to the games or its sequel, while having the most serious tone of all the movies, thus easily being the worst of them all.

Bloodline is the first series based on Tekken and the best adaptation so far, simply because the bar was really low, it learned a little of previous mistakes, and had more duration than the movies to flesh out things a little more. It had more action than the first movie, it didn’t complicate the setting nor had forced romance like the second movie, it was more focused than the third as it wasn’t fooling around throughout most of its duration, and it was of course better than the fourth film, just like most things ever created. It was also the most faithful adaptation out of all of them. Despite that, as an adaptation it has problems, because it is based on Tekken 3, yet it changes plot points from the game, features mechanics and characters from later games, even the latest entry in the franchise at the moment, and Julia Chang was even redesigned to look like her streamer self from Tekken 7, I guess because her original design would be problematic nowadays.

But even if it didn’t have that, plot wise it would still be bad, simply because it is based on Tekken, a fighting game series, which translates to absolute garbage plot, that videogame genre never cares about it, it’s just an excuse for the fighting to take place, proof of which is Mortal Kombat still having the best with all of its retcons and lack of permanent consequences, and even after the most hated eleventh game.

The same thing happens in Tekken, it’s just a tournament arc from a shounen action series with characters either trying to get money to help someone or having personal vendettas against other characters, usually Heihachi, before the whole thing becomes more and more convoluted, goes up in scale to a World War between tyrants and terrorits around the whole globe and even space, keeps rewriting and retconning characters backstories and the Devil Gene, fucks up the power scale with each game, makes a crossover character from a completely different game and universe such as Gouki (or Akuma) from Street Fighter canon, has seemingly dead characters being revived or replaced by other characters, which are virtually the same thing as if they were clones or redesigns, and keeps introducing silly elements such as fighting kangaroos, dinosaurs, bears, sentient wood dummies, and even aliens.

Tekken: Bloodline is based on the third game and it focuses entirely in the Mishima/Kazama family, their family feud and the initial concept of the Devil Gene, thus not having such problems, it still had issues by itself when it comes to writing. Jin is told by Heihachi to not let others know about their ties, what is the first thing he does? Watches videos of Heihachi and Kazuya, asks every other fighter about them, and even goes to talk to Heihachi, more than just one time, thus instantly exposing himself. Then of course, he is a kid who suppodsely lures out Ogre by accident, yet he lacks power, and the monster doesn’t kill him because… the series wouldn’t happen otherwise. Jin also can’t do anything against it, but with just three years of training he becomes stronger and better at fighting than veteran fighters that fought in all previous King of Iron Fist tournaments, despite being told by Heihachi that he doesn’t know how to fight, and of course he gets a convenient power up of an evil inner energy when he needs it at the right moment, allowing him to beat his two strongest enemies. See? A fighting shounen series plot, just like I told you, made worse by the short duration.

That is another problem of the series, despite being longer in runtime than the movies, it’s still way too short for what it goes for plotwise. Xiayou and Hwoarang are closer to Jin than in the game, which was a good move, but there was no build up to that before the tournament, both characters have one very short mute scene where they interact with Jin, thus their dynamic later on feels weak. There are also a lot of other fighters, which despite getting hyped up and fan favourites, are defeated quickly and have no backstory, hell some of them don’t even have screentime, you just see their names and faces for two seconds and that’s it. The show is focused on Jin alright, but why having all these other characters then? The only ones with some motives behind are Julia and King, and even those are presented poorly, just the first talking about them, just like everything is presented in this series, by talking, not showing anything. The pacing is also erratic, half the series is spent on Jin training, or interacting with characters that are not fleshed out, the other half are three minutes fights before moving to something else and forgetting completely about what came before. The series needed to be twice as long, thus a normal cour anime series, to present everything a bit more organically.

Other minor issues in the writing include having no public in the tournament, you have all these fighters in a colosseum, and it’s completely empty. There are cameras and you see people watching the tournament alright, but they are not in the place, and the shots of the people watching it are just three and repeated. Even the first live action movie did it better by having the contestants fighting in ring and having people watching the fights in the place from a safe distance. There’s also Leroy swearing revenge on Heihachi, which could just be a throwaway line of dialogue, or a foreshadowing of a continuation to come, which is a really bad idea because, as I already said, the plot of the games only become worse and worse with each new entry.

But ok, this is an action show based on a fighting videogames series, the last you thing you care about here is plot and characters, this could still be a watchable show if it was good as a rule of cool, but it does not achieve that either. First of all, like I already said, it is short, slow, and the fights are short, which frankly makes the thing boring. Style over substance fiction is never good because of plot but because of the characters, which here are are not fleshed out, and spectacle, which here is mediocre because the visuals are bad and the sound mediocre. The Tekken franchise always had a weird but unique style of mixing semi realistic character figures, faces and martial arts, with stylized character designs, before introducing demons, intelligent animals, aliens, robot chicks that attack with their disembodied body parts as if they were Mazinger, and more stuff. This is a stylized anime, thus loosing the semi realism, but also Larx Entertainment, the studio responsible of Kengan Ashura, is behind this series, which translates to super muscular CGI. Also the motions are a bit stiff.

But the major problems with the visuals have to do with effects, particularly lightning and shading, for some reason they thought having PSX polygons as shadows for the characters, appearing particularly in their heads, even when in places where such thing shouldn’t happen, was a good idea. Also the series implements effects from the games, and although it was a nice addition as fanservice at first, it becomes overused and looses impact, on top of looking cheaper and cheaper towards the end. Also, although the show succesfully imitates the fighting styles of the characters from the game, such techniques don’t translate well to a series, such movements, as well as the blocking, have wide poses and hitboxes in the game, and here I see, for example, Leroy not being able to land a kick to Jin in the chest, despite him blocking with his arms well apart from each other. It also looks silly when a character is blocking still and the other is attacking repeteadly at the same place, couldn’t he try to hit him from another angle or something? The backgrounds are done nicely but other than that the visuals are very weak, even more if you already watched Blood Vengeance.

The sound is also a bit boring. Tekken always had electronic music as soundtrack and although I’m no fan of the genre, in the games it was always hype, here not so much, it is also dubstep, which does not fit Tekken, nor brings a nostalgic feeling from the 90s when Tekken 3 came out, and also, it is dubstep, fuck that, there’s a reason why it died out so quickly and why nobody misses it. And since this was a Netflix series, it obviously had to have the most boring intro and outro you’ll hear in your life, at least until you watch another Netflix anime that isn’t Bastard!! The sound effects were alright or weak depending on the scene and the voice acting was acceptable, although they obviously don’t sound as young as the characters are supposed to be (specially Jin), and people didn’t like King sounding as a human instead of a tiger, I didn’t have a problem with that because he is a man with a tiger mask, not a real tiger, if anything is the games which are weird, not this.

And the action is boring, sorry, the fights are short and not very exciting because of the visuals. For a series which whole plot is a tournament arc, in a medium where you most likely have already seen the Tenkaichi Budokais in Dragon Ball (Dragon Ball, not Z), or the Chuunin exams in Naruto, the brutal fights in Baki, the cool punches in Hajime no Ippo, not to metion lots of other series with far more creative, violent and over the top fights, this is nothing, plus there is no reason to care about the people fighting. The only good thing in them was the characters getting actually injured, as long as they are not Xiaoyu. You could argue that Tekken was always a bit more grounded than other fighting games, well try to see this muscular CGI anime freaks that punch or kick each other two meters in the air in a straight line with traingles all the time on their heads with orange or white lights coming out from their hits as grounded.

But not everything is bad, I did say that this is the best fictional work based on Tekken after all. It’s the most faithful and focused of them all and it incorporated the fighting styles and effects from the games, thus being ok as fanservice if that is all you care about, which I assume it is for the majority of the fanbase, as I’ve seen. Actual good stuff comes from making Heihachi more colected than the over the top cartoony villain he would become as the games went on, even claiming to try and get rid of Ogre, thus seemingly doing awful things for the greater good (although it could be a lie), and the series making Jin a more symphatetic character than in the games. Over there he had his personal vendetta alright, but he was always a jerk towards everyone. Bloodline made him a better guy towards every other fighter, caring for Leroy, Xiaoyu, Hwoarang, even King and to a lesser extent Julia, thus giving the viewer reasons to support him besides wanting to avenge his mother, as well as showing him being conflicted between the teachings of his grandfather and the upbringing of his mother. Which is the second reason why making a continuation would be such a bad idea, besides the awful plot, as the videogame franchise went on he became more and more of an asshole, even tried to pull a Lelouch Lamperouge and became a world tyrant, thus completely abandoning whatever his mother taught him and becoming a person she would absolutely despise.

So, if you are a fan of the games and you don’t care about the plot and characters (as you should), and all you want is quick fanservice, you will probably like this series, as long as you don’t hate poor CGI. Otherwise stay the hell away from it and watch Street Fighter 2 the animated movie instead, it is actually well animated, good as fanservice, it improves the plot from the game it adapts by tying character arcs together, and the english version even has better soundtrack than the boring japanese one. Or watch an actual good action show or movie instead, that would be even better.

Talking about this title leaves me with mixed feelings, on one hand I am happy to finally write a review again after so much time but on the other hand it’s a bit sad that it has to be about a title that was well received at the time yet forgotten quickly, and that I never had a positive opinion about it.

To start with the positives, it’s easy to understand why people would enjoy the show as long as they like slice of life, first of all, for the genre it’s pretty well visually presented, even after half a decade I still remember it as a series with no major quality drops, well made backgrounds, vivid, expressive and fluid motions and facial expressions for its type of show, and with cooking anime levels of detailed and very well drawn food. The scene I remember the most and that I watched a couple times outside of the anime was about the little girl Tsumugi walking down the streets while avoiding imaginary sharks on an imaginary ocean in her mind, that particular scene had great special effects, but during the rest of the series there were pretty standard, and as the vast majority of slice of life shows, the character designs are simple, generic and forgettable, besides that the visuals are still a very solid department as a whole.

As for the sound department, the sound effects were good and both the music and the voices did their job accordingly but nothing to write too much about besides Tsumugi, a five years old girl voiced by an, at the time, eleven years old girl, who despite being so young did a wonderful job. I have already talked about this on my Aishiteruze Baby review where Yuzuyu, also a five years old girl, was voiced by a little girl but with a much much worse performance, that is not the case here.

Tsumugi herself is adorable, as most protagonists in this type of shows are, and unlike Rin Kaga, for example, she’s not so mature for her age, in fact she is not mature in the least. She’s loud, energetic, innocent, and makes a big deal out of everything, in either a comedic or dramatic way. If you’re like me, it will get tiresome a bit to see and hear a character cry for unimportant stuff, but it’s easy to give that a pass when the character is so young, and when is all around very well characterized.

Sweetness and Lightning belongs in the iyashikei, or feel good, type of slice of life show, and as far as that goes, it manages to have a proper relaxing atmosphere, as long as you don’t get overwhelmed by how hiperactive Tsumugi can be at times.

But that’s as far as positives of this show go for me. One complain I have about Tsumugi is that she barely has any conflict with no having a mother, if at all. Yuzuyu from Aishiteruze Baby was a way better character in that regard. I mean I guess you could say that’s the reason why Tsumugi gets so close to Kotori so easily, but that’s it. Speaking of Kotori, her introduction in the show was very weak, crying because she was alone and couldn’t eat with her mom? You’re not a little girl anymore. Then there is the father and he…I don’t have anything to say about him, really. There are more side characters but they don’t offer anything, they are just comic reliefs and what they do is not funny, to me at least.

But what’s the real flaw of the show in my eyes is how it wastes its interesting premise of a widowed man taking care of his child all alone by basically having no plot nor theme exploration, and that’s precisely because it is a feel good type of show. With this premise you would expect drama, but there isn’t, or there is but it has to do with irrelevant stuff unrelated to the premise, which in turn is presented in an overblown way. Most of the series is just Tsumugi feeling hungry and the three main characters cooking and eating together. Slice of life shows are usually plotless and relaxing, but it is a problem here because the whole premise goes to waste. It also reduces parenting, something which I asume everyone would agree can be quite complex, to just feeding a kid, that’s as far as the show goes with it, like, come on. Again, Aishiteruze Baby features multiple characters dealing with parenting in their own ways, here is reduced to just that, so I say go watch that show instead, if you can deal with the bad visuals and weak sound.

And the nail in the coffin is how by the very end they hint that Kotori developed feelings for the father (her sensei), if that wasn’t the sole reason why she got closer to him in the first place, which not only means that later in the manga there’s probably some romance vibes between a teenage girl and a grown adult, it also would mean that her relationship with Tsumugi was a lie the whole show, at least to some point.

Needless to say, I don’t have a positive opinion of this show and I can’t recommend it, it’s as plotless and lighthearted with simple and forgettable characters as many slice of life series, but this one also wastes a very good premise and theme. Even its best points are done better somewhere else.

For something similar, the Usagi Drop anime and as I already said Aishiteruze Baby, both of which I already covered, give you whatever you could want from this show and are way better. If you don’t want to go that back to watch a good childcare show, for some reason, there’s also Koutarou wa Hitogurashi which aired this year and is also good, albeit more sad than the rest.

UPDATE: Since now it has changed, I felt like I should clarify that this cover just part 1, aka, the first 97 chapters, which at the time where all there was.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  I don’t get what’s so great about this manga, I kept seeing how praised it was and how revolutionary it felt to a lot of people, but after finishing the first part I can only think that only newer people would say that. After you have consumed a lot of stuff this one just isn’t special. I personally think that Fire Punch was better, more intriguing and had more substance.

That’s the thing, unlike that manga, Chainsaw man doesn’t have substance, it’s all about the mindless action and being honest, straightforward, unpretentious and entertaining about it, which I can respect but I still won’t give it a positive rating just for that, I need something else for that.

After reading his two major works I can say that I don’t like Fujimoto’s works, but from I what I read about him in the extra chapters, with his ideas about consuming stuff, working on his own projects, trying to incorporate more natural dialogues to his mangas instead of what you’d usually read or listen in another works, I came to like him as an author. He basically likes mostly action and horror, and that’s what he tries to do, in a fun way, with no much more intentions than that. Again, I respect the honesty.

Anyways I was thinking about listing the positives and what people liked about it first then complain about the work later, while bringing superior examples.

THE ARTWORK

First things first, compared to Fire Punch, the overall artwork is a lot better, I was even surprised because Fire Punch ended in the same year Chainsaw man began. I guess the drawings there were a lot more rough because of the far more serious story, while here the intention is to make everything much more spectacular, since it’s a heavy action manga about cool shit and empowerment fantasy. Even so I have to say that the artwork is still not amazing, the character designs feel like rehashes of Fujimoto’s previous works with minor diferences, and outside the demons none of them are impressive. The demons are clearly inspired by Hellboy, I like that, but eventually most of them have similar heads and faces and the already little variety and refreshing factor vanishes completely. The artwork also lacks details in the brief cooldown moments and everything looks a lot worse, and there’s a noticeable lack of backgrounds during those moments.

As I was reading the manga, the extra chapters were included, with Fujimoto’s interviews and recommendations, as well as comparisons between the released chapters and the far superior volumes versions, where all that stuff was fixed, so yeah, we can say that all the minuses in the artwork are because of the weekly schedule, and at least Fujimoto bothered to improve on that with more time.

THE STYLE AND TONE

As I said Chainsaw man is just mindless action and doesn’t try to be more than that. Sure, by the end the main villain has a little monologue but it was more about their objectives, they weren’t trying to shove some themes down your throat at the last minute. I have read many saying this thing is mindless trash that doesn’t make any sense but why is that a bad thing? I mean, yes, it is indeed schlock and doesn’t make sense, demons appear around the world, kill lots of people on a daily basis and the world keeps being the same and people go on living their lives as if it was nothing the next day, but it’s a series about a horny immortal guy that turns into a walking chainsaw wasting enemies, chopping them to pieces, occasionaly eating them and then go on to try and get kisses and feels some boobs from his coworkers, why would I expect common sense from something like that? It’s unapologetic action and it’s honest about it, it’s not as if it’s trying to be serious, dramatic or inspirational. One of the more memorable moments in it is literally about referencing Sharknado for three chapters, for God’s sake.

THE ACTION

Ok so for a series like this is has to be good right? Well, it is, if you don’t mind seeing lots of innocent people dying coming off as cool, having an immortal main character which kills the tension considerably, and simple and repetitive battle choreographies for half the duration. It’s only after 40 or 50 chapters where the fights become longer, require more people, stronger enemies appear and forces the main characters to improve on what they do, also the already violent fights become far more gory by then, if you like that. They still lack tension considerably and have simple battle coreographies, but there’s an improvement as the manga goes on. Also as the manga reaches its end, Fujimoto does this things of following every action in a sequence, dedicating even whole chapters with no dialogue to that, like in One Punch Man, for example. With Mappa doing the anime adaptation I’m sure they will be crazier and more impressive there, too bad I won’t watch it since I didn’t like the manga and the only thing I care about in the adaptation is how are they going to show the 1500 victims of the gun demon.

THE PACING

Well, it’s fast, I’ll give it that, something is always happening all the time to keep the reader engaged, and for a fighting shounen the length is fairly short, so no one can feel that it drags on unnecessarily. Even the training arcs are short and have something else happening at the same time. The problem with it is that the manga is so simple and the way the events happen are so repetitive, it becomes tiresome after a while. I mean come on, the whole manga is one long mission arc. Remember when you are watching or reading a fighting shounen and in the first arc there’s this one mission about protecting someone or fighting a minor enemy later revealed to be a minion for the big bad? Chainsaw man is entirely that, it’s all about killing random demons or hunters that go after Denji until the manga reaches the final showdown, which is really not that different. If you don’t mind that, you’ll have a blast with it, me? I read the whole thing in three days because it’s an easy read and because I wanted to get over it.

THE DIALOGUES AND THE WAY THE CHARACTERS REACT

Are they as natural as people say and as the author intended? Surprisingly yes, the characters talk about irrelevant stuff in goofy ways during the relaxing moments, what they like to eat, how much they want to get a boyfriend or girlfriend, stuff like that. Nobody drops a simple, naive, childish, pretentious monologue about ethics or politics or anything like that (looking at you Naruto). It’s all about leaving the moment and appreciating the minor things in life. The problem is that it’s also very simple and childish, filled with juvenile humor. Also, unlike other fighting shounen, the characters don’t react in overly dramatic ways when hundreds of nobodies die, they don’t give a shit, it’s part of the job and it can happen to anyone at any moment, except for the main character because there’s no way he can die. But they also come off as very cold because of that, not overreacting over victims is one thing, being completely unaffected about it makes them look like assholes.

THE SUBVERSIONS

What about the moments when it subverts expectations? There can be a character talking about doing something specific in the future and die almost immediately afterwards, there can be bad guys that seem to be badass and about to do something impressive, and they are killed with extreme ease, occasionaly in absurd and over the top ways, by accident, which would come off as hilarious for some. And it doesn’t happen in the exact same way everytime to become a formula while trying to avoid a formula, nor that often so you see it coming. Also by the end it does becomes more serious and kills important characters in rather unexpected and dramatic ways, with more build up so the deaths don’t come off as random. The famous snowball fight is one of the more memorable moments in the whole manga because of it, it’s really well done, making you understand what it means for the characters and giving you an idea of what’s really happening. At the same time however, I can barely see the actual fight before the outcome, so yeah, I’m no big fan of it either.

THE LACK OF ROMANCE

For a manga about a dumb fuck in his teens that only thinks about food and sex, there are moments when he falls easily for almost every girl he encounters, yet it doesn’t come off as romantic really, because, funnily, most of the women he ecounters want him dead, as if Fujimoto was fully on incel mode when writing it. Despite all that, he actually managed to avoid the generic outcome of the main guy and the main girl in the same team falling for each other, and keeps them as frenemies throughout the whole thing, which is undoubtedly good and refreshing. Even then, Denji and Power both made the other a better person by the end, so I wouldn’t have a problem if they ended up as a couple, is one of those very rare cases where two characters have great chemistry, are not built as a couple, and yet they compliment each other well enough that it would have made sense and be satisfactory if that were to happen.


THE MAIN VILLAIN AND THE TWIST (WITHOUT SPOILERS)

The best part of the manga actually, it’s well done, it’s not really unexpected and surprising, since the main villain remains a mystery throughout the whole manga, and their behavior serves as a subtle hint throughout it, but it’s built upon nicely, with lots of characters coming after them making you think they are the bad guys, only to reveal that the main antagonist was there the whole time fooling everyone and manipulating the protagonist, Aizen and that persona 4 guy would be proud.

And now I’m done with the positives, moving on with my complains and justifications for my low rating, which has to do mostly with me having consumed better titles, starting off with the protagonist himself.

WEAK MAIN CHARACTERS BECAUSE OF WAY TOO OBVIOUS EMPOWERMENT FANTASY

So Denji is compelling at the beginning, they give him a basic but serviceable backdrop story and enough justifaction for how dumb, simple minded and much of a simp he is. The problem is that this is all he has, he doesn’t evolve beyond that, and he can become tiresome repeting the same dialogues about the same things everytime. There are moments when the manga hints that he’s feeling the pressure of what he’s doing, ponders about his identity and is shocked because of the death of other important characters, but they are short and are forgotten in a hurry because the next fight is around the corner. More of his backdrop is revealed later on, but by that point it was too late to flesh out the protagonist, that is something you have to do at the early stages to make me care about his travel, not when we are near his destination. Also, since at some point he becomes a global threat of sorts, the manga could’ve’d some consequences for a chance and make him change, but nah, this is all about empowerment fantasy, he even ends up having fangirls around the planet by the end. Despite not having the best execution, Agni in Fire Punch was all about anti empowerment fantasy and having to deal with the consequences of his actions, Denji is unapologetically an empowerment fantasy aimed at his demographic, gaining the ultimate power, becoming immortal, not giving a crap about what he does and how he does it, not facing the consequences of his actions, and becoming a desired chad at the end. Agni was far more compelling when you have passed certain age.

The other main characters have a bit of a backdrop themselves, but those are just way too simple to care about them and makes the early chapters to come off as boring and tedious, they grow to become closer friends by the end, I’ll give them that, but that’s about it. It’s when the authour realized that he can’t make a compelling character and chose to focus more on the scale of the action and the absurd events that the manga became more enjoyable.

COMPLETELY WASTED SECONDARY CHARACTERS

As for the rest of the cast, who gives a shit? The antagonists are not fleshed out in the least, the main villain remains mysterious for most of the duration and once their objective is revealed, the outcome coud have been whatever, they never cared about it. There are lots of secondary characters and they don’t matter because they are just cannon fodder that appears for a few volumes and die, or remain absent until the end, where they die, or just…don’t do anything.

AWFUL FINALE

Another issue is the outcome, which was extremely underwhelming, it has the protagonist deliberately holding back, lots of briefly and lazily explained asspulls to make a dead character reappear and help and make the mc win, and the mastermind falling for the most stupid trick and being defeated in one hit, wow they really are like Aizen. Plus the finale hints that both characters will return in part two, thus once again negating the results, what a load of crap and pointless fights.

EQUAL OR BETTER TITLES

And now for the comparisons with other products that prevents me from giving Chainsaw man a decent rating despite all of its pros.

Even the titles that are all about mindless action need to at least care a little about substance, or characterization, or good presentation to stand above the mediocrities, and Chainsaw man doesn’t do any of that. There’s absolutely no substance, even Hellsing Ultimate has more of it, with the characters struggling a lot more with rejecting humanity and becoming monsters when trying to survive, get powers, and become immortal, especially Seras Victoria, who is a better character than the whole Chainsaw man cast.

Another title that is mainly about action is Black Lagoon, where, just like in here, a bunch of psychopaths try to kill each other on a daily basis. The main difference there, is that there is a bit more substance and serious moments to interact with each other, some arcs have historical backgrounds, there is far more caracterization and even development for the main characters, and the setting is far better stablished. It all happens in a city where everybody is a criminal and enemies can be allies the next day, everyone knows what happens and is involved, and they try not to mess with anyone outside the city so the status quo is maintained. It makes sense for things to be that way in a place like that, unlike open Japan in Chainsaw man.

I dare to rate even Saint Seiya, the fighting shounen with the most repetitive fights of all time, above Chainsaw man, but only the manga version, because it doesn’t has Asgard nor as much plot armor, is not as repetitive since Poseidon is very different in the beginning, and actually lets the Golden Saints be the protagonists during the first part of the Hades arc, while fleshing out the secondary characters more, specially Kanon.

Another one on its level is Akudama Drive, also a mindless action series, with a far catchier setting, an attempt to have more substance and themes, and despite having characters with no names nor background stories, they are more fleshed out than the ones in here, plus the action scenes have more variety and there is a real lack of plot armor.

Heck I think even the beginning of Nanatsu no Taizai (the first season) is as good if not better, because the background stories of the main characters are far more tragic and better, even the secondary characters and antagonists have more to offer than the whole cast of Chainsaw man, and there are far more internal conflicts within the main group. Then the manga and anime continued and everything became way worse.

But what about the natural conversations and dialogues? Those shows lack that. Yes, do you know which titles doesn’t? Tarantino movies, which also flesh out the characters via silly conversations and are not as repetitive about it. They also lack the juvenile humor of Chainsaw man.

But some of those titles suffer from cheesy romances, Chainsaw man doesn’t have that. Ok, I’ll admit that is rare, specially within the medium. The only other example of this that I can think of was outside manganime in Pacific Rim, another simple action thing with more grounded battles.

But all of those are very typical, Chainsaw man has more unexpected outcomes at times. Aside from how unexpected doesn’t necessarily mean good, I have already seen it done far better with a much higher level of trolling in Katanagatari, which also flesh out most characters a lot more before killing them in unexpected ways. Even when a supposed big boss is defeated unexpectedly, it is to build up another and show how his companions are affected by their death. It also has far better dialogues and character development, its value doesn’t come just for the shock factor.

Even as an action series Chainsaw man suffers because it never stops to make you care about its characters and is very repetitive and bombastic, Akudama Drive also suffers from that but I already explained why it surpasses it. Chiansaw man becomes even worse when taken outside its medium and compared with straightforward action films from the eighties, which had far more suspense and characterization, even RoboCop has some interesting themes and identity crisis in it.

But none of those is as batshit crazy as Chainsaw man. Ok then, you know what other weird manga and anime has insane immortal characters fighting each other without juvenile humor, with far better characterization because of far better background stories, and it takes place in a far more creative setting? Dorohedoro.

Now I don’t want to come off as a hypocrite, since I rated almost every JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure above Chainsaw man despite also being random bullshit with asspulled things to beat the bad guys. Over there, however, I care more about the characters, it’s clearly trying to be more absurd and comical about everything, and the big bads are defeated with asspulls, yes, but only after a long battle, usually after lots of battles along the way, all of which are far more creative, tactical and with far more variety than everything you can see here.

As you can see it’s not that I have much issues with Chainsaw man itself, as much as I’ve already seen every possible positive aspect of it done far better elsewhere, or in better shows. I appreciate its positives, and it’s a good thing having all of them together, but that doesn’t make up for its negatives, and the fact that it has far too many better competitors out there. It’s an easy read and fun if all you want its a mindless and honest action series, but that’s it.

Note: I find it impossible to review the show without some spoilers, but I think there’s nothing here to ruin the experience, I still leave a fair warning here.

Zegapain is one of those series that I’m glad they exist and keep thinking that I should’ve watched sooner, I only found out about it more than a decade after it came out, and only watched it almost 15 years after it aired. But it’s because I never heard about it before that, it didn’t even have the luck to become more known some years after it ran like Shinsekai Yori, I still rarely read or hear someone mentioning it.

It is not hard to see why, the show was clearly a side project in 2006, when Sunrise had their hands full with Code Geass and Gintama at the same time (and perhaps a Gundam project, cause, you know, they never stopped with that one). It’s perfectly clear with just one look at the series, the visuals were ok for its time and are pretty bad by now.

The series begins in a kind of ambiguous or confusing way, combining a typical high school setting with a post-apocalyptic one, you are not sure when you are watching it if what happens on the latter is real or not, since it begins in a mostly typical mecha fashion, where what happens on the other side is disguised as a virtual reality videogame, before revealing its Matrix like setting and premise (but with mechas).

Thus, the visuals are a mixed bag, half the time you are seeing a very well presented mundane setting that still holds up to this day, and the other half you are watching poorly rendered awful CGI in poorly animated battles in a most unimpressive battlefield. The coloring, clearly digital, is ok, darker than what can be seen nowadays, the artwork does not suffer from major quality drops, the character designs are generic but their models are mostly consistent, and they went for semi realistic physical looks, and they never sexualize their characters. The backgrounds are good to the most part, specially in the mundane setting, but since there isn’t much to see in the destroyed world, over there you are mostly watching a void space with CGI clouds. The CGI ends up being what ruins the visuals of the show, the mecha have stupid designs, are done in a very crappy CGI, their attacks and the explosions during battles are even worse, and the movements during battles can’t carry them even if sometimes they try to be slightly tactical, specially when they tend to have repeated footage. The special effects are not great either. Eventually both worlds collide and the visuals become much better during the final episodes, but until then you are watching the same battle coreography against the same enemies throughout most of the duration, and when you are watching a mecha show full of action, that’s a big flaw.

The sound effects are not very good by now, and are a bit generic, buy they are still great for their time, the voice acting is good, there are well known actors and some other that aren’t that famous and all of them made a good job, Kana Hanazawa and Marina Inoue got rather typical roles for them, and you can clearly tell who they are when you hear them, but they were still fine and not as exaggerated and waifu baity as their roles in other series would become later on. The soundtrack is good, sometimes very atmospheric, but not amazing, there are several endings and just one opening, all of which are very calm and melancholic jpop, which fit well with the feel of the show.

But enough of that, eventually what makes the series worth it is its theme exploration and characterization, that are far better than its more famous counterparts (those being the Matrix and Dark City), since Zegapain doesn’t rely on prophecies about chosen ones that contradicts the whole theme of free will nor antgonists of inconsistent capabilities that despite being so powerful are so easily defeatable, nor protagonists that become super powerful from one moment to another with no explanation or a poorly justified one.

The protagonist is Kyo, an imperactive guy, as you would expect from a mecha series, but unlike the usual protagonist, he’s not dumb, he knows his stuff, he more or less understands the terminology used, he’s capable in combat, he notices weird stuff is going on with his crewmates and close friends. Also he’s not an awesome pilot just because, a decent amount of episodes is spent on showing how despite being good at what he does, he always ends up causing problems to others and himself and gets defeated sometimes.

There’s a good focus on his mentality and existential crisis, how he doubts whom he can trust, what is real and what is not, if he can be considered a living being or not, and what’s his relationships with others worth if they are fabricated and will reset from a point on. It’s done in a way that it seems as if he’s prepared for battle but then new concepts and aspects of the situation and show will appear and make him doubt and revaluate everything all over again, get pissed for that, be mean to his friends and love interests and more stuff, but still doing the correct thing at the end. And unlike Shinji from Evangelion, Kyo does not shred a tear about it, so people wouldn’t even be mad at him for that as with that other poor boy.

The only complain I had with him is how was he able to even pilot the robot in the first place, and the series gave me good anwers for that. There’s a VR game in the series in the made up world by the good guys in order to prepare people for the real battle once they awake, something that’s done slowly so they won’t break all at once in an instant. Also the robots are used by two people at the same time, with one piloting and attacking and other managing all the complicated technical stuff, which also serves for faster reaction during battles, better fuel management and to form character dynamics. By the way, unlike Darling in the Franxx, there are no sexual innuendos and fanservice here, despite every female character being good looking and having somewhat tight suits.

Eventually it is revealed that Kyo used to be a pilot in the past, but unlike other series, the amnesia is used here in a thematically relevant way, related to a plot point and it also serves a purpose in fleshing out Kyo even more once his background is revealed, and how his identity crisis and relationships are complicated even further because of that. Heck, it was a way to show even the doubts he has had in the past.

Despite me wording it as if it is something happening to him alone, there are other characters that go through the same thing as well, just not as intense, and not as well done. Zegapain also has a love triangle going on, but is not done in an annoying way, since the girs are good sports, respect each other and even this plot point is related to the themes. If you are in love with someone in a made up reality, is it true love, or something that was programmed by someone else? In this world which sometimes resets and makes you lose your memories, what happens if you had other girlfriend in the past? It was you, or another version of you, with a different conscience and different feelings? Which by the way also serves to flesh out Kyo more and change his way of acting and even fighting later on.

Anyways, Kaminagi is a typical kind girl you’ll find in any other anime but she discovers the truth by herself, not driven by the plot, and since she passed so much time in the simulation program she turns out to be one heck of an almost unpresedented pilot, and even she is not a mary sue that wins all her battles, quite the opposite actually. The problem with her is that at certain point the story finds a somewhat contrived way to make her stay relevant to the plot and even step back her development a little, for at least half the time…I can’t get into details for that but it was a little flaw, even if it served to kick her own identity crisis, for half the time at least. Oh and I won’t spoil this but I want to say that she is voiced by Kana Hanazawa and for once she ends having different luck than her characters usually do, I’ll just leave it at that.

Shizuno is a good character as well, it’s just that she remains rather mysterious for most of the duration, and when her past is revealed and her identity crisis touched upon, there’s almost no time for the show to manage her mini arc in a completely satisfying way, even if her interactions with Kyo and her catharsis were strong.

There are more secondary characters and they get focus and background stories as well, it’s just that since a lot of time is spent on the main trio, their characters arc are done in a much faster way to feel completely organic. Nevertheless it was great to see internal conflicts, positions and doubts within the group, some want to stay in the fabricated reality because they are traumatized for what they have faced in the real world, others want to leave their final moments the best they can, others are running out of time and about to die so they HAVE to defeat their enemies and restore the world as soon as possible, some quention other members of the crew for being so mysterious and try to find out the truth on their own, and so on.

As for the antagonists, they are ok, they are imposing, have their own language and all sorts of powers, yet can be neutralized, they question the humans and learn things along the way, interact with different humans in different ways, they are not onedimensional, and the big boss has a classic sci-fi objective regarding the next step of human evolution and stuff. It’s just that they don’t have nearly as much screentime as the good guys, so you do feel like they could have gotten more focus.

Another good thing is how even the majority of logical gaps I got along the way were answered in a mostly justified and convincing way. I already talked about Kyo but I was also asking myself how do they have the technology for a freaking spaceship and AIs but are limited in what they can do regarding data? Why can’t they just transfer it? What are the rules regarding all the stuff related to that? Why are they fighting against the same two enemies every single time and how do they reappear every single time? What is the explanation of their powers? How can it be that they have a secret base right in front of the enemies base? Is everyone in the crew a teenager? Why aren’t more adults fighting? Do the awakens all come from the same school? Is it just an excuse to have the setting to feel relatable to a young audience or is there an in story reason? Does it affect the character dynamics in some way? And all of that was explained and answered in believable and satisfactory ways, I can’t get into details about any of that sadly.

With that said, there are still things that won’t feel very convincing regarding the data but I consider them minor and easy to miss, at least for me because I honestly don’t know much about all that stuff.

Since the middle episodes take place in the everyday life in the school, some bits of the series will definitely be dull. But since the setting is explained, the dynamics serve to flesh out and develop the main cast, and has an in story excuse regarding the secondary cast, it is all story related and in the service of the narrative, so I can’t complain about that despite not enjoying those bits much myself. So much time is spent at the school during some episodes that forces big events and revelations to happen in a hurry at the end of those episodes, but is not done in a rushed way, the pacing is steady from beginning to end, building up and anticipating what comes next and balancing the major stuff with relaxing moments in a good way.

Eventually there are only two major problems in the show as far as I’m concerned, the mecha battles which as I said, despite having some variety and trying to be tactical, are still simple, repetitive and look ugly as shit, not even the inside of the robots have cool machinery, almost every mecha title have that regardless of its quality! Well I guess it is well excused since most of the functions are activated through advanced holographic technology, damn this series thought about almost everything.

Anyways the issue with this is not only that they are poorly animated and boringly choreographed to the most part, but they also take a lot of needed screentime, which is why the secondary characters and antagonists are not fleshed out in the same level as the main protagonists. Also there are more branches in the series than the main crew but they are hardly present in the show, which is why despite the final battle being epic as hell in terms of scale and stakes, there is very little emotional impact when you see characters dying which you never knew before that point. It also makes you ask yourself if they had the same information as the captain and why you don’t see them fighting against the enemies throughout the show or why you don’t get to know more about them before the final battle.

The other issue is how convenient are the resolutions in the final episodes, lots of stuff happen to give more functions, abilities and power ups to the good guys in the last two or three episodes, and as much as they try to explain and justify it, they will still feel rushed and contrived in order to let them win for a quick happy ending after a time skip.

Which is why Neon Genesis is still the best mecha anime starring teenagers ever made despite its flaws and not being nearly as philosophical as this one, no ugly CGI, the enemies and battles have lots of variety, and yet the protagonists don’t win all the time, far from it, there’s a reason why the kids are the ones doing the fight and why are they the ones piloting the robots since the very beginning, the action takes place in the same city and there’s a reason why, as well as showing how the whole place is built taking that in count, every secondary character is fleshed out in a basic or major level and contributes to the plot or character dynamics since the very beginning, and there are no forced happy endings, quite the opposite actually. And no preference for badass Kyo Sugurus over depressed Shinji Ikaris will change that.

That doesn’t take away the greatness of Zegapain though, it’s still a great show to the most part, but it prevents it from being even better, which would have been that way if the ugly mecha battles were shorter and more time was spent on the other branches and characters, as well as anticipating the power ups so they don’t feel aspulled at the end. Other than that I consider it a great and seriously underappreciated anime, one of the best that I watched, and much more meaningful and polished than some similar movies that are far more famous.

Note: This covers the whole manga but there are no major spoilers.

Well, that was a weird title, in a good way, to the most part at least. Its plot points and elements reminded me of different titles, so I’ll go over it comparing it to them for a little.


MY HERO ACADEMIA

The set up is kinda similar, super powers appeared around the world but instead of taking place in the future from now and somehow not changing the world in its entirety, it goes for a far edgier version where one single ability destroyed the whole environment forever, technology got stalled and now everyone struggles to survive, no teenagers and high schools in contemporary societies here.


HOKUTO NO KEN

In this post-apocalyptic setting full of chaos and no authorities, people abuse their powers, the strong abuse and enslave the weak, and everyone has lost their mind, plus since the resources are obviously limited the food is scarce, leading some to resort even to cannibalism. Thus religious cults end up being formed and they spread lies and made up bullshit, and they get followers because they are dellusional and in need of a savior, this last element reminded me a bit of Akira.


VINLAND SAGA

To its core, Fire Punch is a revenge story where an edgy protagonist lives (and dies, constantly) just to achieve that and there’s a lot of focus on the mentality of the main character and how self destructive his goal can be, and even how it can affect the lives of everyone around him. Plus both manga dare to do something different with it or go beyond that point, by either not achieving that or showing the consequences of doing so.

And now for this work itself, this is the best part of the manga by the way, showing how the protagonist is literally an unstoppable killing machine that sets up to avenge his loved ones, destroying many innocent lives in the process, becoming a God in the eyes of others, and doubting his goal, objectives, desires and methods along the way, there is a lot of time spent on long introspective scenes where Agni suffers the mental pressure of what he’s doing, thus the manga is not done with empowerment fantasy or victimizing in mind.

Plus the visual narrative during those moments is superb, there are whole chapters showing every single action in the whole sequence, if you’ve read One Punch Man or Fujimoto’s other work Chainsaw Man, you know what I mean. This happens even during the moments where he goes on a rampage, which, thanks to a sharper stroke, the prominence of shadows and close to no lighting, all combined with no dialogue, thankfully comes off as horrifying instead of epic, again no empowerment fantasy in mind.


With that said, there’s an ever present weird feeling throughtout the work regarding its approach and tone to its themes. After a messed up beginning and thanks to a certain character, the whole thing turns into a kind of self aware satire of revenge stories pointing out outloud the tropes and clichés of those type of stories, thanks to said character (and the author)’s fondness of movies in general, especially action and horror where those things are rather common. I have to say that I don’t like this guy’s style of combining morbid and serious stuff with bizarre events and juvenile humor, it makes the tone uneven and hard to know how to respond to this story. Thankfully after a while the manga enters its best bits with all the good stuff I already talked about thanks to a major event in the plot, thus becoming kind of a dark subversion of this kind of story.

Another weird aspect is the kind of incestuous thing, having consumed Koi Kaze and Usagi Drop I can safely say this the most Freudian japanese product I have consumed in my life. The implementation of this is kind of a mixed bag, it’s well established in the context of the series at the beginning since this messed up world left the protagonist and his sister all alone and desperate for emotional support, and their survival instinct and their wish/duty to protect and feed their village kicked in. It’s off putting, I’ll never accept this kind of stuff, but it was well presented in story

After that the manga tries to confuse you concerning a look alike of mc’s sister, it’s rather ambiguous if she’s or not the same person, leading him to develop a weird mix between a sister complex or love, protective obsession or sexual attraction, not being clear enough if he sees her as his sister or lover, and it gets worse the more it goes on all the way to a crappy finale. And I know they are not clearly related, but when I see them acting like siblings for half the duration, the romantic moments just feel kinda wrong. Well presented, weirdly developed is my final verdict regarding this.

Which can sum up the manga pretty well, although the good aspects are still there, the last thirty chapters are rather infamous because, although the protagonist keeps facing the consequences of his actions and never feels like an empowerment fantasy, the resolutions are rather light for him. I keep seeing how he repents for what he has done to others yet keeps being forgiven rather easily, and I know some of them have become his family at that point, but in a story about facing the consequences of your actions, everyone close to Agni seems to forgive him and wish for his happiness with ease. Plus just like the weird feelings towards his non sister, this dynamic had no build up, and that’s because of its worst aspect, the time skips.

There are just too many and they are big, not letting the story to flow naturally, the dynamics keep changing, many side characters disappear from the manga and are never seeing again, some others change completely and even become antagonists, and none of that was properly built upon before happening and also, again, the ending was total bullshit.

Finally for a post apocalyptic series, having an immortal protagonist takes away a lot of tension, well at least side characters die and you don’t know when the protagonist can snap and kill everyone nearby, so there’s that I guess, and the interesting developments still make up for it.

I would normally complain about the characters changing their mentality or becoming amnesiac during time skips and the power levels being somewhat inconsistent as well, but I can sort of accept the way it’s presented here, in both a metaphorical and literal way. Metaphorically, the protagonist lets his desire for revenge go, you can even see that his flame doesn’t burn with the same strength during some vignettes, and his expression becoming much calmer during those and literally half his brain is always burning and was since his childhood, so there’s that for an explaination of him forgetting stuff and being so dumb at times.

Neither the artwork and the designs are that good but some of them are impressive and the highlights in the visuals (the darker moments, as previously mentioned) make up for it. The backgrounds are usually very good too, it’s just that it becomes a little tiresome after a while when you are just seeing the same frozen world almost all the time.

In the end, you get a messed up but well established beginning, followed by a bizarre self aware satire of revenge driven action heroes, followed by a very well presented dark subversion of said revenge stories, with a very bad finale. It’s flawed and it abuses time skips, but as a whole it is meaningful, rather engaging, visually interesting and ultimately mostly well presented, so I say it’s worth the read, despite not being anywhere the masterpiece level some claim it is.

My rating varies between a 6 and a 7 out of 10 among the volumes, with a, let’s say, 6.5 for the manga as a whole.

Note: This long ass review has major spoilers about events present in the second episode and some other minor ones

Deca-Dence was the best anime from last year for me, at least outside of sequels. And saying that is kinda weird since outside of Japan not that many people gave it a chance and among those that did give it a chance, many people dropped it within the first two episodes. Heck, I wasn’t even planning to watch it because of the premise and the previous works made by its studio, I watched it two times and even I think is not that big of a deal either, which says a lot about what I think of anime from last year.

The main reasons why I think that Deca-Dence deserves to be considered as the best or at least one of the bests shows from last year boils down to being fairly original, having a steady pacing and an evolving plot brimming with lots of interesting themes and ideas that are actually looked into throughout its duration, and how many things it does better in its twelve episodes compared to other products of its time.

At first, the setting is rather typical but engaging enough, a city within a fortress attacked by giant monsters with steampunk aesthetics in the middle of a wasteland is hardly original these days but it works well if done properly and it also makes everyone instantly remember previous works such as Children of the Whales, Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress, Darling in the Franxx and Mortal Engines, which can be a good thing…although in this case is not that good because of the titles mentioned.

Compared to those, Deca-Dence is a complete story which doesn´t fool around for half its duration with pointless slice of life teenage dramedy with sexual innuendos in both its mechanisms and its memeable crappy dialogue, and does not throw ludicrous elements and situations just for spectacle purposes (despite having its own silly things) nor does it change plot points and characterization every five minutes, which automatically makes it better than all of them.

Then the second episode begins and drops a big plot twist that changes the show completely by apparently turning everything into a VRMMORPG and that made lots of people drop the show. The thing is, it is not really a videogame. It has elements that resemble videogame mechanics but that world is actually real, the npcs are actual people with actual lives and their deaths kinda matter. And that world is inside a huge dome and the game is in reality the way a tryrannical government of chibi robots control what was left of the human race after a most typical post apocalyptic sci-fi scenario happened, and the greatest warriors that fight against the monsters turns out to be avatars used by said tiny robots. Thus the series moved from a combination of the previously mentioned shows to a mix between Log Horizon, Ready Player One, The Matrix, kind of a reverse Surrogates, with even bits of SSSS. Gridman thrown in there.

How does it stand against those? Compared to Log Horizon, Deca-Dence is, again, a complete and far more compressed story where something relevant is always happening and does not have as much slice of life comedy and slow mmo progression. Plus it has far better characters.

Compared to Ready Player One, it combines elements that are present in other ips but are not exclusively from them, and it does it to build its own thing, not for comedic and referential purposes while mentioning them to sell on their names. It also has a break the norm/take down an evil government/organization type of plot that does not pander to gamers while mocking them with self-depreciative humor and plot points and has more interesting themes in it.

Compared to Gridman, it lacks the anti escapism message but it has a more focused plot where the ideas, objectives, points and twists are presented much earlier and not near the end, and that’s all I can say about that other series without spoiling its final episodes.

Compared to Surrogates, it does not saves its plot twists for the last ten minutes and thus it does not make the plot and characterization feel inconsistent, and it doesn’t feel like a typical thriller/action flick…and yet it still has better action.

I even dare to place it slightly above The Matrix, which came out at the right time in the end of a millenium filled with fear of technology and that was far cooler in terms of visuals and action, combining martial arts with cool gunfights with CGI and directing that were innovative and impressive at the time, but its theme exploration of virtual reality and free will was very superficial when you think about it, since having a destined choosen one as a protagonist contradicts the whole premise, there’s no real tension and free will when you do what a prophecy says that you have to do.

Deca-Dence also has cool action and a basic theme exploration, but at least it has actual proactive characters that want to change both the world and themselves, with strong dynamics between them.

That’s how Deca-Dence gets its peculiar identity and manages to be somewhat unique, by mixing altogether a plethora of elements that normally wouldn’t be in the same show.

With that said, I have to admit that Deca-Dence is barely worth watching more for its ideas than its execution, which is severely lacking in presentation and a proper finale. It’s not a thinking man’s action series, it’s a semi serious and semi comical action adventure first, and a barely competent sci-fi series that explores interesting themes of existentialism, free will, the meaning of life, revolution and stagnation, change and status quo, that leaves you pondering about stuff waaaaay after.

The main reason for that is that the tone is very light. Although it’s refreshing to have an energetic and positive girl as a protagonist in a show where humanity is on the verge of extinction, it can’t be denied that Natsume’s attitude takes out a lot of the sense of urgency that the show could and should have. Even aside from her, Kurenai is presented as a badass veteran fighter that wants to end the war against the Gadolls and leave the city yet she turns into a complete fangirl the moment she sees Kaburagi (heh, if she knew) and the artwork in the robot society makes hard to take stuff seriously at first.

This other side of the setting has a much more cartoony artstyle and the cutesy designs don’t help out either. It’s on a middle point between Yuasa’s Kaiba and Imaishi’s Dead Leaves, not as bizarre as the former and much more innocent than the latter. In the middle of the series there are even more comical moments in this other society and there are about…shit. I guess the point is that the system exploits the workers, takes everything from them, and then fills them up with just the bare minimum, so they decide to revolt, leave and take down said system. Good concept and the execution wasn’t bad but I’ve seen it better in more bizarre and gross ways in both Dead Leaves and Aachi wa Ssipak, even if I still rate Deca-Dence higher than them for having more substance.

The show focuses more on the robot side from a point on instead of the tragic human side and a big part of the atmosphere is lost because of it. Well, at least I can recognize that Deca-Dence knows how to manage its tone, as the more serious, dramatic and tragic moments does not feature this type of comedy in between.

An also, between the silly comedy and the action bits, there’s good enough downtime for the characters to interact, plan stuff, do that stuff, and being a representation of the themes. In the first two episodes alone there are a couple of good dialogues between Natsume and Kaburagi about her sharing the same ideals as Kurenai and a desire to change herself for the better and to no longer be weak and a burden, even if she has to risk her life and perhaps die while doing so, as someone who has lost everything and is labeled as incapable of chasing after her dreams, she still wants to do it and prefers to lose her life while trying instead of living the same life, which is meaningless to her.

Kaburagi is the polar opposite of her, having lost everything and knowing about what really happens, he sees no point in risking one’s life and prefers to settle down and just try to survive and be unnoticed while working for the system. He kinda begins as a depressive and suicidal guy, and his interactions with Natsume and seeing how she, despite being weak, clumsy, idealistic and a bug that has to be erased from the totalitarian system, still tries her best, changes his views about life and leads him to defy the system and let everyone live their lives on their own. From there, she sees him as the only person that actually believes in her at first and the one that helps her overcome her weaknesses and even grow as a person.

It’s nothing mindblowing, it’s typical shounen stuff, but it does wonders in starting their relationship as a master and student or even a father and a daughter instead of just coworkers with more or less hierarchy amongst them, and thankfully it never has romantic implications and developments. And at least it made me brainstorm and ponder about thoughts of this kind for hours the two times I watched the show, but I’m sure it won’t be the case with everyone.

There was another anime last year where something similar happened, it was ID: Invaded and although it was good in there as well, the interactions between the protagonists are few and begin in the middle of the series, they do not affect each other since the beginning, thus their dynamic is not as strong as this one.

Not everyone shares the same mindset however, in both the human and robots side are people that prefer the status quo and just try to do their stuff the best they can without taking much risks. They are Fei, as someone who sees corpses everyday in the battlefield and cares for Natsume but also underestimates her (but eventually is influenced by her), Turkey as a backstabbing bastard, Minato as someone dedicated completely to the system that does not know what to do once his role is over (for a bit) yet is conflicted because of his friendship with Kaburagi and Sarkozy, who begins as a resigned and useless coward, becomes a traitor and gets influenced by Kaburagi (after he was moved by Natsume), and stars one of the most heroic and epic scenes in the whole series. So by extension, the interactions between Natsume and Kaburagi leads them to affect others through their actions. Again, wonderful character dynamics.

Then there is Jill, who doesn’t have the same thematic depth behind her like the previous characters, she’s more about regretting the past, and someone who had good intentions but ends up learning that the system just can’t control everything and breaking the stagnation is ultimately inevitable, even if it takes time. She ends up being the most useful character in the show, since she’s both a hacker and someone with a strong connection to the system itself.

With that said, not every character is as good, Donatello is the typical macho dude that just wants to fight and kill stuff and the antagonists, as imposing as they are, lack screentime and effectiveness to become memorable. From a point on the mass produced jailers become a joke because they are defeated with shit, and the rest of the robot society is completely ignorant about how they are being exploited and treated as livestock of some kind, and keep treating everything as a videogame to the end. Basically, they are distracted from what’s going on through entertainment. Sadly, there are no more human characters explored as much either.

And I have to admit that aside from Kaburagi, the development of the rest is not as good and happens in a matter of episodes, even Natsume’s breakdown and recovery happens in the same episode, but at least is shown seriously and makes her doubt about her meaning and objective in life for a bit and if it would have beeing preferable to remain ignorant to the whole thing.

Since the setting combines steampunk, futuristic sci-fi and videogame ideas and elements, it needs to have a way for objects and logics to work in all of them for the world to feel organic. The steampunk elements are non existent outside the fortress so let’s pay more attention to the other two.

There are people that defy the system and the way it works, labeled as bugs, which of course fits the videogame terminology and logic as well, for they do the same in there, the leveling system and upgrades explain well how these players are above the humans in terms of skill in the war against the Gadolls, the weapons and energy they use works well as both a sci-fi element and a videogame mechanic, a tank that absorbs energy from the monsters and serves as a fuel, and since the people live in a wasteland they have to eat their corpses as well, it’s not rare to feed on the creatures you kill in a videogame so this also fits well on that part of the setting as well. The reason for the robots to participate in this whole thing, aside from the empowerment fantasy, is to gain more of the same fuel from the Gadolls that keeps them functioning, so that element fits within their society as well and that is of course a good reason to keep playing the game. And everyone is seen and more or less controled via chips and cores inside their brains. Thus this weird world they live in feels organic as a whole. The exposition could be better though, it’s ok to have infodumps inside the school or when Kaburagi explains stuff to Natsume, but outside of those situations, there is a lot of spoken information that is not integrated in the best possible way.

Still, you have to suspend your disbelief about how some things play out, for example, why did the system save someone as dangerous as Kaburagi? Why didn’t it remove some parts of his body (his jetpack), as well as Donatello’s laser? Why does it allow the most dangerous prisoners to gather together and even fight with each other when they feel like it? Also this whole thing about them being able to play the game in their cells, and how Natsume is unknown to the system are a bit of a stretch, the corporation is presented as an Orwell’s Big Brother that sees everything type of system yet they don’t notice all of this stuff? There’s an episode where four people run all around to find a body in a Monsters, Inc. fashion and it can’t see that either. Most of this is explained as Jill hacking the system but when you have one single character doing all sorts of stuff, the excuse becomes hard to accept. The system’s course of action does not make much sense either, you want to avoid what happened in the past by supressing humans? That makes sense but why not kill them on the spot? Well I guess they need sacrifices within the game. And what it did at the end was pretty questionable, and I even doubt that the corporation was dismounted, it remains unclear. And that final Gadoll at the end of the series was pure bullshit.

But the biggest issue in the series is the finale itself which is hard to accept, I can deal with the fake deaths since the avatars are an element well established that makes sense within its story and setting, I would prefer for the deaths to be permanent, but I’d rather take a well excused way to survive than a death that happens to maximize the cheap feels when it was possible to be avoided (with that said, the last resurrection is kind of a stretch). What I can’t ignore is what happened to the society after the conflict is resolved, of course and I can’t get into details regarding that, but it’s too friendly and happy and it happens after a time skip thus not letting the viewer to see how it happened and how does all of these people live there without the fuel? It doesn’t make sense, and there should have been more internal conflicts in there.

This is why Deca-Dence is no close to Gurren Lagann in this regard, partially for being rushed and having at least half the amount of episodes it needed. That series did wonders in its second half, showing the conflicts in the newly established society and implementing a big plot twist that changes the whole premise, heck even the whole series up to that point and expands the themes as well as the scope of the story, and also the scale and the epicness of the battles.

As an action series, Deca-Dence is exciting at first but can become dull for some as the episodes go, not because of the production and the atmosphere, which are both pretty good to the most part, but because of how short the fights are, how repetitive the choreography is and how underwhelming are some of the outcomes. At least I can say that I like what they did with Natsume, beginning as a crappy fighter that can’t do anything right, having a training montage, getting upgrades and becoming better, typical shounen stuff, yet remaining unable to do anything during the major battles, and being Kaburagi who has to take care of the stuff at the end. That’s how you handle a power scale properly, for once a series lets the experienced veteran fighter be the one that takes care of things and even making his actions lead to relevant changes afterwards, it even makes more sense because of the limit breaker which the humans lack. Brand New Animal did the same last year, but it suffered of too much ass-pulled power ups for Michiru and a resolution that was even worse than Deca-Dence’s in both its final battle and its conflict.

As for the visuals, the artwork is pretty good to the most part but there are drops in quality when the perspective is located far away, lots of characters lose their faces when that happens, at least the character designs are pretty great, distinctive to other anime because of the weird eyes and for having noticeable noses, A RARE THING IN MODERN ANIME. The robots look much more cartoony but they look good when they are with the humans, the two completely different artworks don’t clash with each other. The backgrounds are low key trippy and well made and the motions are acceptable during battles, not great but excused because of the fields of the Gadolls and the way the angles follow the movements during the battles as if someone was moving a camera (like in Burn the Witch or Majo no Tabitabi, for example) helps to make them feel epic at first. The special effects are good except for the CGI Gadolls, which are pretty bad, expecially in the last episode.

As for the sound, the effects are impactful and immersive, the voice acting is ok, the distortion for the robots is also ok, the soundtrack is not that memorable but is pretty good to the most part. The opening and ending are decent but typical jpop/jrock stuff, and the bgm has some electronic tunes which don’t work outside of the series, but there are also symphonic pieces which are combined with what I think are celtic instruments that makes it pretty unique and atmospheric. Very good stuff as a whole.

As a whole, Deca-Dence is far from a masterpiece because is rushed and not that serious and is not really a memorable work but it has interesting themes, good enough action, strong character dynamics, a mostly organic world, is somewhat fun while still provides food for thought, and it does a lot more in just twelve episodes than a lot of longer shows and more famous movies from around the same time, with at least slightly better execution than them.

Want more like this? Play the Danganronpa videogame series (but avoid the anime) and Transistor for similar plot twists, watch Dead Leaves and Aachi wa Ssipak for the gross and bizarre parts, the first Lego Movie for a comical take in totalitarian dystopias with some existential bits, the 1997 italian action movie called Nirvana for a story about a videogame character becoming sentient due to a virus and his developer helping him while he is chased by his superiors, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann to see how the action, the epicness, and the evolution of the themes and the conflict could have been far better, and Dark City, The Truman Show and Zegapain for better somewhat existential stories about free will and fake/virtual realities.