Reviews by Fernando Leonel Alba

Once in a while out of nowhere comes an original anime that renews my dying interest in the new stuff from the medium. 2020 had a bunch of them but they were either quite basic or couldn’t end in a good way for being either too ambitious or rushed, or incomplete, or having bad writing near the end. This year’s pleasant surprise was Odd Taxi which unlike those managed to wrap up things in a satisfying way. It was made by the Pokémon studio and another one which I never heard of and had no previous hype before airing whatsoever, the premise isn’t amazing by any means either, just an anthropomorphic walrus driving a taxi, big deal. I checked the first episode out of pure boredom and by pure accident I found the title I liked the most from this year full of sequels of stuff I didn’t watch and new stuff I don’t care about.

Before moving on with the actual show I’ll just talk about the stuff I care the least about in a hurry, the visuals aren’t very good, the setting is just your more or less known Japan by any anime watcher with anthropomorphic animals thrown in but it looks good. The rest, not so much, the furries’ designs are simple and kinda generic but at least they are not sexualized, they don’t quite match with the backgrounds at times, the motions aren’t very fluent and the CGI cars clash a lot with the rest of the visuals.

As for the sound, both the effects and the music are fine, neither of them are nothing special but they do their work just fine, I don’t care about the ending, to me is just idolish crap which I always skip after the first episode but at least it fits a little with the show, on the other hand the opening is amazing, easily the best of the year for me, and it’s accompanied with catchy visuals too. The voice acting is very good to me, far more mature than what I expected and I was surprised by the performances, given the voice actors behind them, aside from a few of them, the rest gave an unexpected and refreshing performance, good stuff, Odokawa and the rapper were the best.

With that out of the picture, Odd Taxi is initially nothing really special, just a comedy about talking animals on a taxi, but the dialogue is pretty good thanks to the forty year old cynical Odokawa passively aggressively questioning everyone else about how futile the stuff they do or worry about actually is. From there, in a way, the series makes fun of modern things such as a guy whose whole life is literally dedicated to the idol group he’s fan of, another who dropped out of the university to seek quick bucks and fame by spreading lies and scamming people on the Internet and being obsessed over being relevant on social media.

It also deals with a gatcha addiction theme, a very relevant topic today, but I have to say I don’t think it was explored very well, since the character suffering for it has a very unbelievable tragic background, lost his cellphone in a kinda contrived way, and has very composed internal monologues reflecting on his own life for a character that is supposed to go completely insane. I know that his episode is among the most populars of the show but I couldn’t buy the whole thing.

But it’s not a boomers anime with a millenials are a lost generation type of message, the older cast deal with their own issues and are flawed as well, from an easily manipulated woman caught up on drugs traffic because of a naive love to a literal monkey desperate to marry with whoever he finds and just like the younger idiots he posts his income on the Internet. Heck there’s even a comedy duo where the older guy can’t catch up with the modern society, constantly complains about it and can’t up his game and is jealous of his younger more succesful partner, he is the pure boomer of the show and look how he is portrayed.

It also deals with dark topics within the idol industry being in shady and illegal business but I can’t go into details regarding that. If the series would stop at that it would be a kinda funny and unorthodox slice of life comedy with interesting themes in the background but decided to go further by becoming a crime adventure, an internal battle within two mafia guys which ties its seemingly at first unrelated stories kinda like the “Go!” 1999 movie which starts as a teen comedy and turns into a crime adventure midway. All the characters end up being caught in the main conflict and are somehow connected with the others by the end.

As for the characters, everyone is kinda colorful and has something that makes them stand out a little, such as the capoeira practicer nurse, and eventually most if not all of them have their background revealed and face the consequences of their actions and are affected by the events, going through their own character arc.

Despite all the good things I said about the show, I don’t want to oversell it as a kind of hidden masterpiece or something, since there are definitely contrivances to make the stuff happen and simple and convenient resolutions, such as characters appearing out of nowhere to save someone else or stuff like that, and whenever there’s action it’s hardly exciting, the choreographies are not very good and as I said the visuals are not very good to back those scenes up. Also things go Odokawa’s way quite easily, you almost feel like he can play around with gangsters and cops however he wants without much struggle and tension. Plus, despite dealing with different stories and characters coming together, it lacks the interwoven narratives used by those late 90s and early 00s movies such as Go! and of course those made by Tarantino and Guy Ritchie, or even Baccano! within the same medium, it’s much more straightforward in that regard. I can at least say that this title has better characters, as memorable and fun as those other casts may be, they lack the character arcs and kind of depth found here. Compared to those titles, Odd Taxi is nothing special and memorable and lacks the same level of refined style, but within the anime medium is kinda unique and definitely worth the watch.

What a weird title. It combines a village pulled out of a western movie full of poor people pointing guns at someone the moment they step inside their place, an asian empire combining chinese and japanese aesthetics, another european like medieval kingdom, but all of them have advanced technology. Eventually the plot moves from yet another giant things battling each other behind a world sized wall with a dumb amnesiac protagonist voiced by Yuki Kaji and a centuries old prophecy about the end of the wolrd, to a multi layered political struggle between each country with backstabbing, alliances between former enemies, betrayals, crazy revelations, characters that don’t stay the same way as they began and change along the way while still retaining their basic concept and initial motives, and a main character that has to deals with his destructive powers, all of it presented with fast paced comedy and mecha action in a setting that keeps evolving adding mortal traps, a greek mythology hell like place and eventually going to space for an all out battle against demigods in a finale only akin to the 1984 OVA called “Birth”, it should be at least half as amazing as it sounds, but it isn’t.

Because it’s stupid, like, different levels of stupid. It’s like the creators were trying to make a serious show but weren’t serious about it. First of all it’s silly, it has a cringy comedy that you stop considering funny once you are over twelve, and that clashes a lot with the political struggle it’s going for. Also who the hell comes up with names like Back Arrow, Bruh and a country literally filled with pretty boys, even named after them.

Second, it has bad plot devices, an amnesiac protagonist doesn’t have a backdrop by default and although Back Arrow does get some development and internal struggle, the bad writing takes away all of that very easily. An end of the world prophecy in an advanced world like that? Really? It has some kind of twist, that gets resolved just as badly as the protagonist, well, because it concerns him as well. Mecha activated with imagination and own will like powers? Lame, and gets even worse when they try to give it a scientific explanation later on. A pink haired pacifist princess that never stops talking about the power of love uniting every country and being the explanation of everything in the world and its habitants. What other good show did I watch with a character like that? None. It’s even her own power to be a broken tank healer that takes damage and turns all that pain into healing magic. She also has a twist behind her and is as lame as it’s crazy, it has a silly background, and it doesn’t have nearly as much internal struggle as it should, which in turn is resolved very easily, or not, or does it? It keeps reappearing whenever there needs to be a conflict or an asspulled last moment save.

Third, there seems to be consequences for everything, which would be very cool, but they are resolved very easily, I can’t give proper examples with much details but let’s just say that for reasons the whole kingdom turns against the aforementioned princess, and even that is resolved very easily.

That probably has to do with another issue which is the erratic pacing, every episode has something important going on that contributes to the plot yet the first three have conflicts resolved in very stupid ways and most of them are jokes about a pantsu. Even leaving those aside, there are countries and characters that appear, seem to disappear and reappear again later on suppossedly to do something important, and they don’t, they turn out to be useless and not even do something at the end (again the fucking Pretty Boys country). Also the writing is just so bad, I can’t even count the amount of asspulls it has, the protagonist alone keeps pulling all kind of broken and convenient for the moment powers without even having the source of energy used in the show, eventually there’s a semi dark explanation for that which turns into dark powers that apparently is going to be a major conflict, and it’s resolved just because in about two episodes. And don’t get me started on Bit’s, Shu’s, and above everyone else, Zetsu’s powers, my God.

Oh, also the ships and mechas, they keep pulling spaceships and mechas out of nowhere. Oh, also the characters and the political bits, imagine ending a centuries long war in about two episodes of lame speeches and broken powers, or moving from loving someone to try to kill him and love him again in like, what, 5 episodes? As for the background stories only Shu and Kai has some good ones, the rest are hilarously ridiculous, imagine having shooting your own sister and princess because someone made you think a giant bird was haunting them as your backdrop, reason for exile, and eventually sacrifice in search of redemption, that’s pathetic man.

It’s not even very good as a spectacle, aside from the mecha being absolute bullshit, they look lame, who came up with these designs? Also they are suppossed to be an individual thing product of oneself’s inner state and yet I see two whole mass produced army of them battling against each other. Oh and there are also Zetsu and Shu’s Brightheights or whatever they are called (and more) but I won’t talk about them. These mecha are also made with fugly CGI and aside from the final battle they also move in very choppy ways, not very exciting as action isn’t it? As for the rest of the visuals, well, the setting is interesting enough and looks ok and the non cg effects look ok too, the character designs are recycled from previous works of the creators and constantly go off model on top of having a rather bad coloring, lowering the overall quality of the visual department as a whole.

I don’t have much to say about the sound, there are two openings and endings, none is particularly good, the background music is good enough, as are the sound effects, voice acting is effective albeit generic.

This was a mess, a very interesting one to follow for old timers for how crazy it is but otherwise still a mess in almost if not all aspects. During the same season of its second cour alone, Godzilla Singular Point was far more comitted in being a hard sci-fi series and SSSS.Dynazenon was a straightforward episodic tokusatsu mecha show with random power ups but far more meaningful and consistent characterization, they are far from great but even them kick the crap out of this, let alone older series such as the equally crazy Planet With and above all the modern classics such as Gurren Lagann being everything this series tries to be or Moribito handling its prophecy/fantasy/political aspects and character interactions far better.

It’s crazy to see hoy many peculiar circumstances have revolved around a title such as this. First, it came out in the most overloaded season in years with so many popular ips getting an adaptation or popular series getting a continuation at the same time and somehow staying relevant and somewhat controversial to its end, which is not what happened with lots of the remaining titles.

Second, its studio made three of the most talked about series of the season at the same time and as expected all got issues in terms of production and schedule and received criticism in the end because of it. Cloverworks did whatever the hell they wanted with Neverland’s second season, making it one of the worst rated second seasons of all time, rushed this title leaving its huge original fanbase disappointed and overworked its team responsible for Wonder Egg Priority to the point of being unable to finish the product in time. That alone makes them one of the worst studios among the newer ones, if not the worst.

Third, it is simultaneously an overhyped and overhated title, by being labeled as one of the greatest romcom/slice of life manga of all time and yet being panned by some for stuff that doesn’t really feel like a big deal, to anime onlys such as me at least.

And fourth, it has two different versions with two completely different styles, casts, pacings and studios coming out at the same time, one of them with the most random airing dates ever seen.

And it’s crazy to think that when you leave all that fuss aside, the title itself is not really special, it stands out more for all the shit happening around it than on its own. There were a few romcoms with unorthodox beginnings or elements coming out for some years (off the top of my head, Gekkan Shoujo, Ore Monogatari!, Science Fell in Love so I Tried to Prove it, Recovery of an MMO Junkie, Tonikawa, heck this season has I Shaved. Then I Brought a High School Girl Home, which sounds like a porno) while Horimiya is far more common, even beginning with a rather typical set up of two people meeting casually, one of them being a gloomy looking, depressive, black long haired with glasses otaku that was either bullied or ignored in the past, which is something all otakus has gone through in such stories and arguably in real life as well, immediately making every Twitter anime fan out there to feel identified with, that makes the top girl in his class and school fall in love with him almost right away.

Aside from the last one, those other titles share an uncommon beginning but later on they lose steam because they develop in typical ways, drag more than they need, betray in some level their premises and are left incomplete. Horimiya is the exact opposite by having a far more common beginning, playing around a bit with the stereotypes and expectations of its genre, going a lot faster than the norm and getting a complete adaptation in just one cour.

First, it goes against the initial impression by revealing right away that the protagonist is not a gloomy otaku as everyone thinks he is and he doesn’t look like what he forces himself to look, and reveals the top girl in his class to be a lot different than how everyone thinks she is as well. That’s its main hook, to make you think that you are gonna watch typical characters and then change a bit your perspective about them, while at the same time tapping into themes such as not showing yourself for who you really are because of the others’ perspectives and expectations and because of high school norms, a rather rare theme to see in anime romcoms I think, right now the only other examples like this one that I can think of are KareKano and Ouran High School.

Still, Miyamura feels like a self insert character for otakus at the beginning, because he embodies what the 2000s and early 2010s idea of cool was, with his piercings, chains, tattoos and his very typical “I take my glasses off and brush my hair back and I’m suddenly handsome and awesome” trope, which helped a lot in making the top girl in his class and school fall in love with him. Later on he’s flavored a bit more by revealing that he’s capable of beating the crap out of everyone and has some not exaggerated nor crowd pleasing homo comical bits.

As the episodes go more stuff is revealed about him and he interacts differently with more characters to make him feel like his own being instead of just a flavored combination of different stereotypes, he gets a little development and chatarsis in facing his past and his former self while appreciating how he changed and thanks to who but without disregarding who he used to be.

As for Hori the main girl, I don’t like her honestly and don’t quite grasp why is so cherished by the fandom. She has lots of typical tsundere things such as jumping to conclusions and misunderstanding things rather quickly and getting violent with Miyamura rather easily. Plus I don’t think that her conflict is as big as his, how is having a little brother to take care of and not looking as pretty as everyone made her to be can even compare? I’m not as dumb to notice that she has a tomboyish side that wants to hide from the rest but this series doesn’t do a very good job in exploring that, the previous version is better in that regard, despite still being incomplete. Honestly, the only thing that surprised me about her, and not exactly in a good way, is her unexpected kink.

That’s my initial complain with Horimiya, despite the struggles of the main characters, it doesn’t really feel that important, so yeah the characters later on learned to cope with themselves and reveal who they really are to the rest and that’s it, nothing much changes. Even Miyamura didn’t have that hard of a background story, you were ignored on middle school because of your looks, big deal. It’s a highschool drama after all, so of course I wasn’t expecting much depth or conflict, plus nobody watches a slice of life series for the plot, it’s the characters what grasps the attention of the audience, so I can let it slide.

Still, there were at least two aspects that I would have liked to see more explored, one is the hostility towards Hori’s father in his house which is just treated as a joke and the other is the hint that Miyamura felt so bad for being so lonely, it’s hinted in the series that his parents are usually away and that made him that way, but there’s literally no mention nor exploring of that in the least to make the story and characters even better. At least it was a different take on the usual trope of the protagonist being all alone in his home, in anime it’s usually portrayed as a blessing, here is the reason for a mental scar, even if it’s not a big deal and is resolved rather easily, this feels more real and better in my opinion.

Perhaps the reason for these problems have to do with the so criticized fast pacing, many moments and things were deliberately left out of the adaptation in order to stick to the most important scenes and the finale, and although the series comes off as more focused, tolerable and even enjoyable than the usual dragged on and melodramatic romcoms, at least for an anime only such as me, it does feel like the series moves from one thing to another rather fast and without giving each event that much importance nor having that much build up, it’s not done to the point of feeling like characters are being rewritten just because, but it can, and certainly did bother some people.

Still, I rather have the more believable development of the main couple that is portrayed here, than waiting for no less than thirty episodes for them to hold hands, say each other’s first name out loud, confess, and at best kiss. I mean, we do get all that (and more, although it was only hinted and not as obvious as in the source), and the characters still feel embarrassed and flustered over the pettiest things, but it all happens in half a season.

Still, I want to point out that there are moments when their relationship can come off as a bit toxic and possessive, especially from Hori. I mean, I wouldn’t have issues if the characters said stuff like this is MY girlfriend/boyfriend, but when instead you see characters that say THIS IS MINE or BELONGS TO ME, even at a point when they are still not a couple, it comes off as a bit off putting and cringy, and there are other awkward dialogues as well but that’s to be expected from a title such as this. I guess it was originally written a whole decade ago after all.

The rest of the episodes are dedicated to show more of the secondary characters, who also begin as stereotypes and are eventually shown to be more than just that and have their own stuff to cope with, as well as backgrounds stories to justify their behaviour. Not a big deal, it’s a highschool drama after all, and they don’t have super complicated characters, but it’s enough to make the cast a bit more memorable and better established as a whole than what you usually get in other similar series.

The best thing about the cast, including Hori who until now I more or less made her sound as a monster, is that is far more sensible and mature than their equals in other shows and talk about what bothers them rather quickly instead of making a big fuss over everything and dragging the series unnecessarily. That is something it has over the previous version, which is more dramatic over minor things. The few romances which I didn’t really dislike a lot have that as well (Hikari no Densetsu, Ajimu Beach Story) but I’d say Horimiya is a bit better in that regard for fleshing its cast more, in both quantity and quality, and for managing its narrative a bit better with less flaws aka fleshing them out enough before getting axed and skipping to the end with an out of nowhere time skip. Granted, not every side character is done very well (that lesbian junior and that green haired dude that speaks very loudly), but as a whole they are fine.

The finale felt satisfactory regarding characters arcs and seeing a graduation as just a step towards another phase in life that doesn’t necessarily means no longer being able to see the rest of your friends ever again, istead of the melodramatic end of the world you get on other series, and that’s fine for once.

In terms of presentation, the show has very good visuals, not suffering of obvious quality drops, and in this regard it’s way better than the other version. There are instances when some characters don’t have faces, but it’s done on purpose from the perspective of the characters that feel isolated, so it has a reason in the narrative. The designs are not that unique nor interesting but stand out a little thanks to the rather large and thin figures (not to the point of looking like XXX Holic thankfully) and the characters having their hairs and eyes of the same color, whether that is a good or bad thing is up to you, I didn’t even notice that until someone else pointed that out. The backgrounds are done well and there are effects shown as the characters’ figures presented as some sort of auras slowly coming from their bodies and getting back together during their internal dialogues and monologues, which are quite interesting to see.

As for the sound, I didn’t really feel the opening and ending songs, they are fine for the show, some will find them cute, for me they were nothing special. The voices fit the characters well but I prefer the cast from Hori-san to Miyamura-kun, still this department is serviceable as a whole.

For some final thoughts regarding the hate during the end, perhaps it’s because I’m an anime only but I don’t get it, it’s quite sad to see newer anime fans being spoiled by digital drawn animation and the possibility to acces the source material with ease to the point of complaining about not getting a panel to frame adaptation with 10/10 visuals or saying that an adaptation is shit because it has not that bad CGI for like 5 out of 24 minutes per episode. In this case, I’ve seen people saying that the manga overstays its welcome and drags with pointless stuff after a certain point, and then the adaptation skips all that to the end, and they still say the adaptation is shit for skipping the boring stuff, to me it’s just stupid, but what you gonna do.

Note: This covers the whole franchise

I began watching anime at a very young age but didn’t know what an anime actually was until my teenage years, where I got to watch InuYasha on YouTube, back in a time where a single episode was divided in at least three parts because the maximum amount of minutes per video couldn’t even reach the 10 minutes mark, the audio and the image usually weren’t aligned very well, most channels would usually take out the openings and endings to avoid any possible copyright, and I watched the latin america dub for that is my native language, which changed a lot of the original dialogue. And despite all that, I loved the heck out of it at the time.

It was combining a lot of different elements and genres to please everybody, it felt like a somewhat refreshing take on what the isekai trend was at the time for not being an isekai, and it was expanding on a similar concept handled by its author on a previous work, Fire Tripper, which received a pretty crappy adaptation. What was there not to like? The series featured a high school girl at the beginning of the new millenium, thus being somewhat relatable to the audience, thrown way back to an era completely different than hers, allowing the series to have both creepy, sad and comical situations from her perspective because of that, it was mixing contemporary and feudal times and it was a blast to see how different the two settings were, and it was an action adventure about searching a macguffin all around the country, filled with nightmarish demons everywhere, giving it a constant sense of urgency. Heck, it even had romantic polygons to please the shippers (usually girls) and badass characters from both genders of that time. It combined action, adventure, romance, comedy, horror and a cool mythological lore which all of that was based on, all of that with a mostly consistent tone with no mood whiplash.

Of course, when you look back at it, there were lots of stuff that weren’t explained in it and that didn’t make sense. The well was working whenever it felt like it, the constant time travel wasn’t affecting the present in any way, the modern elements Kagome was bringing to the feudal era shocking the people from that era was funny at first but it's something that just shouldn’t happen, her family not giving a damn about what could happen to her was pure nonsense, Kikyo was acting like a bitch towards the main group most of the time, and the coexistence of her and Kagome at the same time is hard to accept, the Tessaiga, just like the well, was working however the plot demanded, Naraku giving Miroku a technique that works against him without being able to take it away is plain stupid and as good at the characters motivations and reasoning seemed at first, they eventually come off as stupid the more you watch the show. It was still easy to shut off the brain and enjoy the epic dumb fun displayed on screen…for a while.

Despite its highs and lows, the first twenty or thirty episodes were pretty good not only for the mixed genres and elements but also because every character was important and somewhat tragic and every fight was creepy, intense and had lots of battle choreography and a basic strategy.

After that, the show becomes very repetitive, reuses scenarios and formulas too often, relies heavily on the already high plot armor, InuYasha, Sesshomaru and Naraku are constantly leveling up and making the fights too boring and tensionless and the secondary characters become mostly irrelevant and are reduced to spectators and commentators of InuYasha’s battles and never develop, Kagome is completely useless against normal enemies but overpowered against the main villain to the point of almost killing him a few times, and still not doing so because the writing is poor, Sango forgets her main objective for most of the series, Miroku comes off more and more as a pervert and even a cheater for still touching other women when he was already kind of Sango’s boyfriend, Shippo is reduced to a cute mascot in just two episodes. On top of that, the comedy never changes and the already bad exposition becomes plain terrible, and the romantic aspect, as complex as it seems at first, ultimately comes off as if InuYasha was a two timer that was playing with two different women at the same time and still getting jealous whenever one of them was around other men, before choosing his second option once the first died for good after four or so fake deaths, Naraku was doing everything out of jealousy, which is lame, and so on and so on.

Still, from episode 40 to 50 the show was still kinda watchable thanks to InuYasha slowly opening more to Kagome and her resolution on episode 49, the look into his past, Naraku almost getting the whole Shikon no Tama, and some of his incarnations having a little of personality, objectives and free will on their own.

However, after 50 episodes, everything bad about the show becomes even worse and the series constantly repeats itself with endless filler, and I’m not talking about the original anime content, which yes, it’s there, and it’s usually terrible, but also canon material where the gang still goes around fighting random one time demons in tensionless battles because InuYasha is too powerful by then, almost nothing in the show is worth watching from that point, and the series goes to shit. Even when they try to make you somewhat care with InuYasha’s demonic bloodlust and new techniques, all of that is mostly taken away for you to give a damn.

The show becomes good again for its one and only long arc from episode 102 to 123 because the plot was going somewhere, in a setting with its own lore, the fights were interesting because of the different fighting styles of the antagonists, every character had moments to shine on their own, the antagonists were interesting and had different dynamics between them despite being part of the same group, it has several highlights in terms of interactions among the characters and themes and there are negative consequences once the arc is over.

I mean, the silly comedy, despite being mostly absent, was still there, the exposition was still terrible and the writing was still not the best, since the characters seemed to be stupid at times and the way Naraku was even able to get in Hakurei and become more powerful is a stretch, but as a whole the show was once again almost at its initial level.

But after that the show becomes mediocre at best once again before ending incomplete thanks to all the horrible filler and the repetitive situations and outcomes, at least the artwork remains pretty good up until the end despite the large number of episodes, thanks to the improvement of the original character designs of Takahashi with sharper lines and more facial variety, even if it meant killing the resemblance between Kagome and Kikyo in the manga, which is a big plot point and even if it was easy to tell which enemies wouldn’t last much because of their uninspired designs. The backgrounds were well made although typical and repetitive, the motions were good at first but almost non existent once the battle choreographies were replaced with big light beams of different colors that could kill hundreds of enemies at the same time, and the special effects were very good for the time. The transition from hand drawn to digital was done well despite losing a bit of impact in the character designs and shading.

As for the sound, the voice acting is ok, the sound effects good, the music is very good but not very memorable because, despite being a good composer, Kaoru Wada tends to repeat himself with his works.

Whatever happens afterwards in the manga is pretty cool on paper with newer revelations, powers and incarnations, but the events kept playing out in the same old tired ways, the resolutions were too simple, the power ups were getting out of hand, and the finale was disappointing and had some silly things such as Kagome finishing high school only to leave her family forever and going back to the feudal era, somehow not breaking the time continuity while doing so.

By the time the sequel came out, the visuals and sound were good but the adaptation was so rushed it only made the already poor writing even worse thanks to its super fast pacing, plus lots of people didn’t care about it anymore at that point, because lots of cooler or better similar shows came out between the two series.

There are also four movies in the franchise, but none of them is truly special and they reuse the soundtrack of the series and reflect well the state of the show at the time. They have better visuals than the series but they are simple what if stories that don’t add much nor are very remembered. The first one is (not) remembered for rehashing content from the series, it has lots of action for every character but not much of a plot and it came out after season 2 when the series was already losing steam. The second one is remembered for killing off Naraku in a very disappointing way in ten minutes and because the main couple kiss YAAY, but it’s otherwise a stupid and mostly boring what if scenario where the characters introspect about what they are going to do next before going back to the same thing as before and where the plot gets completely undone by the time the movie is over. It came out after the third season when the series was already shit.

The third one, which came out after the Shichinintai arc when the show was good again, is the best and the only worth talking about, it has great visuals, minus the horrible CGI at the end, it has the fastest pacing and the highest stakes and amount of action with most main characters involved, as well as the most serious tone, it also deals with a somewhat internal conflict within the main demon family in the show and expands on its backstory without contradicting what was stablished in the main series but it is still nothing special, it has nothing to do with the Shikon no Tama and the resolution is simple and obvious, plus it uses simple and somewhat boring elements from the show such as an arm making you able to wield a sword you normally couldn’t use and a demonic sword mind controlling someone. It also has some issues regarding the internal logic of the series, such as:

-The well keeps working however it suits the plot
-Kagome’s spell was useful for once, but the necklace breaks and gets repaired, which shouldn’t happen
-Sesshomaru is able to touch Tessaiga, which shouldn’t happen
-The Tenseiga has abilities non present in the main series. Ironically the movie anticipated the sword getting more abilities later on, and managed to build Sesshomaru’s subtle development, so it’s not completely a minus

And the fourth is easily the worst as it came out after the series was over and sums up the worst aspects of the series and its fillers. It wasn’t the worst in terms of visuals, it’s actually the best in that regard, partially for being animated by Sunrise themselves, which meant not suffering of the lesser character designs from the previous movies, animated by Kyoto Animation. But in terms of story it was about protecting little kids from one dimensional villains, which feels wrong for InuYasha and is much less exciting than saving the whole world from powerful demons, it happens in its own simple setting with its own simple lore, which is told instead of shown and is also literally disconnected from the world around it. But it’s biggest issue is that it has too many characters at once without being well excused by its plot, as it was the case in the third movie, the main ones all conveniently gather in one place and disappear once the script says so because they are no longer required instead of having good reasons for that, the enemies are hyped up as literal gods but they are defeated very easily after powering up, which is lame and the movie is full of forgettable kids with two words of characterization, plus a good chunk of the duration is wasted on silly comedy around them. I mean the comedy is present in all of the movies, thrown in unappropiate moments and very silly ways, but the fourth one takes it to a whole new level.

Then eleven years after the sequel ended, a complete cashgrab of a sequel came out and most people didn’t care about it, again, and was even called BoruYasha by some. Yashahime was completely boring and uninspired, despite having a good artwork, its visual presentation is boring, simple and lacks the cool details of the original, the sound is nothing special because the voice acting is still just ok and most of the soundtrack is rehashed from the original series, and the effects are just ok.

The series relies heavily on rehashing stuff from the original to the point of even causing serious retcons. The well worked because of the Shikon no Tama? Not anymore. Characters died or disappeared on the original series? They are here because why not, InuYasha and Sesshomaru were able to use powerful swords and techniques because of their connection to said items and because they learned how to use them? These three girls can use them however they want with no explanation from the get go and the way their powers work are changed at the end. Did you like how Kagome was bringing stuff from the modern times to the feudal era? Towa does the same.

Do you want an ongoing plot? Too bad because most of the show is wasted on stand alone missions that are resolved too easily and have no connection to the main objective before the series ends incomplete and leaves you waiting for a second season, which causes the main battles and events to play out with an even worse pacing and writing than Kanketsu-hen’s. And yes, InuYasha suffered from that as well but it wasn’t a 24 episode series thus it undeniably had more relevant stuff in it, despite also having more terrible filler.

Do you want good characters with good personalities and backstories? Not here because Moroha has the personality but her backstory is very poorly written nonsense, Setsuna has the looks and backstory but is the most boring of the three because of her amnesia and cold attitude, and Towa doesn’t have anything in her favor, she’s the most inconsistent and stupid of the bunch, she’s presented as a tomboy yet becomes a typical girly high schooler when she goes back to her time, and spits boring moral speeches that usually cause more harm than good, while also doing the most stupid things such as giving her pearl to a fishy guy she likes because she spoke to him a few times.

On top of that there are horrible fillers in the series and also very bad messages, such as putting an addiction to a cellphone (which is never shown clearly in the series) in the same level as a toxic and possesive love, or the brooming present in the series that was criticized by most, even if it was still well received by some shippers. Age is not the problem here, since Sesshomaru is a young demon and girls becoming wives and giving birth when they are teens wasn’t considered weird in that era. It’s the betrayal of the character dynamics what caused the complaints. Rin was supposed to be sort of a daughter to Sesshomaru, slowly making him care about humans, not a love interest to bear his children and not seeing him ever again, with no build up towards that change, thus it was Usagi Drop all over again.

It is also inconsistent in some elements, such as Setsuna losing control of her demon powers because she’s a half demon, but not Towa and Towa losing her powers once a month like InuYasha because she’s a half demon, but not Setsuna. There’s also the fact that Moroha’s shortcomings for being a quarter demon work however it suits the plot at the moment.

Plus the fights are boring and the enemies are defeated way too easily, except for the epic final fight which still suffers from being way too fast paced, with asspulled powers that are changed from how they were throughout the whole series, and the characters’ motivations and courses of action changing a lot in just two episodes, before leaving the series incomplete with the expectation of a sequel that who knows when it’s going to come and if it gets any good.

I will at least accept that there are a few decent things in Yashashime, the main antagonist is a honorable and respectful warrior that seems to have good motives behind, but is boring as a villain because he’s nowhere near as schemy and backstabbing as the cowardly bastard Naraku, and he doesn’t achieve anything at the end and his objectives remain unknown because of the open ending. The lore is expanded in the series and although it feels kinda like the needless continuations of Dragon Ball at times (because they introduce stuff that was supposed to always be there even if it was never mentioned in the original series), it was still pretty cool and does fit the initial concepts, and the older cast overshadows the newer one with just a few minutes of screentime, and the motivations behind the whole thing are not (just) unrequited loves and complicated love polygons.

Thus, nostalgia aside, the franchise was nothing special and was beloved at the time because we didn’t know better, and rewatching the franchise made that perfectly clear, my ratings for the different entries are as follows:

-A somewhat generous 6/10 for the third movie for being the best and most consistent entry in the franchise, yes, this is as highest as it gets.

-A 5/10 for the original series and manga, for being overall cool and starting strongly, but also dragging the plot a lot with poor writing before finishing in a disappointing way.

-Another 5/10 for the first movie for having cool action but not much plot.

-A 4/10 for Kanketsu-hen for messing the adaptation of the final parts of the manga with its super rushed pacing and another 4/10 for the second movie for being a boring build up to a finale that erases its whole plot.

-And finally a 3/10 for the first Yashahime season and the fourth movie, for being the worst and most stupid entries in the franchise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And now for a short comparison between the two versions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

             VERDICT: Positives and negatives are equaled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In my older review I wrote this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VISUALS - 4/10

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

SOUND - 8/10

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

STORY - 6/10

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

CHARACTERS - 7/10

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

VALUE - 3/10

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

ENJOYMENT - 7/10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

18/08/23 update: 

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

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

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

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

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

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