Reviews by Fernando Leonel Alba

Note: This review is filled with spoilers, to explain how bad the anime is.

Blue Drop is a lesbian show where one of the main girls killed the whole family of the other, and the first interaction they have in series, but not chronologically, is the former strangling the latter, and not because of a kink. This would be more than enough for me to say that this anime is not worth watching but there sure is a lot more to criticize it for.

The series is about an amnesiac girl who goes to a prestigious girls only high school and ends up sharing room with another girl who strangles her at first contact, and is found out to be an alien from an all-female race that wants to investigate Earth for plot reasons. It immediately tells you that the main character has no backdrop, or that it remains a mystery throughout most of the show, and based on the very typical setup and setting, you just know these girls will end up as the main couple of the show.

Even though it combines slice of life and sci-fi action like Figure 17, the last show I covered before this one, Blue Drop really doesn’t focus on any of them, or at least, not in a way that feels well written, it’s even hard to tell what part is prioritized in it, because, really, it’s none. Scenes transition from the school to a space ship (as in, a spaceship that’s underwater, it´s a spaceship, but it’s a space ship), without a solid reason, they don’t do much in it during the initial episodes.

Eventually it turns out that this spaceship is a traitor, or suspected to be a traitor, again, for no clear reason, yet. It’s not a complicated show in the least, but since stuff just happens for the sake of happening, it’s hard to even tell why or how something just kind of happens. Heck, it’s even hard to say that stuff just happens, things are shown on screen but nothing is progressing any of the two main genres of the series.

When the girls are in school, they just goof around, when the space ship is shown, the dialogues are something like this: “Commander, I kept investigating, we need you here to do that thing”, “Understood, I will keep investigating here, so keep waiting for me there, I will go soon to do that thing”. The show desperately tries to build a mystery but there´s no mystery because nothing is happening.

So, inevitably, the focus ends up shifting to the school setting. Normally this would be to flesh out the cast and build character dynamics, but here the two main characters just flicker and makes fun of the other. The show dedicates screen time to other girls they interact with, but it feels like it’s just there for the sake of being there, it doesn’t really show much of the girls in question besides one or two things about them, and since those characters are ultimately irrelevant to the plot or the characterization of the main characters, it is just a waste of time.

The plot points never connect with each other, each one of them is there just to take screen time from the other. The school life portion just have the girls doing typical stuff, with more drama than deserved and needed, is just there to fill episodes, and eventually it doesn´t even gets a closure. When the stage play that they built for half the show is about to happen, a space invasion kicks in and the play is cancelled and you never get to see it in the show.

The sci-fi portion of it has the actual protagonist being attacked by her alien race, seemingly for being suspected of being a traitor, and she and her friend keeps taking down everyone that goes after them, even when there are more than one. How can a single ship take down a whole fleet, and later on a whole army? Well, you better believe it because it happens.

And it doesn’t stop there. Everything regarding this part of the show is horribly written and it doesn’t even connect with the main story. Unfortunately, to explain this, we have to step into spoiler territory.

-The protagonist is suspected of being a traitor because of an accident, which turns out to be something made deliberately by her superiors just to see what effect would have on their race. Imagine killing lots of your own species just for that, and without any anticipation, it is just revealed when the show is close to being over.

-The all-female alien race can create more of their own, but still came to Earth just to investigate about men. Nonsensical writing, they essentially are here just because it’s the setting that the writer wanted them to be. You never even get to see them around men at any point because there are barely any in this show.

-There is a teacher who is actually a secret agent spying on the amnesiac main character, she is found out by the latter for speaking about it out loud, on phone, in the school. Aside from the dumb writing, the show tries to build drama around them with this but this is the only episode that dedicates them some shared screen time and dynamic, their relationship goes back to normal by the end of it and their interactions are as brief and hollow as they were before.

-Characters suspect that the main girl has some kind of psychic powers, it is never explained properly and it ends up not playing a single part in the plot.

-The protagonist captures an enemy and lets her roam around her ship however she feels like it, never suspecting that she might be an infiltrator. Guess what happens.

-Knowing that her prisoner of war resents both her and the main girl, she still takes the latter to her ship, gets the two of them to know each other, and even sends them together to the same room inside the ship. Guess what happens.

-The spaceship has some level of conscience, yet never tells them what this infiltrator is doing.

-At one point the plot or characters progress because of the spirit of a dead character briefly appearing to tell the protagonist to let go, that it wasn’t her fault.

-Fights keep happening between the aliens but no one notices them, not even the spy teacher reports them. This spaceships even fly through the city at some point and people act as if they were planes. And yet, by the last episode, lots of human armies appear out of thin air to fight against them, only to, obviously, get stomped with ease.

-The outcome somehow leads into the very first scene of the show in the future, but it happens out of screen and after a huge time skip, it feels that it came out of nowhere and that it shouldn’t unfold the way it does.

-The protagonist never explains to the main character that she never actually intentionally killed her family nor destroyed the island she used to live in, all she does is apologizing while crying.

-What is the response of the other girl? A slap, but not for what she thinks she did, the expected confession, and a kiss, with even a shared line of dialogue in unison. Aside from being corny as hell, we the audience at that point know that the other girl wasn’t really responsible for that, but since she doesn’t explain it to the main girl, the latter is still from this point on, and for a very short time, going out with the person that, as far as she knows, killed her whole family and destroyed every place she used to know about.

-The protagonist never explained nor even apologized to the main character for strangling her in their first interaction, yet they are girlfriends by the last episodes.

-Her underling, that wanted her Commander to go back to the spaceship the whole time, decides that her being part of the stage play for the school is more important than preventing the invasion on Earth.

SPOILERS END HERE

And these are just the instances of horrible writing I remember off my memory at the moment of writing this, imagine how many more I could write about if I were to do a quick rewatch of sorts.

As for the characters, as you can tell by me never naming them, these are the things that I remember about them as well, characters, besides their roles as plot devices in the show:

-The main character, she is amnesiac, the plot somehow seemingly revolves around her, but she takes no part in it. At least she is willing to throw some punches when she needs to, I’ll give her that.

-The actual protagonist, she is unexpectedly a prankster.

-The infiltrator, she is resentful for having lost her ex-girlfriend, ends up becoming an ally once she finds out the truth.

-The teacher, she sucks at both of her jobs and ends up having no part in the plot nor any meaningful dynamic with any other character.

-Tall fat girl, her older sister has two babies.

-Cool girl, is the daughter of the school principal.

-Glasses girl, always liked fairy tales when she was a child, after a lot of drama she ends up writing the stage play that is never shown.

-The antagonists, they exist, they are cannon fodder and their reasoning is completely forced by the script with no explanation or logic whatsoever.

I can’t even say that the visuals are good even with three main studios working on this show. I’m sure they were innovating by 2007 standards, but by now they come off as, at best, painfully average and dated. The character designs are simple, generic and forgettable, the artwork is very inconsistent, the motions aren’t very good, the special effects and the backgrounds are not bad actually, but both are filled with very dated and crappy CGI made by Gonzo, a trademark of the studio for a while.

So in the end, Blue Drops ends up being a sci-fi show about an alien invasion that doesn’t go anywhere for most of its screen time, and with a single ship defeating a whole army, with absolutely no reasoning nor logic to unfold the way it does, and with one of the most illogical writing I have ever seen. It is also an empty slice of life series with no fleshed out, memorable nor likeable characters whatsoever, and it never manages to connect its parts together. It is also another nonsensical and quite toxic anime about lesbians, and even a visually very dated show.

But I still have two positive things to say about it. One is that it has a good sound department, very impactful and very well mixed sound effects both during battles and during slice of life moments, and also, very good soundtrack, even a very good opening, which sounds almost elegiac, too bad it ended up in this anime, and a very good ending, although not as good as the opening. Check out the full versions of both, because they are even better. The voice acting is not the typical voice acting I expected, but it is still not that special and not on par with the rest.

The other is having a very important death in it, which remains permanent, the character that dies isn’t magically brought back to life.

And even these two things are still only semi positives, since the volume in this anime randomly goes up and down for no reason, and that ends up being a bit annoying, and a character staying dead should be the norm anyways, and even then it’s weird because you wouldn’t expect this character to die throughout the whole show, it kind of happens to end in a dramatic way, in an attempt to finish with a somewhat bittersweet ending, and as far as I’m concerned it failed because I never cared for the character, and the scene afterwards has a comedic tone to it, ruining its impact.

It is far from the worst anime I watched in my life, and is not the worst nor most toxic, nor my most hated Shoujo Ai anime I watched, since I consumed both Kannazuki no Miko and NTR: Netsuzou TRap, but it is still a very terrible anime and one of the worst written anime I have watched in my life. Aside from listening to the very good soundtrack, I think that the best thing that can be done with this anime, is to stay the fuck away from it.

Figure 17 is the cute story about a little girl who gets parasitized by an alien who takes her form, stays on her house, eats part of her food, pretends to be her twin, is part of the brainwash of her father to make him think he always had two daughters, becomes better than her at everything at school while becoming more popular there, and makes her fight against horrible dangerous monsters.

There’s this little precious Tsubasa Shiina, a shy and rather quiet girl with clear problems to socialize and lack of self-esteem partly because of the loss of her mother, her dad being away almost all day at work and almost absent for her, and because she recently moved on to a new place and school. She bumps into a crashed spaceship where some eggs of extraterrestrial monsters hatch and scatter over Hokkaido, they fed off of it and evolve that way. At the same time she accidentally fuses with an alien weapon/battle armor/life form thing to fight them, which out of battle takes her form, and thus she begins to live on her house as her new twin sister, Hikaru.

How is any of that cute you may ask? Because of the way it’s presented. Let’s clarify that this show is a cutesy and relaxing slice of life and coming of age story first, and a sci-fi action monster of the week series after. The focus is clearly placed on how Tsubasa no longer feels lonely thanks to her new more optimistic, energetic and extrovert sister who is always by her side, cares for her and encourages her to talk to others, get new friends, try more things, and be more confident with herself, while also fights alongside her and protects her from the aliens they face. Since their father is a baker and they live in a farm, the first thing they learn together is to make some breads and cakes and all that stuff, while also stuff about different animals, particularly cows. Then at school they go to class together, practice and compete in sports together, and rehearse and later star on a stage play together, that kind of usual stuff.

As the series goes on, however, after a tragic event, where the more cynical view of the situation which I began this review with gets acknowledged and addressed, and with the acknowledgment of their inevitable parting once all the monsters are defeated, both girls will be a little more apart of each other and Tsubasa will effectively learn to be more sufficient by herself and less dependent of Hikaru.

But how does the action sci-fi part of the show fits in? Well that’s the thing, initially it doesn’t, it feels tacked on and it even drops the overall quality of the show actually, since those monsters are just horrible things with zero dimensions of personality to them, which exist just to be killed on each episode. Not only that but the fights, despite having some battle choreography and strategies to them, usually start with alien policeman D.D getting defeated, and get resolved by Hikaru convincing Tsubasa to not be scared of the opponents, and they defeat them with one punch, even when the more experienced characters couldn’t win.

Fortunately this appear to have been realized on the writing room at some point, and as the show goes on, the monsters keep evolving and sharing information with the others, gaining new characteristics and forcing the heroes to face them together, form new strategies and use new weapons in order to win, by the end of the show no alien can be defeated by the girls all by themselves, they have to fight alongside the two veteran space police officers in order to win, even survive.

But that’s just an improvement action wise, how it ends up connecting with the main plot? Well, first, by having D.D and the later introduced other officer Oldina have a little, but very little, lives on Earth on their own as well while they gather information about their enemies. Second, by having them changing a little from their cold initial attitude to be more comprehensible and respectful of the things the two sisters go through the show, even letting them out of a few fights and having a few instances where they take the monsters on their own. Although short lived, it was a very welcomed change to have the two veteran space police officers be the ones to kill the aliens. Third, since the majority of the series is dedicated to the slice of life moments on Hokkaido, having all of the characters the girls interact with at stake as the show goes on, makes the following fights to be and feel important. And fourth, part of the growth Tsubasa goes through ends up playing a part as well, since it leads to an improvement on their way of fighting, and she even gets to save Hikaru at some point, an even more welcomed change.

Another way the writing tried to connect the two plot points with each other was with the presence of an investigator who realizes weird stuff is happening in the environment of Hokkaido, even appearing in the final battle. Although this portion of the show is necessary to understand the actual effects that the monsters have, it is universally considered filler, and to be honest everything regarding this character feel as such. Which is a shame since it is something very easy to solve, just have D.D and Oldina be the ones to investigate this stuff, they already use some pseudo-science to learn more stuff about their enemies, might as well have them look into what those monsters are doing to the Earth, that would help them in their own investigation, and give them more screen time to have a little more lives on their own on our planet, and thus have a bit more presence and character outside the action bits. Eventually this investigator ends up getting a catharsis, but like I said, everything about this character feels unnecessary and tacked on.

Another thing worth mentioning is the unexpected but welcomed lack of plot armor, especially with how many times D.D could have died but didn’t in the initial episodes. This I find to be positive, since despite being primarily a slice of life show, Figure 17 still has stakes, and having important characters dying permanently is the proper way to make said stakes feel real and their consequences important for not being taken away. And is not like the deaths come out of nowhere for shock effect, they are properly anticipated and it’s great that the series does not chickens out with them, even leading to a somewhat bittersweet ending.

To continue with the positives, I was surprised by the visual quality of the show, since it is a rather minor production from 2001. There are quality drops and characters go off model when seen from afar, and the designs are simple and generic, even very lookalike to what the designer would do later on Planetes, for example, but still the visuals are usually very good, very good special effects, very little and well rendered CGI for its time, in turn well mixed with the rest, and some of the most beautiful hand drawn backgrounds you’ll get to see on anime. The motions, though not always, are usually pretty good as well, and even the slice of life bits have vivid enough body language to not feel those bits as visually inferior.

As for the sound, the children sound very cute and convincing, every voice fits perfectly and is well performed. The adults however, partially because of their part on the show, sound a bit more typical, not bad, just not special in any way. The background music is good, composed of cute and relaxing themes for the slice of life portion of the series, and heavy rockers for the sci-fi half of it. With that said, the soundtrack ends up coming off as repetitive because some themes have many different versions and are reused in the exact same way every time in similar scenes. The opening is also a cool rock track, and the base for some tracks of the soundtrack, but it almost does not feel like the overall vibe of the show, luckily the more relaxing ending song fits better, and compliments it well, just like the two different genres don’t fit together at first but end up making a proper whole later on. The sound effects are nothing special but they are fine.

And now for the issues of the show, aside from the ones I already mentioned.

-Brainwashing is one of the laziest plot devices to use in writing regardless of what it is used for, thus it is an issue here.

-Although somewhat explained, having just one human notice what’s happening it’s impossible to buy, another major flaw and another reason to get rid of that investigator.

-By the end of the show all memory and track of what happened is erased, except for Tsubasa’s, this way it does not takes away the most relevant aspect of the show, but still makes the ending to feel like very little mattered in the end.

-The sisters are away of all the people they live and interact with everyday every time they get called to fight, and no one notices them going away to fight and get back to their house late at night at times, how convenient.

Despite the minuses, I still found it to be a pretty good slice of life and action hybrid, each genre is ok by itself at first, and they get tied together properly as the series goes on. Plus, it’s a slice of life show with plot continuity, stakes, permanent consequences and actual character growth by the end of it, quite rare within this medium, and somewhat valuable and memorable because of it. It is also one of the atypical and unusual oddities coming from OLM, the Pokémon studio, worthy to check out when they make something outside their comfort zone, like this, or Odd Taxi, or Berserk, to name a few. Still, with each episode being 45 minutes long, the simplicity of its plot and how it takes a while for its two genres to feel like they belong in the same series, I don’t find rewatch value in here, but for a one time experience, it is a good choice.

For similar stuff, there are actually way too many options, but just to name a few:

For the slice of life portion of it

-Gin no Saji, a coming of age series about high school students from the countryside.

-NieA_7, a slice of life comedy about a woman living with an alien.

-Hinamatsuri, a slice of life dramedy about alien girls living on Japan.

For the sci-fi action bit of it

-The Guyver action franchise, about a guy who accidentally fuses with a bio-organic alien armor to fight against extraterrestrial monsters invading Earth.

-Brigadoon, a science fantasy action romance dramedy about a girl being protected by a bio-organic extraterrestrial being from other soldiers like him, as well as many other monsters.

-The Tetsuwan Birdy action franchise, about a guy who for plot reasons shares body with a female space police officer who captures space criminals.

And more, there are a bunch more similar titles out there, damn. Another title that it’s usually recommended along this one is Blue Drop, but as I will explain next time, it’s best to stay far away from it.

Before I start I would like to give two warnings: Fist, I love this show, so this review is most likely going to be very biased, second, I did not (and will not) play the videogame, so the mentions of it I could make are going to be limited to what I saw on just one walkthrough, and of course, I am not going to complain about how is not a 1:1 adaptation because of that, even more so because this is mainly directed towards anime only viewers like myself.

TL; DR: It has poor CGI and is not a videogame, but despite some issues it is still a great science fiction show.

Oh poor show, all it took was one episode of bad CGI and not doing the impossible of making a tv series to be exactly like a videogame for most to not give it a chance. And then something weird happened (they said COVID, but it has become hard to believe) that messed up the release completely, and even more stopped giving a damn because it would come out like a manga on hiatus.

Let’s get the production out of the way. A-1 Pictures usually delivers with the visuals, but I never felt like any of their shows was visually impressive, and NieR:Automata Ver1.1a could have been the exception, but it is not. The overall artwork is great, I had no issue with it, there are no obvious quality drops, the backgrounds of the game are captured perfectly on the show, the motions during battles are really good even when the fights are short, although not so much during relaxing moments, the special effects are really good as well, and the character designs were translated well to 2D, even though the lines in the joints of the characters in the series do not reflect the fact that they are androids as well as the 3D models from the videogame, and obviously, the hairs do not have as much volume as in the game. Some people have issues with 2B’s face since she seems to have lipstick and eye liner or something, not me. That seems very superficial and minimal to me, especially when she wears a skirt and high heels during battles. But the main issue with this anime is the infamous CGI that made lots of people drop it with just one episode. At first glance it is plain awful, but maybe I got used to it, because it did not look that bad to me during a rewatch, I mean, it is still pretty bad compared to the rest, since those CGI mecha do not seem to match with the rest of the show at times, but the motions are still good even during those moments. Luckily it is not that present after the first episode, but it is still the worst visual aspect in a show that is otherwise very solid.

Sound wise, the show is kind of amazing even if it could have been even better. The sound effects are impactful enough and usually very good, yet they could have been a bit louder sometimes in a particular episode, the background music in the show is immersive and very reminiscent of Ghost in the Shell’s, but I have to take points from it for being practically reused from the videogame or the original Nier, even Advent Children had different arrangements of the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack, this series does not seem to be changing the themes one bit, nor add its own. The opening and ending are good but did not make the best first impressions on me. They definitely grew on me over time though, particularly after hearing the full versions, and even more so when I found out a bit more about the lyrics and how they reflect the perspective of the main characters. As for the voice acting, every voice fits the character just right and is well interpreted, and is good what they did editing wise with the robot characters, they might sound a bit annoying to some perhaps but since they are robots trying (and ultimately failing) to be, act and sound human, what was done with them sounds accordingly. I would never have had an issue with this department if I had not watch a walkthrough of the game. I do not know if this is just a thing on the English dub that I watched and it was different on the original Japanese, but over there the robots sound more monotonous and lifeless, which fits the idea and characterization behind them a bit better, as well as the weird feeling both the protagonists and viewer are meant to feel when that happens. So, funnily, if I have to criticize something from the voice acting it is from being way too well done, but I am still not taking points from it.

And now I can finally move to the meat of the series. The premise is rather typical but usually interesting and exciting if you are into science fiction, humanity lives on the Moon and tries to get back Earth which was taken by aliens after they attacked it and conquered it, with the spin of both sides using robots and androids as their military forces. Throughout the show we follow two androids on Earth interacting with the Resistance and fighting alien machines there while investigating a former unit going rogue. It seems like there is not much conflict in it and it is just two sides at war, but there are different interesting clashing perspectives in it:

-The YoRHa units are built to just kill every robot they see so they want to be done with it as soon as possible.

-The androids on Earth were fighting for so long and know and are in contact and even negotiations with some machines, so they are tired of the war and not nearly as extreme. They also have been neglected help from the Human Council for so much time that they do not trust YoRHa units all that much. And even then they have their fair share of internal differences.

-Similarly, the machines have been fighting for so long and had seen so many of them getting destroyed that some of them just want to live peacefully in community.

-Then there is A2, who considers she has been betrayed by the Human Council and YoRHa in the past so she goes rogue on her mission. It is interesting that she is still hunting machines despite not being ordered to do so, but she has a personal reason to do that.

-Then mankind, which you never get to see, just want to take back Earth despite all the sacrificed androids it takes.

-The YoRHa commander, who just seems to be serious and cold at first and not caring about using the Resistance members as decoys like the Human Council orders, yet does not like sending the androids to their destruction.

As you know already if you played the videogame, or have guessed with the above, this is another one of those what if stories where AI essentially developed a level of conscience and self-awareness that they consider themselves to be humans, or equals to humans. So here you have every character going existential in one way or another, and this is a very important thing to clarify. If you go into this show expecting to get all the action from the videogame, you will be disappointed. There is action alright but the series focuses more on the existential drama of the story of the game. The characters in this show are constantly pondering about how humans are and act, how we do certain things, the things we do under certain moments, why are those even important and what do they mean to us, and are also curious about Earth and why is it so important to mankind, while the alien machines that now want to live in peace on the planet try to mimic what they came to know about humans and life on Earth, and they talk about emotions, bonds, ways to organize and live in society, concepts such as loyalty and love, they claim to have a soul, and even try to mimic different ways humans show affection, heck they even have sex at one point.

Basically, the series more or less references to, or combines ideas of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Nietzsche, Theseus and Pascal and although the way said ideas are integrated is basic, this makes the experience easily digestible and enjoyable, instead of tedious and tiresome. Also, since the concepts are related to the plot and characterization, and unlike other anime Nier:Automata Ver1.1a does not quotes the philosophers, and thus it does not comes off as pretentious.

But it is not like the show just has androids and robots just talking about these things either, there is also action, mainly the hack & slash portions of the videogame, while 9S’ hacking sections and the shoot ‘em up/bullet hell bits have a much more minimal presence, even more so with the latter. And even those are usually accompanied by the machines challenging the concept of them that the androids have been bombarded with all the time by YoRHa and the Human Council, so there is theme exploration even there.

There is also some comedy, and although I was born a grumpy old man that prefers his serious moody shows to stay as serious and moody as possible, I was mostly fine with the mix here. There is some Yoko Taro trademark humor in it, like a post ending puppet theater segment that shows all the alternative endings from the videogame, as well as speeding up the credits that come right after, like in the videogame. There are some silly bits that are meant to relax, yet they are usually followed by soldiers talking about everything they have lost, their need for hope, or if all the fighting is really worth it, or the scene where the village leader Pascal says to 9S that despite all the modifications for weaponry done on his body, he is still the same on the inside because of his soul or heart, even Operator 21O asking 9S to collect photos of certain things on Earth are meant to show her curiosity about it and humans, or Operator 6O asking 2B to put a flower on her hair is meant to show hers about the same things, as well as certain human customs and even fashion choices. So there is theme exploration even in those moments, no scene in this series feels like it wastes time.

And it is not like the show sacrifices its plot and pacing for the sake of theme exploration either, on episode 2, 2B and 9S are assigned the mission to do reconnaissance and find the reason for the weird behavior of the alien machines, as well as why so many other YoRHa units have been disappearing. With proper anticipation and build up, and without having you wait that much time for answers, by the eight episode you already know the reasons for both of those things, and there is a proper follow up after said answers were given.

And it is also not like the show is all plot and no interesting characters either. The protagonists as you sure know are female android YoRHa Model No.2 Type B (for Battler) and male android YoRHa Model No.9 Type S (for Scanner), 2B and 9S respectively for short.

She seems to be always serious and collected during relaxing moments and wants to complete missions as quick as possible, and she always tells 9S to no get emotional, but is clearly affected by the loss of a squad she was part of at the beginning of the show, which is why she does not mind doing errands instead of fighting, as well as 9S being a different 9S she fought along with in the first episode, which is why she refuses to call him by his nickname, so she is the more emotional of the two. She is also clearly doubtful about her duty and the depiction of the alien machines from YoRHa and the Human Council’s propaganda compared to what she finds on Earth.

He, on the contrary, tries to get closer to 2B and is always far more relaxed and friendly during relaxing moments, but is otherwise serious and merciless during battles, not doubting to kill innocent machines, even children. He also hacks robots during fights and gets to see their memories, convinced that they cannot possibly have something such as memories and they are just trying to fool him by mimicking humans. He is clearly more in line with YoRHa and the Human Council’s propaganda and denies every display of emotion and cognition done by the robots, but even he starts to doubt that throughout the series as he interacts with the Resistance, or Pascal, or the encounter with A2, and even spies on YoRHa’s commander at one point.

Other important characters include deserter veteran soldier Type A (for Attacker) No.2, A2 for short, on the hunt of machines and trying to put YoRHa units against the Human Council because of her past, adding a former soldier betrayed by her military layer to the show, Resistance members Lily the leader, with a close past connection with A2, and Jackass, who acts as a comic relief character and a technology and data freak of sorts but still has her serious and sharp side like Lily.

The only somewhat fleshed out robot would be Pascal, a former battle unit, leader of a village, trying to be up to his position, acting silly at times and challenging 9S’ views at others. Much like A2, he is a deserter, and much like Adam, he yearns for learning.

The machine brothers Adam and Eve, acting as antagonists in the show, evolved from many others. The former develops intelligence and language throughout their apparitions, by reading and interpreting different human writings to be like them, while the latter is just defined by how much he admires his older brother.

There are more robots that appear for about one episode to explore certain themes, and they have a backdrop, but they are not as important because of lack of screen time.

There are also more characters from the Nier franchise as a nod to the fans but they appear as cameos with not much to do or say.

Aside from the writing, another thing that stands out is the directing, with very good battle choreography during fights, following every motion and even referencing the videogame at points. Sometimes there are also long atmospheric scenes with very minimal dialogue, or even mute, letting the viewer figure what is happening by themselves, showing instead of telling. The art style also changes completely when showing Pascal’s past. The sixth episode which is the one showing Lily and A2’s past is the one that stands out the most, using first person perspective during some shots, and having Lily and 2B walking on a place, while the memories of the former transition over to behind the space they are walking on, so she is, in a way, reliving her past. I find it quite impressive coming from the people responsible for it, who before this title did not make anything that I find to be particularly good.

Another thing that I want to point out as a positive, is the fact that, despite being based on a videogame where it is possible to have a relatively high level of fanservice, and adapted by #1 butt fetishist Japanese studio A-1 Pictures, the instances in the show where skin is shown that can be counted as fanservice are few, scattered, and subtle. It also makes sense to have like three or four very quick butt shots with 2B jumping everywhere while using a skirt, so I did not have a problem with them while watching the series, and if you have read another one of my reviews you may know that I always bitch about unnecessary nudity moments. Still, I have to say that I did not like how they increased in the final episodes.

But despite my praises, Nier:Automata Ver1.1a is certainly not without its questionable things of different nature.

The first one has to do with the concept itself. As much as I tend to love these kind of stories where AI becomes sentient and stuff, the scenario is still hard to accept even in these times. AI is programmed by humans, the things it can do are limited to what a human commands. Granted, this story happens way further in the future so who knows, but in our times, the concept is still not fully believable. Another thing to point out about these premises are how AI develop conscience, self-awareness and free will, despite being built and programmed by others, so the things they should develop on their own by definition, were actually programmed by others, sounds a bit contradictory does not it? It is even weirder when it comes to the machines, but is it perhaps easier to accept since they were made by a supposedly advanced space species, again, in the future.

Then there are things that are questionable within the writing of Nier:Automata itself, like why would you program emotions into your android military forces, knowing that could potentially lead them to oppose you, which is something that actually happens, should not the YoRHa units be more monitored and controlled in some way to prevent that same possibility? Why would the robots try to be humans when they were made by another completely different species? Ok maybe the reasoning is that they want to live on Earth and they want to show androids and humans that they can be the same, and they fail, so the franchise addresses that in a way. Then there is something regarding the robots and their alien creators which does not make much sense when you consider that a good number of them moves in sloppy ways, and cannot even fight against the androids. These are things that affect the credibility of Nier:Automata specifically, and without clear answers they feel like they are the way they are just so the story can happen.

And another issue of the anime itself, is how it shows the backgrounds of certain machines and throws references to the original Nier. Although I do appreciate how those scenes are presented as I said earlier, it is true that if you are an anime only like myself you can be confused by what is shown, even more so with the references. Like, I know who Kaine is, but since I did not watch a walkthrough of the original Nier yet, I did not get why her brief apparition was important, or what that wedding earlier even was. The scenes by their own still function at showing the background stories of the characters and impact 9S, but it is understandable if anime onlys are confused with them and feel indifferent towards them.

Other issues include how sometimes some cinematics from Route B are integrated in ways that do not feel properly contextualized, and the fact that part of the plot is left to be adapted. The season ends in a good point but the story is still incomplete. Also, as great as 2B and 9S are, and although the rest of the cast is still somewhat fleshed out and given a good enough either presence or personality, or a backdrop, or all of those things, they are still not as good characters as the main two, which are the only ones to get proper development and catharsis.

I would now like to talk about the criticisms about how the adaptation works compared to the videogame. I heard and read complaints about how the videogame is more engaging thanks to the three obligatory runs to complete the whole story, and how it shows more information about the story and characters each time that way, there is replay value, while the anime gives you all the information you need at once, thus it does not have the same sense of intrigue and rewatch value. Those points are somewhat true but also unfair with the show, an anime television series is not a videogame, it is supposed to give you the full story at once to be complete, which is why it skips most side quests. Also it has rewatch value because that way you might notice things you missed the first time, or how it foreshadows or builds up future events.

Granted, a more faithful adaptation to the videogame could be possible with more seasons, but for that to be done that way, I can only think that it should be like either the Endless Eight arc of the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise, which although it had interesting directing choices, it was mostly hated even by its fans for how minimal the new content was on each episode, or the Fate/Stay Night franchise, which adapts each route on a different series each time. The problem with that approach is how every adaptation lacks important details about either the story or the world or the lore or the characters, even in the original game. If you just consume Fate or Unlimited Blade Works, you know nothing about several characters, and you are missing a lot of lore that is only shown on Heaven’s Feel, on which so many characters die so fast and early, you have to watch or play the other two to even know who they are. If you adapt a videogame that way, it might mean more possible money and a longer time you have a fanbase, but writing wise it is not a good way to do it, because none of the stories will be entirely complete without the others. Retakes of a same story from different perspectives can work just fine, but exact reruns of that said same story works only for videogames, and is otherwise not good writing.
And this criticism did not even age well now that the season is complete and the continuation adapting the third route was confirmed.

Plus, imagine how much time it would take them to release three series instead of just one or two, why with the horrible release date this one alone had. That is a serious criticism that can be made about this anime but not in terms of writing, it is not a problem within the series itself, but rather a problem of it as a product, thanks to the people responsible for it. The release schedule was so irregular without much explanation, and the one given, COVID, was hard to believe for how long the series was postponed. It was even worse because in the meantime they released all kind of products, from the soundtrack, to podcasts, to a card game, to figurines, to puzzles, even the puppets you can see in the post credits each episode, among many more, it felt like they were trolling us and delaying the series on purpose to sell more stuff of it. Obviously this will not be a problem once the series is fully complete and available to watch from beginning to end whenever someone feels like it, but in the era of overproduction of products, hype, instant gratification, and short memory and attentions spans, it is a big issue for some, and I do not see many people recommending this anime in the future because it became kind of niche even when it was airing.

And now, I would like to add a summary for people who have already played the videogame, where I tell you what parts of the videogame are adapted on each episode, and what the adaptation skips or changes, as much as I can notice:

Episode 1-A foreshadowing of route A ending, followed by the prologue, including the very beginning of route B.

Episode 2-It is mostly original, half of it follows a robot that grows and take care of flowers, while the other half shows the Resistance, which 2B and 9S get to meet after the maintenance scene. Anemone is replaced by Lily and also, Devola and Popola appear. It includes some cinematics from Route B.

Episode 3-Follows 2B and 9S meeting the Resistance camp, including Jackass, who is more energetic and silly here, acting as the comic relief character. They also go to the desert, and the City Ruins where they meet all the android corpses and very briefly fight against Adam and Eve. The only important skipped bit was the member of the Resistance that wants to conserve his original leg, as the only remain of his original self. This conversation is somewhat present on episode 7.

Episode 4-2B and 9S go to the Amusement Park and fight against Simone/Beauvoir, I guess the Memories of a Songstress novel from the videogame is included in a way as a flashback, though the dialogues are quite different, so maybe not. At the end of it 9S tells 2B to not hesitate to kill machines, this way is far more impactful and makes more sense than in the videogame, partly because of the events on the episode itself, and partly because on the original he says that to her during a random encounter with a group on the desert, while the player has the option to casually slaughter them to grind experience without hesitation.

Episode 5-2B and 9S go to the Ruins of Commercial Facilities and the village where Pascal lives, they also find Emil, in a way, and reveal him as a weapon. Kaine appears in a flashback. It includes cinematics of Adam and Eve on the table.

Episode 6-Shows Lily and A2’s past, adapted from the Anemone: Encounter, Understanding and Separation novels from the game, the Ongakugeki YoRHa Ver.1.2 stage play, and the YoRHa: Shinjuwan Kouka Sakusen Kiroku manga. Anemone appears as a side character, as she was replaced by Lily in this series. Very good on its own but I found the other version I saw to be more detailed and introspective, thus better.

Episode 7-It fuses some side quests into a new one of sorts, leading 2B and 9S into the Forest Kingdom and their encounter and fight with A2. Since she cleared all the guards, it skips all the fights in it, and the castle sequence from the game, but it shows the backstory of the place that is shown on Route B. An important thing that was skipped between episode 5 and this one is the second encounter with Adam and Eve, and the reveal of what happened with the aliens. In this episode Pascal and 92 discuss about how much of you is still you if you change your body too much, so in a way it has the conversation that could have been on episode 2.

Episode 8-It mostly has the main characters interacting in the Flooded City, with the Lunar Tear accessory included, it does not adapt the fights and protecting the carrier mission from the game, thus it does not feature the other YoRHa units. With major changes, the end of the episode leads into the mission to find 9S.

Episode 9-It begins with 9S arguing with Adam in the cyberspace, then 2B reaches that room where the last episode left off, and goes to the Underground to find an access to the Copied City, where Adams presents himself and reveals what happened with the aliens, a bit that was missing from earlier episodes, as the second encounter was completely skipped. Then the two of them fight, with a major change in the outcome, for the better, honestly.

Episode 10-It adapts 2B going to the abandoned factory and fighting the Robot God, a mission from the videogame which was reconnected directly with the main plot through the outcome of the previous episode, thus I find it better than the original. The after credits puppet theater shows the Red Girls briefly.

Episode 11-It has the full scale attack of the alien machines on the Resistance Camp rewritten into an original fight which I did not find all that good in any particular way, but at least had the Resistance being a somewhat active part of it, unlike the game. It also has a bit more of immersion giving to the brothers and now the Red Girls officially appear in the anime, even if for an even more brief moment than before. Still, as a whole, I found this episode to be the worst of the season, both as an adaptation and on its own.

Episode 12-It shows the outcome and the Route A ending, even finishing with End of the World as a mid-episode ending song. Afterwards it shows 9S getting all the information he comes to learn about during his data overhaul and synchronization in Route B, even displaying some messages he reads in the game. It also shows him encountering the Red Girls, now responsible for these leaks in information, something which I also find it to be better than the original. Aside from that, their apparition, alongside with a post ending teaser, anticipates events from Route C and the second season.

As a whole, despite not free of issues in writing, visuals and presentation, along with a very bad release schedule, I found it to be a great existential post-apocalyptic war drama and the best anime to come out in years, as well as the best videogame adaptation so far for keeping the core story with more changes to its favor, although some of them were not as equally good, and also for making every second of it count for plot progression, characterization and theme exploration. An easy entry among my favorites anime of all time.

27/09/2024 update

Before I begin, I want to say that I rewatched the first season before starting this one and there were things that I found to be better than I gave the previous entry credit for.

The reasons for A2 are not as mysterious as I said, they are pretty clear.

Also I have noticed in my rewatch that there are details properly anticipated or built upon throughout the whole show, such as the flower, and the final showdown.

The machine life forms resent their creators and that is why they were interested in being closer or more akin to humanity and why they tried to create different forms of families or communities for thousands of years. Even though they cannot procreate, they found out they could fuse together to create a more advanced humanoid super machine in the form of Adam (and/or Eve).

In turn, said character was so interested in humanity and its emotions that disconnected… it? he? them? selves from the network to experience death as the conclusion for life, like it happens to a human. Yet, when it finally happens, it/he/them snaps full of resentment and grieve, realizing what was lost and how did not fully appreciate the time shared with Eve. Then proceeds to force a new fusion with the network and the rest of the machines to become the God he aspired to and tries to destroy the very thing he admired and used to see as equal.

And although still nowhere near its game counterpart, the final showdown was better than I remembered it to be, because not only has the whole resistance taking part of it, but also the YoRHa units and even the Commander using everything they can and even defying orders in order the defeat the ultimate enemy.

From the negative side, I noticed that the CGI was more prominent than I remembered, and the artwork suffers more from time to time than I noticed the first time. And in terms of writing, I think it would have been better if Adam was shown as a more active antagonist throughout the show. That also counts for the still disappointing final showdown, where not only he has a horrible change in design, but also is mostly there taking damage without really doing much. Also, although I still appreciate the scenes in terms of directing, it is true that different nods to the videogame and the original NieR, can be quite confusing and feel a bit messy within the rest of the series. Also the exposition is a bit too in your face at times, it definitely could be more subtle or improved with minor changes in the script.

Overall, my rating and appreciation for the first season remain unchanged, as I found both better and worse things in it on my rewatch.

Sorry for this prologue, now, onto the actual review of this season. Since I have already written a lot about the whole concept and most aspects of the characters in the previous one, this one should be considerably shorter and more to the point.

In terms of visuals and audio, this second cour remains the same as the first, so I will not get into details nor dedicate much writing to it. The only change worth mentioning is that both the opening from the, in my opinion, overrated LiSA, and the ending by GEMS COMPANY, were far inferior than the previous ones. Lyrically, however, both songs retained the same level of quality, and the latter referenced Drakengard 3.

As for the actual content, the main difference compared to the previous season is that this one does not have as much philosophical elements in it. The characters and overall themes were already introduced and discussed, so now they are not really questioning their purpose and existence anymore. That makes this entry somewhat simpler for me and one I did not enjoy as much as the first.

Not to say that it is worse or anything, just that it lost a neat extra. What it replaced it with, however, is going full on with the psychological war drama aspect of the premise, picking off exactly from the end of the first season. From a certain point, this cour takes itself completely seriously and features a lot more action, war in full on scale, and death and tragedy everywhere.

Lots of character die at every episode regardless on their importance in the plot, a sign of good luck of plot armour, and since almost everyone got a decent focus on the previous half, almost no death lacks impact.

And yet, it is not like the season lacks in the characterization department, as A2 becomes a much more important and focused character and the new co-protagonist. Her tragic backdrop is explored, I assume because taking advantage of the manga adapting the same story being already finished now.

And she even gets development as she gains a new perspective by her interactions with other characters in this entry, such as 2B and Lily, and more importantly, machines such as Pascal and the kids in his village.

The plot slows down a bit for a few episodes to give us much more relaxed interactions of her and them in a wholesome tsundere like manner, but considering what it meant for future events in the story, and for her as a character, I say those moments are necessary and well handled.

Then there is 92 as he keeps being the other protagonist in the show, I am not entirely sure if I can count his change as development or character regression, but the little guy becomes crazier and more ruthless with each episode. He is the one that continues to move the plot forward as he keeps learning more things about the whole conflict and the world itself, and combined with all the losses he keeps suffering in the season, his mind gets completely shattered in it. Great psychological aspect in my opinion.

As for the ending, the anime went with a weird mix between two endings from the videogame, including the True one, and original material. Basically a big fight happens and it seems to ends tragically, several characters start talking about gaining self-consciences and new objectives in a new world, and an original fight takes place before moving into a kind of circular soft reset of sorts but one that does not negate the whole plot. Personally, I would have preferred a more tragic finale, but I still consider it to be an acceptable one.

If you want me to say something negative about it, here are my complaints:

-The fanservice, not only it did not go away, it got worse. Most of it is quick blink and you missed it moments, but others are there in detail just for the sake of it. Can we excused 2B and A2’s buttshots? In general, yes, can we excuse Commander’s? No.

-Devola and Popola were explored way too late in the story. Yes, it is like that in the videogame as well, but instead of changing that for the better in the adaptation, it kept it the same and it meant for them to lack characterization almost until they no longer take a part in the story. At least we got more backdrop lore from previous entries in the whole Drakengard/NieR franchise thanks to them, but the handling of them was still not exactly the best.

-Although in a way the antagonists were orchestrating the whole thing behind the curtains, and not without proper build up even from the previous season, they still felt very passive as villains, even more than Adam and Eve. Heck, they were not even defeated by the protagonists, their downfall was something done by themselves after a quick, out of nowhere and almost out of screen internal conflict. Their change of perspective also happens practically out of nowhere.

An aspect I am not entirely convinced about whether it is a positive or not is that, once the truth is revealed, you wonder what was even the point of the whole war. In regards of theme exploration, a good thing is that something I presented as a possible issue within the concept itself last time was addressed here. I am talking about why machines would want to be human, and here they are having a whole internal conflict regarding getting conscience and searching for a new higher form of evolution and whether they need an enemy for that or not. Pretty good stuff but it feels like it needed more time and focus to not come off as sudden as it does.

Then of course one could see the pointlessness of the war itself as a commentary on every war there is, although that could be counter argued with some real life events, I think. But discussing whether or not all the devastating and tragic wars there have been and are still fought out there have a meaning or not is not the point of this review.
What could be say however is that, after watching both the videogame and the anime, in-story, I was still left a bit without being able to completely shake the question off my head, what was the point of everything the characters went through? And for what did they? Again, very good as a theme, but perhaps not the best executed in-series.

I can at least say that here you do care about the characters because of all the proper characterization, fleshing, psychological pressure and existential crisis they got and went through throughout the whole story in the two seasons. Contrary to, let’s say, Sky Crawlers, which although very different in plot and this point I am addressing now, had a similar relationship between the main characters as the ones in here, but with not even a fraction of characterization, memorability, tragic aspects and impactful ending as this series.

In conclusion, although I do not think of it as being as good as the first season, and not without issues, the second cour was another great sci-fi war drama despite its not so great visuals and differences from its source material. And without something like Pluto around, and with Dededede ruining its ending, I even consider it the best anime of this year.

Like last year, here is the summary and my opinion of the episodes compared to the videogame, so again, skip this if you are an anime only, as it is full of spoilers.

Episode 1-From what I understand, it begins with a very shortened and simpler combination of the Memory Thorn and Memory Cage chapters from the Short Story Long Novel, and the late Amnesia side quest from the game, and part of revelations that come near the end of Route C, as it reveals the true identity of 2B and the actual circular relationship she has with 9S. Then it ends with the beginning of Route C. There are also references to NieR in both a setting and Emil making an appearance. Also, the ending song of the season references Drakengard 3. Weird start of the season for an anime only like myself, but captivating enough because of the events that take place later, and how it changes the dynamics of the main characters shown up until that point.

Episode 2-It covers about half of the first mission of the C route, right until the reverse hacking and its effects. It shows not only other YoRHa pairs, but also the Resistance in the battle, plus some Operators, including 21O, so I found it to be better than its game counterpart. Also the Red Girls appear to mess things up.

Episode 3-It begins by confirming already hinted information about both 2B and the situation thus far, then shows the events on the battlefield 2B was going through while the previous episode was happening. Then continues to show the rest of the battle and the scenes on the bunker with the opening credits of the game included. Seemingly minor but important differences between the versions include the Commander being seemingly getting caught by surprise by the revelations of the episode, instead of being reluctant to believe them like in the source material. In addition, instead of random Operators, 6O is the one that attacks the protagonists here, because she has a lot more direct and emotional connection with them. Besides the fanservice, I have no complaints with this one.

Episode 4-It starts right after the end of the previous one and covers 2B’s death. It has several flashbacks and the visuals were not near as messy from the perspective of the dying 2B as they were in the videogame, plus she does not fight with that many enemies, so it is worse than the source material. On the positive side, there was some neat aerial fighting, without the weak CGI from the previous entry, and having 9S fighting at the same time made him arriving late to make more sense. Overall it was an almost excellent episode and one of the best.

Episode 5-It goes back to show more of A2 and Lily’s past, adapted from the Anemone: Encounter, Understanding and Separation novels from the game, the Ongakugeki YoRHa Ver.1.2 stage play, and the YoRHa: Shinjuwan Kouka Sakusen Kiroku manga. It makes sense to stop the main plot a little to show this, as it helps to flesh out A2 more as the new protagonist, and before her reencounter with Lily, also the manga was finished by this point, so it is understandable that they decided to show more of this backstory.

Episode 6-From what I understand, this episode is mostly original, though I imagine you can get similar interactions in the game as the ones shown here if you stop to get side quests in the Pascal’s village I guess. Other than that, both A2 and 9S’ recoveries were shown quite differently, and although a laidback and wholesome episode, it had nice character interactions for what comes next. A2 is given more needed interactions with Lily, and with robots from the village, which are neat additions and would make the following events to hit harder and make her development better. Meanwhile we see 9S slowly losing his mind and having a nice interaction with someone from the Resistance Camp, thus coming to terms with 2B’s death. Overall it was one of the weakest episodes on its own, but necessary and good in the long run.

Episode 7-A2 continues to interact with the robot kids from the Pascal Village, and along with him, they arm every seemingly capable fighter in order to fend off an upcoming invasion by hostile machine life forms. While that is happening, 9S encounters Operator 21O, rebranded as 21B for going into battle, thus her death makes 9S’ change more impactful both for him and within the story. Then he goes to the Resource Recovery sub Unit of the main Tower System to get its key by indiscriminately murdering every machine life form he encounters. In the post credits puppet play, Devola and Popola reference NieR (Gestalt/Replicant), and sing “Song of the Ancients-Atonement” for a bit.

Episode 8-It continues right from where it left off with an original battle between A2, Pascal and the village against other hostile machine life forms, but with a very similar ending. Later on she activates the Berserker Mode to fight against a Goliath type enemy and is helped by Pascal manipulating another one, like in the game, though it ends in a cliffhanger. Meanwhile 9S goes to the other Resource sub Unit and keeps killing robots and finds out the truth about them and the androids in the library, as well as about the Tower itself. The pods have a sped up kind of meta conversation in the last puppet play.

Episode 9-Pascal quickly defeats the Goliath and then we see changes from the game, as the surviving children are sent to the Resistance Camp but are infected thus chaos unleashes and most characters die either killed by a friend or family or by killing themselves. Even Pascal dies in here committing suicide while also blowing up a kid that ate the rest. Lily gets infected and asks A2 to kill her. Meanwhile 9S finds 2B’s message from the game as he finds the last password and both protagonists advance towards the Tower. The puppet theater is no longer in the show and is replaced, before the ending rolls, with conversations between the pods from the actual game. Despite the changes, I found it to be a great episode.

Episode 10-9S introspects within himself while hacking the Tower, and finds out the truth about 2B and himself, although he suspected it long before this point. Most of the episode is dedicated to Popola and Devola, showing part of the Project Gestalt lore from Drakengard and the original NieR, as well as the backstory of the characters from the “Devola & Popola’s Memories” novel from the game. Then they get 9S inside the Tower while fighting against machine lifeforms. Although faithful to the source material and overall good, I think the information about the twins came too late in the story, and interrupted the flow of the narrative.

Episode 11-Devola dies at the beginning and A2 kills an infected Popola right after. Then she gets into the Tower to find the library and the truth from the Red Girls, who also appear in front of 9S on another place after making him fight against several 2Bs, and then he takes the arms of one and gets infected. Very faithful to the game that far, but then the boss fights are largely skipped as they get infected and fight each other instead of fusing like in the game. Just like the first season, almost none of the epic action of the game is in here, but I never considered that to be a major problem. While that is happening, the Red Girls are discussing and fighting among themselves. Although their dialogues are given more importance than in the game, their fight also gets completely skipped. Then the episode ends with A2 and 9S about to fight each other just like in the game. Having practically no action for the climax kind of sucked, but the rest of the episode was fine.

Episode 12-The Pods keep talking with dialogues from the game, and the fight between A2 and 9S initiates, with interesting different and clashing perspectives between them based on their character arcs up until that point, and combining scenes from both Endings C and True E from the videogame. Also there are original scenes where both main characters introspect before the show sort of combines both endings into one, having A2 releasing the Ark with the machine lifeforms in it, yet also having the Pods doing a semi-reset of sorts I believe, but after an original fight. From what I understand, there is some sort of adaptation of a concert that plays after the end, and for some reason Accord from Drakengard 3 appears as a cameo, which would confuse every single anime only. Overall, some things felt a bit rushed, but a good enough ending as a whole.

Note: There might be a little bit of spoilers in here. To sum it up: the visuals and atmosphere are great, but there is very little plot and characters in here, and what is in it, is a waste of time.

It’s interesting that this donghua even caught some attention, given that initially the premise was very vague, and it adapts a seemingly not that well known webcomic. I guess it has to do with it being easily available.

Well, aside from that, there’s the hook, two dudes go to an escape room and win it, for one of them, the protagonist, to have recurring visions of different escape rooms and the female owner of the place they went to, afterwards. Quite unusual, plus during the first three episodes the pacing is quite good, having the setup and a cliffhanger in the first, the resolution in the second, and a hint of the backdrop stories that connects all the characters in the third.

The visuals are also very good, nothing mind blowing but definitely way better than the average anime out there, especially modern ones. The artwork is very well done, it’s always consistent without quality drops whatsoever, very well made backgrounds despite being limited to the same places in the same city all the time, and a better use of lighting and shading than any anime out there these days. The special effects are also very good, and the CGI used in the show is mixed very well with the rest, compared to other anime, and donghua as well. Plus the visuals and directing during the hallucination parts are very good as well. The parts that stood out the most for me were the genuinely visually dark moments in the show, which nowadays I don’t find anywhere else, even in series that are supposed to have dark aesthetics. The minuses in this department have to do with how stiff the series is most of the time, and how simple the character designs are, the only character that stands out a little is the main girl, and only because of her dress, black and red like her hair and eyes respectively. When she appears with other clothes she blends within everyone else like the rest of the cast.

The sound department is also very good, very well made sound effects during both relaxing and intense moments and the soundtrack is pretty immersive. The opening fits the mysterious vibe from the initial episodes very well and the ending, although nothing special, is fine as well. I take out points here because of the voice acting, it feels very generic and without much variety in delivery among different scenes and events.

But that’s as far as the positives go for me.

Initially the series plays out as a suspenseful psychological thriller making the viewer guess why is this happening? Is it all just a dream? Is the protagonist going crazy? Did he fall in love with the woman? Is she a demon that bewitches all men as the rumors say? Is it that all Chinese men can’t stop having recurring thoughts about a woman they met for like an hour?

Well, let me tell you, from episode 4 to 13 and half of 14, X & Y is not a psychological thriller, is not suspenseful and it’s not a drama in the least. It’s a romcom about the two main characters teasing each other. You can forget about the setup because so does the show, as it becomes a lighthearted slice of life and romantic comedy series with no plot progression whatsoever that made it feel way longer than just a 16 episodes series of a runtime of 15 minutes per episode. Plus from that point the initial thrilling tone and atmosphere became weaker and weaker until disappearing almost completely. No wonder it ended up falling into obscurity once again.

Ok, sometimes a character would appear to yell at the protagonist to STAY AWAY FROM THAT WOMAN, SHE IS THE DEVIL is a most exaggerated and ridiculous way, only for that to lead to nothing. Ok, bad things keep happening to people that harass the main girl, as well as acquaintances of the main character, fuelling the initial suspicion. But that also leads to nothing happening in the end, a girl gets kidnapped and placed in an escape room for several episodes? Nothing happens to her in the end, it was all fake tension, the show just felt like wasting some episodes. Did a character die for harassing that other woman? It happens out of screen or you won’t see what ends up happening to the asshole.

They also keep bringing up how suspicious it is that the woman could build such a big and complex escape room place out of nowhere, but I don’t recall the show ever answering that.

Another big issue are the slice of life moments, which normally serve to at least flesh out the cast, but that doesn’t happen either. Everyone remains one note up until the last two and a half episodes. In the meantime they have the most unnatural interactions in a slice of life series ever, maybe the translation is to blame but seriously who talks like that? Even leaving the dialogues aside, there’s nothing to learn about this cast, they only appear in one place and they do the exact same things every time. Do you want to know more about the protagonist and what the heck is going on in his head? Well, too bad, he is amnesiac and he doesn’t get a clue about himself or the plot until the 14th episode out of 16, and the way he got that was so easy and simple you can’t help but think that it should have happened way earlier.

Anyways, once the answers are given, turns out there’s no supernatural stuff, and the protagonist isn’t losing his mind either, everything was a lie the whole time. To be fair, the reason behind all of this isn’t too bad, if the series was good, it could have been something like a mix between The Truman Show (minus the reality show aspect) and Memento or some shit. But there’s none of that here, and what ends up being the answer certainly isn’t very believable, in fact I dare to say it’s not at all, the characters shouldn’t interact the way they do at all, given their backdrop story, and it definitely didn’t mindfucked the protagonist nearly as much as it should have done, and it definitely didn’t need 16 episodes to show it, it could have been a short movie combining the first three episodes, very few scenes of the next ten, and then the last three. Either that but with better writing, or at least anticipate the outcome a bit for it to not feel as sudden as it was, plus it would have been more impactful and relevant for the protagonist. Ok, maybe if we track every escape room shown prior in the series we could find some hints, but I’m not doing that, and even if I did and they exist, I bet they are few, little, very easy to miss, and not really adding to the big picture nor highlighted in a way that might feel well written or directed. You would find more pausing the opening.

And you know what the worst thing about this show is? The ending is open and circular, and from what I read the series only adapts half the source material, which follows a similar pattern to end with, again, an open and circular ending.

Down to it, this is a show that promises a suspenseful psychological thriller early on, only to give Babylon vibes in a most exaggerated way, full of red herrings and fake tension, a dead pacing with barely any plot progression, a very inconsistent tone, some of the most unnatural interactions among characters ever in one of the emptiest slice of life series ever, no proper anticipation for the outcome, very nonsensical writing as a whole, disappointing resolutions, a story that essentially goes nowhere, and a complete waste of very good visuals, directing, sound, and atmosphere. I didn’t complete many donghua so far, but among those few, this is the worst of them all (but certainly not the worst one I ever checked out, that is Evil or Live, by far).

Since this movie came out it became the worst rated MAJOR Disney movie since Chicken Little (that means without counting those unnecessary direct to video sequels), and I just can’t understand why, even the critics that always praise every Disney movie for the simplest of reasons only praised the visuals and representation, so I’ll try to cover it from a different perspective, because I find it incredibly unfair.

But first, let’s get the obvious out of the picture real quick. As you would expect form a Disney movie, it looks and sounds almost impeccable. The only points to take from this aspects are the characters looking very similar to the ones in Encanto and the music being not as good as the sound effects or the voice acting. Other than that the dressing is very good, particularly the motions and sounds of the non-human creatures.

Now for the actual meat, this movie was first accused of being not original as a criticism, even though execution is what matters. I mean sure, this movie has stuff that you can expect from every Disney product these days. Brown skin main characters, a gay protagonist, pro ecology messages, generational trauma and family issues being the source of internal conflict among the group, strong women. And yet it is never preachy or in some face about any of these things, so why the hell are conservatives calling the film super woke and telling other people to not let their children watch this is? I just cannot understand.

-The characters are not a wrong ethnic representation based on north American stereotypes of what people from other places look like, because the setting is not our world.

-One of the three protagonists being gay hardly matters in the plot, it’s just mentioned thrice in the film, and shown a fourth time, every occasion during relaxation moments, so it doesn’t hurt the tone nor pacing one bit. It is also not preachy since everyone is supportive of the guy.

-The pro ecology themes are the plot in a premise where the whole world is at stakes, so the setup is exciting, and the way to show these are through the rules and consequences of a card game, where we get to see how each of the three main characters would handle a specific situation, and the consequences each decision could have, very good exposition. Plus, despite the film ultimately leaning to the later generation being right, it does not negates that the other ways of doing things are effective in their own right, as there are instances when both the grandfather and the father save everyone doing things their way, and even get to the understand and get close to each other because of that.

-A point can be made that family issues and generational trauma take away screentime from the world ending natural disaster and thus from the actual plot, yet it doesn’t because the characters need to cooperate to survive what’s coming for them and for that they need to understand each other. Plus, it’s not like there isn’t any of the action adventure the movie promises along with it. Plus it makes sense how family members apart from each other for so much time and with so different way of handling things would have such discussions, it even leads to the father to understand that, despite wanting to be different than his father his whole life, he ended up doing the same thing with his son, only in a different way. Which is a total thing in real life and so many generation X never come to accept, as well as many millennial don’t realize they do it themselves, not even when seeing it in a film like this or Everything Everywhere All At once. So good job to the movie for having the balls to include something here for the adults that might see it, even if they might ignore it.

-The movie is not preachy about strong women either, no character belittles what they do and praise them for what they know how to do, it doesn’t demonize any male character.
And do you know what this movie doesn’t have that other Disney movies do?

-A preachy Mary Sue female protagonist that’s always right and has magical powers that don’t fit the setting to solve every possible conflict and be plot armored as well.

-Musical numbers to disguise lazy exposition and slow down the plot. None of that shit here. Every bit is either full of action or important to the plot, themes, messages, or characters.

-A lame villain that comes out of nowhere through a very bad ass pulled reveal. The conflict is entirely internal and even when someone goes against the rest of the group at some point, she gets corrected by the plot when she comes to understand the circumstances, and to top it all she realizes it not by being told, but by seeing what’s happening. Thus she is SHOWN, NOT TOLD, that she’s wrong. Again good exposition.

Also what’s this about this movie being derivative and not original for Disney standards as I read? Just because it is sci-fi as some others? Disney has produced very little sci-fi compared to all the fantasy they made. Also, what’s so original about childish retellings about centuries old tales? Nothing, even more so when almost every movie had a previous adaptation before. The early ‘00s was the most original time period for Disney exactly because they tried sci-fi, admittedly with mixed results, before going back to play it safe with revisited and more childish retelling of tales in the ‘10s. And even then, no title had a setting and plot as original as this. I dare say this is easily the most original Disney film in decades, so how come it’s criticized for being not? And it’s even more than what it initially seemed thanks to the first plot twist of the movie which changes almost everything and yet without contradicting the initial premise or the themes or messages, nor taking away the stakes, good job once again.

With all that said, it’s not like I want to sell you an underrated masterpiece, no Disney film is a masterpiece, and certainly not this one. These are the issues with it:

-Despite being sci-fi, like all the rest of their films in this genre, the science is barely explained and it sure doesn’t make sense, it’s just a gimmick or part of a colorful setting. Also, physics be damned, this is an action adventure film made primarily for kids.

-Despite the whole world being at stake, it never feels like the characters are in actual danger, they can either sort any difficulty or survive anything with barely any damage and certainly no casualties whatsoever, and that undermines the whole thing a bit. I know this is a Disney film, but characters did die in their films in the past, so they could and should have killed someone here as well.

-The grandfather being so conservative towards his son having a different job than him yet having no issue with his grandson being gay is weird. Well I guess grandparents go easier on their grandchildren than their own kids, but still.

-Despite the pacing being overall good to the most part, the characters can face revelations that defy their whole life and worldview and accept them almost instantly. It counts as development and character arcs but it doesn’t feel organic that way, the movie definitely needed more breathing time for the characters to let that sink in, even if it meant slowing the pacing and increasing the runtime a bit. Hey, perhaps take some time from the end credits next time.

-The characters are a mixed bag, not only their developments and catharsis are not very believable, but also: the grandfather Jaeger has a strong presence and is definitely memorable, but he doesn’t have much personality, he is just an alpha male, the son has a strong personality and a big revelation, but he is not memorable because he doesn’t have a name, he is named Searcher, what the hell is he, a character class in a videogame? The talking animals and one trait nobles from their earlier decades might have been less flawed and simpler, but they were more charismatic and unforgettable. Finally Ethan the kid, he has both a strong personality and presence, so he balances both good aspects of his dad and grandpa, but since his whole worldview is not challenged like the other two, his character arc is the weakest.

And finally the most important two biggest issues of this film:

-A fucking time skip near the ending prevents the characters to deal with the consequences of what they did, they saved the underground but seemingly doomed the surface, but don’t worry, that solves itself inexplicably out of screen.

-And at the very end of the film, there is a second plot twist that ruins practically everything. The characters are an ethnic representation, just who knows which one, the whole world is not at stake, the setting is not very original and this world is not very strange, and whatever logic and sense was left in this film just died. What a stupid revelation, whose idea was to almost ruin the whole film!? Plus it serves as a sequel bait, but good luck with that with how bad the movie tanked in the box office.

So, although I do consider Strange World to be underrated and overhated, and the best Disney film since Wreck it Ralph a decade before it, poor time management in the last third and a horrible second plot twist that ruined practically the whole film, turned what was easily their best film ever into just another decent one of their catalogue, just like almost all the rest of them.

Now to excuse the score a bit better:

Visuals 9/10 (Impeccable except for the simple and generic character designs).

Sound 9/10 (Impeccable voice acting and sound effects, the music was just good).

Story 5/10 (Great premise and packed with themes and messages to deem it as complex for a movie for kids, but the pacing suffers near the end, and the finale ruined every possible sense that was in it).

Characters 5/10 (So-so presence, personality and background stories, their development and catharsis don’t feel organic).

Value 5/10 (Unforgettable experience but it’s easily the most ignored Disney film ever and the ending made it impossible to rewatch).

Enjoyment 5/10 (Eh, I half liked it, I was really pissed by the second plot twist).

Final score:

At the beginning of the now finished season there were two post-apocalyptic survival themed anime with very interesting early episodes and disappointing final ones. One was Hikari no Ou which I already covered, and the other one is this title. Likewise, it caught some early attention because of Tsutomu Nihei, who is an author I don’t care about because he seems to make mostly very dry sci-fi, but decided to check this one out because it was something seemingly very different. It also lost some viewers because of the animation, some people just can’t take any CGI that isn’t perfect.

Although visually better that the anime its studio made in the past (but not cartoons, Transfomers: War for Cybertron is way better), the motions are still not that good, facial movements in particular, the character designs are typical, and the CGI itself is not that good. Definitely not bad but it will look weak in just a few years, even the best visual aspect, which are the backgrounds, has some crappy water and effects here and there at times.

Soundwise, the effects and voice acting are fine but they are not that good either. Nobuyuki Hiyama must be kind of old by now but his voice still sounds kind of young, he did his best acting wise but his voice was definitely not the most fitting for the main villain. The background music is pretty good and quite atmospheric at times, the opening and ending are fine too but not that memorable and they don’t exactly sell the stakes of the premise with how lighthearted they sound.

Speaking of premise, the setup is interesting but definitely not original, it’s basically Nausicaa with perhaps some element that you had seen on another anime about ecology already. But seriously, a princess going to battle and into the forest, a world saving prophecy (although more like a legend actually), giant bugs, a setting with limited resources (in this case, water), two nations at war, with another, way less idealistic female general on the other side. See? Very similar.

Still though, the first half of the show was good because it was setting up all of this and its background lore, while also some cool aspects such as the princess not being as idealistic and willing to sacrifice her life. Her father, the king, willing to sacrifice his daughter in order to protect his country, and the series showing the situation of the two nations at war and its citizens, one at risk of getting flooded, and the other, a mobile fortress, at the end of its capacity, with most of its people being colonized from now no longer existing nations, at the mercy of their new ruthless ruler, thus making the conflict seem gray with both sides having their fair reasons to do what they do.

With that said, it wasn’t perfect, as the pacing was kind of slow and there were some silly bits such as the main characters having a typical comical moment from an ecchi show with the two of them peeing from a giant tree. Also, the water was working in whatever way it suited the plot at the moment, making you wonder, are we sure the characters are in such crisis as they claim to be?

Eventually the problems began when the show introduced the other nation in the second half, by revealing that its citizens are not really its citizens, and that every person in the military is a one dimensional asshole, the conflict became one sided, you can’t have a very good (most of the time even just good) war drama if one side of the war is demonized. And that was not the biggest issue, as the writing became really bad in this second half, three people can fool a whole militaristic nation and escape from it, obviously with the help of every plot convenience imaginable to plot armor the heroes, plot devices that come out of nowhere such as a giant water monster or a giant mecha thing are ultimately useless, while others that can solve the conflict are encountered by pure luck or coincidence, they are seemingly lost but in reality not, thus resulting in a cheap attempt at drama, and also, suddenly, a big fucking laser. Also, more silly bits with fanservice included.

There’s a finale but the way everything led to that felt like bullshit, plus it’s incomplete because there’s a movie sequel coming out who knows when. At least unlike Hikari no Ou, this was announced right away, so we all knew or at least suspected that the ending was not going to be completely satisfactory.

Another issue are the characters, with none of them having much to offer, very simplistic, very unmemorable, barely any backdrop, not real development, much less any closure, and they even become worse in the second half. Kaina remains naive and clueless the whole show. Ririha goes from what I described earlier to a generic idealistic pacifist princess in constant need of rescue, and Yaona her brother goes from a former crybaby willing to risk his life and travel the world to save his sister to a useless bystander with nothing to add to the plot. The others? They are there, nothing more.

So, a good show in the beginning that becomes crap in the second half, with no resolution, making you watch its sequel that frankly could have just been two more episodes without the need to come out as a separate entry, with even a giant laser at disposal to solve every possible problem, thus mediocre as a whole. Watch, or even better, read Nausicaa instead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

17/03/2024 update

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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