Rate the last anime you watched out of 10

[Geriatric hedgehog]

That's fair re: Beck, I loved Kids on the Slope too I find it so sad that NC has no English localized BD release

Kids on the slope has great music, unsurprisingly given Yoko Kano was involved.

I always wanted to watch Nodame Cantibile, after reading about it following my watch of the fantastic Your Lie in April (no hype for me, that one is my second favourite of all time after Evangelion). So it never had an English release? No wonder I couldn't find it anywhere to buy or stream, what an absolute shame...

 

[Dai]

Godzilla: Singular Point

I've seen every Godzilla movie. While this series is far from the worst story to feature the titular kaiju, it might be the most frustrating one for kaiju fans to watch.

What's the main thing you want from a Godzilla story? If your answer is Godzilla, Singular Point will frustrate you. Not since Final Wars have I seen a Godzilla story that seems to so heavily resent the need for Godzilla to be in it. Now I'm not saying he needs to be in every scene, or even every episode, since some of my favourites like Invasion of Astro-Monster and Shin Godzilla are among those where he has the least screen time, but there are limits. He doesn't show up until halfway through this 13-episode series, and has (at a guess) maybe five minutes of screen time in total, most of which has him almost completely hidden in a cloud of red dust. Even this wouldn't be so bad if he was having a tangible effect on the story the rest of the time, as in Shin Godzilla, but he's only tangentially related to the impending wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey disaster that the characters spend the whole series worrying about. You could remove Godzilla from this series altogether, and barely impact the plot at all.

So what's the main thing you want from a Godzilla story? If your answer is giant monsters, Singular Point will frustrate you. When a Godzilla story doesn't have much Godzilla, it's usually because of budget constraints, but that clearly isn't a problem here, since Singular Point has extensive monster action scenes in almost every episode. You'll notice I only said monster, not giant monster. For some reason, the decision was made to shrink some of Toho's most famous kaiju down to the size of the dinosaurs that inspired their designs, and instead feature copy/pasted swarms of them. So we have Rodans the size of pterodactyls (ie. the car-sized ones, not the airliner-sized pteranodons), and so on. I'm sure the staff followed the same logic as Roland Emmerich when he switched to baby Godzillas for half of his lambasted 1998 movie: having monsters that can interact with the characters more directly. The problem in both cases is that this causes a genre shift; it's no longer kaiju, it's an animal-on-the-loose story. Now, as animal-on-the-loose stories go, this one presents enough action to be a good stand-in for Jurassic World 3; it just fails to fulfil the narrative promises implied by the Godzilla title.

So what's the main thing you want from a Godzilla story? If it's endless dry exposition and techno-babble, Singular Point has you covered. This show just never stops explaining its convoluted 13-dimensional gibberish, which makes up the majority of the dialogue. Even the brief final battle against Godzilla is overlayed with yet more exposition; they simply will not shut up. There's an okay mystery at the heart of it all, but the eye-wateringly complex jargon feels like smoke and mirrors to distract the viewer from how much of the plot relies on deus ex machina.

So what kind of Godzilla story is this? It's not, basically. It's an exposition-heavy sci-fi mystery with a lot of pretty good dinosaur action scenes, but precious little in the way of kaiju. If you're okay with that, it might just scrape a 7/10 for you, but I watch kaiju stories to see giant monsters knocking cities down, so for me it's:

6/10

 

[Dai]

Higehiro (After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway)

The premise of this show is like watching the writer attempt to ballet dance through a minefield. Yoshida, a 20-something salaryman, takes in Sayu, a teenage runaway who has been sexually abused by every man who put a roof over her head up to that point. She has become so accustomed to that sort of arrangement that she immediately starts offering herself to him as payment, but fortunately Yoshida has some integrity, and refuses. Or maybe it's just because he prefers older women with enormous breasts (as he repeatedly insists).

Higehiro is a tricky one. Many light novel adaptations follow the highly stylised school of anime drama writing, but Higehiro is trying to be a more grounded drama. It succeeds in some places and fails in others. Its strengths lie in its broad strokes. The premise is a natural wellspring of conflict, and the overall structure of the show is good, telling a complete story with a strong narrative arc. The domestic scenes with Yoshida and Sayu, which could easily have been a trainwreck, are also mostly well handled, thanks to Yoshida never once wavering in seeing Sayu only as a kid who needs protecting, and not a potential love interest.

Where the story fails, and at times fails spectacularly, is in its dialogue. Honestly, there were places where I wasn't sure if the author had ever spoken to another human being. The lower-key scenes are fine, but any time the dialogue reaches for emotional insight or dramatic escalation it becomes painfully clear that the author is trying to punch several classes above their weight. When you get to episodes where a rapist starts seeming more reasonable and sympathetic than one of the women who has fallen for the main character (and who continually insists on yelling at everyone about things that are none of her business), it's clear that something has gone wrong.

The mediocre animation and direction does the show no favours with these problems. This comes to a head in the penultimate episode, the most important confrontation in the story, where it becomes clear that no one involved is capable of pulling off these scenes of high drama. I half-expected the end credits for that episode to say, "Guest Director: Tommy Wiseau." Don't play the drinking game where you have to take a shot every time someone hits the table. You will die.

Spoiler

Yet, despite these sometimes crippling problems, the cathartic strength of the story's narrative arc pulls it through. No matter what hollow gibberish the characters came out with sometimes when they opened their mouths, I never stopped being engaged by Sayu's plight or Yoshida's attempts to help her, and that's no small feat. They're the solid core in a story that keeps threatening to collapse around them, and the main reason why this show is at least worth watching once. This review might not read as high as a 6, but I'm giving this one more points for effort than attainment.

6/10

 

[Lordhippos]

Higehiro sounds ridiculous, you **** I'm in!

 

[ayase]

Where the story fails, and at times fails spectacularly, is in its dialogue. Honestly, there were places where I wasn't sure if the author had ever spoken to another human being. The lower-key scenes are fine, but any time the dialogue reaches for emotional insight or dramatic escalation it becomes painfully clear that the author is trying to punch several classes above their weight.

Ah, the Lucas enigma.

 

[Dai]

Ah, the Lucas enigma.

Exactly, and that's a pretty apt comparison. In terms of its pros and cons, I'd compare this show to Attack of the Clones specifically. That movie easily has one of the best plots in the Star Wars franchise, but you have to be willing to look past the clunky dialogue, stiff acting, and uneven editing to appreciate it. It's like a song where I ignore the awful lyrics because I like the melody.

 

[Lordhippos]

So I'm a Spider, so what? (Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?)

I feel like they really dropped the ball on this one, I loved how this started, and I think the Spider is a very interesting, and a well voiced character, but the more into the show we got, and the more the human realm was shown, the more under-whelmed I became.

It's a real shame I think this had a lot of potential but various issues with the production are apparent, it felt rushed, the CGI was (in a lot of places!) terrible. I dropped this on episode 22 as I realised I just didn't care anymore.

5/10

 

[Dai]

Osamake: Romcom Where the Childhood Friend Won't Lose

Why? Why did I watch this show all the way to the end? Why did I bother? Why? I can only think it was some perverse sunk-cost fallacy that took hold the more episodes I watched. It's not that the show is terrible from the outset; the opening episodes are unremarkable, but fine. I'll admit it, I was suckered by the promise in that title. I thought the initial tepid blandness was a ploy, and there would be some clever turn where the childhood friend would start fighting the script to usurp pole position from the more likely girlfriend candidate. Well, there was indeed a bait-and-switch, but not the one I expected or wanted. Friends, if that title tickles your interest in any way, I'm here to tell you not to bother, because the story's author is a massive troll. Within the first few episodes it becomes apparent that all of the potential love interests are the main character's childhood friends. So the title isn't a lie, but nothing interesting comes of it.

Once the story gets past that initial bit of trolling, and is done patting itself on the back for being so clever, it becomes apparent that this show is exactly as bland as it first seemed, and has nothing going for it. Watching this while it was simulcast was a nightmare because the ever-expanding cast of characters are so forgettable that it took me half of each weekly episode to remember some semblance of who everyone was. When it turns out that one of the potential love interests has three nondescript sisters who are all in love with the main character too, the show's signal-to-noise ratio takes a nosedive and never recovers. There are so many dull characters knocking around, and I didn't care about any of them. There is no best girl here, and by the end I couldn't care less who the main character would end up dating. This is a one-cour adaptation of an ongoing LN series though, so obviously the answer is that we never find out.

Suspension of disbelief is a key concept in stories, and great anime contain some of the wildest examples of pulling off this trick. I can believe in a world where people transform into titans. I can believe in a world where teenage wizards summon ancient heroes to fight as their proxies. But I can't believe in a world where this show's main character is fawned over by everyone as a world-class entertainer. His dance routine in one episode looks like a toddler having a seizure on an ice-skating rink. At that point I was convinced that this had to be a genre parody, but it's not. The whole sorry mess is played with an earnestness that boggles the mind.

The structure also gets looser as it goes along, reaching its nadir in one of the weakest final episodes in recent memory, a non-stop barrage of blunt monologues that desperately try to tug at the heartstrings as the clock ticks down to the end of the series, and fall woefully short. Then, in a bizarre move, a couple of minor characters (who I had no memory of by that point) start doing a blow-by-blow sports-style commentary of everything that happened in the last few episodes. This is the in the final episode. The climax. By that point I was really just taking one for the team, so I could write this review from a fully informed position, and tell you not to waste your precious time.

4/10

 

[Geriatric hedgehog]

Higehiro (After Being Rejected, I Shaved and Took in a High School Runaway)

The premise of this show is like watching the writer attempt to ballet dance through a minefield. Yoshida, a 20-something salaryman, takes in Sayu, a teenage runaway who has been sexually abused by every man who put a roof over her head up to that point. She has become so accustomed to that sort of arrangement that she immediately starts offering herself to him as payment, but fortunately Yoshida has some integrity, and refuses. Or maybe it's just because he prefers older women with enormous breasts (as he repeatedly insists).

Higehiro is a tricky one. Many light novel adaptations follow the highly stylised school of anime drama writing, but Higehiro is trying to be a more grounded drama. It succeeds in some places and fails in others. Its strengths lie in its broad strokes. The premise is a natural wellspring of conflict, and the overall structure of the show is good, telling a complete story with a strong narrative arc. The domestic scenes with Yoshida and Sayu, which could easily have been a trainwreck, are also mostly well handled, thanks to Yoshida never once wavering in seeing Sayu only as a kid who needs protecting, and not a potential love interest.

Where the story fails, and at times fails spectacularly, is in its dialogue. Honestly, there were places where I wasn't sure if the author had ever spoken to another human being. The lower-key scenes are fine, but any time the dialogue reaches for emotional insight or dramatic escalation it becomes painfully clear that the author is trying to punch several classes above their weight. When you get to episodes where a rapist starts seeming more reasonable and sympathetic than one of the women who has fallen for the main character (and who continually insists on yelling at everyone about things that are none of her business), it's clear that something has gone wrong.

The mediocre animation and direction does the show no favours with these problems. This comes to a head in the penultimate episode, the most important confrontation in the story, where it becomes clear that no one involved is capable of pulling off these scenes of high drama. I half-expected the end credits for that episode to say, "Guest Director: Tommy Wiseau." Don't play the drinking game where you have to take a shot every time someone hits the table. You will die.

Spoiler

Yet, despite these sometimes crippling problems, the cathartic strength of the story's narrative arc pulls it through. No matter what hollow gibberish the characters came out with sometimes when they opened their mouths, I never stopped being engaged by Sayu's plight or Yoshida's attempts to help her, and that's no small feat. They're the solid core in a story that keeps threatening to collapse around them, and the main reason why this show is at least worth watching once. This review might not read as high as a 6, but I'm giving this one more points for effort than attainment.

6/10

Yeah for me this show disappointed after starting relatively well. The premise was always a bit ridiculous and the story & writing unfortunately soon followed. Shame how everyone was perfectly happy & accepting of the mother having no redeeming features with Sayu being the only one at fault, Sayu constantly being shoved down Yoshida's throat as the love interest and his other actual love interest/s just disappearing. The final take-home message was a letdown for me as well with, rather than the focus being on the two taking away valuable life lessons from their experience together, as is done so well in other anime like After the Rain, it all boils down to yes there is romance but they just wait until it is legal... What a shame as it did come across that the creators genuinely cared for their characters. Despite all that ranting though, I too would say I did like it overall for the latter reason and the first half of the show which has much better nuanced drama overall. But I do think it could have been so much better.

 

[Dai]

Gundam: Hathaway

I was a little underwhelmed by this one, but that may have been down to an incorrect assumption on my part. I know that there are two more movies coming after this, but I was expecting each to be more self-contained. Instead this isn't the first story in a trilogy; it's the first act of one story that will be told across three movies. Consequently, this first chapter doesn't cover much ground, and the plot feels quite loose and insubstantial as a result, lacking the dramatic heft that you would expect from a theatrical release, and so doesn't work well on its own. I suspect my score for the trilogy as a whole might end up being one notch higher than for just this part, once I can see it all in context.

As for characters, they're a mixed bag. I hated Hathaway in Char's Counterattack, but he has grown out of the self-absorbed, whiny adolescent he was then, and become a more sober and contemplative character. Sadly he spends most of the movie tethered to Gigi. She isn't quite as insufferable as Quess from CCA, but is cut from the same cloth, and is what most dates a story that otherwise holds up well, three decades after Tomino wrote it.

What's almost beyond reproach is the audio-visual presentation. Shukou Murase brings quality direction to the table, with the mood of the opening shuttle scene and the chaos of the mid-point city battle being particular highlights. Hiroyuki Sawano turns in another great score, and it's backed up by some of the most striking sound design I've ever heard in an anime. The only flaw is that the muted night-time palette used in the action scenes, combined with the convoluted silhouettes of the mobile suits, makes it hard to tell which side you're looking at a lot of the time. Maybe it's an intentional fog-of-war thing, or maybe it's just Netflix's shoddy, heavily posterised encode letting down something that was meant to be watched in a darkened cinema. I'll be interested to see how it looks on blu-ray, assuming AL can snatch it from Netflix's clutches at some point.

6/10

 

[thedoctor2016]

Vivy : Flourite’s Eyes song - This had promise then just became boring and meh it’s just become so forgettable and weirdly for me a sign that yes I’m getting bored of seasonal anime that we watch and forget as this is so forgettable. At least it looked alright my hot take WIT STUDIO has improved since they left AoT. 6/10

 

[Lordhippos]

SAO Alternative: GGO

As someone who liked the original series and saw this recommended previously, I thought it was worth a shot.

Nothing to write home about really in terms of originality, I felt like I got what I was expecting and it was well produced/paced/interesting to watch.

So for me a 7/10 is a solid anime worthy of my time

7/10

 

[Dai]

Shadows House

This show starts out as something special. In a setup vaguely reminiscent of Haibane Renmei, the main character is 'born' into a society filled with supernatural mysteries and must learn her place within its hierarchy. Where Haibane did this with people falling out of the sky into a kind and nurturing environment, Shadows House has Emilico awaken as a 'living doll' who exists only to serve her shadow-faced mistress in a mansion filled with nobles obsessed with kicking each other down to advance their own status. Over the first five episodes, Emilico stumbles through this unforgiving environment, learning its rules, and encountering the strange powers and creatures at work around her. For those five episodes, this show is a solid 8/10, maybe a 9.

It doesn't last, unfortunately. At the mid-point of its 13-episode run, the pacing grinds to a halt while the characters spend the next five episodes wandering around a garden maze. After the show's initial setup of gothic supernatural mystery, this section feels like nothing so much as a shonen battle school exam, while various nefarious factions plot away in the background. I was not expecting to be making comparisons to Naruto or Bleach when this show started, and the transition is every bit as jarring as that sounds. It develops the languid pace of those shows for a while too, despite it not having hundreds of episodes to burn.

Things improve somewhat once they're finally out of the garden maze, but by that point there's only three episodes left. I worried that we would never get answers to any of the story's many mysteries, but what ends up happening might be worse. In a painfully blunt piece of maid-and-butler dialogue, two of the villains just go ahead and tell the viewer the answers to almost everything. There's no slow, dramatic reveal. No shocking consequences. They just spell it all out for us like they're discussing the weather, and so it has no impact.

Meanwhile, Emilico and her mistress spend the final few episodes dealing with other problems. It seems like this will have lasting repercussions at first, but it all leads to a damp squib of a denouement that just returns everything to the previous status quo. It's a real shame to see a story with so much potential reduced to yet another glorified advert for an ongoing light novel series.

7/10

 

[D1tchd1gger]

it all leads to a damp squib of a denouement that just returns everything to the previous status quo.

Apparently this last bit was anime original to do exactly that because...

glorified advert for an ongoing light novel* series

Well yes the vast majority of anime are! Some end in better places than others and I felt it was OK, not as good as say The Promised Neverland, but look what happened to the second season! I hope if this gets one CloverWorks don't butcher it in the same way they did for that.
* It's a manga I can't find an official English translation unfortunately

 

[Dai]

Apparently this last bit was anime original to do exactly that because...

Well yes the vast majority of anime are! Some end in better places than others and I felt it was OK, not as good as say The Promised Neverland, but look what happened to the second season! I hope if this gets one CloverWorks don't butcher it in the same way they did for that.
* It's a manga I can't find an official English translation unfortunately

Ah of course. If it had been a LN, the title would have been I Woke Up As A Living Doll And Now This Shadow Is My Mistress.

No matter how prevalent it is, I don't think we should ever stop calling out TV studios for their cynical approach to anime, especially when it's only getting worse over time.

 

[ActionFaust]

Apparently this last bit was anime original to do exactly that because...

Well yes the vast majority of anime are! Some end in better places than others and I felt it was OK, not as good as say The Promised Neverland, but look what happened to the second season! I hope if this gets one CloverWorks don't butcher it in the same way they did for that.
* It's a manga I can't find an official English translation unfortunately

What happened to The Promised Neverland wasn't really CloverWorks' fault tbf. I recall it was Shueisha who told them to wrap it up in one season as they had no desire to continue past two seasons.

No matter how prevalent it is, I don't think we should ever stop calling out TV studios for their cynical approach to anime, especially when it's only getting worse over time.

Much like in the case of The Promised Neverland I feel it's unfair to criticise studios for this trend as a lot of these decisions are enforced by the production committee.

 

[Azar]

You could probably count on 1 hand the amount of LN that have received complete adaptations. I can only think of a few very short ones.

 

[Dai]

Much like in the case of The Promised Neverland I feel it's unfair to criticise studios for this trend as a lot of these decisions are enforced by the production committee.

I will, however, continue moaning. I'll admit ignorance of who is to blame for the situation, but the point remains that anime seems trapped as a medium composed almost entirely of adaptations for the sake of minimising risk. This isn't a new problem, but we are seeing those adaptations being ever smaller fragments of the original works as the decades roll by, with only OAVs having pushed that bar lower before now.

It's like one of those talent shows where everyone gets a couple of minutes to flail for attention, and then 99% are never heard from again. In the next ten years, I wouldn't be surprised if someone starts testing the waters for half-cour broadcasts with six episodes becoming the next standard. That's already around the level that streaming-native shows have gone, with ten episodes being the usual maximum, eight being common, and six not being unusual (though I'm talking beyond just anime on that last point).

 

[ActionFaust]

I will, however, continue moaning. I'll admit ignorance of who is to blame for the situation, but the point remains that anime seems trapped as a medium composed almost entirely of adaptations for the sake of minimising risk. This isn't a new problem, but we are seeing those adaptations being ever smaller fragments of the original works as the decades roll by, with only OAVs having pushed that bar lower before now.

It's like one of those talent shows where everyone gets a couple of minutes to flail for attention, and then 99% are never heard from again. In the next ten years, I wouldn't be surprised if someone starts testing the waters for half-cour broadcasts with six episodes becoming the next standard. That's already around the level that streaming-native shows have gone, with ten episodes being the usual maximum, eight being common, and six not being unusual (though I'm talking beyond just anime on that last point).

I think we're actually seeing a better trend of split cour productions of 24~ episodes with a season's break between them which is certainly something series like the recent So I'm a Spider, So What? certainly could have benefitted from. Do your usual 12 episodes, take a break, then your next 12 episodes. It's still a result of overproduction but certainly prevents the series from melting further.

But yeah having read a lot of stuff on the industry I really don't have high hopes for complete adaptations either especially with companies like Kadokawa now aiming for 40 anime per year. There's already too many shows but that doesn't matter as long as the production committee makes its money...

 

[Geriatric hedgehog]

Shadows House

This show starts out as something special. In a setup vaguely reminiscent of Haibane Renmei, the main character is 'born' into a society filled with supernatural mysteries and must learn her place within its hierarchy. Where Haibane did this with people falling out of the sky into a kind and nurturing environment, Shadows House has Emilico awaken as a 'living doll' who exists only to serve her shadow-faced mistress in a mansion filled with nobles obsessed with kicking each other down to advance their own status. Over the first five episodes, Emilico stumbles through this unforgiving environment, learning its rules, and encountering the strange powers and creatures at work around her. For those five episodes, this show is a solid 8/10, maybe a 9.

It doesn't last, unfortunately. At the mid-point of its 13-episode run, the pacing grinds to a halt while the characters spend the next five episodes wandering around a garden maze. After the show's initial setup of gothic supernatural mystery, this section feels like nothing so much as a shonen battle school exam, while various nefarious factions plot away in the background. I was not expecting to be making comparisons to Naruto or Bleach when this show started, and the transition is every bit as jarring as that sounds. It develops the languid pace of those shows for a while too, despite it not having hundreds of episodes to burn.

Things improve somewhat once they're finally out of the garden maze, but by that point there's only three episodes left. I worried that we would never get answers to any of the story's many mysteries, but what ends up happening might be worse. In a painfully blunt piece of maid-and-butler dialogue, two of the villains just go ahead and tell the viewer the answers to almost everything. There's no slow, dramatic reveal. No shocking consequences. They just spell it all out for us like they're discussing the weather, and so it has no impact.

Meanwhile, Emilico and her mistress spend the final few episodes dealing with other problems. It seems like this will have lasting repercussions at first, but it all leads to a damp squib of a denouement that just returns everything to the previous status quo. It's a real shame to see a story with so much potential reduced to yet another glorified advert for an ongoing light novel series.

7/10

Haven't finished watching this yet (maybe tonight) but I agree at how this show is excellent at the start though appears to calms down in the last half or so. Despite that, there is still enough creep factor from Edward's character and some of the other Shadows.

I too, find the use of an anime adaptation to sell other formats saddening. It's like there's a lack of confidence in your work to only be making it to use as an advert, whoever the responsible parties may be. Don't get me wrong, I think some adverts are works of art. But I still find it depressing to watch a great show, that works really well in the animated medium, only to be forced into switching to something else to finish the story. And as much as I enjoy reading a novel or a manga, I will generally prefer anime as it really elevates the story with the addition of music and sound effects, when put together by a talented team.