Rate the last anime you watched out of 10

The Skull Man

Well, this is another show to fall victim to the curse of completely losing the plot towards the end.

I was kind of enjoying the early episodes of this despite reading a review that gave it a fairly low score (even though in the end it made sense why), it had an interesting mystery going for it and it didn't take itself too seriously to begin with, the skeleton man joke in episode 1 got a chuckle out of me, but as the show went on it got considerably more detatched from where the story seemed to be going, which would be fine if it at least kept on making sense; alas that was not to be.

Towards the end the show just loses it and has plot points that do not make any sense, at least to me, how is it that Hayato suddenly becomes super powerful when he puts on the skull mask?, how is it that suddenly it seems that the whole town is riddled with cultists as opposed to it being a somewhat small group like what was set up, unless I overlooked something (which is entirely possible as I was so bored by the time this happened), I don't feel like there is any explanation for this; this wouldn't have been an issue if the show was maybe a supernatural tale as opposed to a semi-grounded mystery.

One thing that is a bit hit or miss are the character designs; some of them are really cool, like the Skull Man himself, his mask kind of reminds me of the design for the lead character in Turrican a little bit, but on the other hand I often times get characters mixed up with each other as some of them just look so damn similar to one another; this issue makes it hard to tell who's who, which is never ideal unless it's intended, which I don't think is the case here.

To top it off, I was just plain bored by the end, though I did power through it, which is more than can be said for some anime, the whole show has several anime cliche's that hold it back even further and, though they didn't ruin the earlier episodes, they kept piling up and as a result I simply lost interest towards the end and was mindlessly slogging through the last few episodes wanting it to end; the earlier episodes are interesting enough to keep it afloat to an extent but in reality, the payoff feels, at least to me, so detatched from the setup that it doesn't feel worth sitting through even that.

Score 5/10
 
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On-Gaku

Hits the right notes.

I will confess it has been much harder for anime to entertain me as of late but occasionally one comes along and manages just that; I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece by any stretch but it was a mostly solid film from start to end.

First off, the style, this one is kind of unique in that it uses rotoscoping as opposed to typical anime techniques, it is not often that this is used in anime and even less often that it looks good but here the animators knew one of the key rules of rotoscoping which is, don't copy the images verbatim, as a result we have the chacters faces highly simplified, which gives a comedic effect, sure some characters look basically identical to one another but, unlike in the last anime I rated, this feels like it was done by design and furthermore, the important characters look different enough from one another so in this case it works.
The style also includes some highly detailed pastel art (at least I think it's pastel anyway) for the backgrounds, and in rare cases, the characters as well; this makes the film truly stand out from the average anime.

Not quite a part of the film itself but the rotoscoping also makes the behind the scenes content much more interesting than if it were just animated the usual way.

The film is actually pretty funny at times as well; like the time when the Kenji takes around a whole half a minute to respond to his friends, with that said, the aforementioned example is used maybe one too many times for my liking but it is amusing for the first few; then there's the bit where Kenji destroy's his guitar in front of a bunch of delinquents who want to fight him, put's his hand behind his head to the shock of the lead delinquent and brings out a recorder before flawlessly evading them while playing the recorder at the same time before leading them on a merry chase like he were the pied piper, scene's like this are absolutely bonkers in the right way and it just adds to the humour; while I never burst out laughing (I almost never do with anime to be fair) I was amused at the deadpan absurdity of it all.

The scene with the music festival is incredibly well animated for the style the film has and it even starts experimenting with different styles in the middle of it; here we also see what is easily the best music track in the film, with that said, I'll admit I was not exactly blown away by any of the music but perhaps that is part of the charm.

One other thing I like is how the film did not overstay it's welcome; it lasted around 70 minutes and that's about the right length for it, though there may be another reason for the length.
I was going for a 7 out of 10 but when I found out that it was made by an independent team, who spent 7 whole years on the project, I knew that I can appreciate it all the more so therefore I think it is worthy of a very solid.

8/10
 
My Hero Academia season 5

Season 4 doesn't seem to have been well liked, but I absolutely loved it from start to finish.

Season 5 was a big disappointment after that.

It starts off with a couple of pretty boring episodes, then launches into yet ANOTHER fighting tournament - the third one in the series so far.

Tournaments in anime just never interest me. Dragon Ball, Pokemon, Yu Yu Hakusho, whatever - I don't care. I want things to be happening. I want the characters to be going to different places and doing stuff, not just fight after fight after fight.

This tournament dragged the Class B characters back into the spotlight for a while. I guess you might enjoy it more if you like those people, but I'm not too bothered about them either way and a load of episodes about good guys fighting good guys just for something to do isn't very exciting to me.

There are a few cool moments in the tournament, but it drags on for too long. There's a lot of focus on one particular character who was very rarely seen before, then isn't seen or mentioned again once the tournament finishes.

Then the show moves back onto all the Hero Agency stuff again - which again, is nothing we've not already seen before. It's slow paced with a lot of family drama stuff. It starts to feel like Eastenders with funny costumes and Endeavor instead of Phil Mitchell.

This is followed by a run of five episodes I really really enjoyed. They were a welcome change of tone and focused on some of my favourite characters. The season really got back on track with those episodes and definitely raised my rating a few points.

Then the last episode is another boring/slightly odd one where the main purpose seems to be introducing us to the heroes and showing us what their powers are. It's a bit late for that.

That's a problem the season has overall - it assumes no one has ever watched the show before. Over and over and over, we get freeze frames with a voiceover telling us the character's real name, their hero name, the name of their power, what that power does and - in the case of the pros - what their hero ranking is. They have to tell us this stuff repeatedly, just in case we forget.

Imagine you're a few seasons into Breaking Bad and every episode, it suddenly pauses for a few seconds to announce "Walter White! Drug dealer name: Heisenberg! His ability is making drugs and selling drugs! Drug dealer rank: #1!" - it would be a nuisance.

It's not an awful season, but things could have been a lot tighter. Nothing really happens for the first part. The tournament is long and mostly pointless. The My Villain Academia episodes saved the season from being a bore TBH.

I just really hope the next season is more lively - 6/10
 
Junji Ito Maniac

I'll confess, I don't actually read manga (though I have seen images of the odd Junji Ito drawing from time to time); I'm not much of a book/comic person and the B&W presentation is often used in stories that should be more colourful such as One Piece or Dragon Ball; with that said, there is one genre it is perfect for and that is horror; however, as I don't read manga, this is my entry point into the world of one of the greatest horror minds in Japan and I liked it quite a lot, though that may have been down to the sheer strength of the source material.

First off I really like the episodic format; I feel that episodic formats make TV shows fly by as opposed to one massive narrative that has to hold my attention for such a long time; maybe the odd episode will be a bit pants, but there is then a very real possibility that the one after will be a masterpiece, I don't have to get hung up on a bad story for long; above all else though, this format pretty much allows a story to get to the point incredibly quickly and not have to take a long time building up.

Did this manage to scare me though? ...ehh; I will say this, this show is perhaps the closest anime I have seen to pulling it off, the Mysterious Tunnel story definitely came close, I think Junji Ito's stories may well have what it takes and I think a lot of that can be chalked up to the fact that Junji Ito understands that explaining the scare basically ruins it; I can recall all too many times I would watch Doctor Who and it gives a scientific explanation to nearly every one of it's horror episodes; I often like the fact that DW does that for it's less spooky episodes but when focusing on horror, it is better that it is beyond the viewers comprehension.

In Junji Ito's stories; scary things happen and there is little to no explanation, normally I like to understand the story but the magic of these stories is that I can understand the things I need to understand while the things that are better off making no sense, indeed, make no sense.

In terms of the quality of the adaptation though; it's not great, the Hanging Balloons look ridiculous with their toon shaded CGI and said CGI pops up again in Tomb Town, I am aware that the manga does not have this issue, so that is generally the way to enjoy these stories for anyone who doesn't mind reading rather than watching; the 2D parts are ok enough for me personally and thankfully the CGI is rare, but neither can match up to the quality of what little I have glimpsed of the manga.
The audio is pretty good; it's fairly standard horror fare but it is suitably creepy and is the one thing the manga doesn't have; being a book and all.

Also the stories are not all as good as each other; the debut episode was more amusing than scary and Soichi's episodes felt more like comic relief than horror; on the flip side, we have Tomb Town which is really good and the aforementioned Mysterious Tunnel episode came pretty close to actually managing to scare me.

Overall I originally planned to watch just one episode of this before finishing Big Order, only to literally watch a whopping 8 episodes back to back; this is incredibly rare for an anime though I am aware that it boils down largely to Junji Ito's source material being so good; the adaptation quality could be better but these stories are just so good that I had an absolute blast watching regardless; my opinion may have been different had I read the manga but I didn't so I personally give this an.

8/10
 
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The anime I'm currently watching is "A Certain Scientific Railgun T". I didn't know it was the third season of this title and I'm really enjoying it, especially lovely Misaka. I've recently ordered the first two seasons on Blu-ray. Because of Misaka, I couldn't help but order the sexy figurine of her in a bunny girl outfit.

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What is it with all thes figures with bunny suit versions, they really are prolific, even in the 18+ figures I tend to peruse online, lol. I suppose they are somewhat sexy, but for some reason they don't do a whole lot for me. I'm not really a fan of Scientific Railgun, I think I dropped it late in the first season, but I did always like to see Mikasa when she was wearing her leg warmers, I think I find that even more appealing than a bunny suit. She definitely has a bit of an electric personally though, for sure! :)

f91cd2fc-7a76-44b6-a07e-a51deff06fc7.jpg
 
Girls with Guns said:
What is it with all thes figures with bunny suit versions, they really are prolific, even in the 18+ figures I tend to peruse online, lol. I suppose they are somewhat sexy, but for some reason they don't do a whole lot for me. I'm not really a fan of Scientific Railgun, I think I dropped it late in the first season, but I did always like to see Mikasa when she was wearing her leg warmers, I think I find that even more appealing than a bunny suit. She definitely has a bit of an electric personally though, for sure! :)

f91cd2fc-7a76-44b6-a07e-a51deff06fc7.jpg
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She wore leg warmers? Nice.

As for the bunny girl outfits, my opinion is that creators think of what sort of outfit on female characters will draw attention, especially the kind of characters that you wouldn't think wearing such outfits. If you think of someone shy like Maina Ichii, would someone ever think of her wearing a bunny girl outfit, with maybe a facial expression that says "I'm not sure if this outfit suits me"? Maybe not but if one did surface, it would get attention. Plus, bunny girl outfits emphasise the figure.

When I was looking for figures of Misaka, there was one where she was wearing a frilly two-piece swimsuit with the top resembling a crop top and it didn't grab my attention.

But when I saw the bunny girl figure, my eyes nearly popped out of my head: "The thought of Misaka wearing that? OH MY!!!"
 
Lol, it was basically just a rhetorical question - I wasn't really looking for any in-depth explanations, we all know why they put figures in bunny suits! Now, if the bunny suit on that Misaka figure you bought was cast-off, then that would've been a bit more appealing to me, haha! ;)

adamclark83 said:
She wore leg warmers? Nice.
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Yes, she wears leg warmers... lots of her figures have them, too.

misaka1.jpg
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Oh, when you said she wore leg warmers, i instantly thought you were talking about leggings which would be nice to see her wear.
But it's really amazing the price differences for all the stores that sold that Misaka figure I bought. Also, some were saying it was already in stock but others saying it's due for release this year.
 
Radiant

If you're 8 years old or have never seen a single shonen anime before, you'd probably love this.

But I'm older than that and I've watched about a million of them, so this didn't do much for me.

It's not bad - it's just extremely unoriginal and the pace is slow. Not to the standard of Goku and Frieza staring at each other while pebbles levitate for months on end, but it still drags on. There are periods where absolutely nothing is going on - just looooong conversations between knights with moustaches.

Absolutely nothing is new, creative or surprising here. The main character is one of the most generic anime MCs in history - just the Asda Smart Price version of Asta from Black Clover. He's joined in his adventures by Fat Usopp and Lunch from Dragon Ball.

Imagine putting Black Clover and Fairy Tail in a blender, mixing them up and leaving the resulting slop to sit around at room temperature for three weeks. Then you've got Radiant.

In its favour, it's inoffensive and suitable for young viewers (the BBFC rating is PG). The violence is tame, there's no sexiness and everything is all just...safe. Visually, it's fine.

I've seen far worse shows, but this is just so limp and feeble. I actually paid money to get this on blu-ray, so it's kind of made me feel even more positive about moving to streaming! 4/10
 
It's probably so generic because it's adapted from a French manga. So I'm guessing the author is influenced by all the big manga from Japan, but is obviously missing the cultural influences that went into those manga. Or just not a good writer.

Not that Japanese authors, mangakas, and script writers aren't capable of churning out generic stuff too or that Western involvement in anime doesn't produce great stuff either (my AotY Cyberpunk: Edgerunners being just one example), but from what you've written seems like the case here.
 
Aim for the Ace!
Some genres evolve beyond recognition over the decades. Others have such powerful foundational works that you can still see their DNA in shows made half a century later. Sports anime are very much the latter. The tropes that form the backbone of the genre today can be traced back to shows like Aim for the Ace! Far from feeling like sports anime have left it behind, this 1973 Osamu Dezaki classic is as riveting now as it must have been when first broadcast.

Indeed, the king of melodrama raises the tension to breathtaking heights. Though it follows the straightforward story of a girl learning the hard work and guts it takes to master tennis, the visuals ratchet up the intensity masterfully to mirror the emotions of the characters. At one point Hiromi has hard lessons beaten into her in a tennis court enclosed by barbed wire, giving it the air of a prison camp. Umpires are faceless shadows casting judgement over the girls' fates. Barrages of tennis balls strike people like a hail of machinegun fire (I've never seen a girl take so many balls to the face in something that doesn't have an adults-only warning on the cover). Blood flies. Questions of who will win or lose mingle with fears over whether they will wind up crippled for life from overexerting themselves.

It's all interwoven with a solid shojo romance arc and, despite clearly not being a complete adaptation of the manga, reaches a satisfying conclusion with an appropriate final confrontation.

9/10
 
Dai said:
Aim for the Ace!
At one point Hiromi has hard lessons beaten into her in a tennis court enclosed by barbed wire, giving it the air of a prison camp. Umpires are faceless shadows casting judgement over the girls' fates. Barrages of tennis balls strike people like a hail of machinegun fire (I've never seen a girl take so many balls to the face in something that doesn't have an adults-only warning on the cover). Blood flies. Questions of who will win or lose mingle with fears over whether they will wind up crippled for life from overexerting themselves.
Click to expand...

Sounds just like my high school tennis team I was a member of for four years, also back in the 1970's, lol! ;)
 
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Galactic Whirlwind Sasuraiger
Sasuraiger might hold the record for the western anime release to go out of print the fastest, being available for less than a month before Discotek discontinued the J9 Trilogy of which this is the final series (though no prior knowledge of the other two shows is required, since they're only a trilogy in a loose sense). So the questions fans of 80s mecha shows may be asking themselves are: should you be kicking yourself for missing out, and is it worth paying horrific scalper prices for? Read on and draw your own conclusions.

The premise is interesting in theory: turn Around the World in 80 Days into Around the Solar System in 365 Days, then throw in a train that transforms into a giant robot. In practice, the execution is variable. Despite being tasked with travelling to 50 planets (they do eventually explain why the solar system has that many by the 30th Century), it often feels more like a road trip across 20th Century America, with a few stops in the wild west and planets inspired by other countries. There are times when Sasuraiger goes full space opera, and those tend to be fun, but on the whole it suffers from a lack of imagination.

The characters are an atypical bunch for an 80s super robot show. There's no Earth Defence Force here, and not a Japanese name in sight. You know that one outgoing, happy-go-lucky and perpetually cheerful American character that used to show up in 80s and 90s anime a lot? Everyone in Sasuraiger is like that. They're constantly throwing each other a thumbs up, and "Yay!" is their version of the Thunderbirds' FAB. Maybe this is just what Japanese people think all westerners are like. You'd think this would grate on the nerves after a while, but surprisingly it works.

Sasuraiger's strongest episodes tend to be those highlighting individual members of the JJ9 team taking part in the journey. Everyone seems to have half a dozen different tragic backstories, since they keep running into ghosts from their past everywhere they go. Thanks to these episodes, and the JJ9 team's infectiously upbeat personalities, Sasuraiger was a show that grew on me after its shaky first few episodes.

Unfortunately far too many of the other episodes fall into one of two predictable patterns. Either:

a) The JJ9 team land on a planet where there's local unrest. They're immediately held up by a gang of thugs with machineguns who capture them and either try to blackmail them into doing something illegal or threaten to hand them over to series villain Bloody God (the kind of villain who remains permanently concealed in shadow even when he's standing next to normally lit people in direct sunlight). JJ9 escape, transform the train into Sasuraiger and kick their butts.

or

b) The JJ9 team land on a planet where there's local unrest. They're immediately held up by local law enforcement, who blame them for crimes that happened before they arrived on the planet and arrest them. JJ9 escape, transform the train into Sasuraiger and kick the butts of whoever really committed the crime.

As for the action, it's a mixed bag. There are some good battles and chases, but in general the Sasuraiger is too over-powered for the typical thugs to stand a chance against it. The enemies don't even start wheeling out their own mechs until half way through the series. Up to that point the hero mech is just stomping on cars and tanks that might as well be toys. After a lengthy transformation sequence, Sasuraiger often lays waste to the opposition all too easily. Also, for a super robot show, it's oddly low-key about fetishising its titular mech. It has various weapons, but they're deployed with no fanfare; I couldn't tell you the name of a single one of its attacks. It may have been trying to ride the line between super robot and real robot a bit, but considering that it's basically a transforming Galaxy Express 999 it's definitely a super robot.

The series does reach a satisfying conclusion, and I waver on whether it's a 6 or 7 overall. It's a show I chipped away at over several months, but ultimately enjoyed and will probably watch again. In the end though, the mediocre episodes outnumber the good ones. There's the backbone of a solid 26 episode series scattered throughout Sasuraiger's run, but the other episodes that pad it out to 43 weigh it down.

6/10
 
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Dai said:
Galactic Whirlwind Sasuraiger
Sasuraiger might hold the record for the western anime release to go out of print the fastest, being available for less than a month before Discotek discontinued the J9 Trilogy of which this is the final series (though no prior knowledge of the other two shows is required, since they're only a trilogy in a loose sense). So the questions fans of 80s mecha shows may be asking themselves are: should you be kicking yourself for missing out, and is it worth paying horrific scalper prices for? Read on and draw your own conclusions.

The premise is interesting in theory: turn Around the World in 80 Days into Around the Solar System in 365 Days, then throw in a train that transforms into a giant robot. In practice, the execution is variable. Despite being tasked with travelling to 50 planets (they do eventually explain why the solar system has that many by the 30th Century), it often feels more like a road trip across 20th Century America, with a few stops in the wild west and planets inspired by other countries. There are times when Sasuraiger goes full space opera, and those tend to be fun, but on the whole it suffers from a lack of imagination.

The characters are an atypical bunch for an 80s super robot show. There's no Earth Defence Force here, and not a Japanese name in sight. You know that one outgoing, happy-go-lucky and perpetually cheerful American character that used to show up in 80s and 90s anime a lot? Everyone in Sasuraiger is like that. They're constantly throwing each other a thumbs up, and "Yay!" is their version of the Thunderbirds' FAB. Maybe this is just what Japanese people think all westerners are like. You'd think this would grate on the nerves after a while, but surprisingly it works.

Sasuraiger's strongest episodes tend to be those highlighting individual members of the JJ9 team taking part in the journey. Everyone seems to have half a dozen different tragic backstories, since they keep running into ghosts from their past everywhere they go. Thanks to these episodes, and the JJ9 team's infectiously upbeat personalities, Sasuraiger was a show that grew on me after its shaky first few episodes.

Unfortunately far too many of the other episodes fall into one of two predictable patterns. Either:

a) The JJ9 team land on a planet where there's local unrest. They're immediately held up by a gang of thugs with machineguns who capture them and either try to blackmail them into doing something illegal or threaten to hand them over to series villain Bloody God (the kind of villain who remains permanently concealed in shadow even when he's standing next to normally lit people in direct sunlight). JJ9 escape, transform the train into Sasuraiger and kick their butts.

or

b) The JJ9 team land on a planet where there's local unrest. They're immediately held up by local law enforcement, who blame them for crimes that happened before they arrived on the planet and arrest them. JJ9 escape, transform the train into Sasuraiger and kick the butts of whoever really committed the crime.

As for the action, it's a mixed bag. There are some good battles and chases, but in general the Sasuraiger is too over-powered for the typical thugs to stand a chance against it. The enemies don't even start wheeling out their own mechs until half way through the series. Up to that point the hero mech is just stomping on cars and tanks that might as well be toys. After a lengthy transformation sequence, Sasuraiger often lays waste to the opposition all too easily. Also, for a super robot show, it's oddly low-key about fetishising its titular mech. It has various weapons, but they're deployed with no fanfare; I couldn't tell you the name of a single one of its attacks. It may have been trying to ride the line between super robot and real robot a bit, but considering that it's basically a transforming Galaxy Express 999 it's definitely a super robot.

The series does reach a satisfying conclusion, and I waver on whether it's a 6 or 7 overall. It's a show I chipped away at over several months, but ultimately enjoyed and will probably watch again. In the end though, the mediocre episodes outnumber the good ones. There's the backbone of a solid 26 episode series scattered throughout Sasuraiger's run, but the other episodes that pad it out to 43 weigh it down.

6/10
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Great review as always but this time I also feel like I've happily experienced the show through it and feel no need to find the time or funds to actually watch it!
awadama said:
I'm very tired and I thought that said "Galactic Whirlwind Sausagerider" 😅
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😂 I'm sure there is one in a different genre
 
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