Dai
Death Scythe
Dead Mount Death Play
Reverse isekai urban dark fantasy isn't a direction you see a lot of anime taking. It has a promising start with a good first episode twist and some interesting setup and conflicts in the early episodes, but it starts to show flaws in key areas as the series progresses. The main problem is structural; for all its attempts to affect the tone of a mature thriller, it's a shonen battle series at heart. Consequently it runs into the problem that afflicts a lot of Jump titles: cast bloat. Any time you think the protagonist's story is going to move forward, we instead cut to a bunch of new characters and focus on them, often for episodes at a time. It's rarely just one new character at a time either. Instead, whole new factions pop up each time. Some of them only link tenuously to existing plot threads within these two seasons. By the end of season 1, the supposed protagonist already feels like a side character in his own story, and it only gets more pronounced in season 2.
This wouldn't be a problem if the stories of this ever increasing cast had a sense of progression, but far too often it falls into the pattern where half a dozen new characters pop up, have their tragic backstories revealed in flashbacks, clash with established characters in an inconclusive manner, and then fade into the background where they just comment on what other people are doing occassionally. It's a structure that manages to be both frantic and lethargic, like the author paced it from the outset with the assumption that the story would run for 20 years. Either that or the author is just making up most of it as they go along, which would explain the messy structure.
By the end of this show's two seasons, a lot has happened and many things have been revealed, but it doesn't feel like the protagonist's overall story has progressed beyond where it was after the first few episodes. It keeps pushing to the brink of advancing or resolving plot threads in a meaningful way, but invariably chickens out at the last minute. This ultimately robs it of the dramatic edge that a story like this should have.
Many of the individual pieces of DMDP work in isolation, but the way they're clumped together and lack the will to push forward in less than 500 episodes makes for a disappointing whole.
6/10
Reverse isekai urban dark fantasy isn't a direction you see a lot of anime taking. It has a promising start with a good first episode twist and some interesting setup and conflicts in the early episodes, but it starts to show flaws in key areas as the series progresses. The main problem is structural; for all its attempts to affect the tone of a mature thriller, it's a shonen battle series at heart. Consequently it runs into the problem that afflicts a lot of Jump titles: cast bloat. Any time you think the protagonist's story is going to move forward, we instead cut to a bunch of new characters and focus on them, often for episodes at a time. It's rarely just one new character at a time either. Instead, whole new factions pop up each time. Some of them only link tenuously to existing plot threads within these two seasons. By the end of season 1, the supposed protagonist already feels like a side character in his own story, and it only gets more pronounced in season 2.
This wouldn't be a problem if the stories of this ever increasing cast had a sense of progression, but far too often it falls into the pattern where half a dozen new characters pop up, have their tragic backstories revealed in flashbacks, clash with established characters in an inconclusive manner, and then fade into the background where they just comment on what other people are doing occassionally. It's a structure that manages to be both frantic and lethargic, like the author paced it from the outset with the assumption that the story would run for 20 years. Either that or the author is just making up most of it as they go along, which would explain the messy structure.
By the end of this show's two seasons, a lot has happened and many things have been revealed, but it doesn't feel like the protagonist's overall story has progressed beyond where it was after the first few episodes. It keeps pushing to the brink of advancing or resolving plot threads in a meaningful way, but invariably chickens out at the last minute. This ultimately robs it of the dramatic edge that a story like this should have.
Many of the individual pieces of DMDP work in isolation, but the way they're clumped together and lack the will to push forward in less than 500 episodes makes for a disappointing whole.
6/10
and not being on the ball...
). Now may be my chance then.