fall 2020 review

A very 2020 Fall anime review, spoilers ahead as always. 

Finished 

Maji no Tabi Tabi 

This was a really interesting show - based on a light novel, it's a girl - Elaina, who wants to become a witch and follow in the footsteps of her idol, Nike, and her adventures. 

This is not at all the comforting, fluffy slice of life show that my friend expected it to be, it ended up being at times, quite a dark show. From what I understand from the Reddit comments, this was actually at some points 'parallel universes' and various different representations of Elaina, the MC, which comes back around in the last episode. 

I really enjoyed some of the stories in this show which sort of flip flop between light and dark, and Elaina as a traveller is very much just an observer to most of the things that happen, which is quite rare with MCs I feel, but I'm not entirely sure I'm a fan of the 'observer MC' route that they took with the storyline - but I guess that's just personal preference. 

The structure of the show basically goes to introduce Elaina as one of the best students of magic, she goes through a reverse power up level up montage and then she sets off to do her travels. The rest of the show is her travelling and experiencing stories - which I do have to say are generally quite impactful. One of them is about a slave girl who gets abused and raped by her master, but her master's son is in love with her and tries to show her all the happiness in the world through magic - the ending implies that she commits suicide after experiencing it but it raises some insightful questions about the grey areas of morality for sure. Some of the more black and white stories are one about a witch who destroys her family and her kingdom after her lover is killed, but she sacrifices her memories for it and becomes a bit twisted. The other one is where MC and another witch is taken back in time to 'save' this girl from becoming a murderer after being abused by her uncle after her parents are killed - the twist is that the girls family had always been unhappy and that she was already twisted and committed the first murder. She tries to kill the witch who goes back in time to save her, but the witch ends up killing her instead.The Witch ends up paying with her memories - but I found that an interesting story as well. On the other hand, there is one more entertaining and fun story about the grape/wine pressing fetish - which I personally liked the best. 

I don't particularly enjoy the way this story was wrapped up as the parallel personas/worlds weren't really introduced and the last episode is about various Elaina's talking to each other about what occurred in their world, and some of it was actually mangled due to the way lines were distributed (one of them was the 'bad'/violent/sad Elaina who experienced all the awful stories, and the other was just the generic MC), and the MC was given the Violent Elaina's story about the time travelling story. I feel like if that had been outlined more clearly as genuine alternate personas rather than the original story of the grossly exaggerated parodies of the character, that would have made a bit more sense. 

Overall, this show wasn't bad, certainly had some intriguing and fascinating storylines which really gave me pause for thought, yet I have to admit, it didn't grow on me as much as I wanted it to. I think the source material was written better from the snippets I've seen, but the anime really skips over a lot of important moments that could have been fleshed out - without that detail this just feels like a show that tries to be a lot deeper than it is, but is the equivalent of a teenager whipping out a knife and trying to slit their wrists in the school hallways outside the lockers for clout. 

I'd give this a 6/10, it was a solid show, yet .... it's just okay. 

Kami-Tachi ni Horowareta Otoko 

I don't really have THAT much to say about this show actually - it's pretty much your stock standard isekai with a sweeter spin on it. You have an overworked salary man who gets reincarnated as a marginally OP 8 year old boy who loves slimes, and he just goes about his life being competent and cool. There's really not that much to write home about on this one but I do like the more wholesome spin on the isekai due to the character being a little more pure? though I have to say the idea of an older salaryman masquerading in the body of a child just feels a SMIDGE creepy to me. 

Nothing bad happens in this show, it's just a great one for an end of the week relaxation, your average kinda show. 6/10

Maoujou de Oyasumi 

This show was one of the absolute funniest things this season and I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this. 

The actual formula of the show is pretty straightforward- the human princess gets kidnapped by a demon king and is forced to live in the demon castle until the hero comes to save her. Then they completely reverse all the tropes in a fun way - the princess just really wants to have the best kind of sleep, so she goes around terrorizing all the demons in the castle on her quests to get the best things to help her get the best sleep she can get. It's adorable and very sweet and hilarious to see the antics of everyone in the castle, especially since everyone in the castle ends up warming up to the princess both in a seriously fond manner and a heavy dose of, well she will fuck us up if we don't comply. In a way, she's not locked in there with them, they're locked in that castle with her. 

I feel like there's not really that much I need to say except that this was really fun and also kinda sweet when it wanted to be, and although it errs on the side of a bit too much at times, it's one that I definitely looked forward to watching every week and I hope we'll see a season 2 soon. 

Watch this if you want a cutely sinister princess murdering demons - or you just want a good time. 7/10. 

Ikebukuro West Gate Park 

I don't know what it is about this genre of like, gritty urban light novels that I'm so drawn to during seasonals, but I'm all about them. This has more of a touch of K, but it also reminds me a lot of the Cop Craft/occult midnight servants/tokunana/hakata ramen vein (seriously, i have to name this genre or something because i'm always kinda into it. 

The MC here is Makoto Majima, who basically is like the peacemaker of the Ikebukuro underworld, and he's allied with the main gang of the area, the G-Boyz and King, and eventually gets in touch with everyone else who shows up around the area. He's kinda like the Rorschach of the show - they just let him run wild because he knows the police, the gangs, and a whole bunch of other people, and he runs around doing nice things because he's a great person. I do love the K spin, with the blue boys, the red boys, and the general air of group nonsense, although I wouldn't say the characters are the most compelling part of this show. 

While the show starts off episodic, I love that they do actually tie up the ends of this show in a great way - unlike what Majo no Tabi Tabi ended up doing, which was trying to tie it up but failing. All the little things he does is actually all connected to a bigger plotline, like the traitor in their midst, and another gang trying to move into the area and setting up conflict. 

While the first episode is arguably the weakest, but the overall issues that happen are the most interesting parts of this story - my favorite episode is definitely the one about the student who broke a man's leg, and the second would be the story about the single mother. I love when shows have stories about grey morality and decisions you'd make if you were in their position, and while they do make judgements on those two stories, I liked how they approached it, and overall just - I felt really emotional about those two. 

Honestly I would have to say, this is actually a solid show - it might not be for everyone as it certainly wasn't very popular, but I definitely enjoyed the hell out of this. 7/10. 

Taisou Zamurai 

This show actually really grew on me! Animated by Mappa - who also did God of High School and Jujutsu Kaisen - this is an anime original and it really shows a great angle for the studio in terms of their creativity. 

The show is about our MC, Aragaki who is a washed up Olympic gymnast who had created his own move set, but is at the end of his career because of his age, and he's suggested by his coach to retire. He plans to quit, and takes his daughter on a trip, where he meets a random ninja at Edo Wonderland who follows him home and ends up living with him. At that moment, although he plans to retire, he ends up changing his mind and pursuing gymnastics one last time - and the story focuses on Aragaki and the people around him while he tries to win one last time. 

I think although the focus of the plot isn't particularly streamlined or direct, I like the slice of life element to this show, which allows you to explore the relationships between characters - although it never really seeks out to flesh out each character's backstory which is interesting. I like the relationship between Aragaki, his daughter and his mother. Also of course, I'm highly biased towards the subtle sport anime references you get between Leo and his adoration for Aragaki, and how they inspire each other to be better, but also the little moments between Bandana Prince and teen angst pitted against Aragaki's age old weariness. I love those little moments between all the interesting characters at the bar. I also really liked how they ended up fleshing Aragaki's backstory being so affected by the death of his wife leading to him overworking himself. I think that was really poignant and I liked how they really talked about the impact on his wife on his daughter as well - I just thought those little moments were really well done and despite the lack of straight plot, it's one which feels really earnest and - dare I say - wholesome. 

I just love how this show ended up making me feel - and I think it was a really lovely show just in general.

I am tempted to give this a 8, because of my overwhelming love for the silly little moments and the pureness of the characters - which is a very high score for me, but I am feeling generous so I will give it a 7.9/10 

The Great Pretender - 

Since this show was released on Netflix as an ONA and has only just finished airing on FujiTV in December, I've decided to call this a Fall anime (although it originally started in Spring, but due to the way Netflix releases things, I really can't confidently say what time frame works so this one is close enough. Don't @ me for the whole timing issue thanks. 

So more and more often we're coming up to see a lot of shows which just don't really stick the landing - and just like in gymnastics, the way you land is absolutely vital to your performance. especially when it comes to writing a good ass show. as a netflix original anime - produced by studio WIT, i had relatively high hopes for this show, especially in light of the previous success of Carole and Tuesday. 

Much like C&T, this also has the trademark internationality which I love. The art style and direction of this show is absolutely stunning, with gorgeous stylized backgrounds of places around the world including Paris, LA, Nice, Singapore and a few other places - but it's really striking and definitely fantastic to see on a big screen. In addition to their ambitious travel plans, this also has a heavy dose of a lot of different languages, which I loved - the first episode bursts out a ton of English/Engrish, but impressively enough, they actually manage to whip out a half decent French accent for Laurent Thierry, who is a French conman, and the garbled English of Makoto Edamura, our main man. Although I have to admit, Makoto's English is painfully grating in the first few scenes before they do a smooth transition to English, I kinda liked the little touches of multilingualism, especially with the French tinge. After that, although the rest of the show primarily operates in Japanese most of the time, there's gratuitous use of French, English (with an impressive British accent for Cynthia from a real English speaker - thank goodness), and a heavy heaping of Chinese at the end (which again, was also legitimately good). Being able to showcase all those elements I think really puts The Great Pretender at a level that's different to previous anime - it has that distinct Western element that colors the show, and without the Japanese lens to the rest of the cultures they visit, it's a really intriguing perspective that you never really get (and definitely not something I can recall in all my years of watching anime.) 

this show itself has a really fascinating premise - about con artists and their adventures. Our MC, Makoto Edamura has long been plagued by fraud and cons and a criminal record because of his past, and as a result, he's taken the easy way out and decided to make that his life. he gets trapped in a scam of his own as he tries to steal the money of a French man - Laurent Thierry, who ends up taking all his money instead. He decides to buy a ticket and follow Laurent to LA, where he ends up getting trapped in Laurent's elaborate scam to take down a Hollywood director, Eddie Cassano, who is all the bad things in the world, a drug dealer who takes advantage of women using his power and influence. They end up trapping him with an elaborate ruse about a fake drug, and Edamura ends up causing a whole lot of ruckus, but they all get out alive with 110 million dollars. There are 4 cases in total in the show and a total of 23 episodes, but I enjoyed how the arcs weren't really split evenly, although the last one is a fucking let down. The second case is scamming two brothers and their air race, the third about a painting and art dealing, and the last one is a really stupidly elaborate one loosely about a mafia group which does human trafficking (although the actual reality is far from just that.) 

My personal favorite was definitely the Hollywood drug case, and then I have a soft spot for the Snow of London painting, especially because it links into Cynthia's past, and has a sort of 'leading up' story - they don't have some sort of grand plan that everyone gets trapped into, rather they try to change their own lives with their own hands. I think there was a real good amount of closure, character development, and earnestness in that one. I do also enjoy the brothers air race, case 2, although I personally enjoyed the prelude to that story through Cynthia's friend Chris, and how it feels like there is an element of the Robin Hood energy there - which I feel like is missing from Laurent's cons. 

I will now proceed to air all of my grievances - mostly about case 4. Firstly - I really dislike what they did with MC. They try to develop this as a duality, he's a swindler yes, but he's got a heart of gold. They corner him and he doesn't often think too deeply about what to do, and then he ends up either almost always cocking everything up, and then either, feeling sorry for himself, or feeling angry at everyone else. In a way, he's a difficult character to like - especially in relation to Laurent and how he brings out the worst in Makoto. For example - Makoto has a real chip on his shoulder about his father (who, is a whole can of worms), and so because of the prejudice he faces, ends up playing the bad guy because that's what is expected of him. In case 1, you think of him as a guy who truly tries to do the best for other people - he tries to save Salazar, and even returns all the money he's stolen from other people and turns himself in to prison to save himself. Then he gets dragged along by Laurent again to do another scam, and then tries to work again, scams again, and at that point you just feel sorry for him because he's been tormented by Laurent's whims. HOWEVER - he ends up signing up for a company (through Laurent's meddling), which ends up being a Mafia run company which does human trafficking. He works there while trying to save the children from being sold, goes out of his way to get them to eat, tries to set them free, only to be caught (fruitlessly?) by his father - hold on let's pause there. lets explain the plot of case 4 first and why it doesn't work. 

so he works for this trading company run by the mafia which deals with children trafficking. it turns out he's been sent there as a plant by Laurent (who is probably fucking Derren Brown at this point), and they're trying to expose this company. Cynthia and Abby (his comrades) pose this whole scenario where Abby is a secret princess and they try to sell her off after they get the money for poaching her. However, because Makoto has a conscience, he wants to rescue ALL the kids, so they make another plan. While he does this, he meets the Shanghai branch of the company, and their translator happens to be his estranged father, whom he despises because he was a deadbeat dad who ended up being a hypocrite as well. He tells his dad that he wants to run away with him after this final scam (also since he gets fucked around by Laurent all the time), and he thinks his dad was just a horrible man who also engaged in human trafficking, but maybe he didn't have a choice. As they make their get away, it turns out his father is actually a double agent, and sells Makoto out to his company while they try to do their grand escape.  From this point on, the kids are not even fucking mentioned ever, which feels really bait-y. Why mention human trafficking if you aren't actually going to meaningfully engage with the story after 'he felt a bit bad for them'. In fact, they do actually end up doing this with Abby - they mention that she's a child soldier after her parents were killed in a bombing in Baghdad, except she ends up forgiving the man who killed her parents because 'he said sorry', which feels... insincere. Often times, and I've said this before with Carole and Tuesday's last arc as well, they aim quite high and try to tackle issues that are 'meaningful' or 'significant', yet because of how heavy the topic itself is, it's notoriously difficult to resolve it the way they might have wanted to - trying to become famous singers is a story you can spin out really well, but trying to tackle the whole issue of racism/terrorism/corruption in politics within a pseudo-future Earth, well. we haven't even solved that now, but we need insightful commentary on this. In Great Pretender, they instead try to tackle issues of PTSD, human trafficking, and abuse within a somewhat amusing, entertaining high octane con artist adventure - but the way they resolve it feels almost flippant and damaging. 

so basically after Ozaki sells Makoto out, the mafia's boss instructs Makoto to kill Abby and Cynthia on a boat in the middle of nowhere, and then Ozaki kills them instead. In anger, Makoto turns the gun to his father and shoots him instead. They 'die', and although he's the main culprit of this whole situation, the boss still really likes him, sacrifices Ozaki (for no discernible reason imo), and although he thinks hes killed mostly everyone who's close to him and that it's really all Laurent's fault, he ends up working there for another 2 months and absolutely rakes in the cash by selling children - which I should remind you, was the very thing he was trying to prevent, but ends up happily chattering away in English and gaining the trust of the mafia boss, who sees him as a son. In a almost touching way, he gives the last remaining relic from his late mother to her, a tiny cat, and they develop a familial relationship. However, his father turns up and explains two things - firstly, Laurent Thierry's past, and then hints at the big plan that they're going to do. In this section, there's like 8 episodes they have to explore this whole arc, but two of them are dedicated to Laurent's past and how he falls in love with a con artist called Dorothy as he tries to kill the man who ruined his mother, Hugo. They do many scams with Ozaki and our resident sexy Korean seductress, but then she gets shot and killed during a failed 'confidence game', and he eventually just breaks. When I saw this backstory, I found it.... interesting? yet I still wonder, then where does the obsession with Makoto come from. Originally my interpretation was that Laurent was a little obsessed with Makoto in the way he endlessly dabbles with his life and waits 2 years for him to get out of prison, yet the way they spin his character after introducing Dorothy almost completely changes his character and personality. He starts hallucinating about her i assume in some sort of ploy at revenge, yet, til the end he keeps his endlessly charming facade on, which feels a little empty and honestly kind of confusing. At this point, even the villains feel more fleshed out and more moralistic, at least they know they're awful people, but Laurent cheats bad people out of their money but keeps it himself, which imo, makes him not that much better. sure he's on the scale of, less shit, but.... it's a little bland. 

In the end, the plot happens like this, he goes back to work and Laurent negotiates to become the translator for the Chinese group. Due to their language barriers, they end up making plans all to do with a shit ton of money, and the two main leaders of each group end up in some big ass showdown during the money exchange, and then Makoto has a massive breakdown after the supposed police raid. Makoto exposes Laurent as a con artist, brings in Eddie Cassano (for some fucking reason?), and then has a long ass monologue about how fucking shit his father and Laurent are and starts cackling, with all the right reasons, and then gunfire happens, the Chinese and Japanese leaders leave, and find out they've been shipped out to a giant island - which you retrospectively find out was ALL PART OF THE PLAN. It turns out Makoto had planned his breakdown, so all his ill will against his dad just vanishes, and the three men they swindled previously, Eddie, Sam and Coleman, all have suddenly forgiven Laurent and the gang for taking all their money (?) which makes no fucking sense, and - here's the crucial part - their whole big plan for taking down this entire trafficking syndicate was not to turn them in to the police, or dismantle the entire organization by planning for Makoto to take over the company or something, or to do anything marginally important about the children, but that they were just going to ship out the bosses to an island in the middle of nowhere and that entire problem would be solved. 

I mean first of all, what the FUCK was the point of putting in the previous villains as people who clearly, have every reason in the world to hate them, including eddie who literally crippled his accountant for no reason, but no its okay its totally fine? what the fuck is introducing all of makoto's trauma and daddy issues if its resolved just because they do a heist together, even though he probably felt the guilt of selling children and killing his friends but then oh no its fine hes fine, that breakdown wasn't real even tho it was all rooted in truth, he's solved those problems. and the FUCKING end of that, where they're like here island time ENJOY. like WHAT. WHAT WAS THAT ENDING. that resolves nOTHING and it wasnt even a stupid amount of money - like here's an idea. what if, you gained their trust, drugged them, and just took them out to a random island WITHOUT the need of a giant building and took all their money while they weren't able to do anything about it. of course, you'd lose all the tension and drama of that last minute reveal, but what the fuck is the point of a facade, when it serves NO purpose? i know its more FUN and EXCITING to do a reveal at the end, yet, i fucking hated it. and then they;re like oh yeah anyway we put all the kids in foster homes. as if that solves any problem.

I honestly wish they'd stuck with some high octane fun stuff - and to be honest, they repeat a lot of the mistakes that happen in Carole and Tuesday, which is just biting a bit more than they can chew, even though it's done in a terribly pretty way, which almost makes you forget about the shitstorm plot, yet someone points it out and you just really cannot unsee it. 

 

in light of this absolute unit of a review, I can only say, I would give this a 8/10 for the first 3 cases. Really innovative, lovely and fun watch. however, if we're weighing the entire show with its shittastic end and how badly it fumbles on the second season, I can only give this a 6/10 for being, ok, but a real disappointment, because it really lets itself down. 

Akudama Drive 

Okay so this was a real deviation from the typical shows I watch - namely because I've never been super into sci-fi action shows with either a cyberpunk/dystopian/utopian/futuristic aesthetic, and this really pretty much has all the same hallmarks. According to Wiki, this was inspired by Bladerunner (the original one) and also a touch of Tarintino. imo - this definitely has a real Bladerunner feel, in fact, this is sort of like an homage to all the same tropes, but it's not easy for me to identify if this is original or not as my knowledge of this genre starts and ends with Bladerunner. 

I found it pretty difficult to get through the first chunk of episodes, but I do agree that it really stuck the landing. In a way this reminded me a bit of Madoka's episode structure and pace, the first few episodes are all really a set up to the big reveal towards the end, although the reveal here is probably less exciting. 

The show focuses on an ordinary citizen who gets caught up in a misunderstanding, and more or less gets grouped with these high level 'criminals', or akudama (which can also mean villain). They get hired by an anonymous benefactor with a lot of money in order to attack the Shinkansen, which is a holy place, which links Kansai to Kanto (Osaka to Tokyo). The cast is never named, but we have Brawler, Hoodlum, Doctor, Courier, Cutthroat (murdering demon), Hacker and Swindler (our ordinary MC who gets roped into the whole scheme. 

The plot itself is pretty interesting but the delivery of the first few episodes is pretty boring to me - our MC sees someone drop money and has a strong moral streak (a real madoka taste here), so refuses to pay for her takoyaki with cash and tries to return the money. she gets jailed on a minor offense, while there's a huge uproar among the akudama gang with a request to rescue Cutthroat from being executed. they all get bombs attached to their necks so theyre forced to follow the plan of the black cat benefactor. they go to a hotel, meet some Executioners - the law enforcement government team - and escape somewhere else. They make a plan to steal the Vault from the Shinkansen, and they open it to find two kids inside instead, and they're trapped on the train. Hacker stays behind to go to Kanto, but the rest of them head back to Kansai. They're found again by the Executioners, and Brawler and Executioner Man fight to the death. After that, they travel to Expo Park to send the kids to the rocket so that they can travel to the moon and escape - they want to escape because they're actually lab experiments made to be immortal and shipped off to Kanto as a sacrifice, but are given a chance to live on. However, Doctor sells them out, and betrays the kids, while everyone else gets cornered. Swindler and Sister get ushered onto the plane, while the Brother gets captured by the Executioner team. Swindler and Sister try to get food before she realizes that she's now technically classified as Akudama, and while trying to get food, gets caught, and they're on the run for a little bit before they bump into Courier, and they plan their last heist, to get the kids back together. Swindler causes a big uproar in the city by releasing some information online, causes civil unrest and while everyone is busy, they try to reunite the Brother and Sister at the shinkansen platform, while Cutthroat is off serial murder happy. There's a big stand off on the platform, but it all goes to shit when everyone decides they want to go to Kanto, and in the showdown, Hoodlum kills Doctor for betraying him, Doctor gets trampled to death, and Swindler and Courier get on the train again. The big reveal: Kanto turns out not to be the utopia they all thought, but instead is where your consciousness gets uploaded to the big mainframe super computer, and your body is eradicated. Hacker makes his grand return as he's managed not to be trapped in the Kanto supercomputer memory trickery (which is what Swindler and Courier experience, just fake happy memories), and he shows them the real Kanto, who need the kids as hardware for their decaying supercomputer (tbh i'm not sure how an immortal human is supposed to help with that but.... ynkow). Anyway, Hacker risks himself to save the kids, is helped along by the spirit of the kids but dies, and Swindler rescues them and tries to get them back to Kanto to get to a safe place that they can reside happily in peace for... however long. They get back to Kansai, are ambushed, and Swindler sacrifices herself to stall for time, but while she stalls, she manages to miraculously hack into the big screens across the city and how she's killed despite claiming to be an innocent person. This again sparks civil unrest, so the city is in uproar, this time against the police who had just massacred a whole bunch of innocent people for protesting, and gives them enough time to escape. Courier dies after being badly damaged in the fights, the kids are eventually able to escape and walk towards the light... the end. 

Okay so despite that heavy word dump - it strikes me that a lot of the action in this whole show is actually a bit pointless, especially during the times where they try to get a little break from the action, when I honestly feel like they could have put a lot more time in developing Kanto more, and explaining a bit more. Listen tho, Bladerunner has never been known for its thorough, comprehensive plot, and honestly, if not for the fact that I was forced to watch it for school, I absolutely would have written it off as one of the worst movies in my life (as I often do with old classics... looking at you citizen kane). However, this show really fucking drags the first few episodes, and it's not really until episode 10 that everything really builds towards a satisfying climax. I personally found 11/12 to be the best episodes, and the ending is honestly the best part of this show, because everything else is a bit slow and laggy for me. I think the ending was really impactful - especially how they handled Swindler's character and her growth (and that I absolutely hated her character at the beginning but its not shit at the end). 

I do like a few themes in this plot though, especially how it lines up with what I have studied in Bladerunner - the themes of man made life, who gets to have control over that, especially when it comes to creating self awareness (although it's not a super overt theme) but how that links in with technology as well, who, or what is really human. There's a good dose of good versus evil and who the real villains are especially when it comes to what's considered criminal. I personally really enjoyed the more 'society' orientated discussion though, when it came to how people were reacting to the current issues in their society and what that said more broadly about the ideology in the show, and while it's not that subtle at all, I like that they really do pause to think, ok who is right, why are innocent people killed when it goes against the ambitions of Kanto, people rebel and try to take their destinies in their hands, and even though nobody gets a real stand out moment sans the child, I like that they were showing those reactions. 

I enjoy this show a little more retrospectively, and also 50% of this is because I have sort of brainwashed myself into liking Bladerunner due to the sheer amount of hours I put into that bloody movie, but I do think despite the amount of unanswered questions (like, where they got all the money to pay them, how they knew how to contact akudama, the amounts of technology that were like, casually thrown in and never mentioned again), the way this show wrapped up was a real satisfying end and that in itself is a pretty rewarding experience. 

If you enjoy the cyberpunk dystopian genre, you'll like this. Also this is like, a far better take on some of the same things Darling in the FranXX tries to explore (in terms of technology/genetic experiments, and the cyberpunk dystopian angle). I personally didn't find this a wholly satisfying watch because it's really not the type of show I usually go for, but I have to admit that it does have an interesting story that is overall consistent. I think it would make a pretty good film too - in fact, if it was trimmed down, it would probably make an amazing film if they reduced it to those key moments. All in all, I'd give this a 6/10 - it's pretty good. 

On Hold / Ongoing 

Haikyuu!!: To the Top 

Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou 

Jujutsu Kaisen 

After having been told by many many people to watch this - with the full intention of doing so - one of my students was absolutely adamant that I needed to watch this and so despite being ridiculously busy, I watched the first episode from Crunchyroll youtube and my god this was good. MAPPA is a great studio, especially when it comes to action and animation, and they really did some great stuff with this. It's rare to see those little touches and I think it really comes through in the quality of the animation. 

Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru darou Ka III

Well it's nice to see the anime finally living up to its name of actually picking up girls in a dungeon. 

Dropped 

Munou na Nana - 

The reason why I've actually put this under dropped instead of ongoing is because I tend to do this thing when I watch new anime, which is to get really excited about it and I read ahead obsessively in order to see what happens, and then because I already know what happens narrative wise, I end up just ignoring the actual show because I feel like I've already seen it. 

I feel that I should mention the actual 'plot' itself of this isn't bad. It's basically about a girl who gets trapped on an island with superpowered kids who are put there to defeat some nameless enemy. It has a bit of like horror/psychological/action all mixed in there and I actually think its a really fun story, even though a lot of people were split on whether or not this was a 'good' show. I thought some of the characters were fun, and even though it felt like a bit of a deus ex machina a lot of the times in terms of plot, it was fun to sit around and guess what was going to happen. 

Yuukoku no Moriarty

I have to say, it wasn't like this show was necessarily awful or, not great at all, but it sort of stood in the crossroads of not really much of anything that I enjoyed, which is really just a personal preference thing. The first episode I watched of this show actually ended up being the 11th episode, and I retroactively went back and rewatched the first episode after having already been dropped in the middle of the events. 

This is obviously based off the Conan Doyle Sherlock universe, except this is about reinventing Moriarty's past. And unlike Kabukicho Sherlock, this is rooted in the same time period as well - with all the English dressings and names. Honestly speaking I just am not that big of a fan of the Sherlock canon, mysteries are fun but besides the BBC series and the RDJ movies, I'm quite lukewarm on the series. 

I don't think this show was bad enough to merit saying that it was a 'bad' show (although I think Kabukichou was a bit more fun), and I see quite a lot of people enjoying it, but it's not one that I'd instantly gravitate towards which is why I lost interest. 

This is essentially a long paragraph apologizing for my personal taste. 

Tonikaku Kawaii 

I just did not like this - it was genuinely like, in no way a calming or relaxing watch for me. I also don't give a shit about apologizing, this was garbage, fight me.