Jeoffrey

If this were a short ad for a manga, a trailer for an upcoming anime series/movie, or at least a full-length follow-up, then I would not be complaining; however, this is just not enough. I binge-watched all the episodes at once, and out of about four and a half minutes, almost half of it was a repeat of the original OVA, and the rest was just little scenes from the manga that do not really say anything at all. It is a damn shame, and I just cannot award more than two stars, and even those are heavily influenced by the fact that I saw the original OVA a while ago, which I really enjoyed. This brief glimpse is almost unnecessary. 3/10.

Hiyokoi is a “classic” Japanese romantic comedy. Alternately, the girl is incredibly cute, delicate, and loveable, while the boy is awfully happy-go-lucky, cool, and loveable. There is something for everyone in this movie. The girls are going to be charmed by the adorable Yuushin, and the gentlemen are going to grow to admire the very sweet Hiyori. Hiyori is probably going to awaken in them that kind of strong protective feeling that she needs to be saved. The situation could arouse some very strong sympathies in certain gentlemen, not only for the main female protagonist but also for the guy who takes the poor unfortunate girl under his wing. Basically, there is nothing new under the sun, and it does not surprise me at all when some people declare Hiyori to be a crybaby, that her shyness is incredibly exaggerated, her emotional outbursts, and the show’s general overwroughtness are just too much, etc. However, from my review, it is pretty clear which of the above categories I fall into. So I found this to be an enjoyable show with an adorable female protagonist and a fine male protagonist. I was pleasantly surprised by the pacing of the narrative, even though given that it is only a one-part OVA, it is actually not that surprising. If a regular anime series came out, I would definitely watch it, and it might be one of my favorite romantic comedies. However, this is way too short, and that is why I am only going to award it four stars. 7.5/10.

Cat Soup is a short film that may leave you feeling like you have finally gone mad and asking yourself "what the hell have I just watched?" It could cause you to have a lot of unexpected experiences and perhaps even make you understand the meaning of existence. Whatever it is, I am not going to argue with you because anything is literally possible. In order to truly understand what is going on, you probably need a lot of LSD and other intoxicants. However, it is not so much made for you to fully understand what is going on, I think it was rather made for you to have a guess and look for some meaning or connection for yourself, according to your own interpretation. You could, however, also just let yourself get carried away by the waves of the authors' imagination. The originality is simply epic; everything is unexpected, interesting, and very peculiar. You are going to immediately recognize some of the references, such as the Great Flood, the Gingerbread House, and many others. Even if you have no idea why they are in this short film, you are going to be happy anyway. All in all, this was an insane ride that I thoroughly enjoyed right up to the absolutely brilliant ending, complete with its very good end credits. I am awarding this a strong four stars mainly because the screenwriters succeeded in alternately making me think and forcing myself not to think about what was going on. 8.3/10.

Back in the day when I first watched this anime series, I found it incredibly entertaining. I really enjoyed the characters, animation, and narrative. At the time, I also enjoyed the action, and I found its comedy really funny. I think that I would have probably considered rating "Problem Children Are Coming from Another World, Aren't They?" somewhere between three and four stars if I had watched it for the first time today. However, because I have now seen other interesting and well-produced shows like No Game No Life, or shows as original and funny as KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!, then my feelings have changed a bit. At the moment, this show benefits mostly from the fact that I first saw it at a time when I had not seen many other shows in the same category to compare it to. I liked this more than, say, the "famous" Sword Art Online, which, although I loved it in the first half of the first season, was ruined by all those elves in ALO (the second half of the first season of Sword Art Online). So at the time, it was something like 8.6/10, with the understanding that I am probably going to watch it again sometime.

I caught onto that pretty early on!!! The explanation for me awarding this show five stars comes a bit late. However, if someone had taken the trouble to write to me with a request last year, I could have squeezed this review out sooner. Fortunately, I do not even have to worry about it too much because other reviewers have already written about a lot of good reasons why this anime series deserves a good ratings. So, I am just going to reiterate the most basic aspects of why I liked Terror in Resonance so much. The first thing is that the narrative is pretty much told from the perspective of those on the wrong side of the law. There are not that many shows like that, and such protagonists simply grab your attention very easily. Did they look like they were from Free!? I do not know because I have not seen it and do not think I am going to. I was wondering more about what would happen between them and the "black-haired idiot." The second thing is that the cat-and-mouse game between the main "bad guys" and the rather charismatic detective is an essential part of the narrative. This aspect gives the show just the right atmosphere that some viewers, like Jeoffrey, love to watch. Well, when you add to that the suspense and a certain effort (it is really more of a struggle sometimes) to solve philosophical questions, various puzzles, and generally figuring out the motives of those this narrative is about, you get something that I personally was definitely interested in and entertained by. Certainly, the conclusion itself could have been much better, even though it could have also been much worse. In conclusion, I will also add that the soundtrack and animation were very good. In my opinion, this anime series is even now at a pretty respectable 8.5/10, which is simply worth five stars according to my personal scale.

This is a roughly twenty-minute pilot for a possible future flash animated streaming television series if the feedback from audiences is positive. I do not know what to think of it really. The animation is not too shabby, and I even smiled a little at times. However, there are way too many fantasy adventure clichés in this short film. Plus, I could figure out how it would continue, and I had only seen a few minutes of it. So if it were picked up as a full series, I would probably only start watching it if I had a lot of free time because this just did not create that much of a desire to see where it goes next. 4.5/10.

HarmonQuest is based on a well-thought-out concept combining the popular fantasy adventure game Dungeons and Dragons with good animation. So you actually have a fantasy adventure TV show and roleplaying campaign game at the same time! Well, both elements were truly successful. As the reviewer SonGokussj writes, it is very obvious how experienced and good the game master is in this show because of the way he can keep the atmosphere and the flow of the narrative. Also, how he manages all the fabrications, the main three protagonists and their special guests come up with. The characters are funny, interesting, and definitely have a lot to offer, even though I honestly have to say that the best thing, in my opinion, was definitely the goblin’s acting. This goblin managed to come up with a lot of surprising and complex subterfuge and attacks, and you could see that he helped a lot to keep the plot from getting bogged down in some kind of crap. Sometimes, the players got stuck on a joke that slowly stopped being funny; some of the jokes, of course, were not funny at all. In my opinion, sometimes there were minor blind spots, even though that is what happens with most comedies, plus when you have to improvise, it is even harder. The quality of the guests was also inconsistent because not everyone is a good comedian or player. However, this is quite understandable, and I was sometimes really entertained. So for the good fun and originality, I believe it deserves an above-average rating. 8/10.

There is a little bit of James Bond, a little bit of Flynn Carsen, but mainly this is a fun and very good action-packed show. It also has a good narrative and characters. The character Yomiko Readman was just great. "Give me back my book!" 7.7/10.

The series of four Persona 3 movies is finally over, and I can say that I quite enjoyed it. Almost every movie had some really great surprises; overall, it had an interesting narrative. The atmosphere worked quite well; the gloomy downbeat vibes during the first half of this fourth movie were very refreshing. I generally enjoyed the narrative style of the Persona 3 movies, probably as much as I enjoyed The Velvet Room. The main protagonist is the only thing I am having a harder time getting used to. Whether it was the Persona 4 anime series adaptation, or the movie adaptations of Persona 3, each time, the main male protagonist struck me as kind of expressionless and took me quite a while to get used to. Luckily, he is always surrounded by some supporting characters that I usually find more engaging. I was originally thinking of awarding this movie three stars as I did with the previous movies; however, because of the really great introduction and the fact that the ending was not disappointing in any way (even though in the game the tone is "just a little bit" off somewhere else), I am going to throw in some extra points. I guess the Persona 3 movie series is mainly for players of the original PS2 game and then also for those who liked the anime series adaptation of the next installment of the game series (which came out before these movies). For others, it will probably be more complicated to get used to the narrative style, understand what the Personas are, or even "The Velvet Room," so I reckon it is not going to appeal to everyone. 7/10.

In the beginning, This Art Club Has a Problem! did not really appeal to me because I could not get on with this show's sense of humor. I did not really think about it; a girl fancies a boy from the Art Club. However, only interested in painting his perfect 2D waifu, which is nothing to write home about. On a similar theme, I saw, for example, the much more interesting The World God Only Knows. I thought that the show offered a lot more in terms of plot personally (and it also had one of the best openings I have ever heard, which I still have on my computer and play occasionally). Still, it is not bad, and after watching more episodes, seeing new characters, and just getting pretty used to everything, it became kind of a mediocre diversion that I even found funny sometimes. Plus, some episodes are also quite charming, sometimes almost loveable, so I really did enjoy watching this anime series at times. My favorite characters are obvious. There is the insane Colette, plus the President of the Art Club. Then there is also little Moeka, who pops up every now and then and who is, as her name suggests, just incredibly "moe" and, for example, in the ninth episode entitled "Moe Stroll", was exactly the style of a cute little girl I like a lot. So, in my opinion, this show is better than average, and I really enjoyed some passages, although there were fewer than I would have liked. 6/10.