Category: Anime

I have no idea what the story is here. A Japanese white color man gets kidnapped by goons, and the Japanese guy decides to just join the goons since it’s more freeing than continuing in his current role of boot-licking for his bosses.

Beyond that, I couldn’t figure out any clear story-line. In some episodes the main characters are fighting Neo-Nazis, in some there are pointless fist fights and gun duels, there is moderately emotional character development in some episodes. But on the whole, season 1 felt completely directionless.

The best part about watching this series was how not addicting it was, I could whenever I wanted, I could skip episodes and not have missed anything, I could even watch the series without audio and understand exactly what was happening. Nothing in this series really mattered.

The dubbing was really good though. Wouldn’t make it a worth-while watch however.

Interesting lines from Black Lagoon:

“The reason you submerged yourself in the southeast asian underworld was probably because you were looking for something different, from Japan and your daily life. But nothing’s really changed for you, because still haven’t decided. You dread returning to your daily life under the sun, but you’re afraid to go any further into the darkness. You’re undecided, hesitating between two lives.

You don’t actually want to save me, I merely remind you of the normal life you thought you’d thrown away, that’s all this is. If you sit back and watch me die, you’d be losing the very last recollections of this normal life in Japan. You don’t want to lose anything do you? Not even the live you’d throw away, you still yearn for it, but you don’t want it enough to keep it. If that’s the way you are, how could you ever choose to save someone. If you can’t even change your own life, how can ever change someone else’s, tell me!”

This anime was previously rated a 3 on story, because it had no real story carrying the anime forward, but the side-quest stories are so good, I still have to give it a decent score.

The mini-stories are so realistic and often quite intricately made that, it warrants a lot of merit. It also drew into question for me why the author of the manga knew so much about the mafia, organized crime, currency forgery and several other crime related topics. It was like the author had on the ground experience in these topics, or had read way too many Sherlock Holmes and crime novels.

Balalaika, otherwise called Capitan/Captain, seems to extensively plan out her criminal activities and even seen turning the police force against the mafia, in order to take down the mafia. She is also an extremely pragmatic leader, who kills of her enemies in a very pragmatic manner.

Outside of our set of main characters being invulnerable thanks to them being relevant to the story, the mini-stories are themselves very captivating.

I guess the character development in this series is pretty solid. In one scene, Rock wants to save the leader of a Yakuza organization, and argues with Balalaika, but then Balalaika questions him, asking him how he has to the audacity to tell her who she kills without ever getting his own hands dirty. Rock feels bad for the Yakuza boss since she is a teenager and lived a very normal violence free life until weeks ago. Balalaika suggests that in preferring one Yakuza organization over another he is telling her who to kill, without getting his own hands dirty, and that it is a despicable thing to say. There is a lot of pointing of guns in these scene, and it would have been very thrilling if you didn’t already know that nothing bad would ever happen to the main characters.

I love how the series explores concepts on self-identity and self-exploration. They add much needed depth to the series and really help flesh out the story. Rock joining the south asian underworld would simply be seen as a gimmick without this philosophical angle the story takes often.

There seems to be a potential for love between Revy and Rock, but the series never reached that arc. Would have been very interesting given how different they are.

The struggles of an introvert to socialize and make friends is brilliantly displayed here. It helps to see all these introvert problems animated and know that lots of people have had these.

But it isn’t as interesting if you’ve overcome these limitations of yours long back. You don’t really relate with the main character very much.

Animation is wonderful, but given how unambitious the story is, I would have preferred a dubbed version, so that I can watch it in the background as I’m working on something else. A whole bunch of nothing is happening for most of the anime. We get to see how the MC reacts to things, but that’s it, nothing actually happens.

A time travel anime where the enemy isn’t stupid

After I’d watched Made in Abyss, I went to the supermarket. I saw a small child there, holding a barbie doll in her hand and doing cute child things. I would have normally thought, Aw cute kid, and moved on. But instead an image of the child dismembered into small pieces flashed in my head.

My eyes went wide, unable to believe what I had just thought. It was extremely disturbing. Although it was only for a quarter of a second, it was enough to tell me that Made in Abyss had affected me.

If you cannot handle like blood, violence and gore, you DO NOT watch this series. But it is easily one of the best anime I’ve ever seen.

Me not having known about this series all this time was a mistake.

Watched to kill time. Best part of the series was how un-addicting it was.

The MC is a adventurer priest of the god of light and he’s trying to get people to worship the god he worships again. That was new.

One of the best world-building I’ve ever seen in anime.

Every piece of the world in this dungeon is explained. It amazed me that that was even possible.

There were several instances where I thought, oh they didn’t explain this bit, but that’s okay, since I can’t expect them to think about every small detail. But then in an episode or two they would explain whatever I thought they’d missed. Every detail and minutia was explained well and in an entertaining manner.

It was amazing!

This show is so much more than cooking videos.

If you make it to the end, then you’ll see why the character development score is a 10.

Solo Leveling was voted as the crunchyroll best anime of the year. Which is such a let down, considering all the great anime that came out alongside Solo Leveling.

Here is trends graph of Attack on Titan vs Solo Leveling and Frieren. Attack on Titan is a show everyone knows of at this point, Frieren has held the title of the best anime every on MyAnimeList for the past two years, and Solo Leveling is all about Aura Farming.

And Aura Farming absolutely crushed good story telling brought forward by Frieren. Solo leveling almost surpassed attack on titan at one point, which means it was likely more popular that several Hollywood movies.

I believe Aura Farming is going to have even more of an impact on anime for a while, because of how well Solo Leveling performed.

Even as a manhwa, it was immediately evident that this series was all about Aura Farming, because of that, the protagonist is never in any real danger. Of course Sung Jinwoo will be victorious and save the day somehow. The show was still fun to watch though.

But then One Punch Man season 3 came out. This was one horribly animated show. Compared to that, yeah, solo leveling was leagues better.

Hiroyuki Sawano made several sound tracks for this show, I guess they really had high hopes for the show, and it did live up to that. All the manhwa readers who proclaimed that this would be one of the most popular anime to come out were proven right.

Still quite a let down that aura farming beat all the other good show.

I watched this since it was so highly rated, I figured the series would be absolutely amazing by the end perhaps. But I truly don’t know. I’m watching Clannad After-Story at this point, and the show is quite boring.

The best part about the show to me is how un-addicting it is. It takes little will-power to close the tab and go back to work, which is see as a huge win. But it would be awesome if the series was fun as well.

You can truly see that animating things back then was far more difficult. The series is very slow, not that it wastes time, but animation was simply harder to do back then.

I saw reviews mentioning how the anime completely broke people and left them sobbing. And here I am watching it at an increased speed and skipping through emotional bits. I know what they’re going to say, it’s incredibly predictable, I don’t need to see it.

Wasted time:

The show does waste time though, there are ghosts and spirits, who we spend hours and hours with, after which they seem to have no relevance what-so-ever. Why did we invest so much time into this ghost if nothing important was to happen concerning the ghost?

Outside of Clannad having an after-story which shows difficult parts of a relationship, I can’t really see what’s special about this show.

The show is as interesting or often times less interesting than your own life. Mostly nothing happens.

I’ve heard it was the bees knees back in the day, it doesn’t seem that way to me now.

Has really really nice fight scenes, and the story is cool, sound tracks are cool, action sequences are awesome.

Each noble phantasm and their summoners have different powers and limitations. And everyone is one mistake away from death. The limitations along with their varying ideologies make the show feel so alive.