The Paragon of Western Writing Problems: Hazbin Hotel

I didn’t really want to post this here, as this meant to just be for anime, with some related outliers like Blue Eye Samurai. But I need to get these thoughts down and out or they will be rattling around in my head forever, and I don’t want that so here goes. There will spoilers and, unfortunately, the introduction of outside political stuff. I generally try to keep politics to a minimum in my reviews and posts, because that’s not what this blog is for, but in this case I find they tie in so well to the points I’m making it needs to be done. Apologies in advance.

With regards to Hazbin Hotel, despite all the negativity that is going to come, I really enjoyed it. It has so many writing problems that it’s actually easier to describe the few things it got right rather than catalogue all the mistakes – but despite being beyond weak in the writing department Hazbin Hotel was a lot of fun if you didn’t think too hard about it. It was very bingeable and for all the flaws, you can at least tell the people behind it really loved the show, it was not corpo slop it was a passion project made by people who just didn’t have the time or talent to make something really fantastic. And that’s ok, more than ok even. I’d take a fun passion project over a “safe” show designed by committee for “reliable” returns on investment any day. This post is not meant to be a takedown of Hazbin Hotel, I think it succeeded overall because if nothing else it was a good time and a lot of people clearly enjoyed it, myself included. But in Hazbin Hotel I see so, so many of the writing problems infecting so much of Western media, and this is the closest thing I have to anime to talk about them, since anime tends not have these problems, even if it has its own set of problems.

Before I get political I want to do a quick rundown of Hazbin Hotel and it’s other problems. The biggest is the writing and pacing, the script is trying to cram way too much into too short a timeframe, sacrificing depth on the few story threads that actually matter. And the plot is full of holes, up to the point that the entire inciting incident it a plot hole. For those unaware the inciting incident is that during the latest round of annual demon exterminations, an angel was killed. This is supposed to be impossible, and the angels spend the whole show trying to figure out how. Where this falls apart is Vaggie. Vaggie is actually a former exorcist, the angels doing the exterminating, whose wings were cut off and eye put out by her fellow angels for sparing a demon child. These injuries were inflicted using angelic weapons, which was supposed to be the big reveal as to how the first angel was killed. But Vaggie was cut down by her peers years before the inciting incident, meaning the angels should already know that angelic weapons can hurt them. You can still sort of spin it into a mystery, figuring out which demon did the killing and how did it get access to angel weapons – but that would fall apart too because the final episode reveals that Carmilla, the one who did it, just has piles and piles of angelic weapons lying around apparently. Like she sends them to Charlie by the cartload for the final battle, despite initial implying they were rare finds, which was one of reasons Carmilla didn’t tell any of her fellow demons she killed an angel, in an attempt to prevent a war she thought the demons would lose.

And the writing problems, especially the schizophrenic pacing are a real bummer because Hazbin Hotel has some really interesting ideas and character dynamics. Angel Dust in particular went from a vapid, flirtatious twink to someone who was good at heart but trapped in a bad situation by their prior mistakes. Alastor was a ton of fun and widely considered the best character in the show because he’s a pretty good representative of Hell in general, scheming, ruthless, power-hungry and capable of great violence. The bones of a much better show are in Hazbin Hotel, there’s just not enough meat on them.

I want to stress again, I’m not ripping into Hazbin Hotel because I think it’s bad or because I hate it, I can just see how it could’ve been a lot better. I described the show to a friend as Panty & Stocking in Hell: The Musical, because it’s a great parallel to Hazbin Hotel’s aesthetic and tone, if not plot. And I love Panty & Stocking. It’s boatloads of fun and I felt the same way about Hazbin Hotel, I enjoyed the hell -excuse the pun- out of watching it. But it does have problems and gives me the best excuse I currently have to talk about them. So here goes.

The real problem is a concept critics have started calling the sympathetic strawman, wherein the character the author obviously writes to be a bad guy actually ends up resonating with people because the writer is actually the unhinged person with bad values, and their villains are not villains to normal people. But before I dig into the sympathetic strawman, let’s look at the writing problems which lead us to him.

The first big one, and one of the problems Hazbin Hotel actually shares with anime sometimes, is a lack of stakes. This is a pervasive problem in modern Western media. Heroes aren’t in danger anymore, and the various creators of shows and movies can’t even create the illusion of danger anymore. In the big final battle of Hazbin Hotel the only characters who are actually in any danger are the villains – chiefly Adam and Alastor, who go head to head and have the actual best fight in the show. Because it’s a fight where two powerful figures are actually a threat to one another. The West used to get this and not even that long ago. As bad as Marvel as has become for this specifically, back in Infinity War and Endgame they sold Thanos as a genuine threat. He could beat the Hulk in a fistfight, and that was before he gathered up all the Infinity Stones. And if you go further back to the absolute GOAT of Western film, Lord of the Rings – Boromir was killed. Gandalf fell into shadow to battle a Balrog. Frodo was constantly under assault in his own mind by the Ring, and nearly killed at multiple points in every movie. It doesn’t matter than Gandalf came back and 8 of 9 members of the original Fellowship ended up surviving – almost all of them were inches from death at least once, and you could believe that they were in real danger, that Tolkien could have altered a single line and killed off another one at a moment’s notice. The story had real stakes.

I actually have this problem with Solo Levelling at the moment. In most of Sung Jinwoo’s big fights he keeps saying how a single hit will kill him, then he takes 10 and kills the enemy by stabbing them in the head once or twice. It was at its most ridiculous during the Cerberus fight, that monster practically tore him in half but all he had to do was stab one of three heads a few times to come out on top? Bullshit. I’m still watching Solo Levelling because the presentation is really good and I largely enjoy it, but the idea that Sung Jinwoo is ever going to have a real fight for his life again kinda died after the God scenes. Even in the most recent episode where fought the Red Knight, dude got absolutely bodied but still won with a couple stabs to the head. Hard to take seriously the idea he’s truly in danger anymore. Not a fan him randomly being given free full-heals and fucking lootbox items for working out either. But back to Hazbin Hotel.

Another problem in Hazbin Hotel which is rampant in Western media is the complete lack of male perspective. Here’s an example. Lucifer is treated as a depressed deadbeat dad when he’s first introduced. Charlie even says she didn’t really get to know him growing up, and Alastor straight up calls him a dud parent in song. But if you go back to the intro, Lilith is the one who took Charlie away and has since abandoned her, and all of Hell it turns out, striking some kind of deal so she can vacation in Heaven. Why is the fault in this scenario laid at Lucifer? Why is Lilith not blamed by Charlie in any way? Lilith appears to be the instigator here and judging by her hiding out in Heaven, forgive me if she doesn’t seem like a good parent. Lucifer meanwhile is overjoyed to actually see Charlie, and he shows up to beat down Adam in the final battle, as a good father is expected to do when his daughter is in real trouble. Everything in the story treats Lucifer like a bad guy, but looking at it from the outside as a dude – I can see no clearer allegory for the evils of US family courts on display.

Sorry to the diversion into real life for a second but it’s a well known issue that family courts heavily favor mothers over fathers, and society is much quicker to label a divorced dad as toxic, or a deadbeat, than the single mom. This despite the fact it’s women who usually initiate the divorce and the evidence of the bad effects of single parenthood on child development is overwhelming. Hazbin Hotel treats Lucifer as a loser and a joke, but if you look solely at his actions and the evidence presented, he seems to be a good dad who was cut out from his kid’s life against his will. And if I can be extra cynical for a moment, Lucifer’s characterization in the show versus how he actually acts, it feels very much like the view a daughter raised by a single mom who blamed her ex for everything, and never acknowledged his virtues, would take towards her absentee father. Just saying.

The other problem with Hazbin Hotel is that it is painfully heavy-handed and seemingly oblivious to its own inconsistencies as it pushes its message. The big brain idea of Hazbin Hotel is that heaven is full of hypocritical angels and even demons are worthy of redemption. The pastor-Youtuber Church Centerpoint described the show as a criticism of those Christians who wrong other people because those other people have made mistakes before, so the Christians in question go out of their way to deny these folks redemption, despite scripture explicitly telling them not to do that. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone and all that. Assuming this is the creators’ intent I would agree that is a fair assessment. But that’s also a surface level allegory at best which doesn’t consider things to any degree of depth. Sure some of the demons maybe have their good points but have you seen Hell recently? There’s an entire district of cannibals. Demon overlords rule with might and manipulation, trying to bind their fellows to contracts that reduce demons to actual slaves. Violence, drugs and sexual abuse are rampant. This is all in Hazbin Hotel, which unironically argues demons are worthy of redemption. What about the behavior of the demons at all implies they even want redemption, let alone are capable/worthy of it?

The only one we see is Sir Pentious who only ends up at the hotel because he’s been sent in as a spy and then promptly abandoned once he gets found out. Dude’s been beaten down so bad, he’s either going to remain an eternal joke in Hell or he has to get out. And it’s not entirely clear if he ends up in heaven just because he became good, or because he was actually killed (by Adam) while embodying the heroic virtues that he was previously anathema to. Because if you have to kill even the good demons to get them to Heaven then the exterminations must continue. That aside I find it pretty hilarious that Sir Pentious’ final act, forcefully kissing the woman he loves before going off to die heroically, is celebrated in-universe but has to be the most classically “toxic white male patriarchy” thing I’ve seen in a long time. It’s ok when snake demons do it I guess, lol.

Even more than just the behavior of Hell’s denizens though, there’s a simple fact Charlie is overlooking in her pitch; with exception of native hellspawn like herself, all of the demons already had a lifetime of second chances as a human. I’m no longer a practicing Christian and I haven’t looked at the Bible in a while but even I know that per the Good Book Jesus died on the Cross to cleanse man of original sin and give him the chance to enter Heaven, so long as he believes in God and repents his deeds. As a teenager this is actually what drove me to atheism, I had a Sunday School lesson about both the good man who lived as the Bible said he should and the bad man who didn’t – the specific example was a biker who partied all the time because man things were so much more tame back in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s – but believed and repented would both get into Heaven. As a kid that struck me as deeply unfair. As an adult I care less about the fairness and more about the lesson being taught. I’m a much bigger believer in karma and the old school Catholic approach of needing to do good to get into Heaven myself. But personal taste aside, the scripture is clear. Every demon in Hazbin Hotel barring exceptions like Charlie, had their second chance and they failed it. They condemned themselves to eternal damnation.

Ultimately what Hazbin Hotel rests on is that people always deserve a second chance, apparently even once they get sent to Hell. Now I can’t say I remember a Bible verse explaining how to get out of Hell but setting scripture aside for a moment I just do not agree. Here’s an irl example. Recently in New York, a cop was killed during a traffic stop that ended up in a shootout. Both men in the car had more than 20 prior convictions, including illegal possession of a firearm and armed robbery. In most of the world, and indeed most of the US, those guys would be behind bars. But because New York is a progressive hellscape, with activist DAs who put ideology above duty, these guys are out on the streets. The progressive types believe that these men are not responsible for their crimes, that society forced them to do it, and so they should get an infinite number of second chances. And now a cop, who as far as the reporting goes, has done nothing wrong, is dead – and his 1 year old son will grow up without a dad. It’s a tragic situation, and one that is easily avoided if naïve progressive ideologues weren’t running things. Some people actually can’t be saved, some people blew their second chance and don’t deserve another shot.

Look there are incredible stories of people with all kinds of problems turning their lives around. Sometimes you need to hit rock bottom to build yourself back up. When I say they blew their second chance, I don’t actually mean they only get two attempts to be good. I don’t think anyone actually means you literally get just two chances. But second chance does imply a finite number of chances, you can’t fuck up forever and expect sympathy. And when you’ve got 20 crimes under your belt and have no compunction killing someone? Yeah, I’d say you’re out of second chances. There’s also extreme cases where the crime is so heinous no one argues the guy deserves a second chance. The o’erexample would of course be Hitler, but to avoid walking straight into Godwin’s Law lets go with a more modern figure – Epstein. Forget whether or not you think he actually committed suicide for a second, if Epstein were alive today and awaiting trial do you think he should be given a second chance? I’m betting the answer for most is no. Setting up a child sex-trafficking ring for elite pedos is not the sort of behavior most people and cultures approve of. It’s not really a matter of numbers at the end of the day, the truth is that barring truly radical people like progressive ideologues, everyone has their arbitrary line in the sand as to when someone has actually run out of second chances and is beyond redemption. And per the biblical inspiration of the setting of Hazbin Hotel, the internal logic of show should dictate that the demons already used up their second chances. It takes a progressive type, like the creator, to overlook the past and current evils of the demons of Hazbin Hotel, and claim they can still be redeemed because there is a sliver of good in them somewhere.

This at long last brings us to the sympathetic strawman and the reason modern villains are more relatable than modern heroes, at least in the West. The sympathetic strawman of Hazbin Hotel is Adam. As written Adam is a douchebag of the highest order, a killer who enjoys the killing, a classic misogynist and an irredeemable asshole. He’s clearly written to be the bad guy. But again, that’s just surface level. Despite this, Adam is one of the best characters in the show, second in my opinion only to Alastor, who is not a sympathetic strawman but a well done villain. Look at how much more attention and positive qualities Alastor gets compared to Adam. Adam is treated as a stupid, hypocritical dudebro, who enjoys killing demons for the sake of it. Alastor meanwhile is a schemer, an overlord the other demon overlords are scared of. A being capable of great violence and great cunning. Alastor isn’t supporting Charlie because he believes in redemption, he’s doing it gain influence over her and further expand his power. He’s unashamedly evil, and that is something audiences adore, as the legendary Big Jack Horner proved to the world. Adam though? He’s written like a caricature of an asshole fratbro. And while there is some surface level fun to be had in that kind of character, all of the problems I’ve mentioned thus far really do culminate in Adam.

As already mentioned, his characterization is as subtle as a brick to the face and has all the nuance of a sledgehammer. No thought whatsoever is given to his perspective, and he’s one of the only characters who actually has stakes when fighting- and in fact dies. Hazbin Hotel justifies this by poisoning the well against Adam at the outset, when Charlie explains in the intro that Lilith left him for Lucifer because Adam was controlling and demanded she submit to him. But this story is actually taken from a book called Hell’s Story in Charlie’s room. Who wrote that book? No idea, but presumably Lilith. The book takes a wholly positive view of Lilith, a wholly negative view of Adam and treats Lucifer like a has-been – one might even say an old fling that has since lot his spark. But remember, Lilith has not only abandoned her daughter, but her entire goddamn kingdom, so she can hang out in the place her own actions got her kicked out of. Talk about having your cake and eating it too. I can’t actually confirm if Lilith wrote the book or not, but it doesn’t really matter because the point of it is to paint Lilith as awesome and denigrate Adam and Lucifer. Deliberate or not, it reads like textbook propaganda. This despite the fact, there are no indications outside the book that Lilith is a good person at all, even by Hell’s low, low standards.

Now consider things from Adam’s point of view. He’s the first man. His first wife leaves him for Lucifer. Maybe that’s his fault as the book says, or maybe it isn’t since it seems like an unreliable source with its pro-Lilith bias. His second wife, this time made from his own ribs, also betrays him for the same guy. That’s a blow to the ego if ever there was one. More than that, because of Lilith and Eve, Adam is cast out of paradise and humanity is doomed by sin. Then from his earthly position, Adam will go on to experience great things – like the first murder. But despite all this Adam is still a good guy during his lifetime, and you can tell that, even if it’s never shown, because he gets sent back to heaven. He did not eat the forbidden fruit and become linked to Hell like his ex-wives, he is by the lore of the show if not the writing, a man worthy of divine ordainment. And from his heavenly perch he has to watch as his progeny, the human race, falls further and further into depravity, swelling Hell to such an overpopulated mess that it could threaten Heaven and Lucifer actually agrees to the exterminations.

It’s also worth noting here that when Charlie first asks for Lucifer’s help he rebuffs her, gently, by making pretty much the same argument as Adam. If memory serves his exact words were, “I gave these people free will and look what they did with it.” He doesn’t believe the demons can be saved either, he’s just willing to grant Charlie’s wish for a heavenly audience because it’s the first time the daughter that was taken from him is asking for his help and he doesn’t want to let her down.

Adam doesn’t believe the demons can be redeemed, and if the biblical lore that Hazbin Hotel borrows from is to be taken seriously in the show’s setting then he’s actually correct. The demons had a lifetime to repent for their sins and get a shot at Heaven, and they chose not to. By the logic of the world, hell is actually forever. But again that pesky progressive bias creeps in and makes redemption always possible, even in the one place you only end up if you outright refuse redemption up to your deathbed. His asshole behavior and arrogance is pretty understandable as well, dude took a psychological beating from being cucked by the same guy, twice, and still ended up going to heaven. If that isn’t a sign of encouragement, nothing is. And as I’ve seen others argue, it could easily be his defense mechanism to keep himself from dwelling on Lilith and Eve.

Likewise Adam’s misogyny is based on very relevant personal experience. Not only did the first two women betray him, deserved or not (again I don’t trust the intro book), but they literally damned humanity by their actions. I can see why Adam has issues with women. Which is ironic because he somehow has the best relationship in the entire show at the same time. Charlie and Vaggie are as bland as can be. Sir Pentious and Angel Dust’s hooker friend is just kinda crammed in there, but Lute and Adam are like peas in a pod. Not only are they together all the time, and hold each other back when necessary, but they have such great chemistry that it oozes without being spoken. The fist bumps and high fives, the abrupt but choreographed flights/dances, the duet during the trial in Heaven. Adam smiling on his deathbed up at Lute, the one woman he trusted completely and who trusted him completely in return. If not for the fact Adam is painted as a sadistic killer and Hazbin Hotel actually allows demons to be redeemed, Adam would be the outright hero of the story, a flawed asshole hero sure, but I need only point to Iron Man to show that people are ok with that.

He isn’t a hero for those aforementioned reasons but that’s mainly down to the sloppy writing and progressive theory if you ask me, and if you made it this far I assume you’re asking me. I mean the writer’s idea for the princess of Hell was a bubbly, happy-go-lucky, goody two shoes. Kind of an odd choice by normal standards, but then again the progressives are very much fond of evil and freely identify with evil characters.. Like that time when the LGBTQ movement claimed fucking Pennywise, the eldritch killer clown, as a gay icon. If any progressive types are reading this and made it to this point, I just have to ask: Why would you do that? There’s a difference between liking an imposing villain and actually identifying with evil. Anyway I think that covers everything. Sorry for about the politics, in an ideal world they would not intrude on my entertainment and I would never talk about them, but alas reality is disappointing. Thanks for reading, see you in the next one.

Unpopular Opinion: Kingdom – The Fire Burned Out

Man it sucks to be writing this. TLDR is that Kingdom, an anime I have stood by for more than a decade is something I don’t even want to watch anymore. Not because the story sucks, or the genre doesn’t interest me or anything like that. I’m still reading the manga. In fact to a casual observer Kingdom is stronger than ever, 5 seasons deep with updated visuals and a soundtrack helmed by Hiroyuki Sawano and Kohta Yamamoto – who combined account for the incredible and iconic Attack on Titan soundtrack. But the soul of what made the Kingdom anime special has been gone for a long time and without it, I don’t see the point in continuing to watch Kingdom, when I get basically the same experience from reading it. There will be spoilers, you’ve been warned.

First off to address anyone confused by that last critique, no the anime and source material it adapts should not be the same experience. They may have the same story, same characters and same scenes but the two mediums offer distinct experiences – or at least they should. For an idea of what I mean let’s turn to Frieren, easily the strongest show airing right now. The anime has perfectly captured the tone and feel of the manga, to it’s benefit because the manga is great, but it also builds on it with fight scenes that way surpass their manga equivalents. Go and read the chapters and you’ll see what I mean, Stark’s dragon fight in the manga is a few brief panels and far less detailed, Frieren fighting her clone is also handled much faster with few if any of the crazy spells the staff went out of their way to bring to life in the anime. Now most adaptations are not so lucky but any team which takes advantage of the differences between anime and manga as mediums can create a distinct experience despite adapting the same story. And if nothing else the original season of Kingdom was very distinct from the manga.

There’s no getting around the main flaw of Kingdom’s first two seasons. They have a lot of godawful CG. It’s what they’re most known for. And the three newer seasons make limited use of CG if they use it at all – though season 5 is really fond of repeating its terrible CGI gif of running through the dense forest. To the Kingdom tourist, the new seasons have an obvious visual upgrade – but that’s only sort of true. First of all the first two seasons had plenty of traditional animation outside of battles, and it was honestly even better looking than what we have now, which it started showing off not too deep into the show. Too late for anyone immediately put off by the ugly CG I admit, but it was there. More importantly though, the new seasons have undergone their own kind of downgrade, they’ve just become moving manga. For those not aware, moving manga is when an anime adapts the manga extremely literally, basically just coloring in manga panels and doing the bare minimum to connect the panels in terms of animation, you know the opposite of the goddamn point of making an anime adaptation. You can totally tell if you compare the manga panels but also because that bare minimum animation is garbage. Look at how Shin swings his glaive in these wonky bursts of fast slashes between the main manga panels, it looks terrible. And it ruins one of things the original two seasons did so well, the fighting.

Look I’m not so blind that I can’t admit the old season’s fights usually look terrible, they were working with terrible CG a lot of the time. But within those limitations the staff made their mark by giving different characters more distinct attack patterns, and importantly, attack sounds. Shin’s sword used to sound heavy, like you could hear the blow tearing through multiple guys and their armor at once. Kyoukai had this airy, ethereal sound effect to sell the supernatural skill and finesse of her swordsmanship. Heavy blows from the Ouki or Renpa had crushing weight behind them. All of that, those little details that helped bring the world and characters alive in the scenes were the animation usually wasn’t good enough to carry things alone – that shit’s all gone now. Battle noises are more generic, characters don’t attack differently and suddenly Shin will spaz out and unleash a flurry of weak blows like he’s holding a dagger not a glaive. The whole point of Shin’s fighting style is he’s stupid strong for his size and will blow through all but the toughest foes, why would you take away details that sell his core character traits and replace them with animation which undercuts said traits?

It actually gets the point that I want the old CG back sometimes, because at least it wasn’t moving manga. Yeah it’s ugly but at least they tried to make something of it. They took advantage of the CG to make fights that were more interesting even if the animation wasn’t that good. Have you seen the fights of season 5? You don’t really, because they keep cutting between manga panels. Sure you’ll see CG scuffling in the background and you’ll see some scenes of randoms getting stomped or the occasional clashed swords of skilled foes. But the fights don’t feel the same, they aren’t continuous scenes, they’re just a series of cuts between static panels, intercut with CG brawling or Shin spazzing out. Look at Shin’s duel with Keisha. Where was the weight, where was the heat? I know it’s a brief duel on purpose but come the fuck on, Shin’s earliest fights against random assassins had more buildup and payoff than the killing of a major general in Keisha.

Or how about Kyoukai’s big revenge match in season 3. That was a character defining battle for her, and it’s a one to one of the manga where she and her sister’s killer instant transmission across the battlefield and we only get glimpses where they collide or when they stop for a second before instant transmissioning again. It’s really underwhelming because it doesn’t take any of anime’s strengths as a medium into a account, it just colors in manga panels. By contrast Kyoukai’s first fight against Houken, despite being shit CG was way more interesting. Could the team fully translate her unnatural movements during the fight to the CG models? Not really, there were scenes where it looked pretty janky, but they tried anyway. And if nothing else you can tell how unnatural Kyoukai’s techniques are because of the janky movements. Plus you can see what they were going for even if they couldn’t quite pull it off. Is that really something to praise? By itself probably not, just another black mark to the meme level bad visuals of Kingdom and Kingdom 2 – but compared to coloring in manga panels it’s a huge step up. At least I know the original guys gave enough of a shit to try something they weren’t quite capable of rather than just half-assing it and calling it a day. And before someone gets up in arms I’m not blaming the animators for this. I know they work crazy hours and have a lot of talent, this is a dig at the directors and producers, who either lacked the vision to do better or didn’t manage workflow well enough and had to make the staff color in panels to get the episodes finished on time.

But even the loss of better battle sounds and the adoption of moving manga pales in comparison to the biggest downgrade from the new seasons, the soundtrack. Far be it from me to call Sawano and Yamamoto anything other than hugely talented and successful, but this ain’t no Attack on Titan. Since Kingdom 3 the soundtrack has incorporated a lot of Sawano’s signature ticks, like lots of electronic. But for the life of me I can’t pick a single track from this OST that has caught fire. There is no YouSeeBigGirl, Ashes on the Fire or Before My Blood Runs Dry, nothing on this soundtrack is in remotely the same caliber. Does the some of the aggressive electronic backing work during say a charge into battle? Sure. But not only is it not distinct from Sawano’s or Yamamoto’s other work, it’s just not memorable at all. And it totally gets away from what made the soundtrack of Kingdom and Kingdom 2 so great. The original two seasons had a soundtrack that was more period appropriate with traditional drums and horns, and blown up to an incredibly epic scale. Kingdom is all about the court intrigues and battles to unify China during one of it’s most chaotic periods and the music wanted you to know that. In the modern seasons, 3 to 5, the soundtrack is very unobtrusive. You might notice it here and there but it’s not making a splash. In the first two seasons the soundtrack was impossible to ignore. So many grand sweeping tracks, that not only fit the epic scale of the story but hyped up scenes to high heaven.

Obviously there’s only so much I explain on this point by writing so here’s an assignment for anyone interested. Go to YouTube, type in Kingdom Season 5 OST and pick the first result that isn’t the OP. Give it a listen. It’s a good track, with drums, strings and abrasive (I mean this in a good way) electronic beats that give the track its aggressive tone. It’s not Ashes on the Fire, but it’s a solid battle theme nonetheless, and in a vacuum I would have no complaints whatsoever. Now go back to YouTube, search Kingdom ost gaika and pick the first result. It’s a completely different style of sound. The drumming and strings are different, there’s no electronic beats, and the horns, my God the horns. You can feeling the heroism and grandeur in the scene this track is for from the horns alone, it’s like an Imperial Chinese version of Ride of the Rohirrim – which I count as one of the best themes ever made. I’m tearing up listening to RotR and Gaika back to back because I can feel it, the call to adventure, that siren song of death and glory. Yamamoto’s track from the Season 5 OST is fine and would work well in a lot of shows, but I wouldn’t trade the old OSTs like Gaika for the world. For Kingdom to lose the old soundtrack, with its unique identity and amazing, bombastic music is an unimaginably huge blow to the anime. Not because Sawano and Yamamoto suck or are phoning it in, they don’t and they aren’t, but because what came before was something truly special.

The sound is really what this all boils down to. The old seasons of Kingdom had the same great story as the new ones, the adaptations have been extremely faithful, with only one change I know of where they removed a minor arc for Kyoukai from very early in the story that wasn’t very good. And I love the story and the setting, I’m a history buff. Seeing ancient Chinese warfare brought to fantastical life is exactly the kind of show I want. But like I said both the old and new seasons of Kingdom have the same good story. The only things that have changed from the old seasons to the new are the visuals and the sound. And knowing how much bad CG me and everyone else who watched the first two seasons sat through, I can say with confidence the sound and the story where what carried the experience. They were so good I could overlook the CG. But now? Even though the ugly CG is mostly gone and the visuals have clearly improved, the moving manga style of new Kingdom paired with a much weakened soundtrack has greatly diminished the experience of watching Kingdom.

I can go to the manga for more detailed panels and some of the manga stuff that they’re coloring in obviously should have been animated more smoothly to get the effect – like this bit where Shin starts to grow bigger before he kills Keisha. Because a manga panel is static the imagine looks a little awkward but it conveys the idea, of Keisha perceiving Shin to grow in presence. But just coloring in that panel rather than showing Shin’s presence grow smoothly in the anime? That looks garbage because it would be so easy to fix. Fuck, the first season had a similar moment when Ouki fought the fatso from Zhao, and even though they were CG the team understood how to smoothly scale Ouki’s growing presence. Like look at this shot in Kingdom 5. They aren’t even scaling Shin up in this shot, they oversized him and are slowly sliding him up the screen without actually increasing the size of the character. That’s some amateur hour bullshit right there.

This was not worth losing the OG soundtrack, if that shit was still playing I’d watch no matter how many visual fuckups Kingdom had, and I know that because I watched the original season in all its terrible CG glory. But at this point, the Kingdom anime has so little to recommend it over or in addition to the manga that I no longer want to bother watching. And as a long-time Kingdom fan, that sucks to say. But I put up with the changes for almost 3 seasons now, and I just can’t do it anymore. Not with the moving manga look and massive audio downgrades in soundtrack and battle noises. The new seasons just don’t offer an experience different enough to reading the manga for me to watch the anime too. The Kingdom experience I loved died a long time ago, not the story, characters or source material, those have all been preserved. But the epic feeling of diving into ancient battles with a military romantic’s flair? It’s gone, traded out for superficial visual improvements that in no way replace what was lost. The fire that was the old Kingdom burned out long ago, and the embers are longer enough to keep me going back to the anime. And as a long-time Kingdom fan that was the last thing I ever wanted to have to say.

Understanding Femininity: How to Balance it in Character Writing

Despite the title this is not a post which will unravel the mysteries of women. I am a man, I do not understand women. But I do understand what men find appealing about women and femininity, how femininity can be used both irl and in fiction, and how women real or imaginary can break the mold without losing their appeal to the male unga bunga brain. Keep in mind my favorite female anime character of all time is Ryuuko from Kill la Kill, who is definitely not what you might consider traditionally feminine. But we’ll get there. So strap in boys and girls, and prepare for some serious mansplaining. There will be spoilers ahead you’ve been warned.

There are 4 things men in general look for in the women they want to marry. Youth, purity, loyalty and appreciation/support. Let’s call these the four pillars of traditional femininity. Despite the common and relentless portrayal of men as pigs in media (which we deserve sometimes, in fairness), these 4 pillars are way more important than being hot. Being hot will certainly get male attention, but hotness is ephemeral and skin deep – beauty is something with a lot more staying power. And beauty is basically the crystallization of the 4 pillars. Also long hair is a huge plus, not that chicks can’t rock a sexy pixie cut sometimes, but there’s something about long hair that connects to our lizard brain at a fundamental level.

So what inspired this was a mix of a feminist critique of anime villainesses, Anime has a Villainess Problem by Josei Cafe on Youtube and some musings on one of my favorite currently airing shows, Apothecary Diaries. To borrow the concerns of Josei Cafe’s video, she characterized traditional femininity as passive/supportive, with the implication passive/supportive rather is bad rather than girls going out and taking charge. There’s a lot wrong with this, and it’s not because of the feminist theory backing it up. First of all passive and supportive are not the same thing, and there are a ton of reasons why a character might play a supportive role in a given situation beyond their compliance with gender norms. To borrow one of Josei Cafe’s examples in My Hero Academia’s Uraraka, Uraraka is generally a support because her power isn’t gear towards offense in the same was Deku’s or Bakugo’s is. Can she mix in some powerful attacks under the right conditions? Sure, her best scene is still the time she went 1v1 with Bakugo in season 2 and had him on the ropes for a hot minute. But ultimately her power works better as a support tool than a big gun and her role in the story reflects that, she finds a niche she’s better suited to than charging in and throwing down.

You can also write a character who is supportive and traditionally feminine but can still take charge in her own scenes without skipping a beat. Yor from SpyxFamily is a perfect example, and frankly her superhuman moments are almost always my favorite scenes in whatever episode they happen. Yor’s strength doesn’t take away from her femininity at all, if anything the fact she wields it to protect Anya and how it contrasts with her nurturing side add to her femininity. Fern from Sousou no Frieren is also a good example. She’s not really the leader of the team but keeps things running where Frieren and Stark are more likely to slack off, and when it comes to a fight Fern is anything but a slouch. Another thing to note about Yor and Fern is that are great examples of beauty over hotness. Men are attracted to both and I’m not going to pretend we won’t do something stupid for a hot chick, but at the same time you can get away with showing very little skin and still very much capture the dreaded male gaze.

Pro-tip for the ladies irl: You look great. Forget about what the mean girls say, or how you feel looking at Instagram, Tiktok and OF models. Ignore that shit. Most guys will think you are attractive just the way your are, with little to no makeup. We are simple creatures and we appreciate the beauty in simple things. Honest to God, you will do more for most guys by putting on a touch of makeup and being down to earth and wholesome than you will glamming it up to the max and dressing provocatively. Sure the latter will get you male attention, I won’t deny that, but it will be one night stand attention or worse. If you want more than that, toning it down and believing you look good as is will do wonders.

But ok, let’s say you think traditional femininity is too restrictive for your tastes, and you want to make a female character who is not very feminine but is still beloved or respected by fans. Two examples that spring to mind are Balalaika and Olivier Armstrong from Black Lagoon and FMAB respectively. I chose these two specifically because while Olivier is still attractive if not as feminine as usual, Balalaika has huge burn scar over her face and is not attractive. What both these women have that makes them stand out though is that they have the respect, and in turn loyalty, of their male peers/subordinates. One of the many differences between men and women is that men don’t really bond by talking. We bond by doing things together. We make close friends with the dudes who are in the trenches with us, metaphorically speaking. Olivier and Balalaika have been in the trenches with their men, literally in their cases, and that affords them the kind of respect men usually reserve only for other men. It’s not that we don’t respect women, we do, but they aren’t one of the boys either.

The boys will insult each other as viciously as possible as a friendly greeting, tackle or punch each other randomly for shits and giggles, and do stuff along the lines of the Armstrong handshake scene from FMAB. Goofy and inane as that stuff seems, it’s how we demonstrate friendship. Generally we don’t do that stuff to women because we’d get the cops called on us. But ladies, if you’re reading this, if you want to see what I mean, get into a hobby that is mostly male dominated or that your guy friends like. It could be the gym, it could be nerd stuff, it could be outdoor activities, whatever you feel comfortable with. If you make genuine effort to get involved and follow along with whatever random thing those guys find interesting, your wife material coefficient will skyrocket. Appreciate a man for his qualities and he’ll remember you fondly forever; appreciate a man’s hobby and he’ll want to propose on the spot. Making a female character who toughs it out with the guys is one way to make someone less feminine but still a character which fits nicely into a story and can earn the adoration of fans.

And for it’s worth, you can still get this effect without compromising a character’s femininity either. Erza Scarlet from the much maligned Fairy Tail is a great example. She’s a bit more of one the guys, in the sense she gets stuck in when it comes time to fight. But at the same time she’s gorgeous, demonstrates loyalty both in her complex relationship with Jellal and to her guild, is obviously pure and appreciates the men around her even as she routinely curbstomps them when she gets tired of Natsu and Gray fighting over nothing. Hell she even takes advantage of feminine appeal on purpose all the time by having a lot of sexy “joke” armor sets to make men act unwise. Like when she does her nurse impression on Tenroujima and the seriously injured men instantly line up for treatment even though she sucks at actually treating them.

Jumping back to Josei Cafe’s critique, her other main problem was that female characters who weren’t supportive were stuck being femme fatales. Bizarrely her examples where Beryl from Sailor, even though she later describes Beryl as a dark seductress – which is not the same thing as a femme fatale – and Toga from MHA, who actually has almost no feminine appeal whatsoever in my book. Don’t stick your dick in crazy is cautionary advice all men share with each other on the reg and Toga is nowhere near hot enough to justify trying to deal with her level of crazy. But bad examples aside, Josei Cafe is right that the femme fatale is another common female role, and for good reason. Women have boobs. They’re why we call you the fairer sex. The femme fatale, and the dark seductress, are both common female archetypes because using their looks to their advantage is something women get away with a lot easier than men. They are women’s natural weapon in the same way bigger muscles are men’s natural weapon. The idea this is a problem is silly. As detailed in my prior examples you can still have a powerful female character who is feminine or uses her sensuality to get her way. In the realm of fiction, women can truly have it all. That a large chunk of female characters make use of their natural advantage in looks isn’t sexism or lazy writing, it’s just realism. You can go outside that box if you want, but it being the norm is not a dig at women. If anything it’s a compliment, you really can lead guys by the nose with your looks if you play your cards right.

Ok, but what if none of these options appeal. You want your female lead to be someone really special, to be feminine but not too feminine, and to not rely masculine things like war to get it done, what options do you have then? Enter Maomao from Apothecary Diaries. What Maomao does is strike a balance. She’s feminine enough to be attractive, and outright gorgeous when a scene really calls for it, but she also has the limitations of a low status woman in feudal China, she can and will be pushed around by whoever has an excuse to do so. She’s also allowed more room to be quirky, adorkable, fun and unique. Maomao is such a great lead because she doesn’t break through her obstacles by force or with sexiness, in fact she routinely makes herself less attractive to avoid the hassle of unwanted attention. She breaks through by using her head because that’s about all she’s got to work with most of the time. To the point that she could be a male character of equally low status in the same setting and the story wouldn’t change that much. In that sense Maomao has universal appeal.

Maomao is certainly more feminine than masculine but she is also very weak in certain key feminine areas in a way that mirrors men. Not her boobs, for those thinking physically. No, it’s her social skills. The social portion of young women’s’ brains are way more developed than boys their age. In much the same way that boys their age will be way more physically developed. This is why the guys you like aren’t catching your signals ladies, they go right over our heads. Seriously. Irl advice moment, when it comes to guys just be direct and expect the same from us. From my own experience, a woman will sometimes read attraction where it isn’t from the ways you interact with her and sometimes she will drop a hint so close to an outright confession you’ll look back and wonder how in the hell you missed her setting you up to ask her out like that. And in the latter case, the guy (me) will facepalm with all his might in shame when he finally figures it out. Crippling Maomao in that area specifically puts her in the interesting position where she vaguely understands some female signaling, but can’t be bothered with that shit, and will still routinely put her foot in her mouth if she speaks before thinking. In the same vein her social awareness is weakened in some ways, especially with regards to romance. She’ll miss obvious stuff there but have razor sharp awareness of her social station and the limits of it. Overall Maomao is thoroughly captivating blend of character traits.

That being the case, maybe you don’t think you’re ready to write your Maomao. Or perhaps you want to fight traditional femininity for your own reasons and go all in the Strong Female Character. Go for it – with some caveats. It’s no secret that the West and Marvel in-particular have gone all in on the Strong Female Character aka the girlboss, in the bulk of their movies and shows since Endgame. And let’s be real these characters suck dick, metaphorically speaking of course, I wouldn’t want to degrade a girlboss by implying she would do anything women do. There are a bunch of reasons why the girlboss sucks but one of the big ones is that they basically ditch femininity entirely, and assume stereotypically male traits for no reason. There are so many shots of women in Marvel and Star Wars being stoic and stern, standing with arms crossed like they’re tough. And it all falls flat because it just makes them really fucking boring. Not every female character needs to be a chatty Cathy but standing around giving people the silent treatment works a lot better when the subject is a big, physically imposing character – which women generally are not. The other big reason is that they adopt fully male actions without any changes to their physique, resulting in hilariously bad action scenes where short women are throwing around men who tower over them like rag dolls. It looks dumb and the audience doesn’t buy it, just look at the declining ticket sales.

Now in fiction you can mitigate this somewhat by creating a woman is actually unusually big and muscled, the muscle mommy to men of culture (though as an aside I really hate mommy and daddy being sexualized terms now, what the fuck is wrong with the internet, it didn’t used to be this way). Valmet from Jormungand is a great example because damn that girl is built like a brick shithouse and she’s got that Scandinavian height going. You can also circumvent it like in the currently airing Chained Soldier where women alone have access to some kind of special power that grants them abilities above men. You can forgo both these situations and just play it rule of cool as well, but that gets closer to girlboss territory which is not territory you want to be in. If you think you want to be in girlboss territory, my advice is take a close look at the paired leading ladies of Kill la Kill, Kiryuuin Satsuki and Matoi Ryuuko. Setting aside the fact they are just great characters on their own merits, they embody what the girlboss should be, rather than what we keep getting. Satsuki and Ryuuko both settle things with force, before and after getting their Kamui, but Kill la Kill is an absurdist world where rule of cool is completely in vouge so that’s not a problem. But more importantly even though both take on certain masculine traits they don’t outright abandon their feminine sexuality, and they struggle when push comes to shove.

Building off the problems I mentioned earlier, the girlboss is usually an invincible plank of wood because, they aren’t allowed to be demeaned in any way. And struggling, or being weak, is somehow taken as a sign demeaning women, at least according to a certain political ideology which has an outsized influence on western media. Satsuki and Ryuuko mop the floor with a lot of people over the course of Kill la Kill but they also really struggle against various opponents, mostly the less serious and disciplined Ryuuko, before she builds herself up to the point Satsuki finds her a problem. And they both struggle against the final antagonist. Both girls are allowed to be strong while still failing from time to time, to be in real danger, and overcome challenge. They also both have distinct personalities instead of just going for stoic silent man impression. Satsuki goes for stoic sometimes but quite she is not. And Ryuuko is a punk chick and proud of it. Both have their shortcomings and struggle at certain points in the story, but they are a great pair ultimately because they are fully themselves, with deeply-held beliefs they are willing to fight for, and they don’t just ignore their sexuality for some reason to do so. They embrace all their qualities and fight for the things they value, and importantly they value good things most people can connect with. That’s not just compelling for female characters, that’s something compelling about any character.

Moral of this blog post, don’t look at traditional femininity and common female character archetypes as a weakness of anime or the sign of a bad writer. Understand why they work as they do, because you can’t bend the rules in a compelling fashion without understanding the rules first. The boundaries are not set in stone, there is a lot of room to play with a female character’s femininity, just don’t go full girlboss and erase it entirely unless you have given your character and story some serious consideration. Femininity and it’s common archetypes are not limitations, they’re tools for you to use when it comes time to write a female character. If you made it to the end, thank you for reading. I’ll see you in the next one.

Not so Surly Summary: Winter 2024 Cometh

I hope all my readers across the globe had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to the new year. If you don’t celebrate Christmas for whatever reason I highly recommend giving it a try. Lots of time with family, over-eating and presents; if not for the music it would be perfect.

But Christmas is behind us, and with its passing I wanted to review what I watched last season. But because the last couple seasons have been unusual, i.e. some production problems and a resurgence of double cour shows, and a new season is just around the corner I also wanted to throw in my two cents about what shows look interesting. How could you resist this obscure yet surely priceless knowledge? There will be spoilers ahead you’ve been warned.

On the whole 2023 was an incredible year for anime. It had a ton of high profile sequels, a strong batch of new heavy hitters and even the conclusion to one of the greats of modern anime in the Shingeki no Kyojin finale. In fact it was a year so full of good stuff that shows like Tengoku Daimakyou and Jigokuraku, bold and interesting shows for their respective genres that surely would have exploded a few years ago, were closer to hidden gems in the sheer mass of anime being made. And the quality of animation for the high end stuff just seems to keep getting better and better. Like don’t get me wrong, the good stuff from a decade ago still holds up fantastically. But when you look at the middling productions of today versus the top tier stuff the difference it staggering. That’s always been true to some extent but it feels more so than ever. This is somewhat of a double-edged sword on occasion, because shows like Helck or A Returner’s Magic Should be Special – which have good stories but only serviceable animation, not bad just ok – look so much weaker now when Jujutsu Kaisen and Frieren are out here absolutely flexing the mastery their respective staffs have in animation. There’s no two bones about it, anime fans have been eating good for the past few years and 2023 is no exception.

Speaking of the end of 2023, what shows made their mark in Fall 2023? I already mentioned JJK 2 and Frieren who were absolutely the king and queen of the season. Jujutsu Kaisen had a huge improvement in the writing compared to season 1 and the already impressive fight scenes were pushed to new heights. So many amazing shots and scenes came out of JJK 2, it’s nuts. It legit dropped more incredible moments by itself than some older seasons of anime did combined in years past. Geto going bad, every Toji fight, the Mahoraga vs Sukuna flex, the death of Jogoat, the long battle against Mahito, Gojo going wild, and more. Ironically probably my favorite little animation cut out of all it was when Mahito dodged Yuji’s punch by twisting his head around like an owl and elongating his neck to get distance in the tiny elevator they were fighting in. I know it wasn’t best cut in the show but it took me so off guard and was such a creative use of Mahito’s abilities that it really stuck with me. Action fans haven’t been spoiled like this since the first season of One Punch Man.

The only thing perhaps more surprising than the boatload of incredible action scenes from JJK 2 is that a quite, slow, mostly peaceful and contemplative fantasy anime stormed into to the seasonal throneroom alongside it. JJK is to the best of my knowledge the currently highest selling manga in the world, with an explosion in popularity due the hype anime seasons and prequel movie. Sousou no Frieren came in and took the top spot on MAL, dethroning the notoriously tenacious FMAB, before it even finished airing. Make no mistake Frieren can absolutely go hard when the time calls for it, the dragon fight and twin battles of episode 9 bow to no one in animation quality. But where JJK was pure action hype mashed together for 20ish episodes back to back, Frieren combines the comfy feeling of moe, the slow pace of slice of life and the wonder of fantasy into a perfect blend. After years of “fantasy” or isekai stories centered on basic bitch RPG and MMORPG worlds, Frieren is out here reminding people what fantasy used to look like. I mean it’s still basically built around Dragon Quest in the logic of the world and character archetypes but it hides that fact a hell of a lot better than most. The baseline level of animation quality in Frieren is jaw-dropping, the forests and towns that make up the backgrounds look alive, hair sways and flows like water – in the slow scenes and the actions scenes, when most sakuga would simplify rather than add more detail when cranking the speed and fluidity of the animation. Frieren is the first fantasy anime in long time that genuinely feels magical again. And as lifelong fantasy enjoyer, there is no higher compliment I can give than that.

Let’s lightning round the rest. I dropped Kingdoms of Ruin at around the halfway point because it foolishly tried to tell a story when its only appeal was gratuitous misanthropic violence. Dark Gathering, which started as mildly entertaining has increasingly committed to the dark aspects of the show and ended up a quite good battle horror show with each new evil spirit getting more and more brutal. Always good to see a show that keeps improving, and I’ll look forward to a sequel. Kusuriya no Hitorigoto has been great, proving once again that Aoi Yuuki is the GOAT of female VAs and can turn any leading role into an instant hit. Undead Unluck has been a solid action experience with some interesting powers and setting details. DekoMajo was as predicted, a nice relaxing show with comedy that ranged from painfully mid to actually hilarious and off the wall, with a hot witch to bind it all together. I mentioned Helck and A Returner’s Magic Should be Special already and they were both solid but hamstrung by middling animation quality. Both are decent adaptations of the source material but Returner’s cuts off before the ball really gets rolling and Helck had some pacing issues with the big expo dump before the finale.

I picked up Shangri La Frontier and it is the o’erexample of what I mean about modern animation quality being a double-edged sword. It’s mostly mindless fun, which I have no issues with – in fact it’s very much like a lesser Bofuri, and I love Bofuri. But at the same time I could not give less of a fuck about the story and characters, none of them are even remotely interesting. The only one I like is Vysache the one-eyed battle-scarred lord of the rabbitfolk, mostly because they gave him the same VA as Hanma Yujiro from Baki and that’s hilarious. But the animation is excellent, if not truly in the big leagues. The mindless fun action and good animation are totally carrying this show. Meanwhile shows with such better stories like Helck and Returner’s wallow in obscurity and seem more mediocre than they should, because the gap in animation quality just keeps getting bigger as anime gets more mainstream and suddenly levels up.

Zom100 finally finished and it was mostly good, having the losers of society attempt to destroy Akira’s hometown but ultimately failing because they had such huge character flaws. They did mess up here though by trying to redeem the main bad guy. It was a textbook example of my biggest pet peeve in anime, forgiving someone who really doesn’t deserve it. This dude was such a bitter bastard that he hated Akira and wanted to make him into a zombie because he saw Akira having fun once with his friends in college back when the villain was not just maidenless but friendless. Trying to give him a last minute redemption because deep down he just wanted to be loved and hang out with friends of his own, even though he just got a bunch of people who took him in and saved strangers from zombies killed because of his massive inferiority complex and petty resentment was utterly asinine. Why anime? Fucking why?

And now we look to the future, to Winter 2024. I meant to get this done before the episodes of anything dropped but I was a day late and a dollar short. Fortunately this gave me a chance to test the first episode of one show with a premise that sounded potentially fun in Ishura. I made it to the eight minute mark laughing all the way at the terrible animation and shitty writing. Oh and a super-edgy death where a cute girl got torn limb from limb by a CG robot. Thank you Ishura, very cool. Seriously skip this one, it starts with an earthquake which destroys a city, and the animation team conveyed this by using a basic screenshake and randomly adding buildings that were broken and reduced to rubble, they didn’t even show one crumble in real-time. As good as animation can get now, shows like this will always be around to drag down the average.

As for what I’m actually looking forward to? Well despite all the sequels I’m only doing three. Blue Exorcist which wasn’t technically a starter anime for me but was early enough in my road to weebdom that I’m quite fond it. Mashle, which I may drop if it doesn’t improve – don’t get me wrong the first season wasn’t bad but it wasn’t that good either and someone had hyped it up for me, making the experience that much more lackluster. And Kingdom 5 because I’m legally obligated to cover every season of Kingdom since I enjoyed the ultra janky first season way back in 2012, damn looking up that start date up made me feel old. But what about the brand new kids on the block?

I know the one everyone is paying attention to is Solo Leveling but I’m very wary about this one. The last time a Korean manhwa adaptation was this hyped, by people other than me anyway, it was God of Highschool – which was adapted so poorly as to suck ass. I’ve only read the first chapter of Solo Leveling and it didn’t appeal. I don’t mind people training to get stronger, or weaklings eventually becoming powerhouses but I want it done through honest grit. The fact the MC is pathetic at first but gets a secret method of power leveling to help him eventually become a big deal is not based, it is cringe. Still willing to give it a shot, and I hope a strong adaptation overcomes my innate disdain for the premise, but I’m being cautious about how this one will turn out. Hype is very dangerous when something goes wrong.

Metallic Rogue released a good PV a while back and a Bones original is always welcome. That said the last time an android-based scifi came out with a smooth PV it was Pluto and as I detailed extensively, Pluto was garbage. Going to be cautiously optimistic on this and hope whatever story hiccups may happen are smoothed over by some classic Bones fight animation. Majo to Yaaju also had a promising PV and fantasy is more my cup of tea. Still going to be cautious because vampire anime tend to be very hit or miss; and Sengoku Youko also sounds up my alley, kind of like a blend of Inuyasha and Nurarihyon no Mago – both of which I enjoy and which date me big time. Folklore has always been a big interest of mine and more often than not anime centered on Japanese folklore have been enjoyable.

But there two that are head shoulders above the rest, the first being The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic. I actually wrote about this one before, in a comparison to Redo of Healer. Fear not dear reader, Wrong Way is nothing like Redo of Healer. In Wrong Way the MC gets summoned accidentally along with the main heroes and has healing magic, which is mostly considered weak in the fantasy world. But this particular kingdom has a batshit insane healing knight who came up with the ultimate form of healer – buff healers. I’m not kidding. The central conceit of Wrong Way is that the MC uses healing magic while doing physical training, first just prolong his workouts, then to abuse his body with impossible training and continuously undo the damage – until at last he is so swole his physical strength and speed make him the equal of any monster. It’s fucking hilarious. The virgin Redo of Healer protag uses healing magic to enslave and abuse the women who used to abuse him, the Chad Wrong Way MC uses healing magic to better himself to the absolute limit so he can save more lives on the battlefield. As sick to death of these kind of isekai as I am, Wrong Way gets a strong recommendation from me. If the adaptation is even half-decent I will have a good time.

But what will probably be the new GOAT of the season, as much of an oxymoron as that is, is Chained Soldier. Or Slave of the Mato Corps as it should be translated. Chained soldier is a harem anime. Yes I know, I can hear you groaning but hear me out. For all the genre’s failings there are a rare few harem shows which go even further beyond and end up being unironically good. Chained Soldier will be one of these. It draws an old type of harem that has pretty much died and improves on it, the battle harem where only girls and the male MC have powers. In Chained Soldier the world is under attack by demons from another dimension called Shuuki, and only certain women have the power to combat them. Yuuki the MC has no power of his own but Kyouka, the woman who saves him, has a magic collar she can use to enslave Shuuki. But when she uses it on Yuuki, he transforms and becomes a useful combatant.

Where most shows like this fail is that they try to awkwardly blend the fanservice into the action, by having enemies that deliberately humiliate the heroine by tearing their clothes with attacks and such. This is bad, the fanservice is terrible and ham-fisted, the fights stunted and broken to fit in the terrible fanservice. The best example of this that comes to mind is Freezing, which was abysmal. Chained Soldier circumvents this problem. In Chained Soldier the action is kept pristine and the fights can actually get really good. But after the fights, Kyouka is compelled to give Yuki a “reward” if she uses her ability to transform him. And she can lend transformed Yuki to other girls, which changes his form and function but also ropes them into the reward. I think you can see where this is going. The real question here is, in a post-Interspecies Reviewers anime landscape, just how much of the manga’s delectable fanservice will make it into the anime uncensored? And I for one have to know the answer.

Thanks for reading, see you in the next one.

Unpopular Opinion: Blue Eye Samurai

This is not an anime, and boy does that shine through in places, but this is the closest we’ve had to an Arcane situation since Arcane. And on the whole it’s quite good. Blue Eye Samurai is a historical fiction following the half-European, half-Japanese Mizu during Japan’s strictest period of isolationism. This involves a lot of violence. If you want a spoiler free recommendation then you have it, I enjoyed Blue Eye Samurai a lot, and I think most people will too unless my vague synopsis thus far sounds totally outside your taste. From here on their will be spoilers.

The main issues with Blue Eye Samurai, great way to start a recommendation I know, come from it’s westernisms for lack of a better word. There are some weird choices when it comes to keeping in Japanese words rather than translating everything into English, the default language for anyone unsure. For example everyone says “matsuri” like it’s a special event, even though it just means festival and you could easily translate it as such. But that’s fairly minor. The thing that was most off putting is all the sex scenes, both by volume and in their relative levels of debauchery. The story justifies having a bunch of sex scenes woven in because of the plot, but there are pointless ones there just to eat time, and some of them really lean into more degenerate fetishes and the like. Ever since Game of Thrones a lot of western media has crammed in a bunch of sex scenes, because GoT did it and it was successful – at least until it crashed and burned. But more than just having them, shows like The Boys revel in really gross, perverse expressions of sexuality. It’s a trend the West could really do without, seeing as it both reflects an aspect of our culture that is becoming unhealthy, and frankly repulsive, and it shows how little creativity a lot of western media has going for it right now.

It’s kind of ironic as an American that we used to bemoan the oversexualized nature of anime with the giant tits, accidental gropings, panty shots, basically the hallmarks of the harem genre, etc. But everyone pretty much understands that’s a common facet of low brow anime. Yet in American media, crass displays of excessive gory violence and sexual depravity are routinely added to shows as markers of maturity or subversion. It would almost be funny since the thought process couldn’t be further from the truth, but honestly I’m getting tired of otherwise interesting shows denigrating themselves with scenes of what can only be described as perverted degeneracy. And sadly it is present in Blue Eye Samurai too.

There are also a couple scenes that seem out of place in dare I say a “progressive” sense. Like when the main European villain says Mizu causing a fire that burns down a major city for the sake of her revenge is her White side at work, or when that same character outlines his plan as basically the Great Replacement but with whites replacing the Japanese in Japan. Colonialism wasn’t really about that, generally it was about extracting resources not replacing local populations wholesale. I mean don’t get me wrong the villain, Fowler, is an openly and unashamedly evil guy so it’s not like it’s totally out of character for him to say shit like that. But it still comes out sounding odd and a little forced. Fowler is otherwise a pretty good villain, he’s brash, abrasive, cocksure and canny. And late in the show it’s revealed part of his ruthlessness comes from the fact he survived a famine that killed the rest of his family during the English Civil War. He also works with a variety of Japanese characters like ambitious lords, greedy merchants and corrupt officials to enact his main plan of taking over Japan and installing a puppet shogun using the power of guns.

Speaking of characters, they’re good as well, with the exception of Ringo. Ringo plays an important role at a couple key moments and is a decent support for the bigger players. But having a dumb upbeat cripple, he was born without hands, tagging along and trying to force his way into the more serious character stories and plot around him can make him annoying. Akemi and Taigen are solid foils to Mizu and each other. Akemi is the princess who wants to marry for love, not political advantage, but by the end of the story she would rather keep the marriage she tried to run away from as it puts her in a position to have more influence. Taigen meanwhile starts off very much concerned about his stature because he’s a great warrior but lower class, and potentially marrying up via Akemi, but at the end Taigen just wants to marry her so the pair can be happy, status be damned.

But the real star of the show is Mizu. She starts off seemingly a one-note character bent on revenge, understandably so given her terrible childhood and position as an outsider in a very conformist society. But it’s actually revealed later on she did try to live a normal life once, prematurely ending her revenge quest by getting married, a move she initially hates but comes to love as she bonds with her arranged husband. Only for it all to come crashing down as either her mother, who Fowler calls a maid, or her husband betrays her and reports her for the bounty on her head. Ultimately both end up dead so it doesn’t really matter who did it, all that matters is that Mizu tried to set aside her revenge and go for a happy life and she was let down once again, and has since committed fully to her vengeance.

The action scenes in Blue Eye Samurai are on a bit of a spectrum. Some scenes are ripped right out of Kill Bill with over-the-top action which borders on goofy, others are rule of cool but not as goofy and some are grounded and brutal. Overall if you want a solid action experience, Blue Eye Samurai has you covered. It can strain credulity at times but Mizu goes through enough and is shown using good enough technique most of the time to make the less believable moments a total non-issue. And during it’s best moments the action is absolutely amazing.

Despite my minor misgivings with regards to certain bits of dialogue or some scenes, this clearly had a lot of talent and care put into it because when it shines it hits some incredible high points. Case in point, one episode weaves together 3 different timelines at once – a present fight against a local gang, and one of the best fights in the show at that, Mizu’s past with her failed marriage and a Japanese folk tale play, which seems to be told as an abstract allegory to Mizu’s life, but actually takes place in the future, after Mizu lets Akemi be taken home by her father’s men. It’s an impressive bit of work, weaving them all in and then revealing at the end, that the play that seemed like a good moral parallel to Mizu’s backstory and present motivations was not just an allegory, but an actual play being performed for Akemi after the two had parted ways.

Overall Blue Eye Samurai is a fun and occasionally deep action romp that mixes grounded realism with rule of cool in feudal Japan. It has enough minor problems that I would consider it good rather than great, but if nothing else it is extremely bingeable and scratches an interesting itch by reflecting a period that can be done to death in anime from a western perspective that makes it less stale, even if doing so comes with its own issues. It’s worth giving a shot if you’re even vaguely interested. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next one.

Unpopular Opinion: Pluto

Pluto is an extremely well produced waste of 8 hours. Do not be deceived by the high quality visuals, grounded character designs and theatrically concealed mystery plot. These are things Pluto uses to disguise the fact it has very little of any actual interest. The story is incredibly simple, the themes cookie-cutter and uninspired, the plot genuinely uninteresting. Pluto is very good at stringing the viewer along, suggesting that it will eventually be worthwhile due it’s positive qualities, but this is a lie. Pluto is a well-polished turd that does its level best to prevent you from realizing that, until you’ve spent so long watching it that the sunk-cost fallacy kicks in and you convince yourself you have keep going so that time wasn’t wasted. Pluto is overhyped, over-produced dogshit. I was audibly groaning as the show dragged itself slowly to the finish line, this was the first time in a while where I felt I had truly wasted my time with a show that seemed promising. For the spoiler free review, that’s it. If you were curious about Pluto, avoid it, it sucks. From here on, there will be spoilers.

If you came to Pluto hoping for some robot action scenes you will be sorely disappointed. They are few and far between, most of them are heavily obscured and the ones you can actually see are brief and uninteresting, or outright nonsensical. This includes the final battle by the way, which ends in like 30 seconds and you can’t even really make out what’s happening and the resolution is a massive science asspull which prevents the end of the world. The only semi-lengthy visually clear battle is Atom vs Pluto and it still sucks because Atom just outperforms this way bigger machine for no reason. His only tactical moves where using his small size and high speed to twist off Pluto’s horn-tentacles. Him just bulldozing the bigger machine would make sense if it had been any way hinted that Atom was just way stronger relative to his size, such that he could do that to Pluto. But not only was no such explanation given or even implied, Atom and Pluto had already fought once and Atom got wasted offscreen, without damaging Pluto to the best of our knowledge. The logic explicitly stated was that Atom had more hatred than Pluto which has nothing to do with technical specs. The hatred thing could have been a cool angle, but of course Atom stops before the final blow and they don’t commit to the development.

This is because the big brained theme of Pluto is that nothing comes from hatred. It’s bad enough that this idea has been covered in so many properties in so many media that it’s just really fucking boring, it’s even worse that Pluto doesn’t use it for anything interesting. Well sort of, it does have Gesicht get so mad he supercedes the Robot Law preventing him from harming humans. But man is Pluto banking on you finding that scene really important because they flash to it like 5 times, even though all the details that mattered were covered in the first reveal. Which is indicative of Pluto’s real problem. It has so little of interest to say, that it takes forever to say anything at all, lest it blow it’s proverbial load too soon. Pluto could easily have been cut down to a 2hr movie, instead it has to fill 6 extra hours with tons of repeated dialogue, scenes and ideas, needless mystery, and scenes that just drag on and on to soak up time. There is a lot of bloat that a more competent script would’ve cut out.

On top of that the writing just sucks, even when it isn’t just wasting your time. Gesicht identifies both the big bads several episodes before the ending, told everyone who they were and then they just escaped detection except when they can 1v1 the other advanced robots. What are the various militaries of the world doing? How does Abullah just always have as many of the cockroach clones as he needs, where he needs them at all times? How does no one figure out the cockroach trick after it pops up again and again? What exactly happened during the bit where Gesicht was helping the anti-robot dude’s family and his fellow cops just disappear into thin air while the assassin appears? In fact why does that subplot even exist? It just wastes a shitload of time to express the realization that Gesicht killed someone, even though he comes to that realization on his own without the anti-robot dude saying anything. Same goes for Uran really. She serves almost no purpose in the story, and the one bit of her’s that was plot relevant where she met with Pluto’s alter-ego Sahad could either have been folded into another character like Atom or cut entirely since Gesicht figured it out anyway without ever talking to Uran.

And most importantly, why exactly did Tenma create a super AI and deliberately fill it with negative emotions to get it working again? With Atom it at least made sense since he was Atom’s creator and Atom was modeled after his dead son. But why even make the villain AI? Sure he’s commissioned to make it but he doesn’t decide to finish the project until the guy who commissioned it is fucking dead. Is it pride? Is he doing it just to prove he could make the perfect AI? Nothing else in his character points to that. Is it madness? He is a grieving man but again, nothing else about him suggests madness. The entire plot stems from his decision to plug Abullah’s hatred into the super AI after Abullah lost his family and died. And the show provides no reasoning whatsoever as to why he decides to do it. He doesn’t seem like the whimsical type either. And since he’s a genius he can’t even pull the retard card and shrug his shoulders.

In a similar vein, turns out Thracia has a giga-AI that planned all the events of the plot and is the true ultimate villain behind the scenes, with the goal of wiping out humanity. Why? Don’t know, it’s never explained. It doesn’t help that the giga-AI isn’t revealed until almost the end and speaks through a fucking teddy bear but again no explanation for its motives. It just wanted to wipe out humanity for fun I guess, I mean at least it had more of a whimsical personality at least. I’d say it’s a missed opportunity for good writing but good writing seems firmly out of reach for the creatives involved in Pluto. And just for another fuck you to the audience, this secret big bad is killed in one hit by the psycho robot that Gesicht visits throughout the show. How? How did that busted ass piece of shit that was impaled on a wall, in a prison, get across the Atlantic and into the President’s secret bunker without any fucking legs, wheels or thrusters. Literally how? I don’t care that it made a cryptic promise to Atom to kill the giga-AI, figuring out the logistics of how things get done is a pretty important aspect of storytelling, once again proving that Pluto just has shit writing pure and simple.

And shit writing by itself is not a death sentence. I recently went back and watched Garzey’s Wing, one of the most legendarily shit anime ever made. And I loved all 90 mins of that pure unadulterated garbage. It was so cosmically bad in every facet – except for this one cut of Falan the Falarian’s little bug wings twitching in 4k HD – that it was really fun to take in. Pluto though isn’t so bad it’s good. Pluto’s problem is that it’s trying to be smart and high brow but isn’t being written by someone capable of being either. I already covered the conveniences, but you can see it best in the themes and presentation. At the outset Pluto tries to make itself seem high brow, smart and interesting by taking a grounded approach to what seems like a serious mystery detective show, sprinkled with some scifi. Then it adds in stuff about a big war and how war leaves a stain on those involved, even the robots undergo personality changes from the horrors of war. But that’s all it fucking says about the war. The war happened, it left a mark on the robots and was the source of Abullah’s hatred. Abullah’s hatred then became a source of harm to the world because nothing good comes from hatred. If I was like 10 and hearing this for the first time, then maybe Pluto would feel as high brow as it tries to be. But I’m 30 and I expect more from shows trying to be high brow. Not everything needs to be a 10/10 genius plot with deep, evocative themes; I watch all kinds of simpler shows and enjoy them. But those simple shows are at least honest about what’s on offer. Pluto’s biggest sin is that pretends to be something much better than it actually is.

And I think I’ll wrap it up there. Pluto has some positive qualities, particularly on the production side, and it has a lot of good elements which could make for a better story in more competent hands. Pluto is ultimately letdown by being far too weak in the writing department for a production that was clearly well above average in other departments. Everything but the writing was enough to suggest Pluto would be a big deal, then the writing dragged everything else down and made it a bitter disappointment. Pluto seemed for the world to be setting a high bar for itself and then fell well below that bar. Thanks for reading, see you in the next one.

Shingeki no Kyojin: A Truly Titanic Endeavor

“Attack on Titan is a modern classic” is something various people from various mediums with infinitely more reach than me have already said. And they’re right. If anything they’re underselling it. Shingeki no Kyojin was a worldwide sensation. It’s anime Game of Thrones before GoT shit the bed. Trying to explain just how big a deal SnK was, is itself difficult to describe. Having just marathoned the whole thing and reaching the end after a full decade, describing SnK in the past tense still feels wrong. Like it hasn’t sunk in that it is in fact over. But it is, and now that it is let me take you back to Spring 2013 when an exciting new anime was coming out, about to change the world. There will be spoilers, you’ve been warned.

It’s amazing how much the landscape of anime has changed just since 2013. I got into anime for real in 2011-2012. I’m old enough to remember seeing bits of DBZ or Inuyasha on Toonami way back in the day, but weebdom was a long ways off for yours truly. At the time, tentpole shows which never stopped airing were still in vogue. Tentpole shows still exist but generally now the follow the My Hero Academia format of releasing in single seasons and getting regular sequels. In fact it seems like any show under the sun that gets a bit of traction gets a sequel now. But back in 2013? Hell naw, sequels were a rare treat. Shit we’re getting new sequels now for stuff that aired back then. The Devil is a Part-Timer released in the same season as SnK, and didn’t get a sequel until recently, and is now on season 3 I believe. Point is, when I really got started the weekly grind of newly airing anime was not as big a focus, I was all about finding long shows I could marathon instead of plopping a few hours on 12 episodes to a show that never even came close to finishing. So Spring 2013 was the first season where I joined the newly airing seasonal grind that is now definitively the central focus of pretty much all anime viewing habits and discourse. And anime as a rule was way less popular at the time. It’s still weird to me how much bigger anime is than it used to be. When I got started most Americans wouldn’t be caught dead watching anime, it was a the easiest setup in the world to being called a nerd virgin loser. Now it’s not uncommon to see randos wearing anime shirts or to pass a car covered in anime stickers. The medium is way more mainstream than it used to be and much more socially acceptable in the West than even a relatively short 10 years ago.

For any newer anime fans who didn’t experience it firsthand, the best parallel I can give to SnK’s popularity during its initial release in 2013, is when Demon Slayer managed to outsell the entire US comics industry by itself during Covid. In 2013 SnK took the world by storm, it was goddamn everywhere. It was so popular even the dreaded normies became of aware of its existence, some of them even liked it enough to dive into anime fandom for themselves, and it dominated the entire medium. Only the fact that Studio Trigger would release its debut project, and in my opinion still the best thing they’ve ever made Kill la Kill, eventually got people to start talking about something other than SnK, and even then its shadow still loomed large over anime discourse. The fact that season 2 took 4 years to come out also stole some of the thunder from the IP. That probably sounds insane in the current anime landscape. Moderate successes are practically guaranteed a sequel in a year or two now, waiting 4 years to release the sequel to the most popular new anime by a huge margin sounds like idiocy. Stuff like that still occasionally happens of course, One Punch Man infamously had a big gap between seasons despite being a massive success at the outset. Thankfully though SnK didn’t get the huge degradation in quality that came with OPM’s sequel gap. 10 years and 100ish episodes later SnK is more than just a big success or even a modern classic. It’s a cultural touchstone of anime fandom, and one of the last true breakout hits before the medium gained serious mainstream traction outside Japan.

There are a lot of things that put SnK a cut above, things that grabbed such a massive worldwide audience. In Spring 2013, it came out swinging. A bold, fresh premise. Great animation for the time, most of which still holds up fantastically, plus some signature visual touches like the intense shadow lines around everyone’s eyes. The incredible spectacle of the ODM assisted movement which definitely still holds up, scratch that it still makes most action shots look weak in comparison. The Sawano music. The shocking level of violence. The raw intensity of the total experience. But looking back on it all, the thing that’s most impressive is the mangaka’s, Hajime Isayama’s, planning and the many animators skillfully weaving that planning into the adaptation.

If you go back and watch earlier seasons there are a ton of small tip offs that show this was a story that was carefully planned out from beginning to end. That’s before we even get to the most famous bit, the paired chapters 1 and 122, or episodes 1 and 86: To You, 2000 Years From Now and From You, 2000 Years Ago. If you’re not into manga, you may not know that many mangaka openly admit that they improvise parts of their long-running stories to fit the demands of their respective magazines. SnK, clearly didn’t though. Those two chapters prove it was all planned out from the start and it’s easily the most mind-blowing bit of foreshadowing I’m aware of. And as stated above, if you know about the big twists later in the story you can see tons of small moments throughout the show which point to where it’s going. That’s a rare talent both Isayama and the animators put on display, and it’s genuinely really impressive to go back and see just how frequently and naturally they placed in all these bits of foreshadowing that you’re only likely to catch if you know what’s coming.

Another big factor in SnK’s favor is its maturity. Now I’m sure some people are scratching their heads considering some of the stupid lines that are said, or screamed, by various characters; sometimes with a ton of repetition, but hear me out. There’s no other show where so many hard decisions and sacrifices have to be made. The rate of attrition in the show is absolutely brutal, and not just among the randos. Tons of important, beloved characters get mutilated, murdered or abandoned. Even when the randos are being slaughtered en masse it’s not just for edgy shock value, it’s taken too far for that. The vicious and unrelenting butchery of soldiers and civilians alike is there to sell the horror of the situation, to paint a picture of just how desperate the struggle is for the few willing to fight. And it doesn’t just apply to the Titan on human violence, but all the violence. One my biggest pet peeves in anime is that characters who commit unforgivable crimes are often forgiven without really earning it. But in SnK? It’s one of the only anime or even shows in general I know where people who have fought side-by-side against all the odds for years are forced to kill each other, even when they really don’t want to, because they believe so strongly in the paths they’ve chosen; and the circumstances are so dire there is simply no other choice. Similarly it’s possible for bitter enemies to set aside their differences, even without forgiving each other, to achieve a desired outcome because again, there is simply no other choice, the situation is too precarious for anything less.

I talk a lot about good shows committing to their various aspects and that being an indicator of quality. SnK doesn’t just commit though, it’s explicitly about committing. As Armin puts it “those who can’t sacrifice anything, can’t achieve anything.” One of the core themes of SnK is the depth of commitment required to overcome immense challenges, and the show doesn’t sugarcoat its approach. Lots of people, from strong warriors to helpless babes are sacrificed on the altar of victory. Huge risks are taken for even tiny amounts of progress because the world is just that dangerous and unforgiving. Eren wipes out 80% of the entire human race to protect his home and the people he cares about. Not because he’s a maniac, but because given the circumstances it’s the only option available to him which he can tolerate. His brother wanted to sterilize an entire race, effectively genociding them, just slower and less violently, to solve the same issue. In a lesser story these would be the plans of madmen and monsters, in SnK they are plans chosen by different people trying to solve a problem so messy that there are only monstrous options to choose from. It’s a story where peace was never an option in the short term and had dubious odds of ever being an option, despite the terrible cost to get even that small chance.

SnK is intense for many reasons. The hype music and action, the brutal violence, the distinct heavy shading that makes everyone look like they are 5 seconds from going full schizo, and of course all the shouting and screaming. But more than of all, it’s that the world is of SnK is so cruel, and the things it asks of its characters so dire. Not for edge, not for shock value, but honest to God brutally intense storytelling. Those other factors are nothing to sneeze at though. Sawano is a great composer and a household name to the anime community at this point. But even if he was famous before I doubt anyone would argue SnK didn’t forever cement him as a hype machine with its long list of excellent tracks. Yamamoto deserves credit as well for his superb additions in later seasons. Continuing on the audio front, it pumps the intensity across the board. The desperate screams of the soon to be eaten, the bellowed commands of Erwin, Pixis and other commanders, the warcries of soldiers running headlong into the fray against Titans and the thunderous roars of the Titans themselves. It dials every scene up to eleven.

But if the audio is a hype machine then the action is hype distilled and pumped directly into your bloodstream. The level of violence is so far above and beyond what most stories can achieve. And it feels earned, it’s not empty shock value it’s just a result of the setting. To complement the savagery of the Titans, the thrill of ODM movement is pretty much unmatched. There are scenes with better digital effects, cleaner art and tons of impressive movement in other big titles like Demon Slayer and OPM but fuck me there is no equivalent to the way characters zoom around with their ODM gear in the midst of a battle. It’s one of the most genius parts of SnK and whatever forbidden technique was used to bring it to such stunning heights in animation was worth the cost. There really is nothing else like it in anime, and Spiderman wishes his web-slinging looked half as cool in his movies.

Outside the action scenes, the visuals are probably where SnK is weakest. Sure there’s derpy CG in places and more of it, if improved, towards the end. Other than that the visuals are solid and probably helped attract the large audience SnK had. SnK designs don’t look very anime, they’re quite grounded and probably appealed more to a wider audience. Characters have realistic proportions and hair colors, and sensible uniforms. The Titans can look really stupid but honestly it just added meme factor to SnK and provided tiny bits of visual levity in a show which is otherwise so consistently intense. And considering how often silly Titans got used post season 1, I think they knew people enjoyed the goofy Titans mixed in with the scarier ones. To say SnK has bad visuals would be a huge mistake, they’re good across the board. The only reason they’re the weakest link is because everything else was even better.

One of the reasons SnK had such staying power was its excellent writing. I already covered the foreshadowing and planning, but the plot in general is just really good. It’s also ambitious, weaving in really big twists, changing so drastically between arcs as to almost become different genres depending on the season and having a huge perspective swap in the proverbial 4th quarter. Season 1 is an action thriller that leaves out a big mystery box, and has a hidden mystery box underneath which an observant viewer can put together or at least get glimpse of. Season 2 cuts much harder to the mystery thriller side before swerving back to the action side. Season 3 changes gears entirely, incorporating a ton of political intrigue and moving away from Titans entirely to focus squarely on the humans in the first half, only to have some the most hype Titan battles dominate the second half. It also revealed a mystery big enough to be worth the substantial wait. Eren’s basement as a plot point comes up roughly halfway into season 1 and isn’t found and revealed until deep into season 3. That’s a long time for anticipation to build and the reveal was still important enough to exceed the anticipation.

Season 4 totally changed location and perspective, and included one of the most important new characters in Gabi. When it came out a lot of people hated Gabi, not realizing she was literally the other team’s Eren before his full character arc. The way she parallels him, and gets a crash course through the truth of the world and Reiner’s arc of accepting that the islanders aren’t evil like they’re made out to be, makes Gabi a deceptively important and effective new perspective character. It was a bold move but she and her friends really added an extra dimension to the storytelling. That new perspective was also pivotal in shaping the events of the end of the story and the hopeful note it could end on despite all the bloodshed it took to get there.

Speaking of the ending, I think SnK stuck the landing. Eren and Armin’s final conversation was reworked from the manga and greatly improved. The desperate final struggle against Eren was captured with great skill, truly pushing the limits of a story which had long since already made most others look like total pussies in comparison. The ending was bittersweet, with terrible losses all around, but still more sweet than bitter. There was hope for a better future, a chunk of the core characters made it out alive, broken families were healed, and even though Eren died, at least he admitted that he loved Mikasa before the end. Better love story than Twilight.

There is of course a lot of controversy in having a MC willingly choose genocide. But going back to his options, what were they? The rest of the world wanted his people and his homeland dead. Peace was impossible in the short term. And in order to buy time they would have had to kill a bunch of people as a deterrent, reinstitute a system where the royal family’s main duties were to constantly bear kids and eat each other to maintain that deterrent, and hope that with time a peaceful solution could be reached. That’s a pretty terrible option and the odds of success were low. It would buy them some time, but they had to give up a lot for that time, and leave it future generations to pay the toll on a plan that likely wouldn’t succeed in the long term anyway. The only solutions doable in Eren and Zeke’s lifespans were to let the Eldians die or to kill everyone who would wipe out the Eldians. Neither of those are good options either. But if those were all the options available, I would probably choose the same as Eren. Not because I want to genocide everyone else but because if my only options are let my friends and family die or kill everyone else to protect my friends and family; I would choose the latter. Eren also had the foreknowledge that he would fail, which probably helped him commit to that terrible option. But even if he wouldn’t have had the foreknowledge it still isn’t the wrong choice. There isn’t really a right choice in those terrible options but it was the least wrong choice. To paraphrase one of the surviving Marleyans: we poured all our hate on the “island devils” and in return they sent it right back to us, that’s a mistake we’ll never make again.

Ultimately whatever rough edges SnK has are vastly outweighed by its many positive qualities. It is a powerful, intense story about heroism, sacrifice, the dangers of hate and the struggle for peace set in a merciless world, brought to life by solid visuals, great music, stunning action and an amazing plot. It has a satisfying conclusion, a particularly tall order for such a beloved and colossal IP. 10 years and 100ish episodes later, I’m sad to see Shingeki no Kyojin go, but deeply grateful I got to see it in the first place. I doubt this next bit will reach any of the people it is meant for, but just in case:

To Hajime Isayama and all the many, many staff members responsible for bringing Shingeki no Kyojin from the page to the screen: Thank you, and congratulations on a job well done. May you continue to find success in your future endeavors.

And to anyone who finished reading this post. Thank you, and I’ll see you in the next one.

Seasonal Summaries: Fall 2023

Truly there is nothing you need more in your life than the sludge an obscure blogger can reliably turn out every couple months when he has no inspiration to write about any particular show, theme, or great scene. There will be minor spoilers for whatever I’m watching. Also I’m not going to bother with sequels, if I liked the prior season like with SpyxFamily or Dr. Stone, I’m watching it. If I skipped or didn’t like a prior season, I’m not watching the sequel, like Eminence in Shadow and Shield Hero.

I’m going to briefly touch on the shows which are still unfinished from last season, lightning round update style. Zom100 hasn’t dropped an episode in quite a while now and I want to see more ASAP. Dark Gathering has consistently improved, with scarier and more dangerous ghosts. It’s now turning into something of a horror battle anime which is awesome. Characters are in serious danger with each encounter making the horror that much more gripping. Really glad Dark Gathering is surpassing my first impression of 7/10, interesting concept. Helck has slowed down a bit as it goes through one big exposition dump but once this is done it will get back into the action and the action and story will only intensify from here on. And Jujutsu Kaisen 2 is proving why the manga made it to the top of Shounen Jump in recent years by being absolutely kickass.

And lightning round 2 garbage boogaloo for the shows I tried and immediately dropped for this season. I got about a minute and half into the 45 minutes of Ragna Crimson’s opening episode and called it quits. That is impressively fast even by my increasingly strict standards but by God the animation was hideous – like Redo of Healer hideous. No way was I sitting through 45 minutes of that shit for a premise that didn’t even sound interesting. Maybe it gets good later or something but with so many anime, plus my myriad other interests all fighting for my time, having a bad first impression is a great way for quick drop on my part. Part of the appeal of anime is that it’s a goddamn visual medium, and being really ugly is not playing to the medium’s strengths.

Under Ninja survived for an entire episode although honestly I was ready to drop it within the first minute because Jesus Christ that hideous CG and cringe dialogue. The entire episode turned out to be unrelenting cringe, seriously the only moment I enjoyed was when the drunk lady laughed about the MC’s friend getting hit by lightning. That was funny, but everything else proved that first impressions really do have a lot to say about a story.

I didn’t even finish the first episode of Shy. I read a chunk of the manga a while back before eventually dropping it and wanted to give the anime a try but I just couldn’t deal. It wasn’t even a problem with the production, I just didn’t want to deal with the titular Shy’s cringe-inducing total lack of ability to be a public figure despite that being her job description. Plus in a world that has been drowning in an endless torrent of superhero everything since the first Iron Man, the genre is fucking well beyond stale. You need to up your game fast because there already a lot of good anime superhero stuff and Shy starts off rough. I know it gets better after a bit but I also dropped it for a reason, and trying to force myself through a story I already gave up on in a new medium is a poor way to spend my time.

Kingdoms of Ruin

With that out of the way I can finally start on what I’m actually watching. Kingdoms of Ruin is an edgy show for misanthropes who need an outlet for hating humanity. I am not such a person but I must admit every now and then indulging in a misanthropic hateboner and watching nihilistic destruction can be very cathartic in small doses. Luckily in Kingdom of Ruin’s case while it may be edgy, it’s not quite Redo of Healer or Goblin Slayer edgy, so it has just enough taste to known when a modicum of restraint is worthwhile. That being said while the first couple episodes have been edgy, mindless fun without really crossing any serious lines this is the show I’m mostly likely to drop from my current lineup. It hasn’t fucked up yet but I have doubts about its staying power. Moving on.

Dekoboko Majo no Oyako Jijou

DekoMajo is a gag anime about hot big-titty dark-skinned witch girl who is very very attached to her blond loli adoptive mother. If none of those words or all of them in combination stirred nothing in you whatsoever, this show is not for you. Even a man with harsh and arbitrary standards like myself occasionally enjoys mind-numbing low key fun, and that is what DekoMajo is all about. Viola is a good looking anime girl and she summoned a goofy looking phoenix who has a serious narrator voice and serves as great unofficial mascot. Make no mistake barring some radical changes this is an easy 6/10 experience but it is both relaxing and mildly entertaining, truly just the kind of slightly pleasant placebo you need to relax and recharge your brain between paying attention to more serious shows, stories and adult life decisions of questionable judgement. I might eventually drop this but I doubt it, I may not be down bad for Viola but I’m down just enough to stick around for an otherwise mediocre experience. No that is not an objective or reasonable standard and I don’t care, it’s my finite mortal time in this hectic world and I will waste it how I see fit.

Undead Unluck

Now here is an action show that comes out swinging. Not so much in the sense it blew me away but it at least had the courtesy to not waste any time and let me know what I was in for. After a little artsy and confusing prologue sequence that blends memories with a manga story we meet Fuuko as she is about to commit suicide before getting interrupted by an undying man of indeterminate age who can regenerate seemingly any damage he takes and use his high power regeneration both for incredible bursts of movement and to turn parts of himself into improvised bullets. Fuuko meanwhile is walking catastrophe for anyone who touches her, to the point that a kiss on the cheek brings a fucking meteor down on a building. Andy the Undead, wants to work with Fuuko to determine just how much damage her bad luck can really do and see if it can finally kill him. Other people with weird super powers try to capture the pair and violence ensues.

This a story that is moving fast with a ton of action scenes crammed into just three episodes so far. The action is kinetic, fluid and just creative enough to be intriguing without ever pulling serious bullshit. Andy and Fuuko make for a great spectacle pair between Andy’s battle prowess and natural ability to be constantly torn to shreds in awesome bursts of violence mixed with Fuuko’s ability to brig about extreme levels of violence on the world around her. I mean her power throws Andy into a speeding train within the first 5-10 minutes of the show. Undead Unluck is very clear about what it offers and is happy to keep offering it at a frenetic pace, without being so overwhelmingly fast as to bleed all stakes and hype out a fight like God of Highschool. This is 7 or 8/10 material that promises lots and lots of stylish violence. And nothing satisfies my inner barbarian like lot and lots of violence.

A Returner’s Magic Should be Special

Remember how I mentioned God of Highschool last paragraph, that’s what you call foreshadowing. Returner’s, because fuck mouthy titles that aren’t easy to simplify, is a Korean webcomic adaptation. To the best of my knowledge only 3 such other anime exist. Tower of God which was a solid show with a such a gutpunch of an ending I had to binge the source material, and I want a second season. God of Highschool, which sucked balls. And Noblesse which had character art so clearly fujou bait it probably enjoyed sucking balls. Returner’s should be a much needed course correction. It follows Desir Herrman, a wizard who specializes in anti/counter magic who was with a group of heroes that slays an ugly CG dragon hilariously named Boromir Napolitan, which just makes me think of Sean Bean made out of spaghetti. After killing the CG dragon it explodes because fuck you and Desir reawakens 10 years in the past with all his prior memories.

Now I have seen many webcomics and manhwa with a similar enough premise and most of those I tried sucked because they were just about the MC using their prior knowledge to get to live their second life as a badass since their first life was boring. That is boring. Returner’s is much more interesting because while the MC isn’t exactly weak he’s far from the strongest character. Desir’s real strength is that he’s maddeningly difficult to fight even if he has a harder time dishing out big power moves of his own, because he excels at shutting other people down. This is a much more interesting position because he can’t just bulldoze his second life by being the best there ever was, he still has to be strategic to get his wins. Moreover, one of his big problems is that he’s dealing with an extremely prejudicial society and he’s a commoner, so any sweeping changes he want’s to make for the sake of a better future are met with a lot of institutional resistance that he has to work around.

Speaking of a better future, one of things that makes Desir more relatable and interesting than MCs who use prior knowledge to go Super Saiyan in their second youth, is that in his future where he was fighting the bad CG dragon, he lost a lot of people he was close to and humanity lost a huge percentage of its fighting forces and maybe couldn’t handle another calamity. Rather than speeding towards instant OP gratification Desir’s aim is to nudge the future in such a way that both his fallen comrades and humanity as a whole will be better prepared before they have to fight Boromir Napolitan again. Not much of that has actually happened yet but Desir’s goals are clear and relatable from very early on.

Now it’s not all rainbows and roses, which isn’t a real idiom but shut up it counts. The animation and effects are not hideous but they aren’t exactly high end even once you get past the CG dragon. This is disappointing but not a death blow as it’s pretty clear Returner’s has a bit of depth and good enough execution to avoid being immediately dropped. Some of the writing is very heavy-handed such as the noble vs commoner prejudice, with most of the nobles being mustache-twirling classists even if they’re not technically villains. This is where the story feels most amateur and it is tough to sit through. Since I’m up to date on the webcomic I can assure you it is a speedbump which goes away as the plot gets rolling. Also for future non-specific spoilers, while the first episodes didn’t really advertise it, Returner’s gets very action-heavy once it gets the full main team assembled. This is up my alley and I personally like the whole team-building aspect of the show. Watching Desir position and power level his allies scratches a very rare and specific itch. I will admit the first two episodes haven’t been better than serviceable, especially with animation quality, but I’m going to have to pull out the trust me bro card, because I know where this story goes and it is quite good. You should give it a try.

Sousou no Frieren

Man this has been the peak year for first episodes hasn’t it? Once upon a time double length first episodes were rare and fancy, now we’ve got Oshi no Ko dropping a movie for a first episode and Frieren dropping it’s first four episodes at once. Will the innovation ever end? Bypassing me being a smartass, I can see why Frieren started the way it did. Because it follows the journey a functionally immortal elf who perceives time very differently from the average person, it has an unusually lengthy intro. Dropping those first four episodes one at time each week would have made the show feel very slow. So instead they basically let us binge the prologue all at once and then slow down as we got to the more normal, linear part of the story.

This was a great idea. Sousou no Frieren has a very contemplative aspect which thrives in slow going adventure but unless you can absorb it quickly, yeah it would get boring. Especially with the first episode being split by a decades long timeskip that sees one of Frieren’s friends die of old age. This is because of one the story’s strengths is its approach to Frieren and the drawbacks of functional immortality and how they effect her character. Elves in this world aren’t rare because they’re at the end of their strength Lord of Rings style or where wiped out in a mass catastrophe Warhammer 40k style. Having so much time on their hands has severely reduced the desire to be proactive about anything, because they will always have time to do it later. This includes the sex drive. Meaning the average elf is so lazy and such a natural procrastinator that they’re fading away because they just don’t bone and have enough kids. This causes a feedback loop where fewer elves mean they don’t see each other as often, which leads to less elven babies, which leads to fewer elves seeing each other at all, ad infinitum. In one of the episodes Frieren mentions that she hasn’t even seen another elf in a few centuries.

This way of writing immortality is awesome. It get away from the elves being totally alien or immortality driving them insane but does make them very detached because they have no deadlines to meet and hardly anyone to anchor them in the present, since they outlive any such anchor. I mean being such a procrastinator that your race collectively doesn’t breed enough and practically dies out sounds insane, but then again most of our real world is hitting below replacement birth rates and Japan is especially bad in that category so maybe such a mad reality isn’t as farfetched as it might seem. But getting away from the kind of comparisons that could get me called a racist conspiracy theorist, this extremely uneventful and malleable passage of time has one major drawback for the audience, we have human attention spans and expect a story to actually do something.

So Sousou no Frieren let’s us binge the slower, timeskip laden intro so we could arrive at the point where the story gets more linear and eventful, even if it’s still happy to spend an entire episode looking for flowers or clearing beaches. Like I said before, this show has very contemplative side to it. Frieren is trying to understand why her time in the Hero’s party had such an outsized influence on her life despite being, in her own words, less than 1% of her lifespan. So she’s retracing her steps and trying to rebuild connections to her past and understand herself. Balancing this is her disciple Fern, a human teenager who has a much more urgent sense of time. Being human, Fern doesn’t really want to waste time, especially since Frieren could be doing a lot of good when she isn’t sleeping all day or spending a few months trying to track down some rare flowers. Frieren, with her unlimited time, doesn’t see things that way and sometimes the wait is worth it like with the flowers scene. Having the pair bounce off each other gives Frieren enough a direction and enough a sense of human time to keep the story moving, while her elven perspective on things really shows how odd she can be even to her closest human and dwarf friends. Keep in mind she’s lived long enough to personally know certain legendary figures treated as myths by other races.

I’m also up to date on the manga on this one and while the slow adventuring is nice, there will be more action-centric arcs coming up. This is good because action arcs not only entertain people with a human attention span but they can really highlight Frieren’s experience and inhuman nature a way that slow journey can’t, even if the slow journey stuff explores Frieren from other angles and is very interesting on its own. Also the production values on this show are absolutely top tier, this is clearly being made by people who care and it shows in every frame. This will go double for action scenes since they have more movement than normal, indeed the limited action already shown has been stellar. If you’re not watching this already, you absolutely should be.

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto

This is the show that has most caught me by surprise so far. I knew Frieren was going to be good, but I had no info on Kusuriya. Unlike most of the other titles this one presumably has very little action since it takes place in the harem of a Chinese Emperor, following a girl who was goddamn kidnapped and forced into said harem as a lesser servant because she doesn’t have big tits like the concubines the Emperor favors. Fair enough I can respect a man who is open and honest about his preferences, especially when he has the power to take any woman he wants because fuck you the Heavenly Mandate said so. And so did the all soldiers he commands.

Maomao, the leading lady, is not attractive by harem standards but she is better educated than all but the upper tier concubines because she was an apothecary, who had a penchant for self experimentation because she just had to know how stuff worked. She’s great. I mean the fact she’s voiced by Aoi Yuuki is a great point in her favor since she’s probably my favorite VA at this point. But like goddamn even without that voice this was a girl I could vibe with immediately. I mean she specifically didn’t mention she was educated to the eunuchs managing the Emperor’s harem because she didn’t want to stand out and get roped into serious palace intrigues, and because it meant her kidnappers would be paid more for delivering a higher value woman and fuck those guys. Truly a complete master of sticking it to the man and malicious compliance at the same time, she’s my spirit sister. She’s also like one step removed from a tomboy because of her unusual interests and lack of feminine curves, she may not be Tomo but such perfection is a rare thing. She has an instinctive distrust and disgust for the main hot eunuch running the harem that all the other girls are fawning over, once again connecting with me and my contrarian nature at a spiritual level.

Against expectations Kusuriya has been very fun and somewhat intriguing for a show that covers the daily lives of concubines and servants. It sounds boring on paper, but as always execution trumps premise and Kusuriya was a pleasant surprised with suggestions of more serious depth to come. Visually it’s also pretty good with great character art and many attractive women, because harem, duh. The environments are also good and detailed although occasionally building textures can look really flat and out of place. Super minor complaint even for me, just something I noticed not something that put me off.

I doubt Kusuriya will be a smash hit but I really enjoyed my time with this one and I hope it succeeds. Maomao has already proved to be a great leading lady, seriously, Aoi Yuuki can carry a show instantly when she’s the MC. She’s done it before and based on the show so far she will do it again. I would highly recommend this, even if it sounds outside your wheelhouse. And with that, see you in the next one.

Seasonal Summaries: Summer 2023 Roundup

Man this is a weird season of anime. Despite the fact we’re hitting the 12 week mark and getting ready to start a new season, the bulk of the shows I was watching are unfinished because of production delays or finally ditching the split cour model and just going whole hog on 24 episodes – God I miss that approach. Don’t get me wrong split cours have absolutely proved their utility, giving gaps to build hype and possibly ensure more time for quality and such. But not having to wait a season is more my style. But despite the delays we’ve got some good shows going. Anyway, there will be spoilers you’ve been warned.

Masamune-Kun no Revenge R

This was dogshit. They turned a mostly light-hearted romcom into a serious romance, sped through all the character arcs at light speed and even managed to pull a fucking “I love Emilia”, totally skipping by actual best girl Koiwai Yoshino so that Masamune could hook up with, get dumped by and then start dating Adagaki again. This is the worst second season of a romance story since fucking Kimi ni Todoke season 2. I wasn’t even that invested in this show but man did the sequel get derailed and destroyed. Upon seeing the finale my disappoint was immeasurable and my day was ruined.

Mushoku Tensei Season 2

This was painful. We spent 8 episodes waiting for Slyphie to confess to Rudy. It got so bad the princess told Slyphie she was taking too long on the audience’s behalf. I’m all for a story that wants to take it’s time but you need to fill that time with something actually interesting. And some of what happens while Rudy is at snowy Hogwarts is interesting, but not much. Lilia and Pursena’s little subplot was kind of fun since they are somewhat fun characters but it didn’t give us much to chew on. Nanahoshi’s reveal was sort of interesting in that she was teleported in as herself instead of being reborn like Rudeus, but anyone with half a brain saw that scenario coming as soon as her name was revealed, since it was Japanese. The dwarf slave girl thing was a total waste of time, not bad not good, just padding out a frustratingly slow season. The only true standout new character is my boi Badigadi who instantly became best side character during his introduction after which the show did precisely fuck all with him. I still have a great deal of faith in Mushoku Tensei as a whole but suffice to say, my faith has been badly shaken by this utter bore of a season. Oh well at least this one got on a romance train and ending I can support unlike Masamune kun.

Jujutsu Kaisen S2

This has been amazing. It is sadly unfinished due to a fat delay after the prologue arc but JJK has hit it out of the park all the way. The prologue arc was excellent, with a light story, great action and the best character arc in the show thus far. The brief transition back to the present had the single best joke sequence in hooking Itadori up with Ozawa, jumping between all kinds of different animation styles to make it really pop. And the Shibuya incident has been pure action hype. This is how you do a sequel.

Ruroni Kenshin 2023

I dropped this after episode 11. I don’t think it’s bad but it just did not hold my interest. The directing is flat as can be, and the animation and fights have gone all in on speed and flash, but lost a lot of substance. The older version is just flat out better made, and having seen that one, I have no need to continue the new reboot. This show might still be great for new fans and the more kinetic and fluid action animation has its merits, but they alone do not make up for the superior directing and style of the original. The flat directing makes all the dialogue scenes feel longer and more boring than they should be for an action show. This one just feels all wrong to me, as an enjoyer of the old school version. If you are enjoying this, good for you, but I say give the original a try to see how it compares.

Lvl 1 Maou to Yuusha One Room

Of the shows that actually finished by now this is the top dog, against all the odds. It was by no means the best show of the season but it stayed solid throughout. It definitely got more serious as it progressed but it largely maintained a fun and light tone, mixed with occasional hints of romance and flashes of action. It also was able to sprinkle in some surprisingly heavy themes such as how much humans can change over relatively short periods of time, and how quickly we can start fighting amongst ourselves when an external threat is gone. Maou was 100% the best character, absolutely carried the show. She was fun, cute, and had that outside perspective that made the heavy themes work. Easily would recommend this one.

Dark Gathering

Dark Gathering has shown the most improvement over the season. It’s far from over but it has gradually gotten less light-hearted and funny and gone more into being a serious horror show. Yayoi is still the best character, able to seamlessly balance a being a happy-go-lucky child and a stone cold psychopath – good stuff all around. But now the stakes are getting higher, more dangerous ghosts are coming into play and Keitaro has committed to the project instead of just being dragged around by Eiko and Yayoi. Dark Gathering is looking up and I’m excited to see where it will go next. If you haven’t given this a try, I suggest you do.

Zom100

Zom100 is not yet complete due fairly consistent one week delays between episodes since the first few episodes. The production hiccups have definitely hurt the show’s reception if not the show itself. Zom100 still looks great, with tons of action. The tone has been lighter for the last few episodes, especially since both girls have bulked out the traveling party, and while the zombies are still dangerous they aren’t treated with the same seriousness as the early episodes. The light philosophizing is mostly gone with Akira’s bucket list being the guiding principle for more of his actions. It looks like the next episode or two will change all that, with the introduction of a group of people living by the same chaotic rules only with much worse intentions and a dark moral compass. It still hasn’t quite recaptured the pure high that was the first episode but I’m not sure it can given the constraints of the story. Zom100 is still very good and I can’t wait for more.

Helck

Helck is more or less where it was before. The visual quality, while perfectly serviceable and a good fit for the manga, is a bit lower than I would like. But the anime has absolutely captured and maintained the tone and feel of the manga, with the journey getting gradually darker as more mysteries begin to reveal themselves. Helck is also not done yet and I’m ready for more. If you still aren’t sure about Helck, give it a try, it will start ramping up in intensity soon.

Unpopular Opinion: Blue Lock

There are 3 kinds of sports anime. Man/fanservice sports, sports for boys and sports for men. The first category is self-explanatory and the second is the most common and probably most popular with the general public as seen in cases like Haikyuu. But Blue Lock is part of group number 3 and which happens to be my favorite sports anime subgenre. There will be spoilers you’ve been warned.

What separates the sports for boys from the sports for men, to keep the metaphor going, is that sports for boys are very much shounen stories, usually focused on team-building, the development of skills, friendship and so on. Sports for men are more likely to be seinen, and they tend to have more character and thematic exploration, or incorporate less realistic elements for the sake of telling a less traditional sports story. The advantage of sports for men have is that they are way more flexible because they aren’t chasing the tried and true formula of the sports for boys, allowing for a multitude of approaches with regards to characters, story and the act of playing the damn sport. I want to cover such titles because by and large I don’t care for sports anime but this one caught and held my attention and I want explore why, because I’m sure many anime fans, especially older ones, aren’t naturally drawn to sports anime either and may be missing out on some great shows. How many such people also read this obscure blog? The world may never know.

Blue Lock is best sports anime I’ve ever seen, keeping in mind that I still haven’t tackled Hajime no Ippo. If you don’t know the premise, Blue Lock is an experiment to create the greatest striker (ace) in Japanese history to finally catapult Japan’s national team to win the World Cup. To do this a bunch of promising young talent have been gathered at a special facility and are ruthlessly pitted against each other, with players who get cut being threatened with losing all prospects of playing on the national team at all. It’s kind of like Shokugeki no Souma in approach, with the idea that by having diamonds in the rough clash against other in a controlled setting they will polish each other and reach new heights. But the attitude is way more extreme. Shokugeki no Souma had fiery competition but Blue Lock is tense and heavy, players are encouraged to do whatever it takes to win and make tough choices for the sake of their futures. To illustrate the difference, when Souma won his first shokugeki against Ikumi, the two eventually became friends. In Blue Lock, the MC finishes the first episode by blasting the only guy he knew in the room full in the face with the ball and that dude was axed from the program on the spot.

Blue Lock is full of moments like this and it’s what makes it the best sports anime I’ve ever seen. This is a warped version of soccer taken to such an extreme that it shatters people. Powerful opponents crush up-and-comers mentally and physically, teammates betray each other, friendships are bent and broken- all so the winners can avoid losing their shot at getting to play for the national team. It makes Blue Lock so much more intense even for matches that aren’t hype per se. In fact, that’s probably the greatest strength of Blue Lock. It actually doesn’t have a lot of forecasted hype matches the way Haikyuu or Kuroko no Basket do, Blue Lock is way more unorthodox and big matches and plot developments can come out of nowhere. But Blue Lock sets the stakes so much higher than a traditional sports anime that every match feels do or die for the characters. Blue Lock is truly edge-of-your-seat entertainment and the big moments hit so much harder for it. A couple years ago when Kuroko no Basket characters entered The Zone that was seen as a high point for intensity in sports anime – but the best cuts from Blue Lock make The Zone look like a little bitch in comparison, helped by the aggressive rock theme that drops with said moments.

More impressive still, Blue Lock can string together many such moments all at once by nature of the competition. Because players are often backed into a corner and have to push past their limits it’s entirely possible for several players on the same team or even opposing teams to have their various breakthrough moments back to back, resulting in ball-clenching matches where every play starts turning into the soccer equivalent of a life or death battle, and they just keep coming since both teams have to give their all to win. Real soccer is incredibly boring to watch, and I’m saying that as someone who played soccer for 9 years straight. If I ever loved a sport, soccer would be it. Blue Lock makes soccer so awesome to watch, it is as hardcore as any crazy battle anime where character’s lives are on the line. It is extremely bingeable.

Visually Blue Lock has spectacular highs, mixing great character designs, vibrant colors, clean art and excellent digital effects – but it is also peppered with brief CG shots, usually bird’s eye view shots to show how multiple players are moving. It’s a pretty minor complaint, and personally not a problem, but I felt it right to mention it for those who do/would care. Still, the absolute powerhouses that are the big scenes are so worth the minor CG cuts.

And the show commits to its own absurdities. The wider world of Japanese soccer harshly criticizes the new Blue Lock program. The kids in the program get their personalities altered by the brutal realities of the competition. Ego Jinpachi, the man behind the Blue Lock program has an extremely consistent philosophy and makes excellent use of various tools to test the players. He even at one point pays the top 5 junior players in the world to scrimmage against the ad-hoc teams which emerge from the first couple phases of the Blue Lock program.

If you’ve ever had any spark of interest in sports anime, or just like a compelling show but have never dabbled in sports anime – I implore you, watch Blue Lock. It is intense, it is hype and I think any red-blooded anime fan ought to give it a try and see if it sticks for them. You’ll know after episode 1 whether Blue Lock is for you or not, that I can guarantee. Thanks for reading, see you in the next one.