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Really can't say if this was a good watch. I consider this as a visual experience rather than an actual series.

The different styles clashing make this a brilliant work of art, very unique, made with a lot of dedication from the studio. You can really feel the passion to make an anime different from anything else, yet, the writing choices don't match this idea.

It's not a case of the animation being the only good thing about it. The stories are interesting, some arcs are a 10 out of ten, some are okay at worst. But what story is TBHX trying to tell? There is no ... continuing narrative, no climax, nothing to keep you watching. The order of facts being mixed up is not something bad by itself, but the fact that it goes back and forth all the time.

When some sort of climax finally happens (Nice and New E-Soul working together, confronting Ghostblade and Queen) this is suddenly over, the status quo is maintained and well let's go see the next arc.

About Nice, well, I never got his character. Sometimes he looks like a total douchebag who was there to help the evil corporate managers, then he is suddenly against Dragon killing Smile Man, then he is a douchebag again. Did I miss something vital or is his writing really that bad? Not that he or Lin Ling is supposed to be a main character, but they keep appearing and being mentioned for a reason.

Who killed Xiao Yueqing and why? Why did Lin Ling see her dead one day before? I didn't expect to get all the answers in one seasons, but with 24 episodes I supposed we would get at least some, instead of forgetting these characters and jump to another story. I liked X's misteryous aura and I wish they kept that open. Everything about him was one episode and then it's over, while most of the others had plenty.

That said, my favorite arcs were Ghostblade and Lucky Cyan. Wish they had more focus.

Nothing Ever Happens: The Anime

Tried really hard to watch this one to the end. The initial idea is good, also the animation, Frieren is a good protagonist and there are some interesting points here and there. But the story is just awful, non-existent and pointless.

Every episode is the same: The trio goes to a small town, no one recognizes Frieren as the immortal elf hero who saved the world and has statues everywhere, and a sidequest is given. Then comes a flashback, showing that Frieren's past group was there before, just to show Himmel gooning out his unrequited love for Frieren for the 1000th time, ... we come back to the present and the episode ends. Nothing interesting, nothing to think about for the next week and no reason to continue watching.

I wanted to forget that Himmel exists, but he is a central point in the story besides dying in the first episode, as Frieren's journey is to talk to him again in Heaven, being this the only continuous plot in the whole series. We're supposed to care about him as he appears to interrupt every episode, but I didn't manage to grow fond of him nor his "romance".

He has no personality, no development and stayed the same person for ten years. He and Frieren have no conflict nor a reason to like each other romantically. This guy spent ten years with a woman who can't read feelings without telling his own, never made a move nor clarified that, and never went after her for fifty years, spent his whole live alone and passed away. Some people say this is the best romance ever, if you believe me. This character and his flashbacks are not only an annoyance, but keeps the story from moving forward.

Besides the plot of finding this guy in a place that will take until the end of the series to get there, the story has no objective. You can say it follows the "it's more about the journey" trope, but that is not an excuse for making a story so lame. Series like One Piece, Fullmetal Alchemist, Samurai Champloo, Vox Machina, Mighty Nein and many others follow this concept while being able to make an interesting narrative, having a lot of story arcs and different antagonists that impact the main plot.

Do the other characters have their own journey, a place they want to go, something they want to fulfill? Fern doesn't, nor Stark. Sein seemed like the first one that we would have, unfortunately he left the group and we couldn't see it, since this series is allergic to story arcs and something actually happening. Every interesting character they meet is instantly forgotten in the same episode, with its story ended there, being brought up just to fill the episode or to invoke Himmel again.

With all this focus on Frieren being an elf "immortal being as old as time who doesn't do feeling nor human relationships" and such, I expected more of this in other elves, such as Kraft, not for the guy to leave the story and make a brief appearence later. I know there is also another elf called Serie, but I didn't get to her since this story made me give up.

When the demons appear and Frieren tells their story, I guessed that we would finally have something actually happening, but I was wrong again. The Johan Liebert guy had potential to be a good recurring antagonist, even if his two companions had to die, but he dies right there too, his fight vs Fern and Stark being possibly the best that we've had. But he hypes Aura, so I expected her to be the recurring villain instead. Well, that didn't happen, Frieren kills her in a blink and then bye bye demons.

I guess this anime has no other antagonist than itself. Frieren being "too powerful" is not an excuse for terrible battles nor a lame story. There are a lot of series where the main character is overpowered and they still manage to make it challenging or entertaining.

At last, I was watching that mage exam where we were introduced to a lot of characters and it seemed like something would actually happen in this show. Frieren is paired with Kanne and Lawine, a cute couple that resembles Fern and Stark, and these are the only good additions. The rest was boring to watch, and with the same face syndrom that this artstyle has, without giving any effort to show expression in the characters, it's hard to see any personality in them. Sometimes it feels like I'm watching a gacha game cutscene.

Frieren in some way seems like a japanese version of Adventure Time with a lot of budget. Good characters, interesting concepts, wasted potential, some episodes with world lore and story but most are filler.

In the end, I don't get the hype nor why people love this, but I don't think it's a bad serie. I guess I expected too much and didn't enjoy it as much as other people did.

I see JJK as one of its own characters, "meet the potential man" Megumi, since it sums up the run of this series: unreached potential.

It's hard as hell to pull off what Gege Akutami did: a manga series that gained much popularity in a short time, one of the best anime adaptations ever made, comparisons to popular well-stablished mangas and even integrate the "new big three" with Demon Slayer and Black Clover. All this to be on the hands of an author who was creative and talented, but also lazy, bored and ultimately didn't like their own series. Anyone writing reviews here, fans, haters or ... whatever, give more importance to this manga than Gege Akutami did.

Skipping the part where I'd talk about all the great aspects of this manga and the reason why I gave it a 6 besides all the complaints, since most of this quality of the beginning vanished in the last 25% of the series. After Shibuya, Jujutsu is full of plotholes and discontinued narratives.

Starting with the main one: Remember Kenjaku, the guy who solo'd two special grades, spent countless years creating his plan for Sukuna and the Culling Game and is the cause of all this? The biggest mistake of Jujutsu Kaisen was discarding him in the worst possible way. He showed himself to be stronger than several characters, smarter than everyone, and then loses in a fight that served as comic relief, taking a hit from behind by Yuta.

I'm not saying that Sukuna isn't a good final boss nor he didn't deserve that much focus: he did. Him being the final boss instead of Kenjaku isn't a problem itself: It would've been fine if it was done well, but his return was very random, it seemed like Gege just wanted to rush the ending. This became even more evident when they threw in Kenjaku's death in the middle of Sukuna's fights, since they had to do it and it would've been worse to do it later.

As a bonus, they also discarded Choso, one of the main characters in Yuji's nucleus, his brother and only one he had left. Yuji lost his grandpa and became the last member of his family, saw his mentor and his best friend dying in front of him, saw his friend being crippled and retired, saw Sukuna taking over the only friend he had left and then killing his teacher and mentor. Choso was Yuji's brother and the most loyal person to him since he found out the truth, he was also the one that told the truth to Yuji and became a mentor to him. If he were to die sacrificing himself for Yuji, he deserved a better ending, but it wasn't even felt because his appearence in Shinjuku was so random and quick, then he is never mentioned again.

Looking back to season 1 while reading the Shinjuku arc is watching and entirely different series. Who was there in the beginning that played a role fighting in Shinjuku, other than Yuji, Gojo and Maki? The other key fighters follow a pattern: Yuta (JJK 0), Hakari (S3), Miguel (JJK 0), Kusakabe (JJK 0), Angel (S3), Higuruma (S3), Hajime (S3). Also, Todo from season 1 is there as the solo member of his school I guess. Not counting Choso and Nobara for obvious reasons.

The Kyoto School is 100% useless by the way. Teacher Utahime appeared and quickly became a beloved character. Her rivalry/ romance/ friendship with Gojo was funny to watch, and with both of them being teachers I expected more focus on her. But yeah, let's throw her under the bus like all the female characters.
(Quick note, if you want to humanize Gojo, one of the three main characters, why not show how he is unable to form a real connection with people close to him, such as Nanami, Utahime and Shoko? His character doesn't need to be all about Riko and Geto)

Kamo is another one I expected something, as he is the future leader of one of the three clans that rule society (something that also didn't matter in this story) and had a backstory (that seems kinda random now). And everything he did in the end was helping Maki vs curse Naoya and cutting off his amazing hair. The rest, equally useless. There are hundreds of battles in this manga and most of them barely have one. Utahime herself only reveals her cursed technique in Gojo vs Sukuna match to make a 200% hollow purple (Sukuna survives this btw).

You can argue that Mechamaru was useful, I agree with that, still disappointing to show him instantly dying after becoming an interesting character just to show Mahito's strength. Same Mahito that solo'd a giant mecha robot with 17 years of cursed energy, using a fraction of the power he had yet to develop, and then died to two guys that punch really hard.

Anyway, background characters being discarded are not necessarily what makes a manga bad, it just makes the world smaller, and it's kind of pointless when the author is going to need background characters and will create new ones instead. With JJK, even the "main ones" receive this treatment.

Inumaki was always shown as relevant and powerful, "oh he is too strong I'm afraid of him" as the equally useless students from Kyoto said. The only time he did anything in this series was in the movie, being left out of the series after Yuta learned to use his power.

And Nobara, oh well, the biggest complaint people have about her is her survival, and I disagree with this one. It's fine that she survived, after all she was briefly injured, rescued by a healer and got medical care. What's terrible about this is that she was our main character's best friend, her loss was really impactful to him and she had a decent farewell (while being alive all this time, while Choso who actually died didn't have one). If she had to die, just do it right there. If she were to survive and help in the final fight, don't just throw her in the freezer with zero confirmation if she was alive or not until the last scene of the last battle. As expected of someone who have no idea of what to do with their narrative, Gege just chose the ambiguous path and did what was more convenient.

After Shibuya begins, JJK is an entirely different series. It has no balance to mantain a healthy narrative, it's just a chaotic, dark, long-ass battle until Sukuna dies. The plot realizes it, reason why we still see some peaceful scenes - only in flashbacks - to make we care more about these characters and root for them. Something that we could've had before or in the middle of all this, if Gege didn't decide to make three chaotic battle arcs with a sense of urgency to finish the manga.

People will call this fillers and say that JJK has none of those. I disagree, we have a lot of fillers: Kenjaku going to the USA, Kenjaku visiting Yuji's friends, Kenjaku getting Tengen or whatever else this guy did. All of his narrative was being a plot device to make the "Sukuna vs everyone" fight that seems all that this series was about, so why care? Just cut it all when the anime comes.

In the end, I don't think that this is manga is bad nor not worth reading. It's good, interesting, has a lot of hype moments, but it's disappointing. Gege Akutami is not a bad author, they're just lazy and full of self sabotage.

JJK Mojuro is there with an entirely new story in this same universe, with their writing and someone who draws better. Idk if I will be reading it but I hope it goes well.

Works as a good comedy and should've stayed so.

Good points:

I had some good laughs at this show and it's definitly worth watching. A work with a lot of love dedicated to make, made by the mind of Paru Itagaki, more known for her other manga Beastars. Even though I know nothing about her other work, I can guess why it is so successful. Sanda is a story with a lot of charisma, having a great cast of characters and an unique artstyle, showing that it's possible to write a drama with teenage characters without resorting to cliche.

The animation is great, with amazing battle sequences. The ... antagonists are well developed and so is our main cast, wish I could follow them longer. The couples are really cute and heartwarming to watch also.

On the other hand:

I don't know what is with seasonal anime that they never do a closed story episodes even though it's all they'll ever get, adding drama and a discontinued plot line in the end (to sell manga, I guess). I doubt this will get a sequel next christmas.

But the main criticism I have with this anime is how weakly explored the world lore is. Something I wouldn't mind if it was only a comedy, but a major event happens related to this and it's only explained as a 10-second read footnote and that's it.

Take the worst of each shounen you know, blend it together and you'll have this.

The premise was strong and at some points it looked interesting. Knowing the target audience, of course I expected some Naruto-BNHA pre-teen drama, humour and romance, yet it became something way bigger than a mild annoyance.

There's no plot or storyline to follow. Black Clover just fills its episodes with a bunch of shounen cliche and forgets to build a story of its own. The fights are interesting, yet the animation is terrible for something so popular as one of the "new big three".

Almost all the characters are annoying and awful to ... watch, and the ones who are not don't have screentime. Asta's screaming and "dattebayo" personality are the most criticized aspect of this show, but I guess the people who do so don't go past the first episodes. Asta himself is a good character, so is Noelle and background characters who almost never appear (Yuno is included here btw). We have to spend most of our time with Walking Tits character who's just there for gooner bait, others who have no role other than cheap jokes and an Epstein Island resident.

I don't know what is wrong with manga authors who have this idea: Let's write a villain with an awful, dislikeable personality and force him as one of the good guys. Some manga do this and portray it like "they're bad but they have a lot of issues" "they're trying to do better" or whatever to make it less awful. Not the case here, as of course this story has the depth of a rain puddle.

Black Clover has a pedophile who wants to bang his own child sister and is obsessed with her, appearing some seconds every episode just to blush and have classic anime nosebleed and faint just by seeing a picture of her. Manga authors see things like this as a comic relief, for whatever reason. I gave up when this guy had his own arc to play the hero, with countless episodes about him. Am I supposed to root for this 2D version of Diddy? Personality-wise he is worse than any of the actual forgettable villains of this show, and doesn't even do a favor of dying.

TLDR: Waste of time.

Rent-a-girlfriend but directed by Diddy

As a manhwa/manhua reader there is something obvious about Japanese authors and their obsession with minors. I wish I'd speaking about particular cases, but in this scenario the decent ones are the exception. Dandadan just follows this norm: make middle school characters and portray them like adults, having the same amount of sex jokes and harassment scenes as Nanatsu no Taizai.

All this hype and good animation spent on something that would fit the tastes of the author of Samurai X. But whatever, if you pretend this is just for comedy and ignore what makes 40% of the plot, Dandadan Schneider is ... still a terrible anime, poorly written and just an overestimated copy paste of teenage romance cliche, worthy of being in kpop wattpad stories or Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas.

I read somewhere that Dandadan "is an original story that breaks tropes" and I don't know which anime those people were watching, because it's not this one. I've watched a lot of romcom anime in the past and I'm comfortable to say that the only thing that makes this one better is the animation. In fact, as for "breaking the romcom genre" aspect, that is a trashy seasonal 12-episodes anime called Gamers that does this well for a few episodes, making a hilarious and unpredictable story about miscommunication and fake love triangles.

Dandadan is nothing but predictable, from the beginning to the end. Two girls fight for an absolute loser of a guy they just met, there are scenes worthy of telenovelas like accidental kisses, being caught in a misunderstanding situation, jealousy, female and male rivalry, people who barely know them shipping, and that's the plot. Some will pretend this is an action story for whatever reason, but all the plot revolves around this cliche romance. Even the villains will be brought in for this reason, or for more sexual harassment scenes.

Not giving this a 1 because of the good animation and some enjoyable scenes that made me laugh. There was also a good side story for one episode, but good side stories don't matter that much if the main plot is garbage.

Does it even need a spoiler warning when nothing has happened?

It feels like the whole part 1 setup baited the audience making the anime seem a lot more than what it is. Some people will say "it was a spy anime that became a slice of life" and that is an offense to the genre, since dramas based on real life will have conflict, and this one is just happy, fluffy family moments. As a lot of people mentioned, part 1 focused a lot on Loid, while this one is just whatever, and Yor is just forgotten, left behind.

The kind of "plots" this series brings ... us are awful, mostly. I enjoyed the dog one, however the ones forcing "romance" all the time are annoying. Yuri, the worst character of the story, an incestuous asshole obsessed with his sister will appear sometimes and I guess you'll have to endure him. Useless to the plot, useless as a side story, useless to everything.

The other one, Damian Desmond has a lot of screentime, way more than Yor. Too bad since he makes it unwatchable. This annoying kid does nothing but bullying Anya and she will always have to interact with him because of "the mission", and without a plot it seems nothing more than a stupid excuse to make this scenes take place. At some point you realize this is just a bunch of fillers and since you don't like it you can skip the entire thing. But yeah the story will force this unhealthy relationship between six year olds as a romance. No, I didn't take any spoiler if there is any, but it's quite obvious what they're doing.

The new one this season, Nightfall. I liked her appearence when she first showed up and expected something more driven to the "main plot" (as if there was any) but it wasn't. Her entire character is to be bound to a male figure, all she wants is to fuck Loid, that is her entire motivation. May be funny at first but I got bored of her quickly. That is how straight people portray attraction and romance. While Loid and Yor, the only healthy couple, is completely forgotten and undeveloped. They barely interact.

Quick note, if Anya's purpose was making the audience want to have children, Damian is an advertisement to use condoms. Japan's population will stagnate this way.

So it's this way. There is no plot, unfortunately, and the next seasons will just be more of this, or at least for a while. This anime sells.

Do not confuse me as a hater, please. I like this anime, and therefore I wanted something more than the basic.

I didn't have much expectations for an anime from 2004 with no chance of being continued. Watanabe is a renowned director for Cowboy Bebop but I watched his recent work Carole & Tuesday that he didn't seem to have much freedom working on, so I was uncertain about Samurai Champloo. The anime turned out to be surprisingly good.

This anime was like a journey, to be honest. Each episode had a very own story, from start to finish, featuring interesting characters that are remarkable despite having appeared only once. Some of these arcs are boring, some are very good, but it's certainly something out of the ... mainstream. Samurai Champloo brings back the historical Japan, the end of the samurai era, how minority groups like the Ainu and Ryukyu islanders were treated, and even had an episode with a good LGBT representation which is very rare in anime. This anime showed to the outside world the overlooked aspects of the Japanese history and how dark it was even before World War 2, and how its societal system and the Western invasion affected the lives of people like our main characters, each one of them coming from different backgrounds.

Samurai Champloo is one of those "it's more about the journey" kind of stories. It's not very comedic or ultra dramatic like some of these tend to be, each episode gives you something to reflect. Well, it was boring sometimes, but I feel like this anime is an unique experience, and having 26 episodes is a delight. Anime is currently in an era that dictates that everything needs to be mainstream, everything needs to sell a lot and everything must have 12 episodes only. I can say a lot of out of the norm anime that were cancelled and rushed to fit 12 episodes that were never seen again. Something like this would never be produced today.

Although it could've been a lot better. It's good that we have a closure, but this one should have been longer, like, it's the only actual plot from the beginning to the end. Fuu's father only appears in the last episode, and his past is only mentioned briefly. He is not a "final boss" sort of figure but he is a terrible person, yet you don't have any strong feelings about it, not because he is a sick man, but because he is shallow.

Honestly, when we first saw Kariya, there were some hints that he was the samurai Fuu was looking for, and I thought he was Fuu's father for a time. But he wasn't. It would've been expected that Kasumi was a badass samurai and the final villain of the series? Maybe, but better than what was given, at least. This adds to Fuu not having a role in the closure besides being the most active character in the story and having focus in most of the episodes. Mugen faced his past enemies from Ryukyu, Jin had a duel with Kariya who caused the death of his old master, and Fuu sort of was there. Disappointing, beucase, although I love Jin and he is my favorite character, I wish Fuu had the larger role in the ending.

Eeach one of them had a closure, at least. And they part ways, of course. Why? The anime doesn't elaborate, even after it was clear they are friends. But I wasn't expecting something different, to be honest.

Rest in Peace Nujabes, the main responsible for this anime being so good.

Really cool anime overall, very unique. It combines a known premise (girl wants to be a successful musician and has to face the music industry) with a really original character that is Kongming. He is really random and comes up with wacky, absurd, smart strategies that are really good to see when he has good and realistic motivations. And it's really great for a comedy anime.

And he doesn't need to be the main character for this anime to be great. Eiko is the protagonist and her story hits so hard that you even forget that Kongming is also in the anime sometimes. It has a ... perfect combination of comedy and drama.

This comes a lot when Nanami and Eiko are on screen. They find each other to give us good music and cute scenes of them both, but also because they needed each other at that time. Eiko needed to find her "soul" and develop her music, and Nanami needed to find a path besides Azalea and her love for music again. And their relationship goes beyond making music, they really show affection for each other and in this sense their song "I'm still alive today" portraits it perfectly.

Besides looking this great, the anime rushes some things in the end and takes off some of the quality it could have had. I have two main issues with this besides it having many more.

The minor one is how they didn't give a closure to Eiko and Nanami in the last episode. Yeah she met the group wearing normal clothes and that's cool but there was no solo scene of them both and that makes it look incomplete, since they were the focus of the series for the entire second half and that is impossible to deny. Yeah there could be a season 2 and this wouldn't be an issue anymore, but excluding this the anime could close here perfectly, so I don't know if a sequel is coming.

The major one is how they solve the conflict with the villain. The guy put them in a Babymetal situation (Azalea has so many Babymetal references that it's impossible not to relate them) where they have no freedom, can't go out with their friends, can't appear in public, can't make music for real (autotune and artificial music production are something Babymetal is really into recently), are treated like objects PLUS they are forced to wear ridiculous BDSM suits.

He forced them to be his puppets and exposed their bodies to millions of people, and what is the closure? He continues to be their manager and they even THANK him afterwards. I really tried to erase that scene from my head.

Still, it's the best music anime I've seen, and the music is really great in this one.

TLDR: Boring, pointless and disappointing.

Watching the first episode and a clip with Azusa and Laika before the series I thought that this anime would have them both as protagonists. They have a good development and the first episode is great. However in the second episode and forward things got weird.

The slime daughters plot was okay and sure a cast with four characters have space for development, but I noticed the huge amount of characters in the OP and there would be more joining them soon. So yeah, episode 3 came throwing Laika into the corner and giving us a Walking Tits character with an overload ... of fanservice scenes. And episode 4 and the rest is more of it.

In conclusion, there is no story. There is no conflict, and when there is it's solved right away. It's simple enough to be a kids' show, but if that was the case I wouldn't be making a review out of this. The amount of sexual referrences makes it not be suitable for children either.

And there's queerbaiting of course. Walking Tits is there with random scenes of advancements on the protagonist and teasing, that are just to show her boobs bouncing. This anime doesn't even develop the characters' relationships. Laika is not even Azusa's friend or apprentice, they barely talk and she acts like a maid all the time. The daughters are there for fluff just like the rest, because nothing happens. All the plots that would make this an actual story are discarded.

I feel like I dodged a bullet. What a waste of time.