#but it really lacked a punch for me in fgo

[nobuverse]

( I was finally able to play through Okita's interlude and I have - mixed feelings about it? )

Because on one hand I really loved her interactions with the kids. The conclusion of finding her 'makoto' was really solid. I adored the way she still kept trying to train even though she could barely swing her sword properly

But, not going to lie, I feel like romanticizing and overall making the death scene so soft was not the right direction to take.

Now, I understand that in literature we tend to overlook certain things for the sake of making a good story - we all do it. But there's no way on earth you're going to convince me that a person who died of tuberculous ( or so the legend goes, a lot of debate on that in some places ) lived the last few bits of their life happily in the warm sunlight.

It just...didn't portray her as a fighter very well, I think? The way I always visualized Okita's death was tragic with the records I read, as the legend of the original tell of him growing delirious and crying out to know what became of Kondou, with everyone telling him he was fine ( a lie, he'd already been executed ).

So they way they just have her smile and collapse when she's been told she looks really health that day - I'm not a fan.

Death by TB is not quiet and calm - it's spent gasping for air, your entire body having crumbled away bit by bit as time as gone bad. It's a devastating, hideous disease - specifically when we didnt have the treatments for it.

I think not portraying Okita as fighting against it to desperately try and get back on the battlefield was such a missed opportunity.

[fenrhi]

I started playing Waifu Impact (the other one) and I have some Thoughts I need to inflict on my followers

When people said you could only summon waifus in this game, I didn’t really believe them, but now I’m like……..eh. Yeah I can confirm this is Waifu Impact

‘Why are you looking for clothes in the soup store?!’ ‘Fuck you!’

Speaking of waifus, they all have horrible designs. Like, on par with FGO and E7. For now I’m still in the early stage of trying to decide if the story can shine despite that, but I have to admit it’s hard to focus on dialogues when I’m constantly thinking ‘Girl, WHAT are you wearing, how does it work’

Speaking of the story, I always feel like I missed a chapter when I start a new mission adsfjlljg. Like……I wish we had a little more Exposition by Explanation, actually. This changes a lot from Hellshin’s ‘go read these 50 pages of lore in ancient artifacts, this will never be relevant in the main story but whatever lol’ form of storytelling. I’m just not really used to it, I guess

I can get 50 different flavors of Waifus in bikini, but not even ONE healer? Really, MHY?

If you played a game called ‘take a shot every time a character with white hair and blue eyes shows up’ you would die in ten minutes

For all the people who (rightfully) complained about the lack of diverse skin tones in Hellshin, I want to say: please don’t play Waifu Impact, because it’s worse in that aspect

On the bright side, the gameplay aspect is fun, even if I’m not engaging with it the way MHY wanted me to. I just smash the same button and go PUNCH PUNCH KILL KILL while my enemies turn to ash. Monkey brain goes brrrrrrrrr

[xtremedespair3d]

HajiKo Anime: Winter-Spring 2020 + Summer First Impressions

I wasn’t willing to return to Tumblr to keep making these posts about my anime reviews which they’re the only thing I make because I was burned out on making them and I wanted to commit on writing my novel but I ended up abandoning it now because I was frustrated with everything about it, from harsh criticism I didn’t ask for to not figuring out the story well enough.

Then I tried to keep my reviews going by making threads on Twitter, but later I wasn’t satisfied with how they turned out nor like writing them because I was feeling limited, and I was even debating on whether to keep the Twitter thread format going, returning to Tumblr or just simply tweet my tiers of every anime I watch, so what better way to keep this review series going? It’s to return to Tumblr because I really like reviewing anime and Tumblr has been the most comfortable space to make my reviews and giving it a new name, HajiKo Anime, as in my name I go on Twitter as Hajime Komaeda.

So, kept you waiting, huh?

I had a lot of stuff to do in my life to the point that it drives me totally insane to the point of questioning my will to live, and then there’s also the pandemic which everything gets delayed and cancelled, even upcoming anime!

The biggest problem with making my reviews is sometimes I have to force myself on commenting on other shows I don't have much thought on, only like few I have tons of feelings I want to express, so I really hope things will be any better once I’m back on Tumblr to make these reviews I liked doing.

By continuing to make these reviews by including my new tiers, let me remind how do I interpret the ranking tiers:

S: 10-9

A: 8

B: 7

C: 6-4

D: 3-1

E: 0

Let’s keep in mind that I wouldn’t give full reviews on literally everything I watch because sometimes I don’t have much thought on so I’ll just skip them, I make lengthy reviews on some shows because I genuinely have feelings on these shows, that was one of my struggles with my other reviews, some of them were forced but I promise I will only do lengthy reviews to some shows I have lots of thoughts to talk about.

First off with Winter which is looking qutie strong even for the beginning of the decade:

Winter 2020

(Higher resolution)

Ishuzoku Reviewers: Perhaps one of the best ecchi series I've ever watched in years to the point where the ecchi really gets near-hentai level... so much so it caused controversy for Funimation and Japanese television alike, with Funimation removing the license and cancelled the English dub due to its content, and the series being removed on Tokyo MX. Though I might say that I wouldn't go that far to consider this as the best ecchi series of all time because there are a couple of things I really hated about the show, it can be a little too biased on some fetishes, includes fetishes I’m not a fan of, etc. But still, I admire the show for taking risks by going beyond the limits of Japanese television.

ID: INVADED: This is the most surprising show I've ever seen this season, it may also happen to be somewhat underrated. How can a dying studio like NAZ produce something really well-animated for once? All thanks to Ei Aoiki. I'm not really much of an animation expert but I really hope there might be someone who will make an article saying "How Ei Aoki saved Studio NAZ with ID: INVADED."

BanG Dream season 3: This third season of Bandori is THE BEST Bandori season ever, this made me like RAS (RAISE A SUILEN) even more.

Eizouken: This was an interesting series about making anime that may or may not compete with SHIROBAKO, though even if they have the same theme of making anime, they're completely different in terms of setting. The animation, even from what I've seen with Masaaki Yuasa and Science Saru with Devilman Crybaby, surprisingly looks like the series was actually fully hand-drawn instead of Adobe Flash, though Adobe Flash is still present in the opening.

Isekai Quartet 2: This second season of Isekai Quartet was a huge letdown compared to its predecessor, my biggest deal breaker is how they wasted the Shield Hero characters into minor roles, they straight-up overhyped them. The last few episodes seemed like they were slowly redeeming themselves on making the Shield Hero characters have some more screentime. Now that the series got a third season, let’s see how they will handle the Shield Hero characters this time if they’ll truly become main character status to be shown on the OP and ED, or they continue to be minor characters on the classroom where most of the supporting and minor characters from the main isekai properties attend to. Also, at one episode there was this cameo of these two characters from a series called Cautious Hero, if they end up becoming actual main characters or something, I’m not even gonna bother binging the series just like I did with Shield Hero.

Nekopara: I was skeptical about this series, but upon watching the first episode alone, this is a very comfy series, but its existence and inclusion of original characters will always baffle me.

Honorable mentions:

Azur Lane The Animation: As of July 2020, I think I might have accepted the fact that a lot of people (At least the Western side of the AL fanbase) hate the anime and they say it sucks, I’m really spoiled about it and it sucks to feel that way. I’ve always been hype as hell when I was watching the series from the very beginning, it had all kinds of easter eggs and references I couldn’t stop pointing them out since I’m an avid Azur Lane player (JP version only), and the best part is that at one episode, it had a bath scene where in the Blu-Ray version, the whole scene happens to feature official animated nipples! Official Azur Lane nipples in official media! I wish this could happen very often, even official artists would occasionally draw their characters in full R-18, such as Sirius and Ark Royal. (NSFW, CLICK WITH CAUTION)

Sure, sometimes the series had some quality, especially at the end of episode 4, but that doesn’t make the series automatically garbage or anything. The Azur Lane anime is NOT GARBAGE, PERIOD. Got that?

If I had the time, I’d seriously love to rewatch the series (Using the BD rips of course) to prove everyone wrong.

In terms of the future of Azur Lane anime, as much as I’d love to see this get more seasons and even movies to beat Kancolle to the punch, we’re now getting an anime adaptation of the Twitter 4komas, well, at least that’s certainly something cool. With that being said, I bet people are gonna be like “This is way better than the main anime” which I won’t condone it like hell. Let me say it again, the main Azur Lane anime is not garbage.

Fate/Grand Order Babylonia: Long after watching the series when it was on the air, I’ve been thinking that this was probably okay, Babylonia is not my most favorite singularity throughout FGO because the previous ones deserve some respect and I’m biased to the Shinjuku singularity for obvious reasons. I do wish they would adapt pretty much every singularity but they’re tediously long that they need to make hundreds of anime of each, so they just happen to skip all that and decided to make a Babylonia series and the upcoming Camelot movies because they’re the most favorite. I don’t really buy it on why are they the most favorite, but okay.

My Hero Academia season 4 and My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising: Heroes Rising was probably the last movie I’ve seen going to the theater before the pandemic happened.

Castlevania season 3: For some reason I didn’t like this season as much as the first two (Unpopular opinion).

Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode Oracle: I was very skeptical throughout the first half of the season, but this second half was making me in high spirits, although I would still prefer the original PSO2 anime over this.

Moving on to Spring:

Spring 2020

(Higher resolution)

Fruits Basket: Fruits Basket continues to be an excellent series, balancing comedy and drama the way I like with the comedy always making me laugh and the drama always making me tense. (I don't wanna see or talk about EP9 ever again.)

Shin Sakura Wars The Animation: Sanzigen continues to deliver quite a lot even after BanG Dream! season 3, not only we get one but TWO shows this season. My main problem with Shin Sakura Wars The Animation is that they really must have abused the hand drawn parts so much, and this was a really frustrating problem that this should be A tier instead, but it was still quite good regardless, I love Sanzigen to death.

Watanuki-san Chi To: This was a neat second season and this makes me strongly believe that the Watanuki-san Chi series are the future of VTuber anime, or dorama as what the series is, and I’m still mad that there are still no subtitles for this, neither official subs nor fan subs.

My few complaints for Watanuki-san Chi To is that Ikuko's role that kinda takes Futaba's place a little too much since Futaba was working at a karaoke bar most of the time and Ikuko and Futaba had interacted on-screen like twice (or three if that ending from episode 3 counts) on episodes 5 and 12 (the final one). I'm hoping that we'll get more of the Watanuki sisters and Ikuko interacting together on-screen some more but I think things will be the same with Futaba continuing to work on the karaoke bar.

Then there’s episode 12 which was the episode where Ikuko leaves the Watanuki house after finding her real parents, the episode was kind of predictable as Ikuko returned and decided to stay with the Watanuki sisters afterwards. This is one of the few, if not, the first time that something definitely made me say and feel something was actually predictable, but not that I would hate on it or anything.

Another complaint I have for this entire season is that it lacked the crowd laughs the first season had, the first season felt like it was true a comedy and having no laughs this season gave an entirely different atmosphere and I wasn't very comfortable with it.

Despite the flaws, I give huge thumbs ups for what they did with the world and the characters, they finally happen to bring the characters from the audio drama played by various other VTubers, and we finally happen to explore outside of the world for a little bit between shots of the streets where Ikuko walked through at the beginning of the series and the karaoke bar, not just sticking to the Watanuki house over and over.

The best part of introducing the newer characters is that they finally showed male characters for once, one of which was Futaba's boyfriend, Kenji, who's sort of a recurring background character frequently mentioned in the first season, he happened to finally have his body revealed, but still no face reveal. And there was also this other male guest character in episode 3, he was interesting to say the least. Finally, something to make the series not sexist.

I wouldn't really consider myself as the most dedicated Western Watanuki-san Chi fan. As much as I'd like to call myself that, I don't really speak Japanese to understand the series some more and I would have to be a badass to actually make fansubs, some events happened in Japan, which I don't live in Japan, and I don't buy the merch, let alone the Blu-Rays and the audio dramas. The worst part about the audio dramas is they're purchasable on Pixiv Booth, which Pixiv doesn't really let me use my debit card (or might if I were to use my Wallet app or something). I for one wouldn't really consider myself as the ONLY person who watches the Watanuki-san Chi, I wouldn't be watching the series if it wasn't for the people who have been uploading torrents of every episode on Nyaa, there's a very niche amount of people who do watch the series.

(I probably shouldn’t talk too much about piracy related things and sites like Nyaa, and I try to make my review posts as formal as possible to stay away from such things, but I’m just an independent reviewer who makes these posts as a hobby, I’m not a big anime news site or anything and I can say whatever the fuck I want, so who cares?)

BanG Dream! Garupa Pico Ohmori and Welcome to the Japari Park season 2: These ones are definitely the absolute surprise and looks like things are definitely gonna get absolutely better. They both premiered between late April to early May, so they're kind of a special case.

Kaguya-sama season 2: I didn't get the first season as much, but this second season is finally making me feel better about the series. (Probably because when I binged the first season, I multitasked and get occasionally distracted, that's why I didn't get it at first)

Argonavis from BanG Dream: This one's quite an interesting series. Not as good as the mainline female-centric series, but as a self-contained universe, it's pretty good on its own. It even handles topics that the base series won't even do, like music industry and money. Although Chuchu is probably the closest thing we experience when she's a music producer character of sorts but she's more entitled to her own band, money is a far more important issue the series doesn't want ot tackle, and Argonavis does it right.

The only thing that almost ruined the series is the unnecessarily dark final episode where the entire episode was basically Banri passing out after doing their debut performance in Destiny Rock Festival and Argonavis were having a hard time about what to do if something were to happen with Banri and they made a song dedicated to him afterwards. Episode 12 should have been the final episode, we didn’t need to see a rollercoaster episode, this should be played out more as an OVA, but I digress. This isn’t the weakest or the worst finale but it’s seriously unnecessary.

Now I just hope the second season makes the other bands teased in the last few episodes become regulars, just like how the first season of the female Bandori where they teased a lot of the other bands, and then from season 2 onwards, the other bands have become regulars. I just really hope they'll make the other bands from Argonavis be full CG because they were all hand drawn for some reason,  and I also need season 4 of main female Bandori series so bad so they can introduce Morfonica which in anime format they're introduced in the Garupa Pico Ohmori series.

Brand New Animal: It partially is because BNA starts with B, but he main reason is that I thought it was alright, and as a Netflix series that I can binge in one run, it's easily forgettable. Not the weakest of TRIGGER, but I feel rather indifferent with this.

Princess Connect ReDive: This was my absolute least favorite of Spring, I couldn't stress enough on how much of a Konosuba wannabe this is, it's such a poor imitation and I wish the actual game wasn't this ridiculously bad. From the over-the-top wacky tone to goofier background character designs and a very retarded MC. I don't know why but I thought this would be a simple way to get into Princess Connect without getting into the game because I see fan arts a lot, and Japan apparently seems to like this, as evidence with the fan arts and as much as I would like to like this more because of it, it just didn’t work for me, the animation is alright, though. At least this is way better than the NOT Shadowverse anime.

I got a comment from someone saying that the Konosuba influence comes from the director of the Puriconne series and this series serves to introduce the game as an original story for non-Puriconne players without touching any major plot points.

And finally let’s talk about my first impressions to all the shows I’m watching this Summer season:

Fire Force season 2: I was hoping this season can be a little bit better animated than the first, but upon the first episode of this season alone the terrible pacing is still there, but then the second episode, things get really interesting. The story is the main thing that will keep me intrigued for the rest of the series.

Dokyuu Hentai HxEros: The first time I heard about this series was when I retweeted and saving a Suketto Sanjou-related picture by artist Rakko where he hid a reply where someone posted a link to the Amazon page of the upcoming volume of the manga of HxEros (which the manga is not by Rakko and this is totally unrelated, what the hell was the guy who made the reply thinking?), that was a little while before I heard that this was getting animated.

At first I was 50/50 on watching it or not, but I saw the news that there’ll be this “H Energy Unleashed” version, which is the “uncensored” version and that sold me, but I continue to be unsure on watching it, that is until the day of the premiere where I was randomly seeing screenshots of the episode on my timeline, particularly scenes where the girl Kirara was completely naked, and I was absolutely sold on it and decided to watch it, and after doing so, I kinda dig it.

However, I dislike Kirara because of how she is. It makes me feel bad for how she used to be when she was a kid during some flashbacks where she was a dirty minded girl to present day where she’s a hardcore tsundere hiding her horniness, the way she is, it really makes me hard to empathize with her. She’s pretty cute and hot too.

Re:Zero season 2: It feels weird having a second season of Re:Zero considering it’s been 4 years since the first season came out, and after watching the first episode, now I just feel unprepared.

Oregairu season 3: While I was watching the episode, I was randomly reminiscing some memories and characters I remember from the first two seasons and who do I like, which I kinda like most characters, but Komachi is my least favorite because she constantly says “gross” to poor Hachiman, geez.

Uzaki-chan: This was a pretty solid series and this is definitely being AOTS. However, recently I found something very hilarious that I’m dying to talk about.

Remember the time when there was a controversy from an SJW where they criticized the Uzaki-chan Japanese Red Cross poster because of her big boobs? Well, that’s a separate story, but things with Uzaki-chan gets more laughable, as I stumbled upon this tweet a few days ago and...

Anime News Network gave the first episode a 1.5 star review?!

Holy jesus... What is that?! What the fuck is that?!

Yikes, Anime News Network are a bunch of clowns!

I’m really glad ANN is getting the hate it deserves, I just don’t like ANN when they do reviews, I never liked them since their discussion post on Netsuzou Trap and then episode 0 of Saekano season 2.

All that aside, this series is going to be quite a fun ride.

This Summer season could have been strong if only Akudama Drive and Danmachi season 3 weren’t delayed, but that’s for the better as Fall 2020 is looking like it’s the strongest season of the year, and you’ll find out why in September.

And that’s it for all my reviews! I really hope you enjoyed my biased reviews and I can’t wait to continue to make these reviews just like I used to. Also, let me address that I don’t make money from making these reviews, I only write these posts for fun.

Anyways, see you in Fall 2020 for my review for this Summer season and what am I gonna watch in Fall!

Check out my Carrd.