#sorry! didnt like them at all. bad writing + pacing (and sometimes animation and acting)

[olberic]

anime ive watched in 2022, ranked least to most favourite:

12: overlord (2015-)

(this show doesnt deserve a gif)

listen. its a bad show. anyone who tells you is good is marvelpilled to see action=good. the world setup and characters had a lot of potential in season 1, but with each season it got progressively worse. the show spends a lot of time developing side characters, and then kills them off just to show how strong the protagonist is. said protagonist goes through little to no character development over 4 entire seasons. even the action and fights arent well done theyre just fights. everything’s a curbstomp and it sucks. idk man even fic cant fix this one.

11: tales of phantasia (2004)

pros: seeing the characters animated instead of in little pixeled sprites. cons: everything else. its a bad adaptation.

10: chainsaw man (2022-)

this one’s also not for me! i think its a really good show, between the pacing, interpersonal relationships, and animation (plus a different ending per ep is god tier). but it makes me feel bad to watch and not even in a cathartic way.

9: spy x family (2022-)

its a fun show! the animation’s great and its funny. but it doesnt stand out to me as much as its hyped. definitely recommend, but doesnt compare to my other faves.

8. black butler (2008)

the story? WACK. the characters? WACK. made me laugh though and it was really fun to watch as like, something id only heard about back in middle school. would not recommend but i had fun watching it. plus, its one of the few shows (ok first seasons) that actively keeps its word and doesnt try to pull a deus ex to save the protag at the end. we need more of this.

7. the case study of vanitas (2022-)

the way this show deals with unreliable narrators and complex interpersonal relationships and still manages to have incredible worldbuilding… the characters are all so well done and i NEED to have more of it animated.

6. demon slayer (entertainment district arc) (2022-)

i dont care what anyone says i love this show. best quality animation of the decade. super compelling cast of characters. i watched the rest of the show last year, but this one gets included bc its new and it made me rewatch the entire show twice. that fight at the end had me truly speechless

4. komi cant communicate (2021-)

i laughed until i cried several times while watching this and that alone puts any show near the top for me

3. fabiniku (2022-)

see above. every ep had me in tears. best ending song of the year (hiii most played song). plus its gender.

2. mairimashita! iruma-kun (2019-)

life changing show. to me. like i dont even know what to say about it. character designs rule. op/ed AND musical songs are good. first anime to make me pick up its manga in a literal decade. theres nonbinary characters. its an isekai. every character makes me go :D when they come up on screen. 11/10

1. mob psycho 100 (2016-2022)

show of all time TRULY. nothing i can add that hasnt been lauded on here before. soundtrack, animation, character designs, writing, attention to detail, humour, it has EVERYTHING. has a (new) favourite character of anything ever (ritsu). ive rewatched it three times in 3 months (incredibly high praise from me)

[ajaegerpilot]

tlou2 thoughts under the readmore

well im not rlly sure what message tlou2 was trying to convey, if any but. joel’s words at the end saying ‘if i had a second chance i’d make the same decision’ is kind of like what i’d always felt abt all the decisions made in the game. and decisions in life. like sometimes you have to make bad decisions, but you can’t opt out, you have to sit in them. abby + the fireflies killing joel is something I think joel would never say he didn’t deserve.

wrt what i think’s coming after the game, and this is what might’ve pissed people off at the end - the ambiguity - but whatever i’m a big boy i can engage with media and make shit up based on what i’ve seen whether or not it’s what the writer’s intended. 

i think tentatively that abby chomping off ellie’s guitar fingers made her think of joel playing guitar in that last moment (probably after a quick ‘OUCH BUT I NEED THOSE’ thought). i think the importance of music was well foreshadowed throughout the game. i personally think ellie is probably going to go back to the original town and apologize to dina, thinking about her last word’s with joel wrt ‘i dont know if i can ever forgive you for that, but i’d like to try’. also I think the implication could be that the fireflies are still alive? also, was that a firefly symbol on ellie’s guitar or was it a moth? like i don’t think the game ended in an abjectly hopeless place like it sounds like most people do because llke... joel was a brutal person who did worse to people that deserved less than abby’s dad (bc honestly fuck abby’s dad).

i don’t think the messaging of the game was ‘violence bad’ because like again, the last part of the game u kill a bunch of bad ppl, and again with the mechanics of the game to decry violence doesn’t make sense. i’m terribly partial to ‘violence to liberate vs violence to oppress’ narratives, but I’m not sure if that’s what the game was trying to convey either. i’m trying to understand how revenge relates to closure, because it’s evident that ellie still needed closure even if she never got revenge.

i’m trying to find the throughline here and what I can personally learn from this and I suppose it’s the thought of like. living after loss. that seeking closure is fine but revenge doesn’t necessarily bring closure. that you are really lost when you become consumed by violence. that the choices you made you have to live with, and if you can find yourself knowing you would do it again that you would, you’re lucky. but idk every time I think about like how if lev was killed, and how lev is a stand in for ellie where abby is a stand in for joel, idk. like if abby didn’t take revenge it feels almost like it was not her choice, but like the world beat out all her energy out of her. like idk, it’s true that when you’re just killing ppl all the fucking time by yourself your life is essentially forfeit. and sometimes it is forfeit when you’ve lost everyone innocent and good in your life. 

idk maybe for abby it was enough to find one good person to take care of, to watch for and die for (as she would have for lev if ellie had killed her), but for ellie it wasn’t enough to have a wife and child the way joel once did.

but idk just like i can’t blame abby for killing joel, and i can’t blame joel for killing abby’s dad, and i can’t blame hardly anyone for killing anyone in this game, lilke everytime i get close to trying to find a common thread within all that’s happened in this game i find an exception. and maybe that’s just because i’ve had a tiring day, but i still don’t really know what this game is trying to teach me other than abby hot arms big strong woman.

i think the pacing of the game was shit. ellie’s part early on dragged, I liked abby’s part bc we got to see a bunch of different worlds and wish we spent more time with the WLFs or the seraphites and less time in abby’s ex’s grimey sex aquarium. and then the last part of the game was too rushed imo in a sense. Idk if necessarily they should’ve dragged it out for longer, but maybe if they’d shortened up the previous two parts the last part wouldn’t have felt so rushed and honestly tacked on.

I liked the ending scenes just fine, and one day I expect someone to write an essay about the symbolism of abby being put up on that lumber like she was jesus but right now the essays are either like ‘tlou2 SUCKEd’ or ‘tlou2 was GOOD ACTUALLY’. i can’t deny the acting in this game was great and they really improved the facial animation between the trailer and the game (which, thank god bc i wasn’t saying it but it looked weird in the trailer). the game was unnecessarily brutal (sorry to the naughty dog employees), the black guy with superhuman invincibility to pain that abby had to brutally kill was disgusting, the way we got 1 nonwhite person that didnt die towards the end. this game needed a script editor to chop things down and make the messages more clear and concise. maybe the story really didn’t have any meaning? maybe the message is like ‘you’re shit and you live in a shit world but do u really just want to kill people all the time and never advance and grow’ but AGAIN that falls apart when you look at the 1) primary game mechanic of killing people all of the time 2) the concept of people killing those you love (eg dina/jj or lev).

like idk. idk man.

[noidsome]

The big issue with the digimon tri movies, and why you should be pissed too.

I just finished watching the 5th digimon movie, and to put it short, i excpected nothing and im still let down. This is a big negative critique on what ive seen so far from the tri movies, but its also more of a vent for me, because theres something about these movies that really fucking grinds my gears and i feel i finally need to let that out somewhere. Look at this as a sort of....badly written analyctic rant. So far this movie, in short, was as i dreaded, 70% meiko bullshit and 20% kari...which is so fucking insulting i dont even know...but thats why im here.

Now before you assblast me with your stupid crap, please try to understand that as harsh as im writing this, im trying to look at this movie from a critical standpoint, and no im not going to put in the effort to be “nice” about it because if digimon tri can get away with half assing everything about itself, then wont bother. If you cant handle that, move on. If your interested, click the read more and we can begin this shit fest, because i think its about god damn time someone put these mediocre movies in their place.

The pacing.

I dont know about you guys, but to me it feels like these movies, or episodes, are either dragging on forever, or they rush really fast. This movie especially took its sweet ass time to give us 2 whole half an hour scenes of meiko being depressed about her shitty OC digimon, to leave the actual interesting fights and plot to 1 and a half episode, out of 4. Im sorry but i feel like ive been following this fucking story for 6 years, its so fucking slow and it drags on for fucking ever sometimes.

I do understand that its important to establish character interactions, and god damn does this fucking series need some, but sometimes it really stops the action dead in its tracks, and as much as i appriciate the movies giving each character some focus, it goes on for too long. the ending to movie 5 was....well rushed as shit. 

But despite all this, its just really frustrating that half the entire series is just them standing around and TALKING...talking talking talking, exposition exposition exposition. It also feels really slow and stagnated sometimes, and the cheesy music in the background of the sad scenes dont really help much. And other times things are glossed over so fast that im standing there wondering if i missed out on something because i accedently blinked. Like how they entered the digital world, only to just suddently fall out of it immediatly after from a big digital gate just like that. Or how meiko just...SUDDENTLY appeared in the digital world with no warning or real reason. huh?? shes here now?? what?? meicoomon is still infected? what?? gennai is back with the dark masters? what where did they come from? why are they following him!? WHAT?? HUH??? HELLO???

im just….frustrated. im frustrated that i have to wait for 6+ months every a new movie comes out, only for the movie to stall for fucking ever and leave the actual OH SHIT moments to the last part, AND END ON A CLIFFHANGER. Its such fucking god damn bait to get us to watch the other movies, its almost INSULTING how incredibly obvious it is. Last movie ended with gennai fucking around and choking meiko. Then, as i saw my fat ass down in the chair, waiting for the big battle, no meicoo just...opened portals and then left with her copy paste army. Oh well so much for that. 

Then the digidestined actually FALL OUT OF THE DIGITAL WORLD, and they are right back to standing around and getting chased by the cops...and then they spend THE REST OF THE EPISODES on meikos useless crying and baiting for meichi shipping material. im sorry but was that neccecary? was it neccecary to stop the entire god damn movie just so we could have tai standing there with spaghetti falling out of his pockets? and the mega evolutions for the other digimons felt really rushed too, i had hoped for more build up...but guess i get fuck alll.

The filler.

Now i do enjoy myself a little “filler” once in a while, i wont lie. and i will also not lie when i say that i really enjoyed seeing my boi tais hot nipple-less body. But, again…. DID WE NEED THE FIRST HALF BEING JUST THAT?! i swear to fucking god if you cut out all the filler content from these movies your going to get the entire series down to 5 episodes. Movie 2 was just...filler. fucking filler. i didnt have much issue with movie 3 but they just NEEDED to shove more meiko in..

movie 4 was kind of a bitch to sit trough because the whole damn “plot” made no sense. why was soras digimon the only one who was mad and while the others were just like before? why JUST her? why couldnt the others be like that too? Its just plot convenience at this point. and then it was pretty much just watching tai and matt spew spaghetti out of their pockets and be awkward because sora cant communicate with her friends like a normal person. Honestly it was a little charming at first but it got old pretty quickly…and then dark masters out of nowhere that died as fast as they came on. what a rushed little cameo for that extra nostalgia bait.

Honestly i found myself first liking the character interactions a little once the movies took a break from the action and fighting...but i much more often found myself angrily tapping my foot and going “REEEE MOVE ON.”

The god damn meiko.

Alright you all saw this one coming probably. Now let me just start by saying, i originally didnt mind meiko, or the idea of a new digitestined in the first place. Its welcoming to try and add something new to your otherwise soulless nostalgia cash grab. However we need to look at her from a critical stand point. im not trying to start a hate train, im just going to analyze her for how shes written as a character.

Im sorry to say this guys, but no matter how you look at her, shes a mary sue. Im sorry but all the tropes are there!! but why do i feel this way? heres why:

Her digimon is the sole reason for everything going to shit.

her digimon is in adult stage like gatomon just because.

essentially her digimon is “special”

all the other kids befriended her really fast just because.

everyone likes meiko and nobody seems to have a problem with her

shes the typical “uguu” shy type of girl.

her digimon OF COURSE won the costume contest in movie 2 or 3

leomon finds HER DIGIMON adorable enough to make the others run off... of course….

she cries constantly and does nothing but wine as the others hold her.

She takes up MAJORITY of the screentime for almost all movies. Almost.

POSSIBLY a relationship with the main character, if they actually are baiting us with those scenes in movie 5.

acts and feels like a self-insert OC in a canon universe.

The reason i dont like her is just because im SICK OF HER!! im sick of seeing her fucking face every god damn movie. im sick of the others shoving a friendship speech or talking about her belonging to them for the 700th GOD DAMN TIME, im sick of constantly hearing ME-MEI and MEIKOOOOOO, and im so fucking sick of seeing her sit down and cry or act sad and do NOTHING! shes just THERE TO BE THERE! her “cute little sneezing quirk” wasnt even something they bothered keeping any more. Shes so god damn obnoxious and shallow, and the ENTIRE HALF OF THE 5TH MOVIE WAS SPENT SHOVING MORE FRIENDSHIP SPEECHES IN HER FUCKING HEAD UNTIL SHE NUTTED UP AND STRAIGHT UP TOLD THE OTHERS TO AXE OFF MEICOOMON, while kari got 5 fucking minutes and got posessed or some shit i dont fucking know, does anyone care at this point?! 

shes such a god damn self insert its PAINFUL! and ive read plenty of crappy OC digimon fanfiction in my days to be able to tell when someone props their crappy OC in a canon story. IVE DONE IT MYSELF!! its INSULTING that im watching a canon produced digimon FANFICTION more then an actual OVA. If you like her, FINE, but you CANT ignore how incredibly shallow and flawed shes written. This isnt someone “hating female characters” this is someone whos frustrated a shittly written character who is just causing repetitive sob scenes over and over and over. im sorry but have we not gotten enough flashbacks from meiko and her digimon? do we need 4 more in the fifth movie??? WE GET IT! ITS SAD! SHES SAD!! THEY ARE FRIENDS! MOVE ON ALREADY!!

i dont feel bad for her anymore, its just getting repetitive now. She ate up the entire 5th movie and left nothing to kari but the sloppy leftovers at the end, and because she ran off like an idiot to meicoomon she got tai axed off too……………...but i will get to that.

The lack of animation.

The biggest insult, and this is….dare i say…….something coming from an animation student, is the insufferable animation. The first movie is fine, but from thereon, i feel like the quality dropped significantly. and oh boy, dont get me started on the amount of time they just pan a fucking picture instead of animating them doing shit.

im sorry but did i wait 4-6 months for a fucking clipshow? I know that animating is hard, and the animation industry in japan is absolute fucking shit, but come the fuck on guys. i think movie 5 had so many times where they just panned pictures of the digimon fighting, and the kids running. I guess when you put all your budget into overanimating the short action scenes you got, you dont have much left for them to trow a punch outside of that. and i wouldnt mind if they had just bothered not doing it so much. they do it WAY TOO OFTEN!

in the 4th move they didnt even fucking bother drawing the kids wet while they were in the water. no wet droopy hair, no indication the clothing was soaked, nothing. not a god damn fucking detail or anything.

The nostalgia bait

Hey kids, remember the bus in the digital world??? remember the gear desert? remember the house mimi was a princess in?? remember the pink forest? remember seadramon? remember the dark masters???? remember any of that shit!? remember primary village?! YEAH??? REMEMBER ALL THOSE COOL 01 THINGS??? ok cool, anyway moving on.

The lack of personality/soul

one thing im really passionate about is expressions. expressive characters and facial expressions i something i enjoy drawing a lot. in the original digimon, every character was spesifically designed to be its own thing. sure they stank of the 90s, but they wer UNIQUE. Digimon tri has trown all that shit out the window. Now they all look boring as hell. the only unique thing about them now is their hair. take that away, and you get a bunch of similar looking, boring samefaced characters.

the digimon movies are just so fucking SOULLESS! everyone looks so god damn watered down and tame compared to their former selves. everyone wears a school uniform even when they got summer vacation. they even wear school uniforms as they get to the digital world, and they have NO facial expressions. NONE! the way they talk and show emotions is almost nonexistant. even once they are seriously screaming at someone or focusing on something serious, they still have that stale, boring as shit facial expression. stone faced and COLD! its like you dont even care!! seriously its so frustrating to watch sometimes because they are so god damn bland and barely deviate at all from their typical “idle” face.

^count how many fucking times tai makes this face troughout the entire series. 

^am i the only one who thinks they looks very..bland and dull here? and this happens way too often.

seriously, watch the movies again and notice just how little the animators bothered giving them any fucking emotions. the screenshots here are just from a few minutes in the new movie.

And dont get me started on how everyone seemed so.........accepting of tais “death” i mean sure they might still be in shock,.....but......why did none of pic under appear???? 

WHy was everyone so.....noble??? except kari...who got....fucking owned.

and the digimon....most of them are just....comic relief now. i feel like most of them have little personality, but fucking agumon. what the FUCK have they done to agumon!? hes just a walking talking “i like to eat” joke. hes fucking nothinng. an empty boring sack of shit who just talks about food and NOTHING ELSE!! oh and maybe fights sometimes...but seriously.

The BAIT.

The trailers for these movies have made me fall into the bait they put out. But its getting infuriating now. All the trailer bait for movie 5 was just taken form the last 5 minutes of the film. that little teaser we all thought were going to show the dark ocean? yeah that was what….5 seconds at the very last minute of the movie? Hime was the one who went there, and they even rushed that part. 

remember when we all tought that tai was the kaiser because the animators thought they copy the excact same hairstyle? remember how they all baited us with the kaiser thinking we were gonna get some 02 action? i sure as FUCK do.

i LOVED the last minutes of the movies. i loved the last half of episode 3 and the entire episode 4… but im so fucking angry that i have to wait 4-6 months for the conclusion to when the movie was JUST GETTING INTERESTING! i fucking hate it!!

The 02 kids, or lack thereof.

Ok honestly ive completely forgotten about them, and i dont understand why they bothered putting them in this movie. and they give us absolutly nothing to go on for ALL of the movies! WHY? WHATS THE POINT?! with this series endless stalling, how can they possibly explain their absence or death or whatever in what little time we have left?! how will they half ass this?! i seriously dont get how they can begin with something so intense, only to give us absolutly nothing till the last movie, IF AT ALL!

Taichis “””””””””””””””””death.”””””””””””””””””

So the fuckers had the BALLS to kill off my boi tai. They actually went there. they fucking killed him off. AND LEFT IT ON A CLIFFHANGER! wow fucking good job guys, you sure got me there. i cant believe tai is fucking dead.

except wait a second here…..tai isnt dead. of course he fucking isnt. i mean come the fuck on, are you really expecting them to kill off their marketig king? the face of all their merc? PLEASE! we all fucking know that hes going to come back. THEY BASICALLY SPOILED THE MOVIES FOR US ALREADY, didnt they say in an interview far back that these movies were whats going to lead everyone up to their careers? so why the fuck would tai die when we know hes going to be an ambassador? 

i dont fucking understand why they even bothered with this fake ass death. WE KNOW HES GOING TO COME BACK! im not mad that tai “died,” im mad that they actually bothered making it a cliffhanger, as if we arent going to fucking figure out hes coming back in the next movie. WHATS THE POINT?! Are they going to just shove him off till the last 5 minutes of the last movie? is that it? are they going to do what they did to kari? or are we FINALLY going to see tai resolving his persional issues that have been shoved away to make room for everything else? who knows, who cares at this point?!

The conclusion

Digimon tri was something enjoyable for me to look forward to..but now, its just a bunch of frustrating, medicore, nostalgia cash-grabbing shitfests of movies, and i need to get it out of my system. 

Im angry because i have to wait 4-6 months between each movie only to get nothing. im angry that i have to wait 4-6 months for an hour long movie that has actual content thats 20 minutes long. im sick of having my excpectations set to low, only for them to be lowered even more. im sick of seeing meiko basically becoming the main characters as the others are somewhat side characters at this point. im sick of the shit-tier animation quality and the stone-bored dull surprise faces. im sick of wanting this to be good, only to see that the fucking directors and animators arent even fucking trying anymore. Im sad, that the sequel was put in the hands of incompetent fucks who only know digimon trough their most basic character traits, and nothing more.

i do like tri...and im sad to see it go so soon….but part of me wants to get this over with, because if you like it or not, tri isnt a passionate fan sequel. tri is a boring, mediocre cash grab, and im sad it cantt be more then that, and im sad its over soon...