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My re-watch was definitely better than my initial watch. Noragami has a weird but interesting concept. It follows a minor Japanese deity, Yato, who tries to become popular and get his own massive shrine. He does all sorts of odd jobs to try and become popular. It's pretty enjoyable overall, but has a couple of weird downsides.

The first is that Noragami's humor doesn't land around 90% of the time, which gets annoying because actual storytelling will sometimes get interrupted by an unfunny gag complete with all the anime cartoony facial features. The second is that it's a superpower anime with a really weird power system. ... The deities can't actually do anything by themselves, but they turn human souls into weapons and fight using them. It keeps getting more and more convoluted with the instruments gaining more and more hyperspecific abilities, all the while you're wondering why the deity seems to be just a normal person.

Its biggest upside is that the main characters are interesting and do interesting things. Yato takes the cake because he's lived many centuries, but he still acts very casual. His age and maturity still manage to slip through anyways because of his very jaded, pragmatic outlook on many things. Both its opening themes are amazing as well.

As for the rest, it's above par. The artstyle is good, but it's nothing too special. The story is there. It's coherent and it's enjoyable. There's not much to say really.

A lot of romcoms rely on an annoying, infinite tease to keep you interested. This one is no exception. I normally don't mind the infinite teasing. However, I expect there to be something else. For example, Tanaka-kun is Listless teases the romance aspect till the very end. However, the rest of the show is very entertaining even without the romance, which makes you care less about it. The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. has a romance plot you know wouldn't go anywhere, but the show is funny without it and the romance plot is yet another instrument for the comedy. I can name other examples.

In ... this anime, there is nothing else. It's just the tease. There isn't much comedy, there is no good story, there's no good romance, it's just the tease. When you look at the manga, the tease is still ongoing. It's going to be stretched out for as long as it generates income. I do have some responsibility though because I saw the "Romance" and "Shonen" tags and I deluded myself into thinking this will have substance.

The story is as follows: Mona tries to seduce Kuroiwa --> Kuroiwa tries to clear his mind because he's a monk in training --> Mona thinks he is unaffected/angry. Rinse and repeat forever.

The show starts off all fanservice and no substance. You have seen this formula a billion times already. Last year it was the Cafe Terrace show, now it's Tying the Knot With an Amagami Sister (from now on called Knot). It follows the usual formula of "guy who is kind of cold gets surrounded by girls and eventually has to choose a love interest. But don't worry deep inside he is kind but just puts up a front. Also he always accidentally gropes them or sees them naked." Completely typical.

Knot's issue is that it wants to have it both ways. It wants to give you ... mind-numbing fan service with really shallow character tropes, but for some reason it also wants to tell a serious story. The serious story, however, is completely uninteresting. So it's just overt fanservice interrupted by long stretches of really boring storytelling. Even if you're watching this for the fanservice, it will be ruined by the shitty storytelling that seems to last ages.

In/Spectre is a story about a girl who resolves incidents involving ghosts with the help of a guy who is invulnerable. The story isn't bad, but the way it is shown is bad. There is a metric fuckton of talking. I do not exaggerate when I say that this might as well be a book or an audiobook. Most of the show is characters sitting somewhere and dropping 5-15 minute long expositions.

In one of the incidents, it boiled down to 2 episodes of the characters sitting on a mountain and explaining/figuring out what happened. The visiuals mostly amount to animations of people talking or walking ... or making coffee or whatever. The visual aspect of the show isn't really used much in any meaningful way. I am 7 episodes into my rewatch and I would say that there has probably been 3 minutes total where there's a difference between reading and seeing.

The chronology gets confusing at times. There are sudden time skips and sudden flashbacks with no way to tell what time you're on. One instance was in episode 6 where I thought there was a scene transition but actually it was a flashback.

I can't decide whether this was worth watching because there is a coherent story, or whether it's not worth the trouble. The only thing I'm sure of is that the constant reading is very exhausting.

I read the Solo Leveling manhwa before even the show was announced. It was marketed to me as a power fantasy and I enjoyed it a lot for the exact same reason. The first season of the adaptation felt slow compared to the manhwa; too slow, in fact. However, season 2 felt like it upped the pace and something was happening every episode, which I commend them for.

I don't think Solo Leveling is the best thing since toast bread. After all, it is just a power fantasy. However, I think it's decently good and worth watching. It stands far above the usual isekai/fantasy slop. There's ... an actual story, the world is cohesive, the animation is good, there is no contrived harem, the characters don't make me want to press mute, the dialogue isn't repetitive to the point that I can predict the next 5 lines of conversation (which usually happens in the average isekai no matter how much they get glazed).

As for the story, I would like to mention that I'm judging it from the view of someone who knows the entirety of it. If I only knew season 1 and 2, I would have some complaints. If you are watching this without having read the manhwa, you might hate some aspects. So you might like the show less than I did.

Angel beats has an amazing setting and an amazing ending. In fact, a one of my favorite endings. However, anything unrelated to those two things is mediocre. The characters are some of the worst I have ever seen. Almost all of them have one gag and that's their entire personality. Their motives are very weird too. The leader of the group is upset at God and that's why they have to steal food from cafeteria (?). Okay but why are the others following her? The animation and art style are also pretty crap. The opening theme is a banger but that doesn't matter, I just ... wanted to mention that.

The good thing about Angel Beats is that it's good at setting up some strong sad moments. There is a kind of sadness I only sense when watching something that Jun Maeda worked on. In Angel Beats specifically, it's loneliness. It's the feeling you get saying goodbye to people and being left behind. If that sounds appealing to you, I think you would like Angel Beats. Otherwise, I'm not really sure. It depends on your standards

The only thing that matters about "The Misfit of Demon King Academy" is that it does reveals in the worst way possible. Most shows will basically start with a premise which you can intuitively understand. Then, after you have understood the "norm", the show progresses and reveals something outside that norm to show how impressive something is.

The Misfit of Demon Academy doesn't do any of that. It pulls something out of thin air then tells you "ok please give a shit about this". It tells you "this is cool" and you're just supposed to accept that.

The best example is when a teacher does a magic ... circle, Anos (the MC) says "ok but its 4x better if you do this". Then he wiggles his fingers around changing the magic circle. The teacher then goes "Oh my God wow". This is where the show's creators order you to be impressed. Is it impressive? I don't know. I don't even know what the magic circle is or what it does. I guess I'll take the teacher's word for it.

Most of the show revolves around how Anos is cool. The pattern of the reveal above repeats a bunch of times. Although sometimes, at least it's convincing As for the plot, I don't really know what is the overarching goal or point. Anos is just doing stuff to do stuff.. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to even care about. Even the show isn't sure if it cares about the story because it just keeps speeding through it.

The only thing I will grant the show is that it's not boring. It's bad.... really bad. But stuff happens a lot so I didn't feel bored

The Elusive Samurai seems to be a show that targets a young demographic (child to teenager). I would say that for adults and adolescents, this isn't enjoyable. For a young demographic this is maybe a 7. For older demographics this is a 5 or even lower. This makes it hard to judge the show because do I judge it for adults or do I take into account that it's obviously for children? In this review, I try to do both but keep in mind I am an adult.

The main characters are easy to understand; they are all young teenagers with "easily digestible" personalities and slapstick ... humor (which isn't funny). By easily digestible personalities, I mean that they don't really have any complex emotions or interactions between each other. The story arcs themselves also feel very simplistic, sometimes to the point of not being realistic or believable.

The characters, their age, their shallow personalities and the simplistic plot lead me to believe that this is a show for younger audiences. In fact, I am sure of this since I cannot see how anyone would like such shallow characters (but then again, anime characters are just mostly dogshit). However, there are some parts that make me doubt this assumption. First is the setting and the way the main story is framed. The setting is historical. The main plot is basically about gathering allies to retake the throne, which seems like a story for adults. Second, this anime doesn't shy away from showing blood. They regularly show decapitations and blood splattering everywhere. Third, the main villain seems to have a slight tinge of horror to him.

This is not to say that if a show has these contradictions, it is bad. For example, Happy Tree Friends uses very cartoony characters to make its violent gore even more jarring. In fact, I think the way The Elusive Samurai shows blood and violence in very colorful animation is a good thing. I loved the scenes where the main villain is portrayed as a terrifying monster who enjoys carnage. However, when you take that task you have to own up to it. You can't pretend that you are willing to mix in adult themes into your show and then give me shallow, boring characters with unfunny humor and a super simplistic story where every arc gets solved by the power of friendship.

Also, I'm not sure how much you can get away with saying that a show is meant for kids. For example, I could point to Over The Garden Wall and say that even though the characters portrayed are children, they did an amazing job of mixing in horror elements and accurately portraying how real children would behave. Alternatively, I could also point to an acclaimed Ghibli movie which are also suitable for children, yet I wholeheartedly enjoyed the characters that they crafted. So I don't even know if it's fair to say "it's a kids show, it's okay for them to have bad characters."

The animation is amazing a lot of the time. The first few episodes especially were very pleasant to look at. However, it's not consistently good either. The more episodes you watch, the worse the animation gets. There are a lot of points where CGI gets used. The horses in The Elusive Samurai are cursed; whenever a character rides a horse, they become a PS2 3D model of their own character.

I am a very big fan of absurd humor in general and Kill la Kill is very good at it. The student council has enormous amounts of power. Normal, every day things are taken to very extreme levels with the characters all acting like it's serious and normal. This is by far the most important part, but sadly I cannot write a review in which all the jokes are spoiled.

The animation is good. The jokes are hilarious. The setting itself is funny. The characters follow shounen tropes, but I think that's necessary for the comedy. The fanservice is really high to the point that I ... couldn't readjust to seeing characters wearing normal clothes. Some people say that's the point, that it's a "parody" of fanservice. I disagree. In that case, Naruto fans can just say the cheesy dialogue is a "parody" of cheesy dialogue. Maybe every anime that has fanservice is now suddenly a "parody of fanservice". It's a cop-out answer. Not to mention, there are other parts of Kill la Kill which are way better parodies of fanservice than Ryuku going around in a skimpy outfit.

Overall, funny and entertaining watch.

A lot of the discussion regarding this show devolves into useless tangents, such as whether your expectations got subverted or not, whether it was dark enough, whether it is overrated or underrated, the definition of a genre's deconstruction, the anime's performance on R34 and its moral implications on society, the definition of entropy, etc. Some of the reviews go so deep that you're left to wonder why there are so many unmarked spoilers.

In reality, this is all fluff. You don't rate shows based on how surprised you were compared to your peers, or a deep philosophical analysis of a 2D animation. The real question is ... "Is Madoka a good anime to watch?"

Madoka is an entertaining anime. It tells a decent story in a compelling way. It's good at building up suspense and mystery. You get the nagging feeling that something is wrong or missing, and you can't wait to learn what's up. The conclusion is convoluted and, in my opinion, unoriginal. However, I find it easy to forgive since the rest of the story was good.

The animation is experimental. Some people might like the way fights are animated, but I personally did not because it was difficult to tell what is going on. The good thing about a well choreographed fight scene is that it tells its own story by movement. In a lot of Madoka's fights, it was difficult to even understand basic things like who is winning, the scale of the danger, the momentum, etc. Outside of the fights, I do like the artstyle and how the rest of the show is animated.

The characters' actions, for the most part, feel very realistic. I've always thought that if I were in Madoka's shoes, I would consider the exact same actions that she does. Some people say that they act stupid, but I would say that characters are not supposed to be mindless robots that go with the 100% rational decision that you, as a viewer who sees literally everything, can come up with. In their context and in their universe, their actions are plausible and totally believable. Characters can have flaws and can make irrational decisions. The important thing is that they are believable and consistent with the character and their flaws. In that case, Madoka passes with flying colors.