Please, no hate.

Last year, I played and informally reviewed Star Ocean. This was off the back of playing Tales of Phantasia, my first ever Tales game. I actually dropped Phantasia after around 15 hours. It was pretty, but not very fun to play…

At the start of this year, I watched a big streamer event based in Japan called Newtown. One streamer had plans to play Tales of the Abyss, and only thought about checking Newtown out for a day or two, but he got swept up in a grand story, and his plans to play Abyss fell to the wayside. Then, around a month later, when the emotional moment came for everyone to bid farewell to one another and return to their normal lives, tears were broken up by a joke: “at least now you can finally play Abyss.”

Fueled by those emotions, I decided to put aside my usual mandate of playing franchises in release order, and I skipped right from Phantasia to Abyss! My first impression was a mix of curiosity and comparison to what I knew from Phantasia and Star Ocean. By the 15-hour mark, that curiosity had mostly given way for complaining, and at hour 36, I gave up. Frustrated by a story that refused to progress, mechanics that punished curiosity, and characters that were easy to hate, I was eager to drop it.

But I didn’t want to give up on the franchise, so I looked at the list of Tales releases and found the successor to Abyss… Tales of the Tempest, one of the very first JRPGs for the Nintendo DS, and a game universally regarded as irredeemably bad. None of the coverage I could find online was very descriptive in why it was so terrible,  other than that the story felt unfinished. Well, having disliked one of the popular entries in the franchise, I was really interested in seeing just how bad things can get with the Tales formula. Let’s delve into the depths and dig up some trash!

Now, I’d been led to believe this was a bad game, but I’m surprised by how competent it is. The first impression really isn’t bad. Sitting at the 4-and-a-half hour mark, there was, of course, plenty of room for it to grow annoying or tedious, but the start was perfectly fine.

It has some similarities with Abyss. Similar battle mechanics, items, controls, map design, monster designs, framedrops, and skits are still here. There are lots of small improvements, though.

Titles have returned, and this time, you can actually see what they do! You can also just equip them in the normal equip menu along with everything else. Isn’t that nice?
Cooking is a lot more transparent and the menu for it is a lot smoother to navigate compared to the one in Abyss, and a new bit of item usage comes from weapon customisation. You can apply items to your weapons to improve them in various ways, such as making your sword deal wind damage or inflict poison. I really didn’t like how elements were handled in Abyss, but this more passive approach suits me better, especially as it costs a limited resource, leaving me to really consider what I’ll need in the upcoming dungeon. It also puts a money sink into the game; if you’ve got gold to spare, buy a second copy of a weapon and upgrade it differently.

One improvement is that you can move the camera on the overworld map very quickly, which, compared to the slow, laggy rotation of Abyss, feels incredible. I’m not taking that for granted.
Encounters are step-based rather than the randomly spawning roaming encounters of the previous game, and given how glitchy and abusable that was in Abyss, I’m happy to be back to a tried and true formula.
Formations feel more meaningful, as depending on how you organise your lineup, you can gain certain stat boosts. In battle, positioning really matters, and pincering an enemy between two allies is a great way to make quick work of them.

Also—and this is very innovative—you can find loot by exploring buildings! Because of this, there’s actual reason to explore the world presented to you, and it doesn’t feel like a complete waste of time whenever you let curiosity steer you. That’s not something I’ve actively appreciated before, as it’s been standard for the genre since the ’80s, but after the last game, I’m happy to see it return.

Dungeon loot, meanwhile, makes a lot of sense. For example, at one point, a spellcaster was added to my party. I wanted to use her, but I didn’t have the money to buy all the equipment I needed, and I settled on buying just a weapon. Well, the dungeon immediately after had a piece of armour for her, so I could fully equip her before facing a boss and try out my new party member at the height of her power for that point in the game.
Again, really basic stuff, but it shows that the core of the experience is sufficient.

On a technical level, the game is quite a bit rougher. The UI looks basic and a bit ugly, the models are low poly, there’s some warping of geometry, and there are still some (though not as many) frame drop zones… but it’s—dare I say—more cohesive than Abyss. Abyss had odd cutscenes due to its slightly higher-poly models, with them often being clumsily animated, and there were frequent close-ups on their blurry, expressionless faces. Whenever they tried to zoom in on the action, it looked really bad. From the overhead perspective, it looked a lot better, but it was hard to tell which parts of the environment were interactive, and character models were so small, they were sometimes hard to make out. With the desaturated tone of everything, it all blended together in a way that really didn’t suit the 3DS. Just look at it!

Tempest knows not to do that. Relative to Abyss, Tempest is far less ambitious. It’s still better than most other early NDS JRPGs, but grand environments and bombastic set pieces are not on the cards here. The focus is entirely different; Tempest is cartoony. Environments are simple and lack intricate detail. The character models are bright, blocky, and really stand out. It has a visual identity that makes more sense to me, and it brings me back to kids’ anime from the late ’90s and early ’00s. My expectations naturally adjust to meet that tone; I’m automatically expecting something cheesy, something simple, and maybe something that cares more about fun than thought. Because of that, I think it’s a far better-looking game, despite the limitations of the platform.

The functionality of the UI gives a bad first impression. When playing it as a standard JRPG, the constant flipping between top and bottom screens feels clunky, and it’s weird to read text on the bottom of the bottom screen while the cutscene plays out on the top screen. Somehow, switching to the stylus disguised a lot of these problems for me. It really feels like I should be playing it via the touchscreen.

But then, while many of the primary actions can be done via the touch screen, you don’t seem to be able to activate artes without using button input, requiring both D-pad and face buttons, nor can you move around freely without relying on the D-pad. Yet button input feels like a secondary input method in every other area. e.g., you can’t move the camera while moving with the D-pad, but you can if you move via the touch screen. You can really tell that the designers weren’t too sure how to use the DS’s unique properties.

It took maybe half an hour for me to get to grips with this odd mix, so there is a learning curve, but once I figured it out, it worked well enough. I don’t think it’ll play as nicely if you’re left-handed, but I think you can remap buttons via cheat codes, so there’s a potential fix there.

So overall, despite some system-based struggles, it immediately feels like a far more focused entry, and I was getting along with it much better than I did Abyss. At this early point in the game, I really didn’t understand why it was so poorly received…

Some things require a bit more time to judge. Gameplay is a good example. Most of the tools in combat aren’t available in the first four hours, and apparently in Abyss, you don’t get them until a second playthrough, so… that’s not the kind of thing you rely on a first impression for.

I always played as Caius, and when doing story stuff, I usually had Rubia and Arria support me with healing and magic, respectively. Rubia’s barriers were great for survival, and Arria spams out damage if you can bait the enemies into a group. They do have access to different elements, however, so I sometimes swapped them around. For one showcase of this, in the desert, enemies are mostly weak to water. Arria can’t provide water damage, so making her into the healer and putting Rubia on temporary DPS duty is an easy way to redistribute the power in your party for an area that demands it. I was often swapping which Artes my mages were using in response to the terrain, and with that, their roles would change. In two zones, you could get the perfect element weapon for the area, both for Forest, so I used him a bit too. I don’t think I was ever incentivized to use Tilkis, the poor guy.

Now, when revisiting past locations during the early game, I did swap Rubia for Tilkis, trading safety for speed. I’d still use Rubia’s heals in between encounters via the menu, but the sword-wielding Tilkis makes faster work of weak enemies, and in that sort of environment, you don’t need immediate defensive power. That was the extent of my Tilkis use though…

The AI settings aren’t well-documented, so I had to fiddle with them for a bit, but I figured out the correct config after experimenting for a few minutes—buckle down and rush them! Thankfully, you can change these settings mid-battle, so it was easy to see what effect the options had, even if the labels made no sense.

As I said, I’ve only played two Tales games prior to this, and the combat systems of both were… rough around the edges, let’s say. Granted, Phantasia was mostly hurt by its frequent pausing and awful boss design, so the true potential of the battle system was impossible to tap into. Maybe it’s secretly good if you retool the Super Famicom-limited tech powering it. Phantasia Cross does that, right? Maybe that’ll be next to grace my PSP after I play Star Ocean 2…

But this is the first entry I’ve played where chaining together attacks is actually fun. Figuring out different ways to sequence together Artes is satisfying, and whenever I run out of TP, I’m not disappointed because I can’t use powerful attacks; I’m disappointed because I can’t do fun stuff anymore. Hopefully there’s more of that to be found in the franchise’s other entries. Before this, I honestly hated the weird fighting game style that this franchise locks its spells behind, because it always felt terrible to play, but apparently Rebirth has a similar battle system to Tempest‘s, so maybe I’ll play that next… Star Ocean‘s Artes implementation wasn’t bad, now that I think about it, but I did play the PSP remake, so that’s not a fair comparison.

I really do like how battles flow in this one. Phantasia had a 2D system where battles were handled on a single plane. Both Abyss and Star Ocean retained a few elements of Phantasia‘s gameplay, adapting them into full 3D environments where you can go anywhere, sometimes locking you onto the “straight path” approach of the original. Both approaches to movement felt bad to me.

Tempest doesn’t do that. It takes Phantasia‘s straight path and adapts it into… well, three paths. There are three 2D planes that you can jump between, attack between, and split damage across with AOE attacks. Surrounding an enemy can help you dish out damage quickly, but being surrounded can get you killed just as fast. As such, you’re always focused on the Frogger-like game of jumping between lanes, trying to outposition your opponent before they can outposition you.

Sometimes, an enemy would go to flank me. I’d hop out of the way of one attack, meet the flanking enemy head-on, and beat them up a bit before jumping back and finding a safe path.
Sometimes, I’d get stuck behind enemy lines, cut off from my healer. Would I be able to squeeze in and tank aggro from them, or would I be stuck desperately bashing at an enemy in the hopes they die before my healer does? Either outcome was possible.
And sometimes, the enemies would surround their mage, preventing me from interrupting their spellcasting that could wreak havoc on my team. Being able to get to that unit before they could throw out more magic could be the difference between victory and defeat.

The weapon upgrading system I mentioned last time really comes into its own here. You can buff up your damage by adding elemental stones to your weapon, but alternatively, you can poison your weapons with various materials. Mages aren’t going to be bonking enemies with their staves often, but in panic scenarios, they won’t have the time required to cast a spell, so melee becomes their only option. Adding materials that give a chance to paralyse or petrify an enemy can potentially open up a path to help them escape from a precarious position. You can really swing the scales in your favour if you plan ahead with your customisation in this way.

Similarly, the ability to add elements to weapons becomes very helpful. Around the ten-hour mark, I moved from a desert area to a snowy one, switching the weakness of nearby enemies from water to fire. However, back and forth between the two areas was frequent, so I invested in crafting both an Aqua Durandal and a Blaze Durandal, I switched Forest between his Glacial Eye and Lurid Rage, and I had Rubia alternate between a water-focused spellset and a fire-focused one. In doing so, my damage numbers were three to five times higher than if I hadn’t spent that bit of gold, material and thought on my loadout.

Because of the risk factor that the three-lane system creates, and because of the high TP costs for Artes, I found myself relying on items and cooking a lot more in this game. My party was going through Dark Hotpots like they were water; it’s a team-wide Pineapple Gel that blocks debuffs! It’s so strong!

The cooking feature has several minigames, though they’re all simple and similar to one another; basic cooking DS game stuff. Now, I did find a bit of an exploit with cooking, involving a kinda useless recipe: Sukiyaki. It’s like a worse Pineapple Gel but it gives a bit of resistance.
While all of the other recipes I’d used gave food that sold for not very much, Sukiyaki sells for 230 zeni. The ingredients only cost 200.
Not only is this free money, but you can get a title for the main character by cooking 30 times with him, so… cook 30 Sukiyaki, get a title, and get paid for doing so! There are probably better ways to make money, but for 100% completion, it’s worth considering.

On minigames, a dungeon had those sliding block puzzles where you get a limited number of moves to rearrange a cut-up grid of images into the correct full image. I really, really suck at those, and I hate how they’re implemented here.

One nice thing here that Abyss lacked is a way to get immediate direction. If you’re off doing sidequests or exploring for a while, or you take a break from the game and you forget what the next step of your mission is, you’ll always be able to get a reminder of where to go, no matter where you are. Pop a tent and the characters will discuss where they’re going and what they last did. It’s a real sanity-saver of a feature.

Also, it’s dumb to say, but I can’t understate how nice it is to waltz into buildings knowing that there’ll be loot hiding inside. I think those 30+ hours of Abyss really traumatised me, and I’m getting it out of my system with this game. The high of stepping into somewhere new and sniffing around for valuables was sorely missed in the prior entry.

The skits in this one aren’t as fun as the ones in Abyss, and they tend to be short. There are exceptions—not all of them are boring—but most of them are very function-first in how they’re written. But then you’ll get a cute moment with Arria or a heart-to-heart with Forest and a bit of charm will find its way into the script.

In story cutscenes, there isn’t much room to animate, so more attention is given to the cinematography. The way that cutscenes are directed is far more like a TV show or movie than the typical handheld RPG, and there were several shots that impressed me. It’s clear that a lot more time was given to the main story than the side content in this regard.

That being said, the dialogue is mostly plain, the pace is a bit too brisk, plot twists feel random and lack justification, and some of what’s set up doesn’t resolve into anything. It is, as the art style would suggest, a kids’ anime kind of story, and it comes with all the standard trappings. I’ve been in the mood for that these past few years, so it suits my tastes, but it’s definitely not for everyone. The main story simply isn’t good.

I do think there are some nice understated moments, and perhaps their effectiveness is accidental given the quality of the writing in general, but two scenes really come to mind: Rubia receiving a certain weapon, and Arria’s chat with an old man. Very little is said in both cases, but in both, I was surprised by the tastefulness. It’s very sweet.

Thinking ahead, I’ll weirdly miss being able to use the stylus when I return to non-DS RPGs. I didn’t think I’d ever praise touch controls in a game, but it works so much better than the conventional control scheme here that I used it for the entire playthrough, only switching to quickly D-pad through rows or trigger an Arte, and that wound up feeling intuitive earlier than later.
I wonder how much of the game’s negative reputation is influenced by people playing via the buttons or in an emulator…

That’s where my mind wandered, sometimes. Why do people hate this game so much? I really can’t wrap my head around it. Now that I think about it, how many people played with the default AI settings? Would the game feel distinctly worse that way? Did they play on manual or semi-auto or… maybe even fully auto? How many people just hate the kiddy aesthetic? Maybe some people just despise random encounters.
I can see reasons for people to dislike the game, but they’re all reasons common to the genre. They’re not the kind of things that make a game into the black sheep of a franchise.

Of the complaints I see, the three main ones are that the story is bad, the graphics are bad, and the enemies are too spongy and tedious to fight. Tackling those in reverse order, the enemies are only slow to KO if you don’t upgrade your equipment. As I said earlier, accounting for elemental attributes can improve your damage massively, and so long as you engage with the game even slightly, damage won’t be an issue.

I can’t argue against people disliking the graphics; we all have our preferences. I still think the best-looking game ever made is Final Fantasy IX, so my bias towards a more childish, whimsical, low-poly aesthetic is clear. I’ve seen footage of Tales of Arise over the years, and I think Tempest looks a hundred times better, artistically, than that game. All of the assets here have a consistent style, and they fit together to create a believable environment. Still, if people hate how it looks, that’s just how it is.

Then there’s the primary complaint: the story’s rushed and feels unfinished. There’s no exaggeration there—characters don’t develop; they have a plot moment. Emotions are shown, but they’re never portrayed. Questions are asked, but many go unanswered.
So maybe that was enough to kill it. Still, I don’t really mind that; if I wanted a story, I’d read a book. I feel like the story in these kinds of games is more a formality than a selling point—Phantasia, Abyss and Star Ocean were all terrible narratively—so having it be something short and inoffensive is perfect to me.
I struggle to remember what the DS RPG audience was like back then. Was it story-obsessed like the PS2 audience, or was it more like the NES audience where more text equalled more bad? I’m definitely in that second camp, as my many RPG reviews have shown.

However, I think the main complaint people should levy against it is the map design. Dungeons are confusing grids lacking landmarks that, even when you’re making progress, leave me doubtful of every step I take. Overworld zones are mostly basic empty fields of grass or sand or snow. It gets a bit better towards the end of the game, as landscapes become more distinct and more detailed, but I didn’t start hitting maps that were anything other than bland until around 16 hours in.

To be fair, there’s only really two quests where you’re made to actually explore one of these boring overworld zones (both in the desert!), and they’re totally optional, so you could just go from point A to point B following the minimap on the second screen. It’s not exciting, but at least it’s not frustrating.

The boss fights are kinda lame too, so that’d be number 2 on my list of Tempest‘s flaws. Fights are a lot more interesting when you have multiple enemies to worry about, but all of the bosses are just a single high-HP enemy, sometimes with a couple of additional goons who die much faster.

I don’t think Tales of the Tempest is a particularly great game—I’d describe it more as “playable”—but with the obvious audience in mind, I think it’s a pretty good beginner RPG. Other than the story, it doesn’t do anything bad or frustrating. It looks nice, it controls well, the combat is fun, each party member has a role, there’s optional content to do, stats and item usage is all transparent, guidance is light enough to not get in the way but available enough to rely on when you need it. I’m trying to think of what other common pitfalls the genre is known for could apply to this game, but it passes all of them.

In the end, I didn’t get to learn what a truly terrible Tales game was. Well, maybe I did when I played Abyss. Funnily enough, it took me around 20 hours to beat this game, which is the length I said I wished Abyss was when I dropped it and picked up Tempest! I got what I wanted there—a game with a reasonable length—but… I was spurred into playing this game out of the desire to gain perspective so that I may appreciate Abyss, at least a little bit. Instead, I was left with a far better time and a totally new question:

“Why do people hate this game?”

No one wants to play it, so I’m not sure I’ll ever know.

Oh and Arria is the prettiest JRPG character I’ve ever seen. She gets the spell ‘Tempest’, so she’s the main character as far as I’m concerned. I wanted to draw her, so I drafted an idea, but I don’t think I’ll have the time to finish it, so I’ll close out by sharing that, as shoddy as it is…

Chiwassu~ It’s one of those rare video updates, and this time, it’s an adaptation of the Maeda Jun article I shared here a year and a half ago. The edit took me a few months, so it’s a bit messy in places, but the amount of additional information packed into it as a result of the video format makes it worth a watch, I think.
Sadly, I don’t like to hear my own voice, so I don’t get to enjoy watching it, but… hopefully you’ll enjoy it in my place!

As a bonus, I also uploaded a few podcast versions of some C-pia! Magazine articles. I kinda workshopped the idea after a few people suggested I do it, but I don’t plan on recording any more of these, so consider this a one-off.

As promised, here’s a quick follow-up to my last seasonal write-up, catching up on a few other shows I wanted to watch in Winter. It’s a brief one this time!

Shows watched:

• Choubatsu Yuusha 9004-tai Keimu Kiroku – Dropped
  “In one word, this show is boring.”
• Majutsushi Kunon wa Mieteiru – 6/10
  “With a laissez-faire attitude, it can be a good time.”
• Meitantei Precure! – Still Airing
  “With weakness comes strength; it’s that kind of show.”

Choubatsu Yuusha 9004-tai Keimu Kiroku
Episodes Watched: 2/12

In a world slowly being infected by a demonic plague spread by monsters named demon kings, a proud soldier named Xylo is falsely accused of a crime and made a criminal. As punishment, he’s declared a hero. He’s given immense power and the ability to respawn, but if he disobeys, he dies, and if he dies, he loses a part of himself.
During one mission, a hero known as a notorious thief winds up yoinking a coffin, and leaves it in Xylo’s lap. When it opens, a creature that looks like a young girl awakens—it’s a goddess, a human-engineered weapon.

Now followed by a quirky girl, Xylo’s stuck on a Shingeki no Bahamut-style adventure with most of the comedy removed. He wants revenge against the world, but he’s stuck on demon-killing duty, so he’s god a lot on his plate. It’s very much from that Zero kara Hajimeru Mahou no Sho bracket of fantasy anime; a light political mystery plot acts as an excuse for characters to blast monsters.

In one word, this show is boring. The cinematography is functional, but there’s never an interesting shot to gawk at. Sound effects are limp if present, but often go missing in times when I’d like them to be focal elements. The music is very forgettable, never worthy of attention, and sometimes it leads the scene direction down a rushed path.
A lot of screentime is dedicated to combat, but it’s not interesting. The combatants are humans with unexpected abilities, a goddess who acts as a ‘solve everything’ button that Xylo is reluctant to use, and big animal-like monsters that tower over everything else. You can’t get much choreography out of that, so instead, they elect to spin the camera around wildly and spend minutes on CG people being slaughtered in order to get across how powerful the nondescript enemy is.

Then there’s the terminology. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before (I probably have) but one of my pet peeves is when a story uses Dragon Quest lingo for the hell of it. We’ve got the heroes, for example, who have nothing in common with the hero vocation nor one another—they’re a varied set of individuals with different talents and specialities, but not sword, shield and magic.
The demon kings are just CG blobs. When the cast are like “oh no, that’s the tenth demon king this month!” and the camera pans over to an enemy from a PS3 shovelware title, it’s hard to take it seriously. They’re nothing like a demon king, but they need to be able to say it’s a story about heroes versus the demon king’s army in the tagline so that people will watch it.

But it’s not all about action; there’s political intrigue in here! Unfortunately, the exposition is clumsy, often delivered via scenes where one character tells another about things that they both know so well, it’s practically common sense. It’s one of those “let’s explain things for the person watching us through the TV” types of shows.
It’s also a bit hard to care about the narrative stakes because… the threat to humanity is beyond the politics, so if the heroes quit, the schemers lose. Conversely, the heroes respawn at the cost of some memories, which makes it hard to invest in their livelihood. If something goes wrong, they’ll just come back. They’ll lose something in the process, sure, but the initial plot is vague about when and how that loss occurs, and without that, it’s impossible to judge how much of a loss that will be compared to a perilous situation.

The world-building is odd, too. Rebellious villains are given immortality, while obedient soldiers are used as sacrificial pawns. Goddesses are incredibly important tools to the people in charge, but they just let one go off with a criminal for some reason. The shadowy figures behind the conspiracy in the synopsis are the types to take useful information and disregard it in favour of… not having that information.

The art style is a mix of Mushoku Tensei‘s and Frieren‘s, so the characters do look good, but it’s not unique. It does some things better than those shows, particularly with lighting, so that’s worth some praise. Sadly, the mass use of CG backgrounds, characters and monsters really disrupts any coherent identity the show could potentially muster.

And the real sad point is that… the main duo are unappealing. Xylo is the generic, boring edgelord who’s on a quest for revenge but has honour in his heart. Teoritta, the quirky goddess girl following Xylo around, fails to avoid the ‘annoying’ territory that the archetype is prone to falling into. She repeats the same lines over and over in a loud, energetic voice, no matter the tone of a scene. She’s no Chaika, that’s for sure.

It’s a formula we’ve seen far too many times. Repurposing popular terminology for no gain. Blending a tale of heroic action with a mysterious quest for revenge. Buddying up a criminal and a mascot character. Combine all of that into the manga storytelling structure of dragging out mysteries for as long as the mangaka can get a publishing deal, and you’ve got something spectacularly worthless.

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Majutsushi Kunon wa Mieteiru
Episodes Watched: 13/13
Rating: 6/10

Long ago, the hero defeated the demon king, but it cost him an arm and a leg… literally. Since then, children born with disabilities are believed to be descended from the hero himself. Whatever they lack, they always have great potential.

A blind boy named Kunon has little desire to live. Born to a noble family, he has a lot of blessings, but his lack of vision makes it hard to appreciate the world around him. But one day, a lesson in magic grants the meek Kunon a sense of hope and curiosity, and soon, he’s lost great ambitions.
His desire to become more capable and independent grows rapidly, but being raised by an eccentric maid with odd tastes, he picks up some odd habits; she wants this once-gloomy shut-in to be the goofiest gentleman in the world. And so begins the story of a sheltered mage with no eyes, a silver tongue, and the worst comedic sense you’ve ever seen.

At first glance, this is a bit generic. A noble kid with little responsibility and a lot of privilege realises the latent magical abilities he’d been unaware of until now, and uses those powers to become popular and fight off bad guys.
However, this is a unique fantasy show. Why, exactly? Because a large portion of it is almost entirely made up of dialogue-based comedy. It’s all jokes, all the time, and many of them don’t land for me. It’s a bit awkward when that happens. However, the jokes are so numerous that a few are bound to resonate, and when they do, I certainly remember them.

Kunon’s maid is no doubt one of the most consistently funny elements of the show, and I could say a lot about her; she’s the greatest maid character I’ve ever seen. It’s entirely due to her that the protagonist becomes a vapid, unprincipled flirt, but her own hijinks outside of what Kunon gets up to are also a highlight.

But Kunon’s quirks are what you should be watching this one for.
Take a normal concept for a scene: Kunon wants to meet someone in the royal family. He decides to ask his father during dinner. Pretty boring start, but how does it play out? Well, his father’s having none of it, so Kunon turns to his mother and cutely asks her to help. She’s weak to Kunon’s adorableness, so she, in turn, puts on a cute face and turns to her husband, asking on Kunon’s behalf. The dad is weak to his wife’s adorableness, so he quickly gives up. Meanwhile, Kunon’s older brother watches it all unfold, silently judging his family for being both shamelessly manipulative and total pushovers.

What could be a boring discussion is instead a fun little gag. Even if the comedy doesn’t land for you in this moment, it’s at least more interesting and memorable than any of the discussions in the “Sasuga Ars” anime of a similar premise and production value.

As it’s such a comedic show, you will have to adjust your ability to suspend your disbelief. Kunon’s blind, but nothing about his behaviour or attitude reflects that. The economy of the kingdom or the mechanics behind the magic don’t matter so long as the results of disregarding them are funny. I think some people will struggle to forgive that, but if you come at it with a laissez-faire attitude, it can be a good time.

That’s not to say there aren’t moments worthy of respect, beneath the humour. In fact, Kunon uses comedy to disguise his feelings a lot of the time, and this isn’t treated as a big deal or highlighted by the writers. The music remains comedic, the direction doesn’t change, it’s kept subtle. In times where a normal kid would throw a tantrum, Kunon tries to hide it, but his voice actor adds a slightly sad tone to the moment. That’s enough to sell the character’s genuine feelings without tarnishing the surface personality of the blind troll.

There’s a light-heartedness to the world, as I’m sure you can imagine. When entering a court’s mage quarters, the magicians there don’t judge him for his limited capabilities or criticise him for not using magic in the proper way; they let their curiosity run wild and have a blast experimenting with what he knows. They’re just a bunch of magic nerds happy to have a new guy with new ideas in their niche circle.

Sadly, like a lot of comedy shows, it loses sense of itself as the plot progresses. The more that the author has to write the setting, the more seriously they begin to take it, and the jokes slowly become second priority. And when you remove the comedy, you’re left with basic magic, bland characters, inoffensive events, underwhelming story arcs, and a solve-it-all protagonist.
That’s not to say that it’s a bad show in those moments, but it’s not great either. It’s sufficient with a quirk. It’s easy to argue that the setting becomes more interesting once thought has been put into it, and there are subtle emotional moments along the way to keep you invested in the protagonist in a more serious manner, but does it compare especially well to the hundreds of other fantasy anime out there? I don’t think it does.

The visuals are often ugly, with characters looking off-model more often than otherwise, clashing characters and backgrounds, weird framing, shoddy cuts, and choppy character animation that never looks quite natural. Yet there’s a surprising amount of attention to detail, so there is something to respect about it. You can tell that thought was put into many of the shots, albeit not the kind of thought that results in good-looking shots.

Sometimes they use an auto-interpolate to create a really smooth motion, but it means that every frame has blurry, warped lines like the kind you’d see in a poor AI upscale, and it’s very ugly. They even use it at one point to make up for a sequence with very few frames, and it’s a messy-looking cheat.

It has a lot of problems is what I’m saying. It has the usual signs of a poor adaptation, and as a standalone product, a lot of it falls flat. Yet the core is entertaining, and I think the comedy focus lasts long enough to make the show worth watching. If a sequel came along, I’d be less certain about watching that due to the decline in quality during the second half, but… maybe the source material is worth checking out one day. I’ll definitely keep it in mind.

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Meitantei Precure!
Episodes Watched: 11

So as I’ve mentioned a few times already, the combination of Puniru and Ao no Hako (and probably Digimon Ghost Game) got me into a real kids’ show mindset, and that feeling hasn’t gone away. It even spanned beyond anime; I played a bunch of Mega Man, the first three Dragon Quest games, Sonic Adventure, and as of writing this, I’m half-done with Sonic Heroes.
But you know what? It’s been a while since I reviewed a Precure! series (8 years!) and while I wanted to fit Hirogaru into my schedule at some point, the time never really came.
So here’s the latest season: Meitantei Precure! On the surface, it’s avoiding a lot of the common Precure pitfalls, so I’m hoping for the best.

Akechi Anna is an inquisitive young girl with a talent for problem-solving. On her fourteenth birthday, she finds a mysterious pendant in the house. Anna, believing it to be a present from her mom, puts it on, but a sudden collision with a cute fluffy mascot character triggers the pendant’s powers, sending them hurtling to the ancient age of 1999. With the help of an aspiring detective named Kobayashi Mikuru, Anna begins searching for a way back home. Along the way, she’ll meet a group of villains and buddy up with talented allies.

This is a mystery show, and they smartly move the setting away from the usual ‘modern day’ and force the characters into a setting where global communication isn’t quite so available. Mystery anime for kids tend to be safe bet, it’s hard to mess that up, and it works well with the protagonist being a kid, ’cause naturally she’s not going to know celebrities or major events from 1999.
It’s also a magical girl show with only two main characters (ignoring the elephant in the room) and because of that, screentime is split across far fewer characters than in other recent Precure! installments.

Those are two reasons why I chose to pick it up. Another reason is that both of our Cures are proactive. We don’t have a meek main character, yet they’re not obnoxiously energetic either. They’re not as dense as a brick, and will quickly figure things out, for the most part, so there’s none of that frustrating “umm and aah” stalling often used by the genre to drag episodes out. Even my beloved Mahoutsukai ni Narenakatta is guilty of that…

The characters have very eye-catching designs, looking neither too generic nor too unique, which is refreshing. The two leads do look a bit similar, but… I can’t fault them on that, for reasons.
The past decade or so of Precure! has looked unremarkable to me, despite the odd hit here or there. Something was lost after Heartcatch… It’s nice to have something that looks different while still capturing that magical Precure! vibe. This is what I wanted Tropical Rouge and Kimi to Idol to look like!

It has potential, but will that potential be realised? Well, it’s Precure, so we won’t fully find out until the year’s run is over, but let’s judge these twelve episodes in isolation, for now.

A lot of the strengths lie in how the introductory episodes are built. The initial arc’s villain isn’t a nondescript disposable blob, but a guy with a unique design and personality. He stands out more than the usual kind, more like Devimon in Digimon Adventure, if you know what I mean; he’s memorable.
They also pack in some early drama. Usually, the boo-hoo sad times kick in around episode 12, else around 22, but here, they fit it in early. That small bit of tense seriousness adds narrative weight that makes me want to continue watching.
And the other thing, as mentioned, is that the main duo are a duo. There is a decent amount of attention put towards the existence of another Cure at the beginning, as well as hints of a fourth, but they’re kept as background elements until Anna and Mikuru get an entire arc of development. The scope starts small, resolves small, and only expands once the initial subplot between the two main characters has resolved. It never feels like too much all at once.

Around the same time that I watched these twelve episodes, I also watched Nanoha. Putting aside the obvious difference in target audience, the similarities make for an interesting comparison. This is a mystery action show about hunting jewels in competition with an antagonist (or antagonists) yet Nanoha is very slow about it. It meanders, almost aimlessly, as the main character ambles about and considers her place in the world.
Meitantei has no time for that sort of pacing about. Anna is equipped with her magical girl gear almost immediately, her newfound powers are never questioned, her newly-formed friendship takes less than half an episode to form, and the enemy is introduced in an open and honest manner from the start.
It’s the kind of brisk pace that can be afforded when you’re riffing off of established tropes. Mikuru knows what a Precure is; it’s an established fact of the world.

However, this fast pace isn’t really a boon, I don’t think. It’s better in some ways to Nanoha‘s slow crawl of a story, but it’s worse in other ways, and it leaves the ‘detective’ angle feeling like more of a formality than a hook. There’s little time spent establishing the facts of a scene, and the solutions tend to be obvious. Sometimes they’ll shamelessly rip a scenario out of Conan, and that’ll lead to something a bit more sensible, but most of the time, the investigations are underwhelming.
There are moments of that usual awkward kids’ show storytelling. When they don’t know how to resolve a scene, everyone will laugh together and the scene will fade out. When an interesting conversation could happen, the writers leave it as short as possible for fear of alienating their young audience. Things don’t flow or resolve in the manner you’d expect from adult-targeted standards, scenes aren’t sequenced logically, and naturally, it can fail to satisfy.

Episodes may feel rushed, but that doesn’t mean there’s no waste. Actually, a lot of the episodes are wasteful, which I appreciate. You get to see the characters acclimate to their surroundings as they establish their new way of living, a change of lifestyle that’s a bit more extreme for one main character than the other. Getting settled in at school, building connections around town, and setting up a business are all brushed over quite quickly, when viewed episode-to-episode, but these elements reappear, and every time they do so, there’s change. Spending time on telling Jet how to greet customers or playing along with Goemon’s games doesn’t really matter to the plot, but it endears me to the setting. That does most of the heavy lifting, honestly; they successfully establish a world and atmosphere that I consistently long to return to.

But it has to be said… there’s not much “1999” to it. They have old phones, they use number substitutions in the transformation sequence (3ける,　6き合う, 9軌跡の二人, 9るっと回して, 9トに決めるよ), and I’m pretty sure they showed the invention of the Pretty Holic brand take place, but other than that, the time travel element isn’t taken advantage of. The various gadgets the girls get overlap in use with a lot of modern tech, and it could’ve very easily worked in a 2027 setting with minimal changes made to the plot.
The attacks are lame too. “Answer Attack” is just a punch. “Mystique Reflection” is just a barrier. It’s a fancy, thematic name attached to something mundane. Again, it’s making use of the ’90s detective aesthetic without delving into it beyond the surface level.

That being said, the aesthetic is fun. Since the days of Minky Momo, detective magical girls have been a successful concept, naturally blending the episodic nature of both genres, mystery and magical girl: help someone discover the truth, and help someone in need.
And while the pace is rushed and a bit clumsy, I think I prefer that to being bored by how slow a story is. At least it’s always doing things. That alone makes it more watchable than many of the earlier Precure! entries.

With weakness comes strength; it’s that kind of show. You always have to accept these concessions when it comes to anime for children, I find. My Top 50 of the Decade list featured multiple kids shows, so I’m well aware of that, but… the axes you use to judge the work has to change, and if you’re not used to that, it might be tough.
It’s not going to have the more mature slice of life style of an SSSS.Gridman, nor are the stakes going to feel as high, but for some lighter, happier times told in the belief that to live is to be good, it’s a pretty alright time.

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My foray into the Korean web novel scene has led to two reviews of two villainess stories. Over the past few years, I’ve also been reviewing the earliest JRPGs, slowly making my way through the years, digging into some obscure stuff. What isn’t obscure is Dragon Quest III, which I loved so much, I had to own it. But while shopping for it and Dragon Quest V last year, my villainess-attracted brain also sprung for Angelique. It was unreasonably cheap, £11 complete in box… If you open up the box of that game (beautiful as it is), you’ll be met by a Sangokushi advert, and then you might start thinking about Nobunaga’s Ambition, and… maybe it’s just my brain doing that.

But what do you get if you combine Dragon Quest and Nobunaga’s Ambition into a single game? Well… it may not be the most obvious answer, but you get Princess Maker. While never a game I found particularly satisfying, I have sunk a fair few hours into the first two Princess Maker games, as well as many other raising sims inspired by the Princess Maker franchise. Several of my friends are fans, and I remember us all being excited for Machine Child! …that was 10 years ago. It finally came out last year and I don’t think any of us played it…

No, instead of playing that, I decided to read a book about someone living in a Princess Maker world, going through all the tedium I can no longer be bothered to do.
That book is titled 로판 속 주인공이 나만 좋아함
Or in English:

Featured art by M1Z @jhigf2008

A guy from Earth, at an early stage of his life, helped bug-test his older sister’s game. She didn’t know anything about video games, nor did she care about them, but she wanted to make her dream project a reality. You’d be put in charge of raising a 10-year-old girl, Marigold Marigold (Mary for short, definitely not a Mario reference). From a noble family that fell to ruin, she is, effectively, an orphan with little life experience, so depending on how you choose to teach and raise her, she can become almost anything. Yet the best endings usually involve her marrying a handsome prince. Older sis knew what she liked.

Anyway, when the guy eventually dies, he awakens in the body of a stranger—Lancel Dante—on his 18th birthday. Surrounded by his family, maids, and butlers, he has become the third son of a countryside noble. He lives that life believing that it’s some form of reincarnation, yet on his 28th birthday, it ends. Once again, he awakens to the sight of his 18th birthday.
Trapped in a 10-year loop, Lancel attempts many ways of living. He becomes a famous knight, he marries a princess, all sorts of things… but the 10-year loop persists. So, at the start of a new cycle, he decides to make the long journey to the capital, a place he had avoided previously because busy capital + famous person = hell. After a year of travel, he finally passes through the capital’s gates, and at that moment, a logo appears in his mind. It’s then that he realises… he’s been living in his sister’s game this entire time!

Now understanding that the goal of the game is not to make Lancel successful but Mary, he sets out in search of her. 10 years spent raising her well comes to an end, and the cycle begins anew. Once again, he sets out in search of her, determined to reach the good ending and end this endless life. But there’s one problem… His life begins at 18 years old. Marigold is three years younger than him. So… he has no control over Marigold’s first 15 years of life.
Every time he meets her, she’s a bit different. Maybe she’s a beggar on the street, maybe she’s a waitress, maybe she’s working for the government, or maybe she has already died. With little control but little else to do, Lancel continues to help Mary live her best life. With each loop, a new, unique, short story begins.

There is something fascinating about this premise. You’ll be reading a story about a school of magic one moment, and in the next, you’ll be following a civil war. Slice of life comedy in the Dante house can make way for life or death drama. It’s a collection of short stories, each one set in the same world, with the same characters, the same sights, and a protagonist who remembers them all. Light continuity gives a sense of progression, urging you to continue reading whenever one storyline ends, and it doesn’t take long to get immersed in whatever the next story is.

This structure keeps things fresh, allowing the author to write whatever they want to write without getting bogged down in concepts they care less about. If a storyline feels like it’s served its purpose, it ends. If the genre is getting a bit stale, it changes. Each loop is a different story, and you’re bound to prefer some of them over others, but the most miraculous thing I can say about the novel is that no loop is boring. The barrage of short stories manages to consistently appeal to me.
I have my preferences. The mage and the pirate stick out in my mind, for some reason. The actor storyline was maybe the weakest. But it switches things up so often, it’s hard to lose interest, and because of the carry-over cast, it’s easy to get invested. The only time I grew bored with it was brief—around chapter 145—but by 150 I was crying my eyes out at every page turn. It’s a novel that refuses to get stuck in the mud.

In all of it, the core remains. Mary is always Mary, no matter how different her life may get. Recurring characters remain their usual selves, though their place in the world may change. In reading one lifetime, the third princess became my favourite side character. So when a later story would briefly remark that she had passed away, I’d be sad. Whenever she got to feature as an important character to any episode, I’d be happy to see her again.
Even though things are always changing, there’s a nostalgia that you craft yourself. The scenes and faces you grow attached to will surely be different to the ones I fell for, and because of the cyclical world’s many connections, you’ll find yourself thinking about earlier days with fondness.

You’d think that, in a story where the protagonist is essentially immortal, it’d be hard to care about his or any other character’s livelihood… but it’s really not. That’s the remarkable thing; Lancel, despite his best efforts, does grow a bit desensitised to death after his first 5-or-so attempts, but he’s constantly reminded that life is a precious thing. Everyone else in this world has one opportunity to live, and the short moments of happiness they get to feel are incredibly precious. It’d be easy to think that it’s okay for one cycle to end poorly because Lancel can get it right next time, but it’s hard to disregard the feelings of the other characters; it’s better for them to be happy right now than it is for them to be happy 10, 20, 50 attempts later.

But it’s not perfect. The biggest problem stems from the biggest strength; the episodic format leaves the greater plot in the shadow. There are storytelling devices meant to tie everything together, but they’re weak and unsatisfying. It’s partly due to a lack of time spent on depicting those devices, but partly due to how they resolve.
And speaking of resolutions, the stories that have concluded don’t typically leave a lasting impact on any of the characters. A few special exceptions exist, but the lessons learned from one playthrough will only have an impact on the following 1 or 2 playthroughs… if it has an impact at all.
Even though there are plenty of opportunities to comment on and redefine old conversations, it never really happens.

Early on, there’s a quote from Marigold where she explains that, to her, every moment is her last. She has lost a lot already, and she doesn’t take the future for granted. This has a ripple effect on Lancel’s understanding of Mary for a while, but it slowly fades away, and even though there are plenty of cases where that conversation would become relevant again, it never pops back up in Lancel’s mind. It did pop back up in my mind though, so maybe it’s still having the desired effect.

There are also some things pertaining to Marigold that make for good examples of this. For one, she has a companion (a mascot character) that appears to her—and only her—when she becomes 10-years-old. This character is present quite a bit in early stories, but later ones frequently go without a single mention of the character’s existence, and in the stories where that’s not true, it’s rarely because of an extended scene. They get one line of dialogue once in a blue moon.
For another, an early hook is that Mary has dreams about previous lives. They’re vague and hazy, but it influences her behaviour, adding a subtle sense of continuity to the endless loop. But this completely vanishes before the halfway point without so much as a comment on it from Lancel.

There’s a recurring dream sequence that I don’t find interesting at all, and the prose is very basic. It’s not flowery or expressive, but I will say, the writing is effective. Emphasis is always placed on the right things. Callbacks feel deserved. Characters feel consistent. I felt alongside the characters. It can be blunt and to the point, and even though that directness fits Lancel perfectly, sometimes it’s a bit too much.
Some loops are presented solely as a big chunk of dialogue. Some are brushed over, while others suddenly end.

The translation is, as usual, a bit shoddy. Names can get jumbled, pronouns are often mixed up, and all the usual issues are here. It’s still very readable, but I’d say this is messier than either of the two novels I’ve previously reviewed.

There are characters who receive a lot of setup in one story, but never return in any others. They might get a shoutout later down the line, but their presence in the world is rarely felt. This does leave time for the few frequent appearers to shine, and more importantly, it results in fewer distractions from the main couple, but I do wish the web of connections ran a bit deeper. When a character did get to reappear often, such as in the case of the 3rd Princess or Lancel’s father, I really, really cared about them, however, the number of characters like that must be less than five.
There were definitely ways to bring it all together better, to satisfy in a larger sense. That doesn’t happen, so if you’re the type who cares more about the ending than the journey, you may want to steer clear of this one.

All that said, the strength of the episodes can’t be understated. I have so many good memories, of a train, of a school, a bell tower, a field, the seaside, a bakery, a parish, and more. It’s fragmented, each memory belonging to a different story with a different Marigold, yet all of them relate to the same characters.
There’s always going to be a variable quality when telling a story like this, and frankly, I don’t think that the overall plot necessarily matters when the individual stories are so interesting; it’s worth a read for the episodic stuff alone. I mean, a Princess Maker game isn’t defined by its endings; it’s defined by how you achieved those endings. The path this author takes is truly special.

The way in which this story develops the characters, letting them grow together, is beautiful. That it then resets the world after each ending, leaving only one person with memories of the past, is fascinating. Not for one second did I think, in a story where infinity is attainable and every conclusion can be overwritten, I would care so much about the small things that I’d be driven to tears for at least a few full minutes.
It’s a unique experience that I’ll certainly look back on fondly, and to find anything that fills the specific niche that this novel does would likely take me a lifetime.  Now, whenever I see a marigold flower, I’ll think back on one of the many stories told in this short novel, remember one of the many Marys, and think to myself…

“I should read that again.”

Like all of us, I’m going through the slow process of dying, but I’ve been really feeling that over these past few months, and it’s been hard to focus on entertainment as much as I’d like. There are a lot of shows from this season that I still want to watch, so maybe there’ll be a follow-up post later in the year, but for now, here’s what I watched in Winter of 2026…

Shows watched:

• Eris no Seihai – 6/10 – ED of the Season
  “It feels like a rushed adaptation.”
• Fate/Strange Fake – 6/10
  “Just read the source material.”
• Jingai Kyoushitsu no Ningengirai Kyoushi – 6/10
  “If this were two seasons instead of one, I’d be very fond of it.”
• Seihantai na Kimi to Boku – 8/10 – Anime of the Season
  “You could watch two or three times just to catch everything.”
• Yuusha Party ni Kawaii Ko ga Ita node, Kokuhakushitemita. – Dropped
  “The differences in quality can be staggering.”

Eris no Seihai
Episodes Watched: 12/12
Rating: 6/10

A six-year-old child named Constance stumbles into a front row seat of an execution. Unaware of what’s going on, surrounded by cheering and jeering, she watches with tears in her eyes. But in the moments before the raven-haired woman is beheaded, their eyes meet, and the woman smiles.
Ten years later, Constance is struggling to deal with her cheating fiancé and the scheming vixen he’s fallen in love with, when the spirit of a dead villainess takes control of the situation. Now, the prideful Scarlett inhabits the meek Constance’s mind, leading her onto a path of revenge… for once upon a time, the woman named Scarlett was sentenced to death on false charges.

Essentially, this is a mystery drama show. It’s similar in a lot of ways to the usual regression/reincarnation plots; you’ve got the broken engagement, the battle of wits, the handsome men, and an element of revenge… however, rather than actually throw the heroine back in time so that she can have a second go of things with knowledge of the future, our protagonist instead utilizes the knowledge of a reputable figure from the previous generation. In splitting the usual duties of a genre protagonist across two different characters, they allow the ‘innocent’ heroine to remain her kind self without conflicting with the revenge-focused premise, and as a bonus, it enables a Holmes and Watson dynamic.

There’s a fun back-and-forth in their roles due to the limited nature of… well, time. Scarlett has a great memory and the instincts of a schemer, but she lacks knowledge of events beyond her death, and her physical connections to the world are all in the past. While Scarlett’s relationships in life were all tinted by her manipulative nature, Constance’s are born out of her generosity, meaning that her friends will often be more supportive, outspoken and honest than any of Scarlett’s old friends were. Various aspects of their lifestyles thus far wind up becoming important to the plot in this indirect sense; we’re witnessing ramifications of lives already lived.

Sadly, it feels like a rushed adaptation. I can really tell that there’s some cutting and some skipping going on, and it does hamper the experience. I wish it was a little bit slower.
It’s also a bit repetitive. Constance always happens into a convenient new character introduction, every other plot point is “someone cheated on someone else”, and most characters feel like the same person—smug schemers, all of them.

There’s also an element of… waste when it comes to the mysteries. Every time the protagonist hits a brick wall, someone new will show up with all the immediate answers. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this invalidates the effort Constance goes through, but when several episodes are spent on jumping through hoops to uncover a plot, only for a new face to conveniently introduce themselves by confirming everything as if it were common knowledge, it does leave a bad taste in the mouth.
On the plus side, the rushed nature does make for a lot of story in a single season of episodes.

The characters are all very simple. The friend is the friend, the blatantly evil person is evil, and I have to call out the dialogue’s simplicity as well. The way that they speak is so stilted and cold. Characters simply explain how they feel and how their brains work with methodical self-awareness. The script feels as if it were designed to hit all of the logical beats, but no thought was put into justifying those beats.
Then oddities such as the one character who can randomly see ghosts, or the one character who can use magic, go largely uncommented upon by the rest of the world.

Don’t get me wrong; some parts of the show are entertaining. The premise is fun, some of the initial mystery is interesting, Scarlett is pretty, and it’s of an aesthetic period in time that always has an appeal, regardless of the quality of the story. There are things to latch onto, things that are poorly executed but may just resonate with your personal tastes well enough to keep you attached to the product as a whole.
But to say it falls short would be generous of me, and if you lack the biases I hold towards historical European settings, mystery dramas, smug noble ladies and handsome knights, I can’t imagine you’ll enjoy anything this show has to offer.

But special mention is deserved for the ED. How long has it been since Yukarin last featured as the OP or ED singer of a show? It must be a good few years at least. It brings me back to the days of Kanon, Higurashi and Galaxy Angel, so you know I love it.

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Fate/Strange Fake
Episodes Watched: 13/13
Rating: 6/10

After much waiting, Strange Fake has an anime adaptation. This is one of the few Fate works I actually cared for, but it’s been a very long time since I last checked in with it, so I’m sure this adaptation will be partially a refresher, but mostly material that’s new to me. Notably, this is one of those Fate works that relies on you being a mega Nasuverse nerd to get full enjoyment of, so… expect a lot of references.

There’s a grail war, but it’s one of those cheap American bootleg versions, so stuff is weird. Also Prelati is here to troll people, so stuff is extra weird. Weirder than Extra, in some ways! This time, two wars are going on at the same time in the same place, and the servants being summoned are largely S-tier. Modern-day folk team up with these figures of historic legend in order to win a death game for—let’s be real—no reward. We all understand the Fate concept,  but what matters most is execution. How does this one fare as on-screen entertainment?

First, I should say that I enjoyed the episode 0 OVA that came out however many years ago. It was a good primer and it got me in the mood for a grail war. I haven’t rewatched it since, though, so my excitement born from that OVA doesn’t really exist anymore. I’m judging this season and this season alone.

I don’t like how cartoony the dialogue is. There are some very cartoony characters involved in the story (one of them is famously near the top of Fate‘s eccentricity list) so when every character—including the serious ones—has a silly tone to their dialogue, it really takes away from what makes the crazier characters unique. It’s more El Melloi II or Tsukihime Remake than Tsukihime or Fate/Stay Night when it comes to how characters are written, and the overall tone is very flat and unoriginal.

One quirky thing they do with the dialogue is, to accentuate certain phrases, they amp up the bass until the voice is muffled and in your face. They tend to lower the volume of (or cut) the music in these moments, and it happens so often that I grew sick of it in just a few episodes. As a rare trick, it’s a fine technique, but when it’s happening two or three times an episode, it grows old fast. It reminds me of the effect the Fate/Apocrypha team threw on all of that show’s sound effects—everyone complained about that, but who says a lesson is to be learned?

There’s also a flat tone to most of the scenes in general. It’s very formulaic: a scene begins neutral, the music slowly builds to a chorus as the main point of the scene takes focus, and then it trails out with a moment of quiet along with a cutaway to another character or location. Every scene ends as if it’s the end of an episode, and each episode is edited like an MV, so it feels like I’m watching a series of 20-minute trailers. It’s a tone I associate more with American cinema and blockbuster TV, and that’s not a good association; there’s a reason I watch anime. Things don’t flow together naturally at all.
Oh, and I have to call out the scenes where a character explains things to the camera for no reason other than to tell the audience things. What’s that about?

Furthering the list of things I don’t like, the character designs are quite ugly. There are moments—usually static ones—where some characters look fine. I think Tine and Fake Assassin get the best treatment solely because they don’t show their emotions much, but it’s when characters get expressive that things fall apart for me. Lines can be thick, shadows can be dark, the whites of the eyes and shadows of the nose can develop these ugly outlines, and the degree of deformation some characters go through is very off-putting. The hyper-exaggerated motions that characters are animated with, paired with this deformation, creates an uncanny valley feeling that I don’t like.
I think this is the first time I’ve seen Gilgamesh in an anime and not thought of him as attractive. It takes skill to make goldie look bad. Though admittedly, I think Enkidu’s beauty shines through the veil of this odd style, just not quite as strongly as in the OVA. What a cutie.

There are some nice frames in amidst all the ugliness, but it’s hard to appreciate them fully due to all of these details. They work better as screenshots than as pieces of the show.
There’s also a bit of a pacing issue, exaggerated by the trailer-style editing they use for everything. Every event has to match the beat of a song, and every episode has to cram in lots of events, so the jolty, breakneck pace of things can be confusing to watch. There were several fightscenes where I simply couldn’t follow what was happening, and multiple instances where a scene ended in an awkward fashion. Music is often abruptly clipped for timing reasons, and sometimes a random fade will kick in to finish off a moment that wasn’t yet done.

Underneath all of these production details that I dislike is a story that I don’t dislike, and uh… that makes my conclusion for this review pretty obvious, so I’ll say it upfront: just read the source material. While the fanservice of seeing big moments animated, and of hearing familiar servants speak with familiar voices, is nice to see as a fan, I’d rather just do away with the odd directing and ugly aesthetic in favour of plain text on white paper.

Well, that’s assuming that the story is worth reading, but is the story being told here actually interesting? Well… yeah, at least for fans of earlier works in the franchise such as Fate/Stay Night, Fate/Zero, and Fate/Extra. I think the fundamental make-or-break for this franchise, at least when it comes to the stories about grail wars, is whether the premise matters. Are the identities of characters important? Do the ideals of humans hold sway over the plot? Do the histories of the servants hold sway over the plot? Those types of things.

In recent years, that hasn’t really been the case. In Grand Order, the central human characters lack personality and the servants get minimal time to shine. In Samurai Remnant, the story was set in a historical time period, resulting in servant identity reveals that fell flat because no character knows who Jeanne d’Arc or Samson is. In Requiem, the whole thing has been turned into a farcical sport. These are stories that have strengths, for sure, but the grail war aspect of the franchise has been lacking for a long time.

So here, while not an entirely straightforward depiction of a grail war, we do get the basic thing. More than just a war of brute strength; strategy, ideals and knowledge all matter. In a melting pot of famous figures and unequal humans struggling to survive a death game, each conflict is interesting.

In the servant cast, some of the all time greats are here. Gil has his charisma, Richard is both a shounen manga protagonist and a shounen manga fanboy, Enkidu’s uniquely gentle nature gets to shine, the goddess who made herself useless is here to cause problems, and Prelati’s ready to parade her body in front of a warped lens. Conceptual greats such as the Watcher, the Archer Avenger, Jack the wristwatch, one of the horsemen, and the every-Assassin are oft-discussed for good reason. It’s an exciting group of servants.

On the human front, that’s where the interest for a casual observer may plummet. I like small aspects of some (such as how Tsubaki’s response whenever she’s frightened by something is to formally introduce herself—that’s cute), but most of them serve to tie together the Nasuverse in ways only long-time fans would find entertaining. The leading lady lacks much value beyond her position as an Ayaka clone. There are a few strict mages, there’s the standard church guy, and a Dead Apostle even gets to participate. Flat, Halri, and several other El Melloi-related characters are here to fill the ‘immature outsider’ role.
Sigma (who pulls double duty as the non-protagonist that you wind up rooting for the most, as well as an excuse for a whole heap of random heroic spirits to get screentime) is one standout that makes his appeal known, equalling the servants. He’s Kiritsugu 2. Kiri2gu? Nah, that nickname won’t take off.

But it’s in the contrast of these characters where sparks fly. Using just Sigma as an example (since he’s the last one I mentioned) we have dynamics such as… a zealot and a faithless, a child soldier and a sheltered child, a hero who performed twelve labors and a human who is undergoing trials, and more. In a game of identities and ideals, it’s important to have a cohesive cast where each member is unique and clearly defined in such a way that they can contrast with multiple others. That’s where Fate stories most often falter, but it’s where the good ones succeed, and for that alone, Strange Fake has the makings of a good entry in the franchise. I mean, there are like… four characters related to death or the underworld, and that’s a minor aspect of the show, just an aesthetic similarity.

Admittedly, some of the joy of the script is in seeing a random Kara no Kyoukai reference or recognising a throwaway name from Fate/Zero, and in that sense, it’s low-brow, but it’s never so in-your-face as to detract from the main story; if you don’t get the references, you probably won’t even notice that they’re there. The focus is laid firmly on the grail war, with each episode’s important characters getting a flash of backstory and a flicker of development. The stakes slowly build up as the characters do, readying you for the big battles to come.
But… the source material has been incomplete for eleven years now, so expecting any of that build-up to pay off would be madness. This is the first verse, no bridge, no chorus, and no satisfaction.

There’s also a bit of that ‘first half Fate story’ feel. Everyone puts their differences aside to fight a single enemy (usually Caster) and we get a multi-episode conflict of heroic spirits fighting against generic enemies like CG skeletons or tentacles. Think you’re about to see a cool conflict? Nah, one of the sides will summon a big dog or a reaper or something and everyone will work together to take it down. Direct conflict is rare and often concludes with an interruption.

So while it is an interesting watch, it’s impossible to ignore how compromised the experience is, and I don’t see much reason to go with this as your first impression of Strange Fake other than sheer stubbornness to not read a book.
The music’s nice sometimes though, and it’s always nice to have a competent Fate anime. The concept alone makes it entertaining, as has always been the case.

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Jingai Kyoushitsu no Ningengirai Kyoushi
Episodes Watched: 13/13
Rating: 6/10

I know a bit of backstory to this one, so let’s start with that. Some time ago, probably half a decade or so by now, I was watching my favourite streamer at the time: Ange Katrina. Minecraft had been the popular game among her circle for a while (though it was definitely declining), and the hot new event had people submitting novels (written using Minecraft‘s book writing feature) for the other people on the server to read.
Ange, the hopeless romantic that she is, wrote some truly terrible romantic fiction which was meme-worthingly cringy and spread around like wildfire. But other than that bit of comedy, there was one other thing being spread around: the stories written by Natsume Kurusu. Were they funny? No, but they were good. Well, one of them was silly, but… they were good! So good that they caught the attention of someone at Kadokawa.
Flash forward a year and news broke that Kurusu was becoming a published novelist. I even remember watching a video around that time of her showing off a release exhibition, but I can’t find a trace of that video anymore, so maybe I dreamed it up, or maybe it was deleted…

Anyway, the novel she wrote back then has been adapted into an anime! I wanted to get all of that out of the way to illustrate that, regardless of quality, I have a sentimental connection to this work. It’s a nostalgia for my favourite era of Nijisanji, and I’ll struggle to ignore that sentimentality. Also there’s a lovey-dovey ojousama, so that’s a bit unfair.
The synopsis of the work is very simple: a former teacher who hates humanity begins teaching at a school for mythical creatures who long to become human.

Episode by episode, we focus on a certain character, getting their backstory, the reason why they prioritise things the way they do, and often an evolution of their current mindset, supported by one or more of the other characters. We get a year of that, then the cast rotates and we get a new classroom, though some aspects of the past carry on. It’s a nice format.

The characters are, fittingly, a bit Vtubery in style.  There’s a mouse called Machi Nezu, who ends all of her sentences in ~chu, and when she introduces herself to the class, she says “I’m a mouse.” In Japanese, that’s “nezumi chu”. I’m pretty sure that’s a pun on “nice to meet you.” Total Vtuber intro.
There’s an oni character who is basically just the Vtuber Compsaurus—similar visuals, similar voice, similar personality—but with some plot-relevant quirks to make her legally distinct.
My favourite is Usami, largely because of the voice actor. The amount of aggression they manage to fit into such a cute, kind character is very funny. The others will be having a normal conversation and she’ll butt in like “shut up, you’re all annoying!”

The production values aren’t great. There are plenty of instances where characters disappear from a scene in the time between shots, or enough time passes for everyone to move places. It’s disjointed, sometimes.
The characters look kinda ugly, shots are constantly reused, and there’s never anything fancy going on visually. It’s as simple as it can get. But there are moments, and it’s a bit odd whenever they hit. For example, at least a third of episode 4 is pure, uninterrupted tear-jerker, but because of the underwhelming direction, it’s not an emotionally strong episode. The music lacks, the shots are boring, and the voice actors are left to carry all of the emotion in the scene… yet there’s one moment where the camera zooms in on a character’s sentimental hairclip, obscuring her expression. The music goes away, leaving you to face only an object with narrative emotion packed into it, only for the voice actor read a quiet, tearful line. It’s textbook, perfect in its execution! …while the remaining 20 minutes are perfectly fine at best.
That kind of imbalance isn’t uncommon, and I’d almost describe it as cruel. Flashes of what this story could be, if adapted well, are frequent enough to frustrate. At the same time, I may appreciate those flashes more because they’re not the usual.

For the majority of the time, however, the creator’s intent probably isn’t coming across in the way they imagined. Episode 5, I think, was supposed to have a mysterious but healing atmosphere, wondrous almost, and they go out of their way to force that tone. But it comes across as… dangerous, almost. There’s nothing ‘healing’ about it, rather, it’s creepy. That’s because, rather than using focused shots that deliver intent, they just use the same types of shots they’d use in any other episode and slap effects on top—a bit of blur, some sparkly lights.

The thing is, it’s an entertaining setting. A good enough job is done at endearing me towards the characters, and I want to enjoy my time in this world, but the pace is breakneck. In these 13 episodes, we rush through three whole years, yet a lot of the characters aren’t even present for three whole episodes! Even the ones that are get maybe one or two dedicated scenes in total. It’s such a shame, but I understand why they did it.
First, they wanted to illustrate the core gimmick of the source (the teacher remains the constant while the students inevitably graduate), which demands at least a year of time to show off, but two years to hammer home. Then they wanted to fit in some story for the protagonist Hitoma, which is third-year content.
But even with thirteen episodes, it’s not enough to portray so much time. I struggle to miss the characters of the past when I only knew them for a handful of moments. One year’s classroom of students is introduced, then in the following episode, they’re given their graduation tests!

If this were two seasons instead of one, I’d be very fond of it. It’s the kind of story that, in the mid ’00s, would’ve gotten that much time to work with. It really does have that style. But that’s just a fantasy, and the reality is… well, it’s a rushed mess of a show. Still enjoyable, and I’ll still think back on it with a smile, but it could’ve been much better.

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Seihantai na Kimi to Boku
Episodes Watched: 12/12
Rating: 8/10

A loud extrovert who’s always self-conscious about how she acts has fallen in love with a quiet introvert who always bluntly responds in his own way. This is the story of their clumsy romance, and of the world around them.
I think a better synopsis would be “this is the replacement for Puniru now that it’s off the air.”

This has been on my radar for quite a while, partly for similar reasons to Puniru even: the designs are very striking. But whereas Puniru had that kiddy CoroCoro flair, Seihantai is distinctly Jump, focusing on slightly older characters in a more grounded setting. There are some CoroCoroisms in here for some reason, but it’s a good mix. I already said this once before, but how nice is it that Shonen Jump are back publishing actual romance manga? I was so sick of that ‘no progress, a million chapters’ style of romance that the industry was focused on throughout the ’10s.

The other reason it’s been on my radar is… well, it’s my type of show. Think of Shinigami Bocchan or Shikimori-san or, in a way, Akebi-chan or Kono Oto Tomare. I could name so many more that I’ve positively reviewed in the past, but when a show focuses on a mostly drama-free setting where a space of unrelated people becomes a place for a wholesome community, I struggle not to like it. As I’ve said so many times, it’s the post-credits portions of Tsuki ga Kirei that made it more than a juvenile romance. And yknow, it’d be easy to equate this show to other romance shows exclusively, but it really is part of a genre that works without the romance element, and I imagine this story would still be a fine watch even if you didn’t care about the main couple’s relationship.

At the centre of this world is Tani—an honest dork who rarely speaks—and Suzuki—a dishonest gremlin who you can hear a mile away—and that’s a great core to build around. The brightly colored Suzuki finally begins to open up to her friends and show her true colors, changing the world around her in the process. The plain Tani begins interacting with other classmates and caring about other people, changing the world around him in the process. Both together and separately, the effects of their romance on their own lives and on others are plain to see.

And that’s where the web of connections comes in. A character who once sat in the background of scenes they had no true involvement in becomes the focus of an episode. What are they dealing with in life? What struggles and doubts do they have? And how does that change when they open up to the kind world fostered by the main duo’s relationship? The betterment of one person is the betterment of another, in time. In Little Busters! terms, it’s the happiness spiral.

So with a good concept and good character designs, it doesn’t take much more for me to enjoy this one. But we’ve got much more! The voice acting is solid. Many times, I appreciated how unflattering Suzuki’s gut reactions were, or how gross her laugh could get. The clueless bro Yamada is voiced by a practical rookie, but his cut-ins and tsukkomis were great; he voices things in the exact way I imagine them sounding. I know that comedy is an incredibly subjective thing, but the casting really suited my sensibilities in that regard.
And of course, there are serious moments. I don’t want to get into them for fear of spoilers, but these voices don’t just exist for comedy. Admittedly, some are better at sounding serious than others, but all of that feels in-character for me. It’d feel wrong if Tani, for example, had a loudly passionate moment; his heart is a quiet thing.

The directing isn’t spectacular, yet it oozes style. The chibi deformations are very cute and expressive, the detail on faces in emotional moments is beautiful, there’s this one sketchy watercolor type effect they sometimes use which I love, and every once in a while they’ll swap a character out for a cartoony animal or mascot character type thing in order to sell how much of a simple dork that character is being. It all works well.
Little details are abundant, and I’m sure I missed a lot of them, but there were so many small things I took note of while watching. A smile on a shirt, the sound effects of a unique pair of shoes, a QR code linking to a certain web page… This is the kind of show you could watch two or three times just to catch everything.

A lot of the time, ideas that could be ambitious are smartly cut to allow for easier animation. They do sometimes go for shots where ambition outstrips their capabilities, but it’s very rare. Most of the time, the storyboards are done in respect of the animators.
Oh, and speaking of style, the OP and ED animations are full of silly ideas, and the ED song is straight out of Chobits, so that’s a thumbs up from me.

The other thing I really want to highlight here, that may shine a spotlight on this show for people who’d otherwise be interested, is perspective. Because of how Tani is characterised, a lot of the cuteness and/or coolness you may see in him is the result of his restrained communication. It’s because we don’t get to see his perspective very often that we understand why Suzuki likes him.
But if the male lead isn’t the go-to perspective, who is? The female lead, of course! As a protagonist, I would liken her to Chihaya from Chihayafuru and Akane from Yamada-kun to Lv999, not necessarily due to their personalities, but in how they are depicted as people. She’s not perfect; she can be slovenly, she can be tired, she can be unattractive, she can be a gremlin, she can be dumb and obnoxious and so many other conventionally negative traits, but when she puts her mind to it, she can try her best. And none of those ‘negative’ traits are actually unappealing.

I’m not sure how to fully describe what I want to say here, but I’ll try with an analogy. I know, analogies are always a terrible way of explaining things, but it’s all I’ve got in my brain right now. I get the sense that this was written by a shoujo manga writer or fan, who originally grew up on shounen manga, and desires to blend the two worlds. The sensibilities of the author come across as that, at least. What stems from that is a cast of characters that not only feels well-balanced, but is also somewhat realistic. Maybe ‘relatable’ would be the better word…

Taira’s a total downer, but his sincerity is so endearing, particularly when contrasted with the rest of the blindly positive cast. Manami’s obnoxious energy can interrupt a sincere moment or bring someone out of depression; she’s groovin’, context be damned. I’m pretty sure Hon-chan is a bad day away from committing mass murder, and that’s great!
I think Azuma is especially interesting because it’s in her nature to accept life for what it is. She has no self-respect and is easily used by others, and that sounds like a bad trait, but it’s because of that accepting nature that the main couple smoothly integrates into the friend group.

As I already mentioned, the voice acting helps establish these characters, but the writing’s a big part of it too. Even though a lot of the characters are introduced as tropes, they don’t feel that way. They are partly contradictory, as people are. They have doubts and insecurities, but they aren’t an excuse to create an episode-long drama; that’s just who they are. They have families and jobs and a small sense of history to them, and when you gather them around a table, the conversations will flow naturally.

The rest of the show’s sound profile is… it doesn’t demand your attention (outside of the first episode), but it’s pretty meticulous. The foley work on tiny actions is very detailed, the music is all lovely to listen to, and a lot of the sounds are new to me! …though they put the message sound effect that GTA FiveM uses for its text message notifications, and I really wasn’t expecting to hear that. It’s like hearing your ringtone when your phone isn’t ringing…

As a show, it’s one of the more effective examples of using music and sounds that, rather than being obnoxiously loud in order to stand out, serve their purpose well in dragging you into a scene’s atmosphere. Oftentimes, I was so invested in the moment that I didn’t realise how well-built the space around it was until it ended and all the build-up caught up with me. I’d retroactively piece together everything they did in the gaps between scenes and feel a wave of “wow, that was a good scene” wash over me.
Naturally, a lot of the lovey-dovey moments make for easy examples of this, but the one bit that sticks with me most comes at the very end of a scene: it’s a shot of Azuma on her bike, at night, looking up at the stars as the day ends. The sound profile of the scene could easily crescendo with this moment, or fade out gently with a visual fade to black, but instead, the audio lingers, continuing on into the following day. Why? Because when someone wakes up, they don’t just forget the emotions of yesterday. It isn’t until the world distracts her from her thoughts that yesterday ends and today truly begins.

All in all, Seihantai na Kimi to Boku is well-executed in almost every regard, and it’s a concept that I’m inherently biased towards, so it’s pretty spectacular. There are some downsides—the plot isn’t driven by a singular cohesive message, and some episodes can feel a bit too ‘we mushed some manga chapters together’, so the episodes themselves rarely feel fulfilling. Zooming out, there’s no resolution, so the show itself isn’t entirely fulfilling either.
Another side effect of the source material’s panel-based format is that we don’t get to stew in the moment ever. There’s always a cut away from the moment or an interjection, and while this can sometimes be relatable (e.g. awkward characters switching to comedy in order to cope with an intimate atmosphere), the balance of continuance vs. interruption is off, I think.

It is a bit of a weird one to summarise my feelings on. The only thing truly exceptional about Seihantai is that it’s exceptionally sufficient; it doesn’t have a wow-factor, and I’m not sure how to feel about that.
If you asked me what my favourite episode was, I wouldn’t know how to answer. None of them stand out, rather, they’re all around that same level of “yeah, I liked it.” Do I feel passionate about any of the people, places, or ideas present in these twelve episodes? No, not at all. But its flaws are relatively minor, and I think it’s a great show. Maybe it’s nice to have a show every once in a while that doesn’t try to blow us away, and simply tells a nice story in a nice way. I have room in my heart for that.

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Yuusha Party ni Kawaii Ko ga Ita node, Kokuhakushitemita.
Episodes Watched: 6/12

On their quest to defeat the Demon King, the hero’s party constantly falls to a certain demon. And yet, that demon—Yoki—always brings them to safety after beating them. Why? Well, Yoki happens to be the reincarnation of a human from Earth… and also, he has a crush on the party’s priest, Cecilia.
Eventually, he decides to let the rest of the party pass, leaving only Cecilia behind. As he confesses his feelings to the priest (only to be turned down) the hero’s party goes on to defeat the wicked Demon King. But not all is over for Yoki, for the girl he likes has vowed to help him escape, so that he may live a normal human life.

Other than the backgrounds, there’s not much visual appeal to this one. Characters are drawn messily, and even the stills in the ED look a bit off. The voice acting can be a bit plain too, but it’s one of those shows that isn’t quite a comedy but isn’t quite serious, so mundane voice acting isn’t out of place.
However, this is also partially an action show, and while this isn’t at the low level of Butareba‘s late episodes, it’s still shamefully poor. I often found myself wishing for fight scenes to end, just to lessen the burden on the animators. You don’t have to aim for action if you don’t have the manpower for it; the rest of the show can stand by itself well enough.
The art style fluctuates from episode to episode pretty egregiously. That does mean that some episodes look better, but that’s my ‘glass half full’ way of describing it. In some episodes, the lineart has a nice, textured effect. In others, the characters are proportioned in a way that reminds me of old Deviantart galleries.
In a few of the episodes, the shadows are drawn in such a way that characters appear to have skin conditions. Episode 5 features a transformation sequence that genuinely looks worse than the amateur flash animations coming out 20 years ago. They don’t even play any music in the moment, so all you’ve got to pay attention to is… this:

Those are keyframes, I swear. And in the very same show, you have frames like this:

The differences in quality can be staggering, but I imagine if they cut the ambition and gave the staff something simpler to work with, they’d be able to invest their time into a more consistent product. I’m sure some people believe that it’s better to try, regardless of whether you succeed or not… but there’s a time, and there’s a place, and I don’t think this is the time or place for it.

So if the art and sound isn’t great, what’s left to enjoy? The story and the characters, of course. Are they good? Uh… I’m not sure.
The primary characters have a charm, even if they’re a bit plain. The main character is a chuuni isekai guy, friendly but generic. The main love interest is the kind healer girl who will give you a lecture if you do something bad. They’re not winning any awards on their own, but the supporting cast does a lot to improve them.

I think the show is at its best when it’s weaving connections between characters. When one of Cecilia’s party members unknowingly falls in love with Yoki’s demon subordinates, it’s fun to watch. When the guy working at Yoki’s guild winds up being the husband of the maid working at Cecilia’s mansion, it’s fun to watch.
Last season, we had that Mugen Gacha anime, and even though the characters in that were incredibly simple, I praised the second episode for its portrayal of interwoven interactions and relationships. Heck, that’s what makes things like Nageki no Bourei and Konosuba so entertaining, right? Well, this show sometimes has a low-quality version of that kind of writing, and it still works great.

But when the story tries to be serious, it becomes very clear that the characters lack the emotional range required to respond to situations properly. When the script tries to stew conflict, it’s always in the most vapid way possible. When faced with sadness, characters get over it in an instant. When something shocking happens, no one really reacts. As you might expect, the plot of the show isn’t very good.

The part that makes it tough to stick with is that the main duo just aren’t fun, and the focus on action when the production can’t execute action scenes well is a poor choice. All that said, the first few episodes aren’t all that bad, so I wouldn’t dissuade someone from wanting to try it.

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Not long ago, I read and reviewed a Korean web novel titled The Court Physician Cured the Villainess and Ran Away, and I had a great time with it. I was interested in getting a fresh take on fantasy, different from the Japanese novels I had grown used to, and naturally, my desire for more only grew when I finished that book.

Since then, I’ve sampled a few novels, and read quite a bit of The Saintess of the Evil God is My Childhood Friend (the intro was interesting, but it wasn’t my kind of story in the end), but none were working out for me, so I’m back on the more traditional villainess topic. This time, I’m reviewing…

악녀에게 집착받는 호위기사는 도망치고 싶다
Or in English:

—

A Korean man lives a turbulent life. He had an unfortunate start, but through hard work and perseverance, he forged a worthwhile life. But when times were hardest, he developed an addiction to a certain game. It simulated a large, fantasy world.
Even after picking himself up by the bootstraps and returning to a normal routine, he would still play that game for comfort. One day he’d take over one of the guilds, and on another, he’d hunt for treasure. Sometimes he’d even take the Emperor’s throne as his own. But there was one odd element to the game he could never wrap his head around: Eliza di Bevel, a scarred, vengeful woman who killed without remorse. Her backstory seemed nonexistent, and approaching her would lead to certain death, no matter how carefully you’d tread. Why would the developers put such a character in their game, a game known for its expansive world and developed characters?

Somehow, the man dies, and somehow, he is reborn. The sight before him is a familiar one: it’s a location from the game he so loved. But something’s off. The characters he recognises look younger. The body he inhabits is of a character he’s never seen before. And more curious than anything… the villainess before him has no scar.
Summoned to this world before Eliza’s bloodthirsty eradication has happened, trapped in the body of a helpless orphan, and with no explanation of what’s going on, the boy now known as Judas Defecit will have to use his wits to survive.

What follows is a slow romance on the sidelines of an action-packed life. Judas, the new kid in Eliza’s training barracks, gets into fights with other kids, with the teachers, and sometimes even with a visiting noble or two. Eliza, fascinated by the contrast between his willingness to obey her and his defiance of status-based power, begins obsessing over him, however… trauma compels her not to rely on anyone, and a twisted voice in the back of her head tells her to act with violence before logic. Similarly, Judas begins hatching plans for his eventual escape, securing monetary support from the world outside so that he’s not reliant on Eliza’s whims to survive. This may be a romance story, but it’s not a romance either party asked for.

The structure is rough. Every chapter begins with a recap of the previous chapter. Sometimes, points will be repeated three or four times in a short window. They’ll begin each chapter with a summary of the last, and then reiterate that summary to pad out the word count. After that, they’ll repeat- sorry, I’m being facetious, but it does get a bit annoying.

The prose is light and almost mechanically efficient. Don’t expect much description beyond what’s required… but when it’s time to be artistic, the metaphors will drag on for days. Symbolism is clumsily handled, often treated as an in-universe truth, and if you’re hoping for a satisfying explanation on how the synopsis came to be, you’ll be sorely disappointed.
So when it comes to the merits of the writing, it’s all in the substance, far removed from the presentation. Yes, there are merits.

First, though this may be a divisive one: the characters are very imperfect. Sometimes a character will ingeniously figure something out, living up to their established reputation, yet, because of a gap in knowledge that only the reader is aware of, their conclusion will be wrong. They’ll then spend hundreds of pages believing in that conclusion. Sometimes, they never learn the truth, leaving only us, as the omniscient observers, the only ones with a full picture of things. I think this approach may annoy some people, especially if you’re impatient and just want to get to the good stuff, but I really liked it.

It’s also quite a slow story. It begins with the two main characters—Judas and Eliza—meeting, and they don’t get along. There is one timeskip, but other than that, you are stuck watching them slowly go from a distant dislike of one another, to a begrudging partnership, to conditional closeness, and beyond… Both characters have their own values when it comes to being friendly with others, both have their own reasons to not be friendly with the other, and it’ll take a very, very long time for the romance part of the story to begin.

In the meantime, Judas is training as a knight. He’s got his buddies training along with him (a bit of a boys club atmosphere in there), he’s got some rivals who spend their days plotting his downfall, and he’s got some brief connections to the outside world by way of an information guild. Sometimes, glimpses of life beyond Eliza’s walled garden will slip into the facility, only to stand in conflict with Judas. But you won’t get to see most of that world, and what exploration does occur happens incredibly late into the story. Judas is a boy in a cage, restricted in where he can go, and forever attached to a woman who hides herself away in a mansion for fear of assassination. Don’t expect to see the big picture.

And yet, there is a world. I’m not sure what the planet looks like, or what countries exist, or how many other continents exist… but there is a world out there, and it’s impossible to ignore it. Outside forces always exist, and the humble life as a knight Judas has set for himself isn’t guaranteed. Furthermore, the state of affairs politically is a complete mystery to our hero. Most of the factions plotting and scheming in the present day are long-gone in the game he once played, assumedly wiped out by Eliza, so despite the small benefit of knowledge he gains from having played that game, it’s not much help to him now. The truth is always in the gaps between what he knows to be true.

It’s like playing Skyrim, and then being warped into that bit of Tamriel 100 years prior. Sure, you know there’s gonna be a couple wars after you die, but… the imperials aren’t doing anything yet, and whatever trouble’s going on with the local population has little to do with what you know. Knowledge of the eventual takeover of Winterhold isn’t going to help you, is it? But you do know where Meridia’s Beacon is, so maybe that’ll come up…

There are really just two reasons to read: the first is to see the slow-burn romance reach a crescendo, and the second is to see the results of everyone’s scheming. Technically there’s a mystery plot involving the backstory of the guy our main character is now living as, but the symbolism isn’t subtle in this one. You’ll figure out what’s going on immediately, I’m sure.

So let’s focus on those two points. First, let’s go with the scheming. There are several factions that may catch your interest. Judas is one; he wants to plan an escape and find out about his past. In contrast is Eliza, who also wants to find out about his past, but for different reasons. Also she wants to kill her whole family.
Her family can be split into three groups: her wicked stepmother plans to kill her in a way that absolves her of responsibility, her siblings plan to kill her in more direct ways, and her father—one of the two rulers on the continent—plans to take control of the empire and also deal with the disrespectful Judas discretely.

There are two religious cults: one focused on the sun and one on the moon. These aren’t directly related to our main cast, so their goals are a bit more opaque, at first, yet both of their plans seem to involve Eliza, and they may involve Judas as well. There’s also an assassin’s guild that has it out for both of our main characters, and an information guild that works for both of our main characters. Then you’ve got the other knights-in-training at the facility, and Eliza’s few attendants, all of which have their own things going on.

We could judge all of these, one-by-one, based on their conclusion, or based on the journeys their stories took, or both! But that would take forever and would involve spoilers, so I’ll just say… most of them are one-note, with simple goals and simple methods. It’s the number of machinations in one small corner of the world that makes it interesting, but the schemes themselves aren’t exactly grand. The ripple effect of their conflicting plans is where the fun is. To give a fictional example, Judas will go and interact with someone he knows from the game, knowing no one else will understand his actions. This will unintentionally step on the toes of some plot, and in the meantime, Eliza will grow suspicious of what Judas is doing. She’ll look into it, discover something Judas was unaware of, and uncover a plot that had remained hidden. Then, rather than directly confront that plot, she’ll use it as a weapon against another faction. With that kind of storytelling, every faction gets pulled into the same soup of scheming without any of them knowing how large the soup bowl is. That can be fun to read.

Then there’s the romance, and I think it starts strong. However, I think it might start too strong. The bulk of the scheming Judas gets up to involves him eventually running away, but he works so well with Eliza, and she becomes so enamored with him, that the idea of him ever running away is hard to believe. Personality-wise, the two feel well-planned, and they complement one another in ways you may not notice until new information comes along to recontextualise things. In the midst of all the action and danger, the quiet moments they spend together are always sweet, and I looked forward to them. When the two hadn’t been together in a scene for a while, I longed for them to hang out together.

Thus, in order to fit the book’s title and synopsis, the author clumsily shoves in reasons for Judas to want to run away from Eliza, and all of it is hard to buy into. It’s this topic, as well as many others, that make up the core of arcs I often concluded with the thought: “so all of that was pointless.”
Sometimes a plot point will come along, steal the focus of the narrative for a few chapters, then wrap up so neatly you could forget any of it even happened. But sometimes, a plot thread will be dropped unceremoniously, and you’ll wonder what the point of it was. In both directions, there’s a lot of waste. But hey, I only got to long for the couple to reunite because the weaker in-between content was there to soak up my attention.

It’s the kind of story that ends with a whimper. Maybe a pant and a moan too, but ‘whimper’ works. I think I respect the way that the plot is distributed throughout the book, but it’s not my definition of fun. There are some fun chapters, there are some fun ideas, and some of the interactions between the two main characters are, of course, quite fun too. But with an intro that focuses on what is effectively a ‘the new kid at school’ plot, and an outro that’s clumsy and fails to satisfy, it’s a hard one to recommend. I don’t regret reading it, because the good parts are good, but… the bad parts are common. To me, bad and common is a poor mix. Bad and noble, on the other hand? Sign me up.

—

‘Why would the developers put such a character in their game?’ It’s a question that Judas, in his previous life, had asked. He grew so frustrated after failing to discover any sort of story for Eliza that he began flaming the developers, insulting their work and throwing bad reviews their way. It’s a bit of fluff at the start of the story, and it’d be easy to forget, but… I think that frustration is a really interesting piece of character writing.

On first read, it seems like the protagonist is merely annoyed by some incomplete content, or frustrated at the many unfair deaths he’s wasted his time going through… but thinking back, it’s not that, is it? He was frustrated because of the lack of agency.
Whether he realised it or not, the man later known as Judas lived a similar life to our villainess. Yet he, given a degree of agency, seemed to be able to change his fate. Why, then, was Eliza so static? Why could her fate not be changed? Why won’t she ever be happy?
And therein lay doubt: can we change our fate? Did he have agency in his life? Or is he, like Eliza, trapped in misfortune? His interest in her stems from a projection, don’t you think?

Now, this isn’t exactly a subtle novel. The metaphors are clumsy and blatant, the characters self-analyse a lot, and the author tries their best to wrap up every thematic thread they can, even if it risks dumbing down the prose. We get that they’re similar—the sun and the moon, once the same—and yet, seeing it manifest in their actions is still interesting, especially in hindsight. It makes the characters more believable, I’d say.

On another topic, there’s something to be said for taking things for granted. As I said earlier, when the two main characters were wrapped up in their own plot points, I found myself missing the moments they spent together. The core anticipation behind any arc was not in seeing how Judas would pass a test or how Eliza would debate another rich person, but in seeing the two reunite and talk about nothing in particular. The primary plot may not have been to my tastes, but because that plot existed, I had something to look forward to: the absence of that plot, giving way for the romance.

So… when the plot ends and we’re left with many, many chapters of what is exclusively romance and smut… I didn’t really care about them anymore. If they’re always together, if every day is blissful, and the big victory lap of recapturing Eliza’s childhood and blessing her with all that she missed out on never meets any sort of resistance, what do I have to look forward to? After this lovey-dovey moment, there’ll be another one, then another, then another…

The functionality of the escort knights, for example, as a storytelling mechanic becomes so much more apparent when you remove them from the picture. There was value in the weaker material, as it elevated the greater material. I could only think of tomorrow because today was sure to end. If nothing else, that makes this book an incredible example of the value of waste.
As I said in my Court Physician review, “I’ll forever wish that the author had wasted more time.”
This is a book that certainly achieves that waste. I would’ve liked it to be higher quality though…

Last time, I reviewed a bunch of JRPGs from 1984-1990, and this time, I’m continuing on through the ’80s, and I take a time-travel trip to 1995!

Contents:

• Arabian Dream Scheherazade – 1987, Famicom
• Psychic War: Cosmic Soldier 2 – 1987, PC-8801 & MSDOS
• Phantasy Star – 1987, Master System
• Dragon Quest III – 1988, Famicom
• Mother – 1989, Famicom
• Chrono Trigger – 1995, Super Famicom

Arabian Dream Scheherazade
Platform: Famicom
Year: 1987

Culture Brain’s The Magic of Scheherazade, another 1987 release, is a real hodge-podge of all that came before.

In the mythical land of… Arabia… the titular princess Scheherazade has been kidnapped by an evil demon-summoning mage. You, as the descendant of a great hero, set out to save her. It’s basically an expanded (and twistier) take on the plot of Dragon Quest, reskinned to suit a different setting… though you are joined by a talking cat companion, so that’s new. It’ll be overdone in 10 years, but mascot animals are still in vogue in the ’80s.
…what do you mean they still do that!?

So, you journey through a Zelda-style world, fighting overworld mobs in a clunky rendition of Zelda or the game I spoke about last time, Esper Dream. Lemme tell ya, I can feel the downgrades. This isn’t a good action RPG.

However, whenever you enter a hostile map, there’s a chance that you’ll trigger a random encounter, and these play out as turn-based battles. You get to control a growing party of story-based allies as well as an army of recruitable troops. There are a lot of options in battle, but I didn’t experiment much, so I don’t understand all of it. I mostly just used the default attack, the heal spell, and sometimes the freeze spell. Both versions of combat feel low-quality to me.

One nice thing is that you get to select which of your plot-mandated party members participate in each battle, meaning no member will be left out just because you forgot to swap them in and try them.

But if manually selecting a formation of party members each and every battle sounds tedious, don’t worry; you can also choose from pre-set formations that combine party members that work well together against certain predefined enemy encounter tables.
Yup, the different possibilities for enemy combinations in each encounter are taught to the player as if they were learning about the demon army’s divisions! You’ll probably see these two types of enemies together, and if you do, pick this formation of party members to best deal with them!
It’s not a difficult game, so there’s little reason to dig deep into the battle system, but this concept is pretty cool, I think.

The mapping of the game is unique to everything I’ve played so far on this journey through old JRPGs, I think. In isolation, it may appear to be exactly like Zelda‘s mapping, but there’s actually a world/level system.
While you’re in level 1, you can go anywhere in that level at any time, but you can’t go anywhere that’s in another level. There are multiple open worlds to explore, effectively. NPCs in town give hints on the vague direction to head in, but even aimlessly wandering around will often get you where you need to go. The maps have a good ambience too, with the sound effects altering to suit the map. At the end of each level, you get a cute cutscene and a title card to welcome you into the next world.

And let’s reverse the comparisons, shall we? One of the big gimmicks of The Magic of Scheherazade is time travel. For an early example of how this works, if you go back in time and plant a seed somewhere in the world, it’ll have grown into a tree once you return to the present.
Also you can gamble in this game! That’s a first!

That being said, one of the songs is obviously ripping off the Dragon Quest battle music, so… maybe it’s more unoriginal than unique.

I have to mention one gag, involving a town that is on the verge of being submerged by a rising ocean. A stubborn old man refuses to leave, no matter what, and if you travel through time to see the town’s fate, you’ll find an underwater civilisation of mermaids, and all the humans are gone! Except… the stubborn old man is still there, under the ocean, refusing to leave.

Stylistically, it’s very clear that this game is continuing the shounen manga influence on the genre popularised by Dragon Quest, and so, it’s really one of the few titles from this time period that has the tone you’d expect the genre to embody. The Dungeons & Dragons aspect that was so prominent in games from ’84 to ’86 is truly beginning to fade away by this point, and the transition in the target audience from ‘PC Game Otaku’ to ‘Manga Otaku’ is most obvious here, I’d say. If any year was the turning point, it was 1987.
Now obviously, Lodoss hasn’t hit its peak popularity yet, so I’m sure some of that DnDness will find its way back into the genre in the years to come, but with knowledge of the future, I know that it doesn’t last long.

I could do without the Dragon Slayer ghost mechanic which engages if you spend too long on one map (it makes discovering enemy weakpoints a bit annoying), and the combat isn’t great, but other than that, I had a good time. One of the better games of the era, with a very memorable style and some great comedy.

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Psychic War: Cosmic Soldier 2
Platform: PC-8801 & MSDOS
Year: 1987

A game by my beloved Kogado, and a sequel to a game that I only played a small amount of!

It’s a dungeon crawler, sci-fi in aesthetic, a bit like Star Cruiser of the following year, but without any of the crazy tech that makes Star Cruiser notable. But Cosmic Soldier 2 is impressive in its own ways.

It’s worth contextualising the genre, here. On console, the first two Deep Dungeon games are out, but we don’t even have Megami Tensei yet. On PC, the genre has certainly been a thing for a few years thanks to Wizardry, but if they’re not blatant copycats, they’re often in a simple form or as a hybrid with another genre. The first-person dungeon crawler—while established—is still very much a new thing. So when Cosmic Soldier 2 offers large maps, NPCs you can chat with, decisions you can make, and most notably, enemies that you can recruit in battle… it’s hard not to appreciate what it’s doing. And this is just the sequel; they already achieved all this once!

You walk around a 3D space, searching for items and locations. Each map has one or two rooms of importance, then 20 others that exist to waste your time. Random encounters are aplenty, so as you walk around, you’ll get into conflict with a small roster of enemies. For some, you can chat with them before attacking them. Others will only be willing to talk with you if you beat them into submission. Some will give you useful information, and others can be recruited into your party, however, only killing them will grant you exp.

As you walk around, your resources will naturally recover, but it’s not the most reliable method of healing; walking around a lot will get you into more fights, after all. However, there are healing stations you can visit to snag some healing items. These items, as well as a set of psychic powers, act as the only useables in the game, so it’s not the most in-depth system.

Speaking of, combat is a system of holding down one of two buttons, for the most part. You have a shield and a laser, and you defeat enemies by either overpowering their laser or outlasting their energy. Despite the simplicity, there’s a tiny amount of room for you to flex your skill—you can choose to intentionally take damage in order to siphon some energy from the incoming attack—but it rarely matters. Usually, you’ll just be alternating between holding down attack while navigating a dungeon and automatically winning battles as you walk, and holding block in preparation for scarier encounters that require some careful attack timing.
Given how open to free exploration the world is, you could conceivably venture into areas too high-level for you, and you’d be stuck without much chance to survive, but… it’s pretty obvious that you shouldn’t do that. The game is easy, so long as you respect the boundaries between the game’s levels or areas and save your progress frequently.

Weirdly, this game was localised into English, so most of the information you’ll find about the game online will be about that DOS version. There aren’t many gameplay changes made during the localisation or the port process from Japan’s PCs to the West’s—some name changes, a bit of visual censorship—but they play identically down to the key bindings. I prefer to play these Wizardry-style games portably, and I didn’t think my handheld supported PC-8801, so I wound up playing the DOS version. I later figured out how to get PC-8801 running on my device, but I couldn’t be bothered to redo all the button mapping, so I stuck with DOS.

Moreso than a lot of PC JRPGs of this era, CPU speed matters a lot. If you run Ys slightly too fast, it’s still playable. Run a turn-based RPG too fast and you’re only getting benefits. If you run this game at a pace expected of a rig from 1985 or 1987, it’s pleasant, but if you max out the CPU or go with something better suited to the ’90s, you’ll die over and over again. Both the rate at which you lose energy and the duration of the windows of opportunity between the enemy’s attacks are drastically affected by CPU speed, and the faster you run it, the harder it becomes.
Running the game at 8 MHz, it’s a breeze. Even at a crazy 12 MHz, I was able to travel to and clear the second map at level one with no difficulty, only running into trouble towards the end when timing actually started to matter. Any higher than 12, however, and going beyond the intro map would get me one-shot at level 2. Looking at what the few other English reviews out there had to say, one of the most consistent comments is about the game being difficult, so I have to assume they didn’t account for this and just ran the game as fast as possible. Make sure you’re playing between 4 and 12 MHz when it comes to these old PC games!

The UI is far more functional than you’d think it to be at a cursory glance. The style in use is similar to what the Master System port of Haja no Fuuin would use: several windows that each act as a unique menu.
In the top left is the menu screen. It can be your inventory, it can be a party member’s status window, and it can be a map. You choose what it shows, reminiscient of how the bottom screen was used on the DS.
To the right of that is a display of your movement controls. In certain contexts, this becomes a choice box. It can be your main menu, it can be a dialogue prompt, it can be how you interact with enemies; if you need to make a selection, this is where you’ll do it.
In the center is a dialogue box. This is used to deliver information, notifying you when you’ve levelled up or detailing the words of an NPC.
In the bottom left is the game world. The visual representation of the environment and of the people you’re interacting with shows up here.
And finally, in the bottom right is the battle screen. When you run into an enemy, it’ll face off against your party here.

It’s a method of presenting the game that can appear overwhelming when you don’t know anything about the game, but the strength of this approach to UI is that you never get lost in a menu. These types of games—which demand you navigate nondescript mazes with no landmarks in order to make any progress—there’s always the potential for you to lose track of where you are and become disoriented as a result of constantly entering and leaving random encounters. But when you check your inventory in this game, the rest of the UI isn’t replaced. When you go into battle, it’s not a full reset of the display. It makes it a lot harder to forget where you are.

Partly because of that, and partly because of how straightforward and uncomplicated the experience is, I don’t think this is a game that’ll appeal to long-time fans of the genre. There are few systems to engage with, battles are largely a single button press, and there’s little to do other than find the few rooms that matter in order to collect the items required to progress.
Thanks to its age, I also don’t think it’ll appeal to today’s beginners; even if it had a Windows port, ’80s-era retro gaming has become a niche of a niche. But as someone who doesn’t like the first-person dungeon crawler genre in general, and is willing to play through games from the ’80s, I had a lot more fun with this than I expected, to a point. Eventually though, the complexity of maps increases, and mechanics such as exitless dungeons and player-defined teleports are introduced, all of which makes progression a bit frustrating. Hunting down the correct character with the correct ability required to progress is a gruelling process too. It’s a lot of backtracking, and making progress isn’t exactly thrilling…

But if the idea of mindlessly mapping out dungeons without much friction for a few days sounds like your thing, and you like the sci-fi aesthetic, I do think this is worth trying.

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Phantasy Star
Platform: Master System
Year: 1987

I played a little bit of this on GBA a couple years ago, but I decided to save it for after I’d played Cosmic Soldier 2. Well, I’ve beaten that game, so I’m back to this.

Phantasy Star is an interesting cross-section for the genre. It is, like Cosmic Soldier 2, a sci-fi dungeon crawler with a first-person view. However, whereas Cosmic Soldier 2 would be set entirely in hostile ground, Phantasy Star breaks free from the chains of Wizardry in order to dip into Ultima territory; dungeons are connected via an overworld presented in top-down fashion.

This game lacks the enemy recruitment mechanics of Cosmic Soldier 2 or Megami Tensei, but it does bring in some Megami Tensei-isms, such as the iconic healing trick: it’s cheaper to spam your MP on heals and then get your MP recovered by the NPC healer than it is to get your HP recovered by them. Classic! You can also talk with a small few enemies to escape battle and get advice in the process.

The highlight aspect of the game has to be the sheer technical prowess. The music is weak compositionally, but everything else about the presentation is stunning.
The overworld is full of different environments.
You can visit towns, all of which have a unique aesthetic.
Enter buildings to see a fully designed room and a detailed NPC sprite.
If you open the menu or talk to an NPC, the screen will be filled by a background drawing of the environment you’re in.
There are even cutscene graphics during major scenes, reminiscient of PC JRPGs of the time. The kind of stuff that’d become more popular on consoles in the 16-bit CD age.

There are multiple unique building designs, lots of terrain tiles, and some ambitious city design. One of the earliest things you do in this game is head to a space port and take a flight to another planet. That has to be the first time I’ve seen such a thing (chronologically, that is) and elements such as technology’s effect on transportation and the clearly marked Shop and Heal buildings make me suspicious, once again, of Pokémon‘s hallmarks; they didn’t just copy from Dragon Quest and call it a day!

But more than anything, the dungeoneering is a spectacle. Navigating the dungeon is not a choppy experience as you would expect from the genre in ’87, no, your movement is animated to look truly 3D. It looks incredible and adds an oddly spooky atmosphere to the caves and labyrinths you visit. I don’t normally get a sense of physicality from dungeon crawlers (not even modern ones) but I could feel the space I was in while playing through some parts of this game.

Admittedly, the 3D effect is slow and a bit glitchy, but it’s so effective at setting the mood, and when combined with the beautifully animated enemy sprites, it’s hard not to be impressed by it. I mean, this is a Master System game! A late Master System game, but still… Between this and Miracle Warriors, I really am convinced that this was a more capable device than Nintendo’s offering. Maybe my Brit bias is getting to me there though. Granted, Jaseiken Necromancer would launch a month later on the PC Engine and absolutely blow both the NES and the Master System out of the water, so I’m not blindingly biased.

The balance is… strange. At the start, it’s very easy to stumble onto the wrong tile and die, but before long, I was drowning in cash. The generous inventory size and low price of healing items made it almost impossible to run out of resources during a dungeon run.
The inventory size may be generous, but the inability to sort it in any way makes navigating it very annoying. When the vehicles for traversing the map are in the second page of the items list, and I need to use them over and over again, it makes me wish I could just walk everywhere.
Open menu, move to page 2, select your land vehicle, drive a bit, open menu, move to page 2, dismount land vehicle. Do that same process for your ocean vehicle, and when you’re done sailing, do it again to re-enter your land vehicle. What’s that? You need to open a door? Better be ready to browse your inventory!

Also, I once talked on this blog about how I’ve never really enjoyed fantasy or sci-fi 4Xes compared to historical ones, because there’s no sense of connection to the tech tree. I can’t intuit what a Folgarian Trelt is, but I know what a battery is! Well, a similar problem exists in this game; you’ll be wandering through a dungeon when you get some loot. It’s a weapon! But not knowing anything about the world’s technology, I’ve gotta dig through the manual to find out if it’s worth swapping for my current weapon. That’s annoying.

Loot in dungeons is mostly terrible, so exploration feels like a waste of time. The behaviour of the B button in menus is very inconsistent; sometimes it means confirm, but sometimes it means cancel.

All of this tedium serves to stretch out what is a relatively short game. It’s somewhere between Hoshi Wo Miru Hito and Dragon Quest 2 in scope, but closer to Dragon Quest 2‘s side, and that’s a bit awkward, to me. Something like Hoshimiru or Ys or the original Dragon Quest are short enough to where you can comfortably beat them in a couple sittings—they don’t drag. Conversely, larger titles like Dragon Quest III and Final Fantasy are always throwing something new at you to keep you interested.
But Phantasy Star has you trekking through a large, repeating desert. You’re delving into dungeons that all look the same. The scale is there for you to explore, but the locations are empty and the process of getting anywhere is slow. It feels like they spent all of their attention on the initial presentation of the game and then struggled to match that ambition in other regards. Heck, even the late-game graphics struggle to keep up with the production quality of the early game stuff.

Even though the setting is blatantly sci-fi, most of the experience involves travelling through dungeons and empty, natural landscapes while fighting skeletons, dragons, and various creatures from Greek mythology.  A lot of the sci-fi flair is front-loaded, but it kinda gets lost as the journey progresses.
The mechanic where chests dropped by monsters can be trapped is annoying, not because they deal damage to you (that’s meaningless), but because it turns every single loot drop into an extra prompt: an enemy dropped a chest. Do you want to open it?
There are parts of the game that are totally inaccessible until the dungeon key has already served its purpose. Do I really need to be manually opening doorways still when I’m so many hours in?

I wouldn’t say it’s a bad game, but… this is the last JRPG to release in 1987, and there’s an entire year’s worth of better (or simply more interesting) games behind it. The many cheap Dragon Quest clones released on the Famicom during this year may all have worse production values and less-responsive controls, but they all provide something new that never really loses its lustre. As much as it pains me to say, I don’t know if Phantasy Star does that…

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Dragon Quest III
Platform: Famicom
Year: 1988

Systems-wise, it’s pretty similar to Dragon Quest II. If you put the two side-by-side, it’d be hard to tell which is which. It has that spirit of Super Mario moving into Super Mario 2 (not the US version) in that it feels like an expansion.

There are some immediate signs of difference, however. Your party size is one larger, and the battle UI has been modified slightly to fit the stats of all four characters on screen at once. It’s a bit ugly, and it took some time for me to adjust to the subtle changes in the layout, but it’s functional.

The neutral lighting of DQIII, for example, is a bit brighter to my eyes, but not all the time; as you spend your time exploring the world, the time of the world will change, and at night, the locations can get dark and quiet.

Compared to the previous game, I prefer the structure of this one a lot. It may be more of a refinement than a revolution, but… Dragon Quest II needed a lot of refinement! That game had you lost, exploring back and forth across a map that, long before the game was over, you’d be far too familiar with. Once the facade of an adventure fell to the wayside, it became clear how small that world truly was.

In Dragon Quest III, you always know where to go. It’s not exactly railroaded, but even when I thought I was blindly exploring, I ended up progressing through the main quest. It’s very successful at steering you towards the next goal, which for an open world game, is very impressive. II could only manage that during its linear tutorial section. It’s very ‘go! go! go!’, and I didn’t spend any more time than I’d’ve liked in a single location or area of the map. You never have to pause, and I rarely ever backtracked (only when escaping a couple dungeon runs). Utilities such as the spell that lets you escape a dungeon, as well as the ability to fast travel to most locations you’ve visited in the past, means that you only need to fight your way towards an objective once. Once you’re done, you never have to redo it again, so you can just keep pushing on with the plot, and I like that. I never actively paid attention to my party’s levels, but encounters still felt meaningful as they were a drain on my limited resources.

Furthermore, the locations you visit are numerous, the few interactions you have in them feel more controlled and logical than in the towns of previous entries, and the day/night system adds some personality to each one, even if most of that personality is ultimately pointless on a gameplay front. But despite the individual locations having more personality, the actual map is just Earth, so it’s as far from creative as you can get.

For some reason, I didn’t think I’d like the ‘full custom party’ idea (even though I love Final Fantasy), but I really do. Putting together a team is entertaining, and even though the members lack a built-in personality, it beats having to hunt aimlessly for a worthless prince.

For my playthrough, I made a team out of some OCs I once created for a Tamagotchi thing. I had my Hero, of course. My Martial Artist became a Warrior, my Mage became a Merchant, and my Priest became a Sage. I also had a fifth party member, who was a Merchant, but she didn’t stick around.

It does, however, retain the awful laggy input method for movement. I can’t wait to be done with this ‘engine’, for lack of a better term. The gameplay is also very simple and easy, as is standard for the franchise. Though I have to give them credit, magic is useful in all sorts of ways, equipment is fun to experiment with, and the vocation system adds further spice to battles.

The dungeon design also is much improved. There are a few nondescript mazes that aren’t entirely fun, but most dungeons have a unique gimmick, a unique aesthetic, as well as some sort of narrative purpose. And due to the increased complexity of dungeons and battles, reserving resources in order to push further and further than a spammy approach would take you is an actual thing in this game. Some of the DnD dungeon crawling flavour that was lost to the Dragon Quest series in its origin has made its way into the game!

But it’s not as dungeon crawlery as Final Fantasy; as I said before, with the right vocations in your party, you’ll have the ability to escape from dungeons at any point, as well as the ability to teleport to any settlement you’ve previously visited. With those systems in place, the struggle of having to survive both the trip to and the trip from a dungeon is mitigated. All you have to worry about is keeping a mage alive with enough MP to escape. It’s more beginner-friendly because of this, but it doesn’t completely erase the initial stress of venturing out into the world, so the charm of the subgenre is still easy to recognise.

And of course, there are QoL improvements. You can skip the opening cutscene now, you don’t have to type in a long password to load the game anymore, and there are several utility spells that exist just to make life a bit easier. They even ripped off HoshiMiru‘s teleport attack, allowing you to force an enemy out of the battle whenever you don’t want to deal with them. I’m a big fan of that. The best boon is that the game retains a level of challenge during dungeon runs despite the QoL additions, and there are no brutal level spikes or exp walls to grind through. It’s a very smooth experience; difficult when it matters, convenient when you need it.

Some of the adventure game trimmings that made Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II stand out are no longer present. Not all of them (and the pitfall system is used in some very fun ways) but the general loss of the Portopia-isms does have me feeling a bit sad, because it’s a loss of something unique that Dragon Quest employed and other games didn’t, but on the other hand, I certainly don’t miss having to search a random tile to find the item needed to progress.
Another loss comes from the added focus put on telling a story; the NPC dialogue is far less meta and comedic. That might be a disappointment to some people.
Also, the ending is a bit tedious, but that’s par for the course with Dragon Quest games. At the very least, you’re confined to a small area, so there’s little risk of wasting more time than the creators want you to.

But overall, it is, as far as my priorities are concerned, an outright improvement upon Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II in almost every imaginable way. There are maybe one or two JRPGs from pre-1988 that I prefer, but there are a lot that I don’t. And when it comes to recommending games to others, I think this may be the most generally recommendable JRPG that I’ve played so far in this chronological run through of the genre. Also, if I ever had to pick one game for a kid’s first JRPG, it’d be this. I think it’d be really magical to a child.

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Mother
Platform: Famicom
Year: 1989

A pretty unique Dragon Quest clone that, unlike many of the others, forged a name for itself that has persisted into the modern day. Fittingly, it took place in the modern day. You play as a kid in a fantastical version of America, and the usual mechanics are modified to suit the setting.
To save the game, for example, you don’t visit the King or go to a church; you call your Dad. Defeated enemies won’t drop any cash, but the funds in your bank account will increase as you spend time fighting, and you need to go to an ATM to retrieve it.
The main character isn’t a hero (though jokes are made about that); instead, he’s a kid with a weak constitution and no parental figures to rely on, but a bunch of younger siblings to protect.

You’d think the unique setting would be the defining element of the game, but it’s really not. The tone is by far the most striking thing about it. With a professional author helming the project, a lot of the dialogue feels personal to someone. There’s a slight, unspoken history to characters (and to the world) and in the blanks, you get a sense of who the creator is. The priorities of one creator in putting together this made-up world are very different from those of previous game worlds.

The combat is pretty standard. We’ve got the psychic power system replacing magic, which has been the sci-fi standard for JRPGs so far. Four party members, turn-based combat, in-combat items, etc… There’s an auto-battle option like Megami Tensei‘s, but that’s the only real addition.
Exploration, on the other hand, feels a bit closer to the mid-’80s RPGs than the late ’80s ones. It’s very AVG; talk with people, answer questions, fetch items, examine objects, and so on… The combat may be similar to Dragon Quest III or IV, but the overall game feel out of battle is closer to the original Dragon Quest.

It even has the same input lag as the Dragon Quest games, so I assume it’s polling for inputs in the same way, however, this game has a run button. When the button is held, you obviously move faster, but the polling rate also seems to increase. Because of this, movement is actually responsive so long as you hold down the run button.
The overworld is depicted via a slightly-angled birds-eye view, which definitely helps it stand out, and it looks quite charming. But even with the addition of diagonal movement, it can be a bit annoying to get around. With the input lag factored in, it can be a bit finicky in cramped spaces, but it’s mostly better than in the NES Dragon Quests.

Both the perspective used for the overworld and the way that locations stray from simple geometric layouts make it hard to tell where to go or what to do. This isn’t like Final Fantasy where you can only go north, and the one point of interest is obvious. This isn’t like Pokémon, where you start in a box, move to a slightly larger box, and then follow increasingly complex corridors. It’s not even like Dragon Quest, where guidance is loose but crossing a bridge always indicates a level progression. The maps in Mother are nonsense.

Usually, when I get lost in one of these games, I like it. I’m naturally curious to explore the worlds, but it’s the subtle guidance of their world map design that makes the experience smooth. I never felt like I had to grind in Final Fantasy, for example, because natural exploration would lead to natural encounters.
Mother, however, is sort of the opposite extreme. I’m so unsure of where to go that the constant encounters become a nuisance. There’s also no visual flair, and combat is very basic, so the encounters themselves are trivial. You can literally press the ‘auto’ button and do something else with your time. Take a couple steps in maybe the direction you want to go, trigger an encounter, hit auto, and repeat.

Really, the encounter rate is a mess. Sometimes I’ll walk several screens worth of distance without an encounter, and sometimes it’ll happen every 2 or 3 steps. There’s no inbetween; the rate is either incredibly high or nonexistent.
The one upside is that there are several battle themes, so it’s not quite as repetitive as it could be. It helps that this game has a really nice soundtrack, probably my favourite of any game covered so far.

The journey isn’t just confusing; it’s aimless. At the start, there’s little narrative direction. You go to a nearby town, do a couple chores for the mayor, and all the while, you’re collecting melodies for some reason. It’s when accidentally stumbling into the second settlement of the game (which has all of the best gear for sale, for some reason) that you learn what the point of collecting melodies is. Spoiler, it’s another chore for a person in power.
After that, the in-game hints of where to go or what to do dry up. Just walk around until something hopefully happens.

The UI is a mess. It can be confusing to navigate, and while it’s fine once you figure out how things work, and the ability to examine any item to see exactly what it does is incredible, it can be a pain to do some basic tasks. Your menu of special abilities is initially full of blank pages, where unlearned spells will eventually be. But one of the earlier spells you learn is on page 3 or 4 or something, so you have to skip past a blank list in order to see it. That’s not very intuitive…
Interacting with things is split across three options in the main menu: you can talk, you can examine, and you can use telepathy. Oh, and sometimes things happen automatically once you stand in the correct place, so when you’re digging through a room for a specific trigger to continue the plot, it’s hard to know which one to use. In one map, an assortment of wells are spammed across the environment. One of them, it’s rumored, sounds like home. So you step onto one and nothing happens. You examine it… nothing. Talk to it? Nothing. Telepathy? Nothing. Onto the next well, and repeat this 30 times until you discover the correct well and the correct form of interaction.

There’s a randomly detailed piano sprite in a classroom somewhere—a type of room that is copypasted multiple times, identical save for the piano. And up ’til now, collecting melodies has been important, so… do I interact with the piano? Examining does nothing. Talking does nothing. Telepathy doesn’t work either. Maybe I was standing on the wrong tile? It’s a lot of work to eventually discover that the piano’s just a fancy tile placed into the map for no purpose.

The inventory limit is brutally small, and most of it will be taken up by mandatory items, so loot in dungeons is practically worthless since you won’t be able to hold any of it. There are exceptions, but they’re oddly placed. For example, early into the game I got a blade weapon that gave 46 attack from a chest, and a few minutes later, I got the same type of weapon… it only provided 15 attack. And of course, you can’t check how good a weapon is unless you have a free space in your inventory, so make sure to free up one of the four slots you have to use. That same dungeon had the weapon you start the game with as dungeon loot. A few minutes later, that very same weapon again! Why?

By the time I got my second party member, I was almost level 20. The new party member joined at level 1. He died constantly and struggled to gain any exp, making him useless in battle. Due to the scuffed balancing, he (as well as the following two party members) was a glorified inventory expansion. One got to be a healing battery sometimes, at least.

Despite the charming aesthetic and the unique writing style, it’s a painful experience. When you sum it all up… the world is vast and without direction, movement feels terrible, dungeons are a nightmare to navigate, most of your party is useless, item management isn’t fun, the lack of a main plot makes it hard to know or care about the intended path forward, and one thing I didn’t already mention is that crits are very special. They seem to avoid defence, or something to that effect, which means that the enemies (most of which deal 1 damage per physical hit) may randomly one-shot you if they get a critical hit. It never felt like I was in the right place because I was either steamrolling through everything or losing most of my health to a stray hit. Levelling up never felt meaningful and encounters always played out the same way, regardless of where I was in the game; either the enemies do nothing or they do way too much.

If anything illustrates what kind of game it is, it’s that previously mentioned money mechanic: you can’t just collect money from defeating enemies directly; instead, you have to find an ATM and withdraw a specified amount of cash. You can’t just go to the shop and buy what you need; you need to look for the building with the ATM in it first. Really, why does that extra step exist? It adds up to so much wasted time. And heck, in the one location where you’ll really want to buy things, the ATM is hidden outside of the town, where monsters are, and you’ll only know how to uncover it if you chat with enough NPCs to learn about it.

All things considered, it might just be the worst console RPG I’ve played so far. Even in the realm of PC RPGs, you have to go back to 1984 to find games this painful to play, though, to be fair, Mother at least has an art style and some nice music. But I think every JRPG I’ve played that released between Dragon Quest and Mother was better than Mother, and some of those games weren’t fun to play!

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Chrono Trigger
Platform: Super Famicom
Year: 1995

A bonus review! Isn’t it odd that we’ve got two time-hopping RPGs in a single write-up? Isn’t it even odder that I think this is the worse of the two!

I did play a bit of this back when it first came out in Europe (in 2009), but I dropped it sometime after finishing Frog’s storyline. I forced myself to actually finish it this time, so consider this my first proper review of Chrono Trigger. Do I even bother giving a synopsis?

The very start of it is quite strong. They do a good job tutorializing the combat system via the fair’s robot event, and the early reveal that the game is tracking your decisions and behavioural patterns gets you into the mindset of really considering your actions before you take them.
But after a few sessions, 14-ish hours, I began to feel some heavy burnout. This was around the point where you search for the hero, shortly before where I dropped it originally, and I totally understand why I didn’t get much further than that when I was younger. My tastes really haven’t changed at all.
Push on for a few hours and it recovers, somewhat. At the point where the story feels like it’s actually ready to begin, I finally felt a second wind come on, and I think I had a decent time with Zeal’s plot specifically… But from the moment you save Marle up until reaching the flying islands… those hours really weren’t any fun, and that’ll probably tarnish my opinion on the game as a whole, despite what moments of fun I did have. The far-off past and the far-off future are mindnumbingly dull.

Whenever lore stuff was happening, I really appreciated playing this on a home console rather than the DS. The presentation of the story isn’t exactly effective when it comes to delivering tension or emotion, but I enjoy the cheesy style of it, and this is the first time I’ve actually sat down at the TV with a SNES controller in hand in a very, very long time, so there’s a nostalgia to it all. I think a lot of the joy came from being reminded of that feeling I had when I’d play JRPGs as a kid, a unique feeling that I’d kinda forgotten even existed.

There’s some small jank, here and there. NPC movement can be a bit glitchy. Some of the puzzles and minigames are clumsily made. Music fails to loop correctly sometimes. Minor things.

But there are larger issues, as well.
A couple times, major events went completely uncommented upon, and while I respect the aspect of leaving the player to explore and discover the changes that occur across time periods, it can be a bit hard to buy into events that no character ever acknowledges. There’s a disconnect there, for sure. In those times, it certainly feels like a late NES RPG in spirit.

The gameplay is theoretically interesting, especially since a lot of enemies have unique patterns and mechanics, but I don’t think I enjoy it in practice.
I’ve experimented with different party members where possible—whenever I’m not forced to use a certain character—though I had a bias towards Marle because Haste is, as always, incredibly OP. Item stealing is easy money, and her skills are so defense-oriented, it’s impossible to lose a fight when she’s on the team, so long as she’s equipped with good gear.
But the fact that I was sometimes forced to use a specific party member, when combined with my desire not to waste TEC on a character with all their techniques unlocked, led to me using a lot of random combinations. Crono, Marle and Ayla felt the strongest and most reliable, but I didn’t play with Frog much, so maybe he unlocks something worthwhile later down the line. I wasn’t impressed by anyone else, gameplay-wise, except for maybe Robo.

Some of the dungeons and plot points felt like they went nowhere. Really, in retrospect, a lot of the game was… “So why did I do that? What was the point of this place?” Plus, at least half of the party is very light on character, and I think I’m wording that statement generously. Narratively, the time-travel mechanics are put to less use than in Scheherazade, and the selection of time periods is odd. Extreme past, extreme future, 400 years ago, plot-relevant dark age period. Most of these times feel disconnected from one another, while the ‘400 years ago’ period hardly feels any different to the present day! What a waste of potential!

There was one particularly poor moment involving a dungeon. To be light on spoilers, there’s a scene where a big vessel rises up into the sky, and one of my party members (Marle, I think) was like “it looks like they’re calling for us.” So I went over to see what it was about and unintentionally spent an hour in a dungeon that felt very side-questy in how it repeated and repurposed old enemies. I was then given an opportunity to return to the start (cryptically worded as ‘do you want to wake from this dream?’ or something like that), but I was an hour in, and I wasn’t sure what it was asking me, so I ignored that NPC and pushed on until it was complete. The next thing I knew, I was facing the final boss with no build-up, most of the plot yet untold, and an empty inventory paired with a full wallet. It felt very sudden.

Thankfully, after beating a couple phases of the final boss, they let me return to the rest of the game, but at that point, I was mere minutes from completing the game. Learning that most of the plot was tucked away in side quests I’d missed due to following the game’s prompts, my desire to continue cratered. I didn’t want to go back and do petty tasks to get a crumb of storytelling for the yet-characterless party members, so I took a break for a couple days.

Returning to it, I managed to push on through, starting with Crono’s side quest. I almost gave up after the third Lavos Spawn battle, as it felt like they’d just keep forcing me to fight enemies that tank lots of damage while posing no threat to my party, but thankfully it was a short-lived trend. I felt a lot of regret while climbing that snowy mountain.
But six hours later, I think I’d managed to finish everything. I didn’t follow a guide, so I might have missed something (e.g. does Ayla have a side quest?), but I hit the credits when every loose thread I could remember had been addressed. I exorcised a ghost, built a forest, dealt with a royal pain of a father, smithed some legendary weapons, and put some underwear on Crono’s head. Was that everything the game had to offer?

Sadly, however, doing the Black Omen before everything else meant that every encounter (sans the Sun Son) ended before it started. I really felt my mistakes catch up with me… Also, I had to watch the final boss encounter cutscene a second time, but this time, the hype music abruptly ended when the game realised I’d already beaten the first phase. That was weird.

The UI in battle is very poor, so keeping track of enemy health and status effect applications was awkward. You have to really fight the game to get it to display any information. It felt obscured not by creative intent, but by unforeseen design limitations.
That being said, status effects didn’t seem to be very useful, so maybe that doesn’t matter. Provoke did nothing for me vs bosses, and the only enemy I successfully put to sleep is the gimme phase of Masa & Mune. Do two negatives make a positive in this case? I feel like I’m just getting more negatives…

I’m one of those people who never liked ATB. I like turn-based RPGs, I like action RPGs, but the attempted combination of the two as ATB just isn’t fun to me. You have too much time while you wait for your turn to come around, then too little time to actually execute an action.
I think it’s particularly egregious here, because a lot of abilities have effects that change depending on your character’s position relating to an enemy’s. Do you have any control over any of that? Of course not!
I saw this same problem in Yakuza 7, and at the time, I attributed it to the developer’s lack of experience with turn-based gameplay. Little did I know, one of the greats was just as bad about it… well, at least characters can’t glitchily teleport around after getting stuck on terrain in this game.
Chrono Trigger does have the issue of flying enemies not accurately matching their position on the field to the position of their sprite, however, and that can make lining up attacks correctly feel buggy.

In the end, I think the poor initial ~8 hours and the dreadful handling of the Black Omen made this game very easy to hate. Even so, there’s some charm to be found. The graphics are pretty good—not Phantasia or Star Ocean tier, but it’s more ambitious than something like Secret of Mana, even though I think I prefer Secret of Mana‘s environment style sometimes. Granted, Chrono Trigger‘s story is much better than the plots of all of those games, so long as we ignore the characters…
The music is incredible, of course. Some of the tracks grew old due to how often they got repeated, but others are so good, I’m not sure it’s possible to grow sick of them. I did notice a suspicious amount of the music felt similar to songs I know from elsewhere, but I like when creators rip one another off, so that’s fine by me.
And the comedy, though never getting a laugh out of me, is easy to appreciate. I do like it when it feels like the developers are having fun, be it through a silly plot sequence, a random bit of dialogue, or a gimmicky encounter. You can tell where Toby Fox got his style from.

If there was one thing I had to single out as being the best (other than that it isn’t any longer), it’d be the potential of the adventure game stylings. I don’t know how vast the game truly is, but it has established a strong facade of being expansive for the time, and I’d be interested in playing the game a second time through to see how differently (or not) some events can go. I know there are some romhacks worth checking out, at least.

Oh, and I did like that I didn’t have to backtrack frequently or sail back and forth across the entire globe to get four mcguffins. It is a bit more streamlined and fast-paced of an intro, compared to the usual 8-bit and 16-bit RPGs. If only it were turn-based like the usual RPGs!

I do want to say, I think my tastes typically match what’s popular when it comes to these old RPGs, unlike how it is with anime. Once we get beyond the PSX, my interests diverge from what people seem to like, but for the age of 2D, I like the big names. I mean, Dragon Quest III is easily my favourite from today’s post, and that’s definitely the most popular. The idea of adding some Dragon Quest DNA into what is clearly a Final Fantasy spinoff is so cool to me. And yet despite all that, Chrono Trigger didn’t leave much of a lasting impression. It feels very lacking, I’d almost describe it as ‘nothing, the game’, and I’m not sure what people see in it.

It’s pretty linear, the combat is very simple and easy, the characters barely exist, there’s not much to do, the pacing is brutal, the main plot is confined to just one of the many time periods you have to slog through, and the big boss is a literal rock with no personality; turn that description from literal into metaphorical and it’d perfectly describe the protagonist. Even the soundtrack, which people adore, is hardly special for the system; when even shovelware like the SFC Lodoss entry has equally amazing music, having a good soundtrack isn’t enough to win me over. The graphics are nice, but there are plenty of better-looking games on the system.
The writing style has a bit of that Final Fantasy II or Final Fantasy IV thing going on, where you’re running from setpiece to character to setpiece, but Chrono Trigger somehow has less story than those games despite its longer script. I’d rather just play them instead.

I’d love a game that’s like the Zeal stuff, but aside from that, I don’t think I get it. Why is this the game people love so much? What is it they love about it? I really don’t understand. Maybe this game, to them, is similar to how I feel about Harvestella. That’s a game where the combat kinda sucks, the character quests have their weak spots, the scope of it is restrained, and the production values can lack, but the way it all comes together is perfectly what I’d want from a game. If I try to break down each aspect of the game, as I did with Chrono Trigger, they’d sound similar, but with Harvestella, it all clicks into place. I didn’t get that feeling with Chrono Trigger—it never became a singular, cohesive product to me—and so I’m left to judge it as a series of disjointed aspects. And I suppose the only thing that controls whether the disparate elements of a game click together for you is… well, preference. Aesthetic preference, that is.
Maybe if I liked Dragonball, or Back to the Future, or tales of chivalry, of cavemen and dinosaurs, of rundown robots… Chrono Trigger would’ve suited me more. But I’d rather a library than a laboratory; I’d rather cropfields than a castle. Chrono Trigger lacks an appreciation of the mundane, and thus, I view it as mundane. If I had to rationalise why it didn’t resonate with me… that’d probably be why.

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The health issues continue, and man am I in pain, but thankfully I got most of this C-pia! Magazine issue out before I reached the worst times, so I was able to complete it without dying!

You can read it in-browser via the C-pia Magazine website or download it at itch.io.

Page 2: Rapid Reviews
Page 9: Little Lovers SHE SO GAME Review
Page 12: Dragon Quest IX Review
Page 16: Tenerezza Review
Page 19: Something Special About Happy Princess ~Another Fairytale~
Page 21: Have You Ever been surprised by a game?
Page 23: Special Feature – Dagger Series
Page 31: C-pia! Spirits – Updating the Website

Last year was my favourite year of anime, and 2024 is a tough act to follow, but I was quite hopeful for 2025. The year started off slow, but did it reach similar heights to its predecessor? …God no!

I tried out 62 different anime in 2025, less than the past two years, and my average rating was 4.7/10. If you remove everything I dropped, that rating jumps up to 5.5/10 across 33 anime, which sounds better, but… last year was 6.2/10 across 67 anime, so it’s a real step down.

My highest rating in 2025 was a 7/10!  The last time I didn’t give at least one show an 8/10 or higher was 2009! Y’know, the year most affected by the global financial crisis? Yeah…
But does that mean there was nothing to praise about 2025? Of course not! So let’s do a bunch of praising and a little bit of hating on one of the messier years in recent memory. The first bit of hate? There are no OP or ED of the season awards this year due to a lack of candidates. Crazy, huh?

Categories: 

• Favorite anime – My favorite anime of the year.
• Least favorite anime – My least favorite anime of the year.
• Favorite moment – My favorite moment of the year.
• Best guy – My favorite male character of the year.
• Worst guy – My least favorite male character of the year.
• Best girl – My favorite female character of the year.
• Worst girl – My least favorite female character of the year.
• Best cast – My favorite cast of characters of the year.
• Worst cast – My least favorite cast of characters of the year.
• Guilty pleasure – A 2025 show I’m ashamed to have enjoyed.
• Unexpected favourite – A 2025 show I didn’t expect to love.
• Biggest disappointment – A 2025 show I wanted to enjoy.
• Late to the show – An old show that I watched in 2025.
• Movie Talk – A movie I watched in 2025.
• Looking forward to in 2026 – A show I’m hyped to watch next year.

Favorite anime: Ao no Hako – Covered Previously

Hehehe, I’ve pulled a fast one on you. You thought this post was about 2025 anime, and yet, my Anime of the Year award for 2025 goes to… a show that started airing in 2024! A year so good, it breached the boundary!

It’s always easy for people to lose track of the shows from the very start of the year, and that’s only made worse for shows that split their airtime between years, but that only happens when those people simply watch a show and move on.
Well it’s been a year now, and I haven’t moved on from Ao no Hako yet. I’m not sure I ever will…

In my original review, I spoke about ‘space’ and ‘nostalgia’, and how framing important scenes around memorable locations was a surefire way to attach viewers’ emotions to the locations of the show. It’s a classic method we’ve all seen exploited about as much as cute yet unfortunate animals get exploited for internet points, but listen… knowing the trick doesn’t ruin the magic.
The more distance that grows between the show and I, the more fond of it I become.

As I wrote in the first issue of C-pia! Magazine way back when, I’m not the kind of person who takes sob stories at face value. Far be it for me to judge another’s reasons for liking media, but when I see people ignoring every facet of a piece of entertainment on the basis that it “made them cry”, I really do question their judgment.
I don’t cry very often, and I don’t believe that a show making me cry because ‘boohoo sad music times’ is a meaningful talking point. To illustrate the first, let me recall some anime…

In 2022, Shikimori-san made me slightly teary-eyed not out of sadness, but out of how ridiculously sweet it was.
In 2023, Tondemo Skill de Isekai Hourou Meshi did something similar; the slime creature Sui was so damn cute.
In 2024, 2.5 Jigen no Ririsa had me so excited for more, I’d get a little misty-eyed whenever I remembered an episode was about to air.
You may be noticing a pattern…

We’d have to go all the way back to 2017 to find the next anime that got my tear ducts tingling. The cause? A single scene during a rewatch of Little Witch Academia. I didn’t actually cry though, and the emotion I felt wasn’t sadness; it was, once again, happiness. A friendship realized towards the end of the show was just too sweet!

In reality, I don’t know when I last cried at an anime, and I don’t know when I last felt actual sadness from watching an anime’s plot unfold…
But I do know that, in April of 2025, while looping Ao no Hako‘s second ED for the hundredth time, an emotion suddenly hit me.
It wasn’t the complicated feeling that the show left me with when it finished airing.
It wasn’t the bittersweet emotion of seeing a girl’s innocent crush from her PoV.
Both were still present in me, of course, because that’s what the second ED is; an illustration of a young girl’s innocent emotions. You feel what Chono-san feels, and that’s only natural.
But on that one specific viewing, for whatever reason, Chono-san’s emotions left me, making way for my own: a couple quiet tears…
I was sad.

That’s the thing about space. When you tie emotions and memories into a physical location, they all kinda bottle up together, like a carbonated drink. Most of the time, you’ll open that bottle up and the bubbles will gradually rise to the surface, one by one, hardly noticeable…
But on a rare occasion, when you’re not paying attention, a flurry of foam will burst out from inside, all at once, with no way of stopping it.

That doesn’t happen because some sad music played, or because a tragic event occurred, or anything of the sort. No, it happens because those memories and those locations meant a lot to you. And even when that place is fictional, as part of a TV show you could rewatch at any moment, you can never really go back. Those feelings are in the past now.
Knowing the trick doesn’t ruin the magic.

Hey, here’s an hour-long music & ambience track of the Ao no Hako gym. Or maybe you’d prefer to go to a festival? There are a bunch of these, and I’ve been listening to ’em a lot. It’s been that kind of year.

Hey, let’s talk merch! A bunch of Ao no Hako figures released this year, but the SEGA-branded ones were the only ones that looked good to me. Chinatsu-senpai’s was a pretty easy one to find, but Chono-san’s sold out ridiculously fast!
I ended up relying on two listings, one Ebay, one Aliexpress. If you asked me for a list of the 5 worst sites to buy anime figures from, they’d both be on there, but… Out of FOMO, I gambled on the Aliexpress one. It’s been that kind of year.

Hey, what about radio shows? We all know I love those, and Ao no Hako‘s just so happens to feature my (apparently) favourite voice actor, Ueda Reina, so I felt obligated to watch it.
Kito Akari, who wasn’t satisfied with being 2024’s best childhood friend heroine Mikari (that’s the second 2.5 Jigen no Ririsa shoutout!) treated us to an incredible performance as 2025’s best childhood friend heroine. The two together make our main heroine lineup, and as such, they’re the most common voices on the radio show, alternating as hosts with a rare few episodes dedicated to the two as a pair. I had no idea they were old friends, but they’re great together!

When I say I haven’t moved on, I’m not exaggerating. It’s really been an Ao no Hako kind of year for me.

I think, in a simplified way, what all of my praise comes down to is… this is a down-to-earth bit of media. When it comes to Jump, it’s been a while since we’ve had that.
I’ve complained about this in the past, but it really does feel like a lot of industries are afraid of letting romance be romance. It has to be crazy, quirky, comedic. If not that, it has to be magical, fantastical, maybe even sci-fi! Else, it has to be either 99% drama or 1% drama; one of the extremes.
We don’t get these kinds of plain romance much anymore, and I hate that.

Ao no Hako isn’t set at a school where every student is the world’s best at something.
It’s not an insulated romcom about two characters who have literally nothing going on in life other than the romance.
It’s not a parody. It’s not tongue-in-cheek. What it is… is normal.

A normal relatable setting, with normal relatable characters, telling a normal story we can all, in some way, relate to.
A street full of shops. A quiet ride on a train. A walk by the river. A summer festival. I can map all these sights onto my own life; these are all things I saw when I was young, living the kind of life these characters have.

It’s not just that, though. It’s not just normal; it’s understated—mundane almost—in how it delivers its messaging.
When a competition is underway, the various side characters don’t start loudly cheering to power up the protagonist with friendship, they just watch.
When a character is lost in their own feelings, you probably won’t get to hear what those feelings are. Instead, you’ll see it in where they go, how they walk, what they do.
Sometimes they’ll look at an object or image that holds no meaning to you, but to them, it means the world. You won’t even realise that until a season’s worth of episodes later.

You won’t notice the symbolism on show until it’s already resolved, and the connections in your mind scurry to form as your memories of the past catch up with you.
You won’t notice how powerful the use of colour and lighting is until the scenes get stuck in your head.
You won’t notice how incredible things are, because… it’s normal for this show. It treats its impressiveness as a mundanity, as we do with life.

To bring back one of my oldest criticisms on this blog, in regards to another shounen action show (KimiUso), I hate it when an action scene—be it a fight, a performance, a game, whatever—is met by that poetic monologing: “let my feelings reach them!”
Let the action speak for itself – that’s always been my mantra. Keep the melo out of my drama!

That’s exactly what this is: normal. Truthfully, normal’s all I need.
Like life, merely a forgettable mundanity.
It’s beautiful.

Oh, the Aliexpress gamble paid off, if you were wondering.

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Least favorite anime: BanG Dream! Ave Mujica – Covered Previously

Man, I don’t want to talk about this. I really want to just forget Ave Mujica exists, but I suppose I’ll have to deal with the bitter reminiscence in order to write something.

I had low expectations for this show, but I foolishly assumed it wouldn’t be so bad that it’d harm my memories of MyGO!!!!!. Being too hopeful about things is a curse sometimes, and in this case, the curse manifested as a season of hot garbage. A cast of crazy girls (most of whom get ignored for a majority of the runtime) soliloquise about how unfair life is while they live it up in fancy costumes, performing on prestigious stages, in blatant rejection of a more normal, stable way of living.

Along the way, hamfisted exposition and forced flashbacks will deliver the explanations that are required in order to reason out half of the story. The other half? You’ll just have to learn to ignore the details. Put away the calendar, forget about the setting, and chalk things up to production errors. If you stop thinking and simply clap your hands whenever a character’s pupils dilate, you’ll have a great time.

After my initial review of this show, I learned that the original scenario writer had a falling out with the team, and the plot of Ave Mujica was rewritten mid-way through production. I don’t know the exact details, or how much work was done beforehand, or how much of the redone work strayed from the original writer’s vision. I know the original writer is far from infallible…
But one thing I can say is that… Mutsumi’s character arc took up far too much of the show’s runtime in order to tell a worthless story, leaving most of the cast with very little development as a result. That, I can confirm, is one of the redone elements that wasn’t in the original scenario. So I guess office politics is partly to blame for this mess of an anime. I’m getting flashbacks to Kemono Friends…

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Favorite moment: Bye Bye, Earth Season 2 – Covered Previously

When it comes to classical fantasy, there are a few things I really need the story to do to fill my fantasies (pardon the pun) of the genre.
It has to begin from a point of defeat or confusion.
It has to build into a moment of self-reflection and understanding.
It has to end with a fight against an all-powerful being.

Personally, I always think of the second as the Final Fantasy moment, because… I’m a gamer, and I once spent a lot of time around a big fan of Cecil from Final Fantasy IV. I understand that FFIV stole this from Star Wars, which stole from the monomyth theory, which itself is incredibly derivative, but even so… It’s the Final Fantasy moment. No one says White Album invented love triangles, but we all know what a White Album moment is.

Before a climax can truly be set up, and before the hero can conquer the villain, the hero must first conquer the hero. It’s a battle of self.
I was very worried about Bye Bye, Earth‘s structure during Season 1, because it was set up as a mystery show, yet it had answered all of its own questions before the second season begun! The one glimmer of hope came from how they broke the protagonist, Belle, down, but… she had been lost and confused for nearly the entire run, so I wasn’t comfortable in believing they’d succeed in carrying the story to the finish line in a satisfying manner.

So in episode 5, exactly halfway through the second season, we have a Final Fantasy moment. We’re 5-and-a-half minutes in, Belle is in jail, all her major emotional connections have been shattered, and she’s more than ready to give up.
Then the music begins to play.

The mixing of the audio is unignorably brilliant. It sweeps the story up and guides it towards the natural conclusion: Belle finds herself. She remembers how to believe in herself. It’s not the story that’s impressive; it’s the styling. I described it as near-Ghost Hound quality for the audio, crossed with Kingdom Hearts-style visuals, which are carried further to greatness by Fairouz Ai’s typically incredible voice acting.

Mundane as it may be, I appreciate a good music video. When an anime decides to become a good music video in order to sell a moment of contemplation, it really, really works.

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Best guy: Xiaohei – Kowloon Generic Romance – Covered Previously

Nostalgia is an important aspect of Kowloon Generic Romance, from the art style to the music, and to everything in between.
I don’t know if this is a niche feeling, or whether the rest of my generation feels the same way, but Kowloon Walled City really is a nostalgic place. Even conceptually, it brings me back to a time when that environment was possible – a hybrid slum of poverty and technology. Though such environments do technically still exist (in abundance even!) and provide their own form of nostalgia, Kowloon is different.

I recall walking through busy market mazes, the smell of smoke and meat and scrap and sweat, appreciating the sight of spare parts while avoiding the gaze of dead fish on friers. Even where I live, these places exist, or they existed. Time won’t suddenly erase it all.
Yet while I feel a nostalgia for similar environments, they’re not all the same.
In the mix of things I feel the most longing for—the excitement around space, the crackle of an old tape, the bellows of a boiler, the smell of gas from an oven, and the blandness of a Tokyo office—rests that other corner of the world. Shanzhai goods, Hong Kong romances, and of course, Kowloon Walled City.

It’s really indescribable, but Kowloon Generic Romance tries its best to explain that nostalgia, whether through words or sounds or sights.
Xiaohei, meanwhile, is unhappy. The person he is today is not the person he wanted to be, nor the person he wants to keep being. But the child he was while in Kowloon Walled City… that’s Xiaohei. Poor conditions, few relationships, yet an unabashed honesty.
Like a child whose yet to learn shame, or a kid still unable to lie, I believe there’s a truth to youth, one that some grow out of and look back at in embarrassment.
Xiaohei is one of those unfortunate people.

Read a report and Kowloon Walled City may seem like a mistake. A logistical error, a dumping ground for the impoverished, a dangerous place of drugs and violence and shoddy architecture that poses a threat to all who live within.
We could look back at the silly things humanity has done and, out of shame, categorise them as faults: stains to be cleaned; streets to be gentrified.

But I believe there’s a truth to youth. Beyond fact is feeling, and no matter where you are in the world, a child will know entertainment. They’ll play with a ball, or avoid the cracks in the pavement, or make a game out of counting cars.
Why would they waste time being dishonest to themselves? Happiness is happiness.

When it comes to my feelings on Kowloon, and the representation of nostalgia Kowloon Generic Romance tries to sell, I believe the relatively minor character Xiaohei succeeds more than any of the main cast at embodying all of this.
He’s the point, he’s the premise, and he’s the perfect portrayal.

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Worst guy:  Liam Hamilton – Botsuraku Yotei no Kizoku dakedo, Hima datta kara Mahou wo Kiwametemita

This wasn’t a show I reviewed, and that’s for one reason: the protagonist.
A guy suddenly appears in the body of a pre-teen kid from a rich family, surrounded by people eager to give exposition about his backstory and the opposite of eager to question any change in personality that may have occurred in the process.
This empty blob of an individual—as ill-defined in character as he is in design—is Liam Hamilton!

As the fifth son, he has no responsibilities and all the privileges. He’s also blessed with luck beyond reason.
He happens upon a guy who gives him instant access to a bunch of spells and techniques which few can use, then he enslaves a couple (willing) ladies who he doesn’t even know, then he also gets promoted from one noble rank to the next while impressing the world’s greatest, and all of that happens in 45 minutes!

You may be wondering something like… “so he’s an anti-hero protagonist?” He enslaves the girls, he’s a pampered noble, must be one of those edgy anime, right? But no, you’re supposed to like this guy!
From there, it’s a full season of a generic, humble “nice guy” protagonist breezing through life with everyone at his beck and call. Everything he does is amazing, everybody loves him, and he’s pretty damn insufferable in every regard.

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Best girl: Kris Argent – Nageki no Bourei wa Intai shitai 2 – Covered Previously

Although I didn’t enjoy this run of Nageki no Bourei wa Intai shitai as much as the original run, there was one very obvious improvement: Kris Argent.
Kris was, once, a character of two traits:
1) She was a proud, angry elf lady who always tried (and failed) to be polite.
2) She was an off-screen mana battery to keep the protagonist powered up.

Her development throughout the second season retains all of those traits, but it also expands her characterisation. This non-destructive form of character writing—transforming her from a throwaway gag into an actual character without losing any of the comedy behind her—is very impressive to me. It’s so easy to accidentally flanderize a character, and that’s something which happens to even other characters within these very eleven episodes, and yet… Kris avoids it.

Now, she is a bit of a simple tsundere, at the end of the day, but… I like an archetype. Angry tsundere elf lady is a good combination, especially if the screentime she gets is always fun.
But it’s the framing of her, this archetypal lady, as the normal person in a mad situation, that really makes it work. It’d be easy to make her the tsukkomi, or to make her into another way of escalating the madness, but instead, she’s the plain one. Her expectations are normal, her point of reference is normal, and she’s the only character who has absolutely no information about the situation she’s been dragged into.

Putting a tsundere into a situation where they can’t reasonably hold much pride due to their lack of knowledge, while surrounding her with people who’d understandably confuse her emotions, grounds the character beautifully well.

Oh, and shoutouts to Atou, the other angry elf-eared lady of the year. She was good too.

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Worst girl: Lily – Isshun de Chiryoushiteita no ni Yakudatazu to Tsuihousareta Tensai Chiyushi, Yami Healer Toshite Tanoshiku Ikiru – Covered Previously

A walking joke character in a show that’s not very good. Easy pickings for a worst girl entry!
Lily’s main role in the story is to, much like all the other girls, talk about how much she wants to be the main character’s wife. Unlike the other characters, however, there’s nothing else to her! Her backstory as a saved slave lasts maybe a couple of minutes, and then the remainder of her screentime is spent on things like “would you like dinner, a bath, or me?” type comedy, spoken in a high-pitched voice that’s sure to grate. She refers to herself in third person, too, if you were worried she wasn’t annoying enough.

If you asked her who she was, she’d introduce herself as the protagonist’s wife, everyone (protagonist included) would shut that down in an instant, and then she’d sulk about it. That’s the character. You now know everything you’ll ever know about her. She’s characterised filler.

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Best cast: Amagami-san Chi no Enmusubi – Covered Previously

Back to another 2024 holdover. Following on from Megami Cafe‘s win last year, another harem anime takes the crown this time. Granted, this is a weaker show, but it’s been a weaker year.
I had this realisation that… harem anime tend to have an easier time winning this award because they live or die by the appeal of their cast. If you don’t like the main character, or you don’t like the girls, you’re not gonna keep following the story, you’re not going to buy merch, and the series won’t last long.

In this character-focused genre, Amagami-san Chi has an uncharacteristically small main cast. One guy, three girls, that’s the situation. The main character does have a childhood friend, but… her role in the story is quite different to the main girls, and I’ll explain how with a general description.

Each story arc begins with a focus on a specific character—one of the four—usually about some baggage from the past. But with their newfound connections, they overcome the drama and find a path towards a better future.
The supporting cast of this arc-based drama can play the role of advisors or of villains, sometimes even both, and it’s all in service of the main point: trust and hope trumps cold rationality. It’s anti-nihilism as a product.

It’s not an unfamiliar structure, and even this year, we kinda had the same thing with Mikadono-san Shimai wa Angai, Choroi. What sets this one apart, however, is the way it brings out the other characters, and the effect that those characters have on the main four.
It’s all about life, isn’t it? A character in a romance show shouldn’t just be an embodiment of romantic affection; they should be a living person. Someone who has a unique past, has their own relationships, hobbies, preferences, and so on…

Even though the titular Amagami siblings are, well, siblings, they don’t know everything about one another. There’s an age gap, which creates a natural barrier in understanding that most people with siblings I’m sure will understand, but there’s also the aspect of them all being teenagers. Their lives are at the point where the largest changes arrive, and their minds are at the point where privacy is most important. More than anything, the obligation for one to not be baggage for the other sisters during these important years is impossible to forget.

So while the three sisters get along, and spend a lot of time together, I do feel this subtle sense of distance between them. It’s not distrust, persay, but a fear of not being good enough. So not only does this give reason to open up their private lives in order to explore their individuality, their insecurities, and the many things that make each sibling’s life in a small setting so unique from one another… but it also gives reason for the siblings to reaffirm their love of one another.

Naturally, the protagonist plays a major role in refining the bonds between them and helping each girl come to terms with their insecurities, but most of what I’ve said about the girls also applies to him. He didn’t grow up with them, of course, so it’s a bit different, but… he has his own family, his own friends, his own ambitions, and his own insecurities.

In one character, you may see another, and I think that tightly-woven web of emotions that ties the main group together (and that ties the entire community around them together) is the primary strength of the show. Without any of this, it would be nothing. The characters are everything.

Turkey!‘s cast was pretty good too, though.

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Worst cast: Chitose-kun wa Ramune Bin no Naka – Covered Previously

I just wrote a bunch about this show last week, so I don’t want to give it much more of my time. I’ll just say it’s one of those drama shows where every problem is caused by the cast, yet each cast member acts like they’re above drama, or they’re too smart to bother with drama, or they’re pathetic so they deserve being caught up in drama. Sometimes all three of those points apply to a single character.

For my tastes… if I feel like a show or setting would be more entertaining if the characters weren’t always getting in their own way and causing problems for themselves, it’s not a very good cast. I understand that the melodrama is the entire point of the story, but… it’s not a genre I like, and these aren’t characters I like.

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Guilty pleasure: Shiunji-ke no Kodomotachi – Covered Previously

Another harem show! Unlike Amagami-san Chi, though, this is an anime I believe is ‘harem’ to its own detriment. Remove romance from the equation and most of my complaints towards it vanish!
What it is, at its height, is a great show about a big family supporting one another. Brothers and sisters working together, no questions asked, in order to better the lives of their siblings. I love those sorts of trusting, loving environments in my anime, and I’m a sucker for feel-good power of friendship stuff. Off the top of my head, some of my most-praised anime on this blog are of that type: Akebi-chan, Shikimori-san, Little Witch Academia, Kono oto Tomare!. If the plot is all about characters being unreasonably kind and affectionate towards one another, I’m probably on the other side of the screen, smiling with tears of happiness forming in my eyes.

But… there is the gradual devolution of that wholesomeness as the romance drama aspect of the story worms its way closer and closer towards the surface. I really didn’t appreciate that aspect of the story, and because of that, I don’t have much interest in seeing where the story goes beyond where the anime ended… but I do think this is a pretty fun show to watch.
I can ignore the romance and enjoy the rest of what’s here, mostly.

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Unexpected favourite: Hibi wa Sugiredo Meshi Umashi – Covered Previously

There’s something to be said about the fifth episode of Hibimeshi. In it, a university student receives their driving license, and led by foggy childhood memories of being driven to a market by her mom, she heads out on the same trip.
With friends in tow, she experiences what the little market area has to offer, makes some memories, and drives back under the cover of night, the lights of humanity guiding her way home.

At some point in the year, it was mid-July, the UK had a rainy season. Listening to that telltale sound of rainfall, I recalled the sight of a market street from a car window I’d once seen in my childhood. Then, of course, I recalled Hibimeshi.
There’s something quite universal about car-bound memories, isn’t there? Much like food, much like school, and much like everything else Hibimeshi has to offer, there’s room for you to inject your experiences into the plot, at least in retrospect.

The truth is, this isn’t exactly a fulfilling anime. It feels rushed and incomplete, and the cast really don’t get the care and attention they’d require to truly shine until the final few episodes. Lost potential is what I’d call it.
But life lived is potential lost, and Hibimeshi is certainly lived life. Visiting family, going to a restaurant, reuniting with old school friends, going on a diet, celebrating Christmas, working on a group project. Life lived, indeed.

It really does make me wonder how a series like this is planned. What makes them decide to, for example, dedicate an entire episode of their short run to a one-off gym plotline?
Did they decide on a type of food they wanted to highlight and work back from there? Did they think about what activities a university student would get up to and splinter them into individual episodes? What makes them decide the topics of these kinds of one-off, going-nowhere episodes in the midst of a 12-episode project?
There was thought, there was intent, there was purpose. No series exists without a team consciously deciding to create each episode. It’s fascinating to think about.

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Biggest disappointment: The iDOLM@STER: Shiny Colors 2nd Season, SHHis – Covered Previously

I know the Shiny Colors adaptation has been infamously low quality, but when I heard that my favourite unit, SHHis, was getting a dedicated episode as a special, I was tentatively excited about it. Maybe I’d get to see a bit of the duo, or a bit of Luca, or some of the ‘Soudayo’ storyline in animated form. I don’t think that excitement was helped by the one episode of Shiny Colors Season 2 where the style and atmosphere of the game was actually present, in regards to the unit closest to SHHis in vibe, Noctchill.

But this is such a nothing episode. Watching it with no knowledge of the game, you might get a slight (if warped) idea of who Nichika is. Admittedly, she feels like a bit of a Mano clone in this adaptation, but the basics are here. But I’d be surprised if, a day after watching it, you remembered Mikoto’s name. You will have no idea who Luca or Nami are! There’s nothing SHHis about the episode.

Considering the SHHis storyline is one of my favourites in Visual Novel history, and so much of its strengths lay in the cinematography, the fact that we got such an underwhelming on-screen representation of it is nothing short of disappointing. This should’ve been MyGO!!!!! meets Gimai Seikatsu, man.

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Late to the show: Pluto

I was never a big fan of Astro Boy growing up, but I wasn’t unfamiliar with it. I played a couple of the games, watched a bit of a couple TV shows, and even read the odd manga chapter whenever it was available in the local library.
I also haven’t seen Monster. It never caught my interest.

But last year’s combination of Puniru and Ao no Hako got me nostalgic for cheesy, cartoony manga and anime, and both Pluto and Atom: The Beginning had been on my ‘plan to watch’ list since they came out, so I picked the better-received show of the two and watched it.

There’s a real charm to some of the early content. The oldschool ’60s soundfont of the soundtrack and that iconic sci-fi aesthetic paired with a murder mystery makes for an incredibly appealing tone. I even watched the show a second time (this time with my mom) and every time the ’60s influence took center stage, we were smitten.

Some parts of the material being adapted are strong, too. Most strikingly, the allusions to the war in Iraq, and the heartfelt recognition of the pain it brought to the world.
Other parts of the material are… very cheesy, beyond what I expected. There’s a real self-serving element to the writing style, and I’m not sure if this is an adaptational thing or a quirk of the original author, but they really like to spend time stewing in words and metaphors that don’t exist to further the story or enhance the moral messaging, only to entertain the whims of a creative.

So while I think the show is worth watching for its better moments, I’d go in expecting to groan at some of the more eye-rolling moments and to tune out during its slow reiteration of previously-explained ideas. If you, like I, are just looking for that Astro Boy goodness, this definitely succeeds there.

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Movie Talk: Pokémon Movie 23: Koko

A monkey Pokémon from a prideful tribe of his own kind, Zarude, stumbles upon a human baby, seemingly abandoned in the forest. The baby has no fear, but no self-preservation instincts, so the Zarude abandons his tribe in order to help bring the human back to its family.
Several failed attempts to drop the child into human society are made before the Zarude discovers the fate of the baby’s parents. The reality set in: no one would care for this child but this one Pokémon.
That child grew up as Koko, a boy who believes himself to be a Pokémon. Then, one day, a clueless boy named Satoshi steps into the forest…

After the 20th and 21st Pokémon movies made it into my Top 50 of the 2010s list, I was very excited for Koko, which released in 2020. Then I wasn’t in a Pokémon mood until five years later. Now it’s 2025 and Koko is still the latest Pokémon film! How did that happen? They used to pump these out constantly, but now there are children alive (at the Pokémon fan age range) who haven’t been alive for a Pokémon film launch.

So, let’s get the big question out of the way first. Is this as good as those two? No, I wouldn’t say so. Still, I’d put it in my top 5, maybe.
Following on from Minna no Monogatari, Koko continues the standard of making Satoshi take the backseat in the story. Instead, this is partly a character piece focusing on the titular Koko and his father, a Zarude.
Propping it up is a relatively generic plotline about humans coming to destroy the forest to gather resources. There’s a glimmer of nuance in that the resource’s sole ability is to save lives, and so the lead villain is acting for Humanity’s betterment in a sense, but… believe me, that nuance is hardly present. You have to really think about it for it to matter.
Oh, and Team Rocket are running the D-plot, as usual. They exist.

Visually, it’s a bit different, but it’s familiar enough. The characters usually look good, though Satoshi gets some really rough cuts.
The backgrounds are typically better than in the previous film (Minna no Monogatari‘s only failing, I think); however, there are times when the 3D effects are uncanny, and there are also moments where the painted backgrounds appear blurry or unfitting, which isn’t something I’ve ever seen before in anime, I don’t think.
But the worst part of the visuals comes from the length of cuts. The pace of interaction (usually between Pokémon) is slightly too fast, I think. Maybe this was to squeeze a lot of visual personality into the short runtime, but it results in many cases of weightless movement and abrupt cutting, and it makes the setting feel more artificial than one would expect of modern Pokémon.

The real strength of the film is in the parent-son dynamic between the Zarude and Koko. It’s very charming, it’s emotionally effective, and it’s the backbone to everything meaningful that happens throughout the story.
Yet, everything it supports is… awkward. For one, the language barrier between Koko and human characters like Satoshi is poorly communicated, so I can never tell how much Koko understands. I spent a lot of scenes asking myself, “so does Koko know this information, or can he not understand their language?”

The plot thread involving exploitation of nature was overplayed 30 years ago, and this is far from a good implementation of it. The villain is a one-note, morally bankrupt showcase of maniacal laughter, existing to represent the embodiment of all problems so that every other character can point to him and lay the blame. I say that’s lame.

There are also a lot of musical montages, used to present timelapses in typical anime movie fashion, but this isn’t something I like to see in a Pokémon film, especially not so frequently. Something I’d appreciated about the franchise’s films, as of late, is how they are single-focused stories representing a reasonable chunk of time, tight in their structure.
Koko is a loose film. It’s forced to waste time to communicate time, then scrambles to eek out every second of personality it can before the credits roll.

Yet I can’t deny that it meaningfully uses humans, Pokémon, and the relationship between, to tell a story that wouldn’t work without the greater franchise. You could do something similar, of course, but something of import would have to be removed in the process. That, to me, means it has to be an effective entry in the long line of movies.

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Looking forward to in 2026: Awajima Hyakkei

I’m not sure I’ll really like this, but it fascinates me. I opened the trailer and got hit by that uncanny familiarity to Hourou Musuko (a show I’ve praised the artstyle of profusely in the past), yet with characters who emote as if they came from Chihayafuru.
So I look up the staff list and… surprise! It’s a work by the Hourou Musuko author, adapted into anime by the Chihayafuru director and the Yamada-kun to Lv999 team! I never even considered that combination before, but it’s a perfect match, so I’m interested to see how it goes.

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Well, I was so late to finishing last season’s shows that Fall was a rush to catch up with everything. I have end-of-year posts to worry about! This is the worst time to fall behind on things!
Thinking back, it may’ve been a blessing that the start to 2025 was so weak. But how’s the end of 2025? Uuuh… Let’s just say that so few caught my interest this time, almost half of the shows I watched this season were chosen at random out of sheer desperation to watch some anime.

I’m still coming down from the high that was The Court Physician Cured the Villainess and Ran Away, and I’m not entirely sure I want something as good as that to finally stop me from thinking about it all the time, but… I think the odds of a good Villainess show coming out are higher than the odds of another Mahonare, which is the other thing I’ve been unable to get over.

Another thing I’ve been unable to get over is the declining quality of subtitles. Seriously, I don’t know what’s been happening these past couple years, but the subtitles are consistently worse than I’ve seen them in a very long time. I ended up giving up on them for the season and watching without subtitles, so this might be the last post I comment on localisation details.

Oh, and one thing worth a shoutout! I only saw two episodes of it, but the soundtrack of Shabake was great. Definitely check it out if you care for a good OST.

Shows watched:

• Ansatsusha de Aru Ore no Status ga Yuusha yori mo Akiraka ni Tsuyoi no da ga – Dropped
  “The writing is, as you might expect, quite bad.”
• Chitose-kun wa Ramune Bin no Naka – Still Airing
  “It all feels the same.”
• Nageki no Bourei wa Intai shitai 2 – 6/10
  “It’s a mixed bag.”
• Shinjiteita Nakama-tachi ni Dungeon Okuchi de Korosarekaketa ga Gift “Mugen Gacha” de Level 9999 no Nakama-tachi wo Te ni Irete Moto Party Member to Sekai ni Fukushuu & “Zamaa!” Shimasu! – 4/10
  “A formula alone isn’t enough to guarantee a good time.”
• Tensei Akujo no Kuro Rekishi – Dropped
  “Bland interactions and unspoken misunderstandings.”
• Tomodachi no Imouto ga Ore ni Dake Uzai – 6/10 – Anime of the Season
  “An enjoyable enough watch.”
• Yasei no Last Boss ga Arawareta! – 5/10 – ED of the Season
  “Not the most thrilling mysteries, but they work.”

Ansatsusha de Aru Ore no Status ga Yuusha yori mo Akiraka ni Tsuyoi no da ga
Episodes Watched: 5/12

A class of Japanese high schoolers are summoned to another world. Before them, a King announces that they are to defeat the Demon King. One of the kids is chosen as the Hero, but everyone gets a class with skills and are expected to help.
Of these, Oda Akira is granted the class of Assassin. Suspicious of the situation, he immediately makes use of his ‘conceal presence’ skill to escape from the pack. Like this, he discovers the truth of the situation: his classmates are being manipulated, and only he can save them.

God, I love the art style. The shading style of three light levels is retro as hell. The guys look like they came out of an advert in an ’80s issue of Comptiq. The real difference-maker is the lineart, which is beautifully weighted. Between that and the willingness to play with lighting, this is the sort of art style I wish Mushoku Tensei had been given. The core designs aren’t too dissimilar, but the difference in skillfulness behind the two shows’ aesthetics is staggering.

Fittingly, the setting is of that like too; ’80s DnD tropes litter the world. I read through the original Lodoss replay run earlier this year, as well as a bunch of the novels and even played a couple of the games, so I’ve been itching for more of this style of fantasy.

Beyond aesthetics, there’s the synopsis, and it’s one that may sound familiar. These sorts of shows are a dime a dozen—the lone-wolf protagonist leaves his classmates behind, befriends a cute girl and a monster, and the two sides act as our viewpoint into the world. Yet in every instance I can recall, the main character becomes opposed to his Earthling friends.
Maybe there’ll be one girl who acts as the one likeable character of the classmate faction, but in this show, it’s more than that. The hero and his buddies act as our secondary perspective, and though they act as a separate group, they’re nevertheless aligned with the protagonist’s interests, partly because they’re good people, and partly because they have lingering connections with Akira. The goal is to bring everyone home. That’s the unique element, I think.

What’s not unique is the sheer amount of mind control available to people in this world. It’s a wonder the world even functions.
I’ve probably spoken about this before, so forgive me if I’m repeating myself, but I hate mind control as a storytelling device. It’s so lazy! It’s effectively a way for the author to override their established characters in order to push a plot point without sufficient build-up, but when your characters lack agency and fail to hold onto their own personalities, how am I supposed to care about them?

The writing is, as you might expect, quite bad. Dialogue is very bland (if functional) and while I don’t want to disparage the voice actors due to the material they have to work with, the delivery is very plain too. There’s this stunningly beautiful elf lady in the main cast, yet she’s one of the most boring characters I’ve ever seen, totally void of any personality. Her one prevailing trait is that she’s immediately attracted to the protagonist.

The protagonist’s sentences have that flippant, uncaring tone, but it’s hard to care about something when the main character doesn’t. His replies often begin with “ma…”; he’s that kind of guy.
Every now and then, he’ll go edgelord mode and get uncharacteristically angry, but that’s the total depth of his writing. His main goal is to return home safely, yet he eschews safety at every opportunity—it’s baffling.

On the world-hopping journey that occurs during these twelve episodes, we get an insight into all kinds of imaginative locales. There’s the royal kingdom ruled by the cruel King. The great forest full of Elves who hate outsiders. The rough Beastman lands where slavery is common. You get the point, right? These are the most surface-level details of a fantasy setting, ones I’ve seen many a time (even just in the past few years!), and it never gets any deeper than that.

I really can’t understate just how boring a lot of it is.

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Chitose-kun wa Ramune Bin no Naka
Episodes Watched: 8/13

Okay, this is a broody melodramatic school life thing about the meaning of a class dynamic and about the deep worries of teenagers stuck in their own head, and we all know that’s not my thing. It’s all worthless pretension to me.

But there are a few reasons why I chose to watch it regardless of subject matter. First of all, it has an extended first episode, so I can treat that as a movie and not continue with further episodes if it’s really bad.
Then, some elements of the PV caught my eye. There are shots and actions that look like things I’d’ve written in my own material, so at the very least, I can use this as a way to judge my own approach from a more disconnected viewpoint.
And finally, I rolled a (digital) dice to generate a list of shows to watch, and this was one that I actually committed to.

Some of the music is really nostalgic to me. It has the upbeat energy of the early 2000s video game output—the poppier kinds of games. A bit The Sims.
The 3D characters in the background can be very distracting, but they try to mask it by using copious depth of field effects and blooming out the image. Expect lots of dust, plenty of sparkles, and many cutaways to empty environments.

I do like the flair, on the surface. As I said, it shares a lot of similarities with things I’ve written in the past. And yet, the poeticisms are constant. There’s a constant stream of slow-mo closeups of a pretty girl’s smile. There’s a moon beaming down on the world once per episode. The gentle, atmospheric piano plink plonks away whenever there’s downtime in the day.
That unrelenting sameness gives the show a very clear identity, but it also gives the show one clear identity; it all feels the same. Every character interaction, every plot beat, every episode… It’s all the same.

I don’t know whether that degree of consistency is a good thing or a bad thing. It’s good that they can express a theme so strongly, but like a song, a drop only works if there’s a build; a chorus only lands if there’s a verse.
Nothing represents this better than the introduction to the show, where each of the main cast members gives their own description of ‘blue’. It works well if one character does it. Add a second, and maybe that serves a good narrative purpose. A third has me thinking of a love triangle…. Then a forth, a fifth, and so on. It’s a little bit too much of the same thing.
Like the difference between a callback and a running gag. It’s the rule of threes, not the rule of infinity. Have I repeated the same point enough to get the point across to you? This show sure has.

It also has a lot of the usual tropes of the genre, such as the mysterious girls who act like they know everything, and the downer protagonist who thinks like a Wikipedia page. Monotone voice acting about wearing a mask and not being the real self. It’s inescapable in this weird bubble of light novel writing, isn’t it? Like Schrodinger’s Cat to Visual Novels.
One of the smart girls is, at one point, like “I’m being stalked but I don’t want to get my parents involved, so I’ll keep it a secret from them.” Now that’s forced drama!

Oh, and something clearly happened late in production, because it is quite behind every other show in the schedule. I’m not sure I’ll even finish it, to be honest. Whatever slop comes in the next season will likely replace it.

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Nageki no Bourei wa Intai shitai 2 – Covered Previously
Episodes Watched: 11/11
Rating: 6/10

Forgive me if I’m misremembering, but I think this was a continuous production, so the team working on it haven’t missed a beat when it comes to the feel of the first season.
The usage of Opening and Ending is still unique and they set the exact tone you’d expect them to.
The characters look and sound as great as they did before.
The structure of episodes is still a bit experimental, with the first episode being presented almost entirely in 4:3!
And the blend of clueless comedy and engrossing world-building is as fascinating as ever.
Oh, and Tino’s still the favourite character, and Liz is still my favourite character. They both get a lot of screentime.

It sucks for the other (weirdly similar) shows being overshadowed by Nageki no Bourei wa Intai shitai this season, but this second run of episodes isn’t holding anything back.
Naturally, it starts with like… six different plot points suddenly appearing in protagonist Krai’s life, and with his talent for laziness and procrastination, he brushes all of those responsibilities aside. In doing so, he sets the stage for a grand plot that will somehow involve everything and everyone. The routine is as usual, but what about the quality? Do they pull off that structure well this season?

Well… It’s a mixed bag. I don’t think the mysteries taking focus this time are as engaging as the ones in the first season. They’re not quite as fulfilling in the moments where everything comes together, and there’s less time spent with the guild environment, which is one of my favourite tropes.

When it comes to favourite tropes, one of mine definitely gets a boost here, and it’s in the cast. Now, the cast is all-around stronger this time, I think. Not only do a majority of Krai’s buddies get to be present, but some of the highlight characters from the first season get a boost in screentime. Tino is the most apparent, and the two pink-haired sisters also get plenty of airtime, which is great for us Fairouz Ai fans.

But one relatively minor character—one who was basically a single gag in the first season—gets a leading role in the second arc. Kris, the short-tempered noble elf lady who doesn’t know how to speak politely, is given the opportunity to break free from her singular role in the story. She does retain her inability to speak politely, as well as her tendency to shout at people, but some other aspects of her personality get to shine, and I think all of the changes make her one of the more charming angry girls. I’m a fan of grumpy characters, so I was pleasantly surprised to see more of her. It brought me back to the days when angry elves were more common in visual novels…

The selection of characters is certainly more enjoyable to watch, but it’s balanced out somewhat by the quality of the humor. Some of the jokes are very repetitive. It was fun to, for example, hear a voice actor manually voice their own echo for a scene, but after the fifth time, it gets old. There are several running gags like that, and they always elicit a sigh.

There are some interesting jokes, though. They didn’t get a laugh out of me, but ideas like…. having a crazy, babbling underling get progressively more and more confused by how insane Krai is… that’s interesting, right? You take a trope and you recontextualise it around a baffling protagonist.

The biggest mark against it has to be the obvious amount of cutting that was done in order to fit all of the material into the eleven-episode run. Things that shouldn’t be confusing are. Things that should feel important don’t. It definitely feels like a retelling, the kind delivered by someone who’s in a rush to explain the plot.
Maybe that’s why I don’t feel as enthused by this run of episodes. Surely out of desperation to fit in as much content within their guaranteed episode count as possible, they ended up outpacing the most interesting aspects of the material.

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Shinjiteita Nakama-tachi ni Dungeon Okuchi de Korosarekaketa ga Gift “Mugen Gacha” de Level 9999 no Nakama-tachi wo Te ni Irete Moto Party Member to Sekai ni Fukushuu & “Zamaa!” Shimasu!
Episodes Watched: 12/12
Rating: 4/10

A boy named Light leaves his village in order to become an adventurer, planning to make it big so that he may return and bring prosperity to the village. Then he learns that the outside world is incredibly racist, especially against dumb, illiterate Humans.
He’s picked up by an Elf lady with a Human fetish and welcomed into a party that stands against racial discrimination, each member being one of the world’s many races. But all the members are high-level, and he’s a noob. They were ordered to find a Human “master”, but this kid’s a loser! So the party bring him to the world’s hardest dungeon and then gang up on him.
Using the power of his mostly-terrible skill—Infinite Gacha—he summons a max-level combat maid and survives the conflict, then begins his journey of revenge. Step one: form an empire! Yeah, not the most inconspicuous plan…

Anyway, this is a power fantasy where the villains are generic racists and the protagonist’s ability is “do anything when the author demands it.” Expectations are low.
To give it some respect, I suppose it’s a bit unique to have a useless protagonist surrounded by incredibly strong allies… though those allies are technically all his servants, so… maybe not? The crossed wires of ‘racism bad, slavery good’ is a bit befuddling.

But what’s the meat on the bone? Well, we timeskip three years from the synopsis, so don’t go in expecting an empire-builder type fantasy show. But what follows is… a bit odd. I actually had to look up the source material and check things out, because the pivot in tone is quite spectacular.
The story begins in episode 2 with an adaptation of some side stories from the Light Novel, focusing on characters other than the protagonist, and these side stories play out as a sort of… workplace sitcom. Multiple characters are introduced as they live individual lives within the kingdom established by the protagonist, and the mundane actions each member of the cast takes contribute to a building series of coincidences.
It’s actually very well structured and quite entertaining, a massive boost in quality compared to episode 1. Quite similar to Nageki no Bourei wa Intai Shitai, actually.

Oh, I also learned that episode 1 was a rushed mess that skipped massive chunks of important detailing, so… that definitely contributes to the difference in quality.

Anyway, the rest of the show is far less interesting, but it has its own kind of appeal. One of the protagonist’s old party members is living a cushy life thanks to the rewards for ‘killing’ Light. They’re on the verge of achieving their dream, or about to start a family—that sort of thing.
Then Light tracks them down, torments them in various ways, destroys everything they care about, then grants them a slow, painful death. Propped up by yes men who are all exponentially stronger than the world’s strongest, there are few stakes. Sometimes they try to shoehorn in a bit of drama, but it obviously doesn’t work, and I don’t know why they try.

The way they focus on various elements of the world in order to bring life to the different victims is reminiscient of Overlord or Isekai Shokudou, and it’s a formula I’m quite fond of… But the formula alone isn’t enough to guarantee a good time, and I found this implementation of it to be very boring.
Aside from the core mystery of why Light was set to be assassinated, the depth concludes at the surface level: racist world is racist, selfish people are selfish, and all of them die to OP gacha magic.

There are some brief moments of surprisingly good animation, sometimes in the oddest of places. A poorly drawn character may have an immaculately animated flowing dress or hat, blowing in the wind. Other than that, I struggle to think of anything that makes this show worth picking up, but it’s not incompetent; it’s just boring. If you like revenge plots and are desperate for more, here’s another one.

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Tensei Akujo no Kuro Rekishi
Episodes Watched: 5/12

A young girl named Konoha, obsessed with isekai novels, writes her own self-insert fiction about everything she loves. In that story, she’s her ideal self, surrounded by pretty boys, and capable of using magic.
Then she grows out of that cringy obsession and ten years pass. She gets truck-kun’d, and is sent into the fictional world her young self wrote!
Then only problem is… rather than being the self-insert character that shares Konoha’s name, our protagonist awakens in the body of Konoha’s evil younger sister Iana.

Her love for this world comes flooding back to her as soon as she’s surrounded by it once again, and that forever colors her interaction with the world and its characters. She’s still the geek who wrote this story, no matter how much time may have passed. I kinda like that.
But then the guilt she feels for putting these characters into bad situations (never considering what it’d be like to actually live through those situations) is impossible to ignore. It’s conceptually interesting, but the delivery of these ideas is unfortunately plain, never going beyond verbal explanations of thoughts and emotions.

The story is told in a way I’ve complained about in the past. The protagonist theoretically knows everything about the setting, but they’ve forgotten everything until it’s important for them to remember the details required for an info dump.
Every new plot beat begins with our leading lady Iana recalling an isolated incident from the story she herself had written. Somehow, she remembers details in a strictly linear fashion. I hate it! With each forgotten twist comes a new arc, and with each arc comes a plodding pace of bland interactions and unspoken misunderstandings. As if aware of the work’s inadequacies, the author frequently attempts to disguise the most underwhelming plot beats under the appearance of a pretty man. It may work on the protagonist, but it doesn’t work on me.

With some of the most unfitting music I’ve ever heard in an anime, a plot that consistently fails to be interesting, and a cast of characters only appealing to the very author who created them, I can’t imagine myself recommending this to anyone.

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Tomodachi no Imouto ga Ore ni Dake Uzai
Episodes Watched: 12/12
Rating: 6/10

A serious young man named Akiteru plans to spend his life efficiently. After befriending a talented programmer, he led the creation of a circle who developed a popular game—a hybrid reference of Kamaitachi no Yoru and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, with maybe a splash of the Chunsoft stuff. The members of that circle are all named as dumb references, too.
The circle’s voice actor (who keeps her identity hidden) is, in actuality, that programmer’s little sister, Iroha. Not only is she the greatest actor known to man, but she the one thing she loves most in the world is trolling Akiteru. So when, as part of a work arrangement, Akiteru is asked to act as the boyfriend of his boss’s daughter, Iroha gets to work scheming.

The primary unique point to this work is that the characters are, as the title puts it, annoying. Not the kind of annoying where you feel bad for one of the cast members because of what they have to put up with on a day-to-day basis, no; everyone is slightly annoying. It’s part of the banter.
It’s gimmicky that a love triangle exists between three characters who act out of dishonesty more than anything else, and the third-wheel in that love triangle—a shy girl named Mashiro—is the weak point of the show, to me.

So let’s get Mashiro out of the way quickly and move onto other topics. I don’t think the love drama aspect is entertaining, and I don’t think Mashiro’s voice acting is any good, but the concept is interesting. I’m honestly a bit surprised that, for once, I didn’t like a girl who expresses her love by telling people to die (I love that trope!) but the directing for her voice is really weird. That weirdness will probably make her uniquely appealing to some, but not to me.

Some other aspects to the character are shoddy. There are some details like… she’s supposed to be Akiteru’s childhood friend, yet he’s forgotten her. So when we get a flashback to them hanging out, only to see that she looks exactly the same as a child, I start questioning things. Her hairstyle’s practically unchanged! How didn’t you recognise her!?
Adaptational misgivings like that… they really do show up more than they should. And y’know, the directing of her voice is odd, and yet, the directing for everything else is incredibly mundane, so Mashiro really sticks out like a sore thumb.

The mundane direction is fine for the average scene, but as soon as the original material veers into more ambitious territory, the production struggles to keep up. There were multiple big scenes where I distinctly felt like I was getting a bad telling of a good story, and that’s never a good sign. That being said, the good story does shine through, at times… and yeah, the average scene is fine with average directing.

The elephant in the room is, of course, the source material. The last work by this author to be adapted into anime was Gimai Seikatsu, which was famously elevated by its incredible directing, taking even mundane moments to high heights.
So although I say that the average scene is fine with average directing, I can’t deny that it feels like a bit of a waste. In some ways, this material has the potential to be more entertaining than Gimai Seikatsu ever could be, and the relatively boring nature of Gimai Seikatsu‘s script was its biggest weakness! If I’m remembering it correctly, this adaptation was in the works before that one was, and it’s hard to ignore all of that in my judgment.

But the rest of the cast have solid voices. The designs are better than decent. The actual scripts for the episodes can be very good, so you could get engrossed in one or two of them despite the plain presentation. There was even background music and sound effects too! …I think.
It’s a hard show to write about, because my ability to sit down and enjoy the show without the baggage of perspective isn’t going to be reflected in a critique. I can’t just put context aside and pretend it doesn’t exist. Even so, it was an enjoyable enough watch.

Also, it’s worth a mention: I should like this style of Opening—it’s very old school—but it just comes off as pandering. Like the show, it contains a lot of references, and it also has Karubi singing for the track! It should work for me, but it doesn’t.
Similarly, the ED is performed by Kohana Lam. I feel like some parties involved in the planning of this production had a bias for a very specific bubble in the world of livestreaming, but I can’t prove it… I do still enjoy seeing familiar faces appear in my anime, however.

…Maybe I should rewatch Gimai Seikatsu this year.

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Yasei no Last Boss ga Arawareta!
Episodes Watched: 12/12
Rating: 5/10

In Exgate Online, one player rules all! But that’s not very fun for players, so the man behind the great conqueror Lufas decides to face the game’s other great players in a war of evil versus good, which naturally results in his defeat. Lufas is sealed away, and his role as the game’s unofficial last boss is over.
But upon returning to the login screen, a message presented to him via the game’s goddess offers him a new role. He accepts, expecting a conversation with the developers, but instead, he winds up inhabiting the body of his reborn character, stuck living within the game he once played.
But uh… Lufas seems to have memories of her own, and they certainly feel real.

Immediately, the synopsis has me thinking back to Leadale, but this isn’t entirely the same. Despite being an MMORPG, the main appeal of Exgate Online (to the protagonist, at least) lay in features reminiscient of PBWs.
The role a player takes and the lore surrounding their character can be co-opted into the game world’s lore by the people running the game. This gives players an incentive to roleplay, to manifest and appear in major events, to invest in their character, and in the case of permadeath, a reason to risk losing the character they’ve put so much time into; they could become an official part of history.

As you can imagine, a player’s connection to the setting will be far stronger than that of an MMO where they play through a tailored storyline, so manifesting into the MMO he loves, the player behind Lufas is very excited.
However, it’s not plain fun going for the guy… girl? Whatever they are now. See, there’s a mystery afoot!

200 years have passed. What has happened in the meantime?
How did the main character get transported to this fictional world, and what’s going on back on Earth?
But beyond the obvious, there are questions such as…
Other player characters are in the world still, albeit very few. Are they controlled by their players?
What’s going on with Lufas and the memories she possesses?

They’re not the most thrilling mysteries, but they work. Adding to that is Dina, our protagonist’s first ally in the world. She was an NPC placed within a throne room where Lufas sat, but her presence was so thin that nobody seems to remember her.
Acting as a databank of knowledge, Dina is the guide of a growing party of NPCs, and her knowledge goes surprisingly deep. Also, she has the ability to modify other people’s memories.
Like I said, not the most thrilling mystery, but it’s enough to keep some otherwise mundane events interesting.

Much of the story revolves around visiting various cities founded by the heroes, in an attempt to find playable characters that may be in the same boat as our protagonist. Each new city brings a new story arc, a new villain, and some new details pertaining to the main plot.
It’s a traditional structure, but it works. Though a lot of the side plots taking up most of the screentime are ultimately just padding, they do introduce us to various aspects of the setting, and they fit together to tell a focused moral message, almost.

As our protagonist travels, picking up new allies along the way, he learns more about what’s going on. He doesn’t, however, learn everything… because this isn’t a complete adaptation. As a show focused on mystery and intrigue, the lack of a proper conclusion always hurts.

Not only is it an incomplete mystery, but I doubt it’ll ever be a fulfilling one to witness the end of. This is a story set in a world that mirrors the events of a player-determined game world to a 99.9% degree of accuracy. Thinking about the various contrivances that could be used to add logic to that synopsis… none of it is good.
Earth could be fake. This fantasy world could be fake. Neither of those is satisfying.
The main character’s memories of Earth could be fake. So could his memories of Lufas. Both would suck.
The world could be guided by a god to follow the novelised game. That’s not doing it for me. I suppose the game could be based on the world, but that’s nonsense unless the protagonist isn’t real, which as I said before, would suck.
I just don’t see how it could fit together in a way that makes me feel happy to have stuck with it until the end. So even if this did get further seasons to wrap everything up, I wouldn’t be eager to sit down and watch it.

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