Scalpelexis

This arc didn't excite me enough to sing songs and odes like the 2 leads. The first time the robot AI problem didn't make sense to me and I didn't understand the solution, or what it was preventing in the first place. Compared to previous arcs, it was impersonal and Matsumoto's mission wasn't clear at all; instead it was abnormally confusing. A very tight 4 stars for an awesome fight scene.

Stowaway is in many ways a woefully underdeveloped and unoriginal sci-fi survival drama that isn't even entertaining enough for what it's trying to sell. It's at least problematic to convince viewers of the authenticity of the portrayal of the astronauts' behavior in the face of a relentless crisis, while shamefully failing to resolve too many of the rational questions it raises. I take rocket science and mathematical calculations as part of space travel in general as the highest level of accuracy and rigor, and since the snags occur from the first few minutes, it's difficult to chew through a very rigid plot with that unexplained question for 2 tedious hours. I also had difficulty grasping the roles of all 4 characters, with one thrown onto the boat to represent the crisis cowering shyly in the corner, fearfully awaiting resolution, and on the other side the expendable captain who was only there to tear her hair out with stress. The story surprised me in places by unexpectedly dragging out the viewer's expectation of "Now it's got to go wrong!" only to then slap a sticker on it in the form of the most banal twist of genre anthologies. While the spacey visuals are magical in the climbing sequence, overall they don't crush impressions like other more familiar and spectacular predecessors. In the final minutes, the audience is split between criticizing or praising the work because of the dueling characters representing opposite poles: Humanity vs. Calculation, and depending on which side of the barricade you settle on, the final rather unfinished message will have resonating power. My personal impression remained somewhere in the range of "such a shame, Anna Kendrick's acting" and "is that all?", tickling my altruistic soul just at the heel.

Argh, this doesn't spark joy at all! If this series could have, or perhaps even should have ended the whole Castlevania thing, then it could be palatable, but what was that whole first half?! Looking back, I can't help but admit that the first 5-6 episodes or so were de facto pure filler. Familiar figures were spread out differently on the playing field and they were doing something, somewhere. Even if behind it all is the downright stupid idea of bringing Dracula to life (every character had a lesser or greater stake in it, for veeery weird reasons), the creators at least slightly learned from the past, decided not to put us to sleep with excessive babble, and indulged us in what they do best, without rival: fight choreography. The work with perspectives, angles, and the whole composition of the battles is playful, caressing the visual perception especially. And thankfully there's plenty of that here; almost too much, in fact, given that in order to show off newer and newer tricks, for example, they've already made the character of Sypha into a de facto Superman, who has the eternally cranky Belmont as a practically useless catchphrase. Yes, I've managed to watch the other storylines as well, but they're a) not interesting at all and b) pathetically inconclusive and sadly unnecessary in the overall context of the series (What was the point of the vampire family?). In fact, at some point Season 4 decides to make one giant teleport into the main plot, which for a while reminds me of endlessly spinning in circles (Yeah, I'm pointing at you and your decisions, you sanctimonious little prat!), so that we end up doing an epic highway dance. There's always something about those penultimate episodes of Castlevania – the playing of the main trump cards, be it fine banter or brilliant action, and the instinctive fingers crossed for the main badass trio. Alucard is as consistently stale as a 5-day-old beer, so it's mainly down to Sypha and Belmont, though a much stronger script would have helped the overall impression immensely. And that... that sunny ending somehow doesn't bother me, but isn't it considerably out of place for Castlevania? Sure, I accepted the prefinal minutes, but the hell with those last ones. Make those last 3-4 episodes an OVA, we'll have missed out on nothing; for the good of us all, no more series, please.

The final scenes reminded me of Trigger's best-offs (inspiration?) – if you can't do it anymore, step up, fuel up with a brutal injection of optimism, immortality, and let's go!

Heh. Yasuke very much reminded me of my creative, yet very often hopeless culinary creations a la cooking based on what you have. I open the fridge, pop this and that in, get this and that out of the pantry, pour this over that, scrape the last of the sides off the shelf, sprinkle in the 3 spices most readily available and ta-da, the masterpiece is born! At first glance, I would have thought the script for this anime was written by an American teenager on bended knee with a retired Japanese spiritualist. Gods, demons, I can accept, but it's hard to explain otherwise that 16th century feudal Nippon, thus depicted, is home to black-skinned samurai, Catholic priests, werewolves, vodka-swilling Russians, astral magicians, JoJo-esque shamans, even flying mechas! Several times per episode we are reminded professorially that tradition, honor, and history are fundamental, but it was delivered in such a careful and respectful way that I the subsequent tearing down of these aspects in racial or gender progress, for example, appealed to me. What was more amusing, on the other hand, was the attempt at spirited retellings and understanding of the past in the form of a few flashbacks scattered everywhere, when the show frankly didn't bother with any other kind of depth, and pushed the characters down a road not taken, towards a destination not aimed at, for reasons of such and so forth. The first 3 episodes made sense within certain limits; the slower development, the wandering, the depiction of the first stories was fine. It's just that the next 3 were such an additional encore and the creators' delight in not having to bother introducing characters anymore, and just letting things meander illogically, with no rules or boundaries. There's no time to illustrate the characters except for Yasu (I applaud the "great" idea of cramming 2 arcs into 6 episodes), the bad guys are a bunch of amateurish jokers, and on the hand the good guys are so boringly super-positive that you couldn't even root for them! Appearance-wise, it doesn't look bad, MAPPA has been doing their bit lately and holding the bar high, it's just that the desired uncompromising slashing fights were sabotaged incredibly often by the omnipresent magic, which annoyingly knew no bounds, so if something needed to be cleared, slowed down, or simply executed, abacadabra, it was done magically without any fuss or trouble. The anime, full of contrasts, was undercut by the choice of modern music as a soundtrack, which overall left me with one of two minds about it: cool in places, but many times it felt like a cheap play on the superficial "cool" factor. I'm not angry, it's decent entertainment, but I'd put it in the "crap" drawer, since it lacks tighter organization, more decisive direction, and a noticeably better script. A better 2 stars

[Watched 2 episodes of season 1, drop] Ouch, ouch, it made my heart ache once again to have to share the gender of such an awful main character as Kazuya. You can easily tell the lowest level of creativity in the romcom section based on simple traits: 5 trillion misunderstandings, convenient coincidences every minute, confessions as difficult as hiking up Mt. Everest, the king of virgins in the lead role. Honestly, just so I don't degrade "The Girlfriend Rental" here (that in itself sounds awfully stupid, doesn't it? ) to the worst imaginable extremes, the point itself isn't that terrible, and could be made relatively workable with 1/10th of a brain engaged – except that would mean that the scene would have to remain free of the sympathy-devoid squadron in the form of a bunch of wasted buddies, a grandmother more obnoxious than a Jehovah's Witness, and even the ex has nothing to do but psychopathically romp around stalking our hated dork. And Kazuya heroically lies, lies, lies to create new misunderstandings and more room for this whole idiotic endless circle that will surely span 200+ manga volumes. The saddest part is that this manga has a clear audience goal: to give non-existent hope to all those closed-minded, self-important boys who think that by sitting at home and being totally passive, they'll stumble across the interest of X many perfect beauties. Who will give their hearts to him if he smiles at them. Well, I've given plenty of reasons and warnings, the rest is up to you. A worse 2 stars.

Once again, one of those shows cut straight from life where girls experience one unfortunate predicament after another. You know it, right? Those classic situations where, as a teacher, you spill more fluids on your chest when you're wearing a freakishly see-through shirt. You don't? Or those moments when a young lad wants to drink from a bottle, but fate is such that his mouth ends up right under someone’s skirt? Wait, that doesn't happen to you either? Or the most common one of all, when a paperclip flies off so unluckily that it snaps behind your back, thus undoing your bra, which you can always get help fastening from a random popular student passing by, but he mistakes the buttons for a slightly different pair of "buttons"? If even this life certainty isn't happening to you, congratulations, but you certainly don't live in an anime world where for some unfathomable reason one of the 4 teachers suddenly appears out of nowhere wherever you are. The series bounces wildly from sweet and romantic chittering to sudden leaps of 10 levels to frantically undress the ladies for more or less pedophilic continuations of their pleasures (one lady in particular abounds in the bizarre, where her features guarantee that her half a head shorter boyfriend will never need to buy milk for the rest of his life). So unless you've actually experienced something of the above, this anime is happy to prepare you for it, but offers nothing more. Finally, on second thought, a little more seriously... why the hell are you here, Scalp?! The weakest 2 stars

A fantasy harlequin novel with a Soviet touch. I haven't read the source material, so I can't judge how much the creators skipped on better worldbuilding, mythology, descriptions of peoples and magical abilities, or if the author's shallow imagination is to blame, but this part limps considerably. In any case, the presence of the paranormal "Shadow Fold" is an interesting opportunity and an idea that is not badly used to play a number of political games, but they tend to go broad rather than deep to a more complicated level. The author thought she wanted to have a huge world complete with a plethora of minor characters just so that everyone could somehow fall in love, but each in a slightly different way! And the ones that could be essential (e.g. the rulers), on the other hand, are probably not well liked, so let's just skip them altogether. So, without intentionally shrieking and clamoring for the floor, the plot and character motivations are pulling at cupid's arrow stuck in the asses of pretty much everyone present. I didn't care for it at all, and I don't understand why there was an expendable witch/viking storyline (inspired by Jon Snow and Ygritte?), but I can't say that I was any more interested in the other side of the scales than I was in the main character, who has no opinion, no strength, no charisma, and who, unfortunately, isn't even played by a very good actress. If anyone interested and entertained me, it was the creeping trio of outlaw thieves whose adventures, unlike the others, had considerable variety and spark. On the other side of the roller coaster, the sets and costumes weren't bad, and though they skimped quite a bit on the special effects, there are well-executed moments to be found. I have no problem recommending Shadow and Bone to a teenager hooked on series like Divergent, but other audiences will give this one a wide berth. Or at least they should.

A bunch of the most generic clichés within the high school battle harem shōnen genre. The list of the main characters' features are a variety of fanserviced archetypes of the OP jack-of-all-trades type, the tsundere (oddly enough staying pretty well grounded, thumbs up for that), the flat and flighty lolita, all underscored by a noticeably more pumped up ara-ara tease. Except for the last few episodes, the plot is more linear than "2+2=4"; example: fights, more fights festooned with stupidly named special abilities, the building up of a constantly blushing harem, some filler in a pool followed by an overlong and fairly uninteresting tournament full of boring opponents that aren't worth talking about at all; they just constantly praise the protagonist when he manages to get his ass in gear. The final mildly political arc throws a welcome pitchfork into the mix and tries to build something from the so far null foundation, but for what? There weren't enough episodes for that, and there's no next season. Sadly, it doesn't even look all that great on the surface. It's perfect for turning the sound off and falling asleep to it. A weak 2 stars

Forded the river and not turning back. Mild boredom gave me the silly idea of bridging the gap between SAO I and Alicization; I knew a more tragic idea would be to merely skip (in a wheelchair) to Alicization, but I waved my hand and internally armored myself with concrete, patience, and meager anticipation. It dragged on like a queue at the only open checkout in a supermarket on Black Friday, but let's say the first half was noticeably less at fault, yet I got perfect practice in Italian gestures and very vehement shoulder shrugs backed up by unwanted attempts to shake my head. Machine guns instead of swords? Okay! Sinon instead of Asuna? No question. Kirito... yeah, Kirito, let's see what you got. So, a good-looking girl? I don't understand the reason, but, uh, fine. Wait, he logs onto a new game for the first time, immediately meets the main character two steps in, and wins a contest no one's ever won? Yeah, that's kind of the "entertaining" gold standard of glorifying this character. Wait, he has to draw his sword to be the only one who can use it in this game? Yeah, he's suddenly the best with it in the whole game the second time he logs in? Of course, I'm still surprised. At least this arc was relatively action-packed, and Jedi Kirito could stand up to the F-quality Darth Vader, because the rest of it was drowned out by the main good guys' soporific outpouring of tales of trauma minor or even minorer, all while frequently documenting Sinona's open boxers. It's simple: as you dwell on something for longer and longer, the viewer's mind automatically relegates that issue to a more pathetic level, even if it had solid initial weight and meaning originally. To end the first arc with a conclusion that totally robs the first season, and under the baton of Sherlock Kirito sucking the solution out of both thumbs like it was his life, I would leave the rating at a weak average. Rumor has it that the second half of SAO drops everything down to the dustiest basement, and here that rule was once again proven true. What I find comical about the whole thing is that the already hellishly drawn out failed emotional blackmail a la Maeda couldn't be stretched enough to fluff up the rest of the episodes, so as punishment we got the totally unhelpful filler of the sword swinging to save the mosquito elephants as a patch. I'm still wishing that the huge theme of real life vs virtual reality could have been better used; indeed, SAO had such a ton of opportunities for that! Instead, we have to settle for the message from kids to their parents that being a total online addict is actually necessary and very useful. As I mentioned, expectations weren't high, but I still can't figure out what's so outstanding about this anime. Will I give Progressive another chance? A weak 2 stars