Another seasonal roundup of anime, this time for the Winter 2021 season and I knew this was going to be one of the most intense seasons of the year because so many big hitter shows were coming out. There was so much to watch and it was all so good, it was just big hit after hit and honestly after the drought that was Anime 2020 because of COVID delays and all sorts of issues like that. Honestly, it made this perfect, we're all still cooped up so having a bunch of anime to watch especially good anime to watch was great. I mean I'm working so I still don't have a ton of time but as long as you don't fall behind, you're okay when you watch a bunch of shows.
Without further speaking, here we go..............
Like if I can put it simply, it's got aspects from my favourite shonen anime Bleach tossed together and blended with other fantastic shows making it one of the best shonen anime in YEARS. It's a shonen anime that isn't meant for young kids like My Hero Academia, it isn't outdated and cliche like Dragonball, it's not just average in every aspect like many others in its genre. It's got a killer art style, amazing fight scenes set to killer music, great characters, neat powers, and a great story. Legit it has everything you could want in a show like this. I don't want to say it's perfect but it's pretty close.
It's a great story like I said, it's the story of Itadori Yuji, a high school student who's grandfather dies and tells him one thing on his deathbed, "help as many people as you can in life so you're surrounded by people who love you in the end" (not the exact words but close). When he meets a young man named Fushiguro Megumi, a jujutsu sorcerer, who's job it is to obtain a cursed object that has been sealed away on Yuji's high school campus. What he doesn't realize is that Yuji's friends have an occult club and are trying to peel off the cursed objects seal, which would draw curses to them. Yuji tries to help Fushiguro and save his friends when he fights a curse, he is told he can't beat it without cursed energy, simple fix......eat the cursed finger right ?? Well, it should've killed him, but there was a one in a million chance that it does something else. Turns Itadori Yuji into a vessel for the King of Curses and Poisons, Ryuomen Sukuna. While a normal person would succumb and Sukuna would just have a new body, for some reason he can't control Yuji, and that leaves both Sukuna and Yuji in weird spots. Sukuna is in the world again but with no way to be himself and Yuji is now possessed by someone so powerful that those higher up in the jujutsu sorcerer society want him executed.
Avoiding the execution was thanks to Gojou Satoru, the top jujutsu sorcerer in the world, and Yuji's new sensei. To explain Gojou he's like a combo of Kakashi from Naruto and Urahara from Bleach, the kind and caring sensei with the funny/sarcastic attitude with a heavy sense of rebellion towards those in power. I immediately took to Gojou-sensei, like I loved the character design (cool white hair and blindfold), awesome powers when you see them, and his attitude was great (like a funny guy who's also the ultimate badass who know one questions). We then see the higher-ups of the jujutsu world send Itadori, Fushiguro, and Nobura on a "simple mission" to eliminate a cursed spirit while Gojou is away, what they didn't mention is that this curse is a special-grade curse and there are very few jujutsu sorcerers that are able to handle these types of curses, the whole idea was to kill Itadori Yuji so that Sukuna was no longer in the world and Fushiguro and Nobura would be unfortunate collateral damage. Afterwards, Gojou decides that the best course of action is to teach Yuji how to use cursed energy and have him return at the inter-school tourney between Tokyo and Kyoto where one of the people who most likely ordered Yuji's death, Kyoto's school principal will be. That point forward is just a really cool tourney arc between the two schools that breaks down into other kinds of fights..........it's just so good. The last 3 episodes are amazing as well.
What makes Jujutsu Kaisen so great is that it's a shonen that actually feels like it's meant for an older audience, it isn't a kid driven shonen like My Hero Academia, which itself is getting darker and I know it gets rougher in the manga but nothing like this, it's a show that feels like it's meant for an audience like myself and friends of mine who enjoy shonens of this fashion. I also again feel that it's like Bleach in that you know there are a handful of jujutsu sorcerers that are head and shoulders above others while there are also other necessary side characters that are still powerful but nowhere close to the main group. If I was to make a Bleach comparison I'd say that Itadori is Ichigo, Fushiguro is Renji, and Nobura is Rukia in terms of power then you have guys like Gojou who's like Head Captain Yamamoto, Todou is like Byakuya. Like everyone has a similar counterpart to Bleach in terms of power and where they fit in the story. One thing I do have to say is unique to Jujutsu Kaisen that is different to other shonen (Bleach included) is that while everyone has cursed energy available to them, very few of them are able to use Domain Expansion which is like the ultimate move of a jujutsu sorcerer or curse. From what I know right now as of the show, 5 people demonstrated the ability to use one, with a few more that you know have one; what I like about this is that unlike Dragonball's "everyone is a Super Saiyan", Bleach's "everyone at a certain level has a Bankai", Naruto's "everyone powerful has these crazy jutsu", etc, etc that having such a few people have one make Domain Expansions seem special. Which is something that no shonen and very few anime in general actually do, make powers seem special.
Basically Jujutsu Kaisen is an amazing show, it's a 10/10 and if you disagree watch episode 24 again and then you'll say "oh ya I was wrong" it's an 11/10. I can't wait for Jujutsu Kaisen Zero the movie coming out before the second season and while I want to read the manga...........I've only been able to pick up Volume 7 and 9 because everyone's sold out of everything else.
HOLY SHIT RECOMMENDED -11/10
Fast forward 4 years, that's when Attack on Titan: The Final Season kicks off. That means we're going to be seeing aged-up versions of our favourites when they do appear for the first time. However, we are first introduced to the "warrior candidates": Gabi, Falco, Falco's brother and two others who were relatively forgettable and play no importance going forward really only Gabi and Falco do. These kids are the elite of the elite of the Eldian children, those who are hated by the people of Marley, kept in a ghetto yet as long as these kids perform well their families are treated well as are they. The reason being it is their job to inherit the Titans passed down through the years, with the only Titans left in their care being: the Cart Titan (currently Pieck), the Armored Titan (currently Reiner), the Beast Titan (currently Zeke), the Jaw Titan (currently Galliard), and the War Hammer Titan (a member of an important family). Having the Colossus Titan, Female Titan, and Attack Titan all taken from them was a major blow to Marley. But what is more of a major blow is what's to come and that is the taking of the War Hammer Titan and essential declaration of war against Marley from the hands of Eren Jaeger (and the Scout Regiment but mostly Eren).
One complaint that I heard from a lot of people is they disliked MAPPA studios use of 3D animation for the Titans in this season and while I could say that MAPPA's 3D work on some shows in the past has been checkered......lookin your way Zombieland Saga......the way they did the Titans was very solid and I have no idea where people were coming up with these ideas. Like I thought the Titans were well done, there was a few moments Eren's titan was like..."hmm"...but even then I imagine a lot of that complaining is from people who dislike 3D in anime in general and who also hate change.
I think that for people experiencing this season of Attack on Titan has already caused some massive shocks to them and it's only going to get worse for them when it picks up in December because I've read to the end and people think Eren became a terrible person, well he gets worse........everything ramps up to 11. I mean everything did already take a massive jump in terms of degree of savageness that people had, the characters in the show, their attitudes, the things that happen in it. I think Attack on Titan is the perfect example of a show that could've fallen by the wayside after season one but continued to push itself in storytelling and animation until it became one of the best shows out there and one of the best shows in years.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 10/10
The memory erase of Rem from people except Subaru, Roswaal knowing about Subaru's "ability", Subaru meeting the Witch of Greed Echidna who knows all about him, Subaru meeting the other witches: Typhon, Minerva, Sehkmet, and Daphnee, finally coming face to face with the Witch of Envy, the one who gave him the power to return by death, Satella, finding out about the Great Rabbit one of the major mabeasts destroying Sanctuary and eating everyone and how he found out about that was AWFUL, that Roswaal sent assassin's to his mansion to take care of Petra, Rem, and
All of that was just jam packed into the first half of Season 2 and that left you asking, just how much more is there and how crazy are things going to be for Subaru and everyone going forward ??
After watching this I honestly like...........I already revealed stuff that happened in the first part of season two and that's not legit but there was SOOOOOOOO much that unfolded this second half of the season like I honestly feel like mentioning anything takes away from it. What I can say is that the end of every episode makes you go "I want next Wednesday to come so I know what happens" because there was not a single episode where there wasn't a good bit of character progression or a good fight, etc. It was action packed from beginning to end and so many things happened that I was not expecting, the return of a character I didn't expect to see at all, a fight I wasn't expecting, a couple things Subaru does I didn't expect, and a pairing I didn't expect to end the show.
IT WAS SOOOOOO GOOD, honestly like if you didn't like Re:Zero, well I don't know what to tell you but if you only sort of enjoyed season one watch season two and you'll just be like holy shit this is so good. I can't wait to see what happens to everyone, I really want Rem to return as well but there's only one way for that to happen and it's going to involve Subaru defeating another Sin Archbishop.a
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 10/10
Regardless, The Quintessential Quintuplets is an amazing romantic comedy, the second season was awesome, and I think that everyone should watch it.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 11/10
That's where we've left off, Rimuru has become a Demon Lord, and now has to stop his friend and fellow Demon Lord Milim from hurting his ally Carrion all thanks to interference and massive problems caused by Demon Lord Clayman, everything all of this destruction, all caused by him. I looked ahead to see what happens and I'm excited to see them animate it I can tell you that, we've got what's called a Walpurgis Banquet coming up and it's gonna be fantastic.
HIGH RECOMMEND - 9.5/10
I love The Promised Neverland, the first season left me on such a cliffhanger I picked up all of the manga, the stuff that came out that the first season covered and then the stuff it didn't. I was looking forward to all these cool things coming up in the second season of the anime. Then the season came out...........and while the animation was still there, the characters I loved were still there, the voice actors still delivering great performances, the new characters I liked from the manga made their first appearances, and the "return" of someone important happened. All things I liked.
The problem with this was they just cut out massive arcs in the manga to make it fit into the typical "12/13 episode" seasonal show, so it felt rushed. So rushed and disorganized that some people lost track of what happened, they didn't explain or go into certain things more in-depth. The lack of depth for most people who didn't read the manga probably threw them off, not that it was terrible, but it just jumped around and there were things they could've explained a lot better and had way cooler scenes and such if they decided to lengthen out the show. If they knew they were only getting a season 2, then doing a 2 core version with 24 episodes would've been better but that isn't what happened. It got SOOO BAD that Kaiu Shirai, the author of the manga, asked to NOT be credited anymore. Imagine, the creator of the work you are adapting going........."fuck stop butchering my work, don't credit me anymore I don't want anything to do with this trainwreck."
And while I feel that it was rushed, that there was so much character development left out, that the big moments weren't as big, that there was just so much rushed into the end. I still enjoyed watching it, I enjoyed the experience and seeing the "wrap up" to Promised Neverland in anime form. I enjoyed it but not nearly as much as I wish I could've.
RECOMMENDED - 7/10 (THAT'S A LOW SCORE FOR ME CONSIDERING I GAVE SEASON ONE A 10)
I just thought to myself so many times during Horimiya, these characters are great, they've got so much personality and we're only going to see a certain amount of it with the shows limited air time. It touches on a lot of tough issues that people go through. Miyamura is someone who was bullied relentlessly as a kid, even ignored by everyone in his class in high school still, he had to find his own sense of identity with tattoos and piercings but even that didn't help. Everyone is bullied to a degree as kids or adults and it's something we can relate to with Miyamura. Finding Hori for him changed his world and while it sounds cliche as hell I think there's someone that will change everyone's world like Hori did. It's hard for me to go into a lot of detail on Horimiya because it's a simple romantic comedy show with endearing main characters in Miyamura and Hori, surrounded by great supporting cast in their friends Toru, Yoshikawa, and others. There's so many funny moments in the show too: the way Hori's dad is with Miyamura, the way you find out that Hori has a massive masochistic fetish because she wants Miyamura to treat her like garbage on rare occasions (WHICH I FOUND HILARIOUS), the dynamic Miyamura has with all of his new friends and the old people who slowly make their way into his life.
It is simply a perfect rom-com and I loved and enjoyed every minute of Horimiya, great characters, beautiful art, great voice acting, it was awesome.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - 10/10
However, that's where shit changed dramatically................Rika became the prim and proper girl she always wanted to be and Satoko stayed true to herself, the only problem, at a school full of snobby rich girls the kind of attitude Satoko has just doesn't fit in. She doesn't even find a plucky gang of misfits to fit in with because that's not the kind of this school. She does begin to resent Rika with every bit of her soul, wishing she never made the mistake of following her friend there, wishing that they were both still in Hinamizawa........a wish that strangely finds out that she now has the ability to control or to try and control. As while Rika may have escaped the loop world where she has lived for 100 years, Satoko finds herself there now and is honestly pleased with it. I love the slow evolution of Satoko into the character she becomes through her loops. she spends time to watch all of Rika's mistakes, so watches 100 years of loops to try and make sure things will work for her. She's not trying to do what Rika did, she's almost trying to make Rika's efforts of 100 years of looping obsolete, she wants them to remain friends in Hinamizawa together forever, NO MATTER THE COST. Like Satoko's attitude, her personality change, everything is so great about her post-school and during her time loop phase, there's nothing she won't do to accomplish her goal; she becomes a borderline evil character to get what she desires. Finally at the end of the series accomplishing something that her time loop god and her know that makes her the one in charge of her destiny at that point.
HIGH RECOMMEND - 9/10
So we've got another story of someone reborn into another world, this time having been a NEET back in Japan but unlike someone like Subaru (Re:Zero) or Kazuma (Konosuba) this guy was an irredeemable piece of trash. So when re-born as Rudeus how do we grow to like him, well mainly he realizes through his new parents and his magic mentor Roxy just how to live his life, and how to go outside and experience the world, to not be afraid to meet people and make new connections and experiences. Something that he never would have done in the real world. I mention his mentor Roxy, she's there to teach him how to control his magic, a girl from a specific demon clan who is a Saint class mage in Water and initially dismisses the idea that Rudeus knows anything until she sees it happen and teaches him to her level. She also has discussions about her homeland, particularly one tribe of demons called the Superd who killed both ally and enemy for no reason in a way and if he ever saw one to run. Rudeus makes a friend Sylphie after Roxy leaves and he wants to pay for both of them to go to magic university together so he asks his father to find him a job. Well he does, unfortunately that jobs takes him away from his home to teach a spoiled heiress Eris (in his distant family) how to use magic. They get into a typical day to day routine until a giant magic disaster occurs and sends both Rudeus and Eris to the Demon Continent where they encounter one of those dreaded Superd demons as well as run into a tribe of Roxy's demon relatives. There is incredible adventures had with the odd pairing of three on the Demon Continent as they search for a way back to their homes.
I enjoyed the fact that Rudeus is actually treating his rebirth into a new world as a fresh start, to try new things, to realize that he isn't going to be bullied like he was in the other world and to just get out and enjoy life all while using the mistakes and things he learned in his past life to better himself and the others in his life. The art is very nice and the few fight scenes there are are very slick, I also enjoy the different types of characters, their attitudes, their designs: characters like Gislaine this like wolf-woman and this one demon guy who was essentially a talking horse are all neat. The story is also very good as well and I enjoy that Eris being a tsundere is only for a certain portion of the story and not for the whole thing.
RECOMMENDED - 8.5/10 (SURPRISINGLY GOOD)
So what kind of things did I hear, well, it started when I heard that like several other shows it had a censored and uncensored version but that it's censored version had to cut so much content that it was nearly unwatchable. I tested that theory, watched the first episode and during some of the scenes it would literally just spend a majority of the time focused on objects in the room rather than the characters themselves or what was going on. Like there is a scene where it just focuses on a flower, then scenes where it just zooms in on a fireplace, then lets add all of the censoring of parts (which to be fair is okay if that's your plan but at least be clever with your censoring not just black bars). Then I watched the episode again but uncensored, which is 100% the way the studio meant for it to be seen, honestly 100% of the plot can't be understood properly without the graphic detail that the uncensored version goes into. I'll explain the flower scene I mentioned, so you don't see anything but a bit of dialogue and then the flower pot, then more dialogue in the censored version, but in the uncensored version our hero Kaeyaru says to Princess Flare "if I break all your fingers and you don't scream, I'll let you go," and you hear and see each and every single snap and agonizing moment before he heals all of her fingers and then says "good job looks like we get to keep going" before he got to the last finger. Now while that doesn't sound like the things a hero would do or things we'd expect of a main protagonist or a likeable main character.......the thing is I don't think we're supposed to truly like anyone in this show outside of maybe two characters. But I'd say that's more realistic, we aren't supposed to like everyone in the real world and in a tale of pure revenge driven by hatred it's understandable why are protagonist is so shitty a person. I'll explain.
So Keyaru finds out he's a hero but that his healing magic is so painful to use because he has to experience all of the pain of whatever wound it is himself, it continuously puts a massive toll on his body, he asks to not do it. While initially Princess Flare agrees she deceives him, drugs him, forces him to heal people, continues to drug him, allows people sexually assault him, she treats him worse than garbage. He finds a way out of this by essentially killing the demon lord during their final fight and restarting his life, following information his past life left behind and gaining a narcotics tolerance, improving many aspects about his life so that when Princess Flare and the others came to get him and treat him awfully once again that he would get his revenge. It gets to be an intense story, there is a lot of gratuitous sex and violence in the story, it's not a great story but it was an interesting watch. It is very much so a plot driven hentai, just masking itself as an anime.
As for why I only have the song here and not a clip too................well like I said, the only way to truly watch this show is the uncensored version of it, therefore, YouTube has no clips and if I did find a censored clip I hear that this show is essentially unwatchable because 90% of the content is cut out.
I CAN'T RECOMMEND IT - 1/10
UNLESS YOU ARE OK WITH CERTAIN TYPES OF STORIES, LIKE THINGS THAT HAPPEN ARE TERRIBLE TO BOTH THE PROTAGONIST AND ANTAGONISTS...........ALSO IT'S ESSENTIALLY JUST A HENTAI DISGUISED AS AN ANIME.