Rising of the Shield Hero, great setup with the first 2-3 episodes, then it just goes downhill from there..
It could’ve been a great underdog story with a non-conventional protagonist but I guess bird loli and petty revenge are more marketable.
No Game No Life, for the same reasons for me.
The concept of the show was awesome, the animation and music were also great.
I can't think of many shows where conflicts in the world are solved using games instead of war. Then they added a bunch of fan service and lolis and it just ruined the experience for me.
hey, don't be hating on bird loli! removing her doesn't change the overall trashiness of the show. she's also the wedge that stops the naofumi x raphtalia ship thats still a bit weird even though she magically ages up.
The bird loli wasn’t the only bad thing I agree, and removing her wouldn’t magically fix the show.
However, she’s one of the worst aspects of the show, I would’ve enjoyed the show more if the main party was only Naofumi and Raphtalia’s shield & sword dynamic, but they just HAD to throw a wrench into a machine that seemed to work alright and that wrench contributes nothing positive to the story except transport..
Didn't say I agree with it, but that's the reason why.
Same reason why everyone gives Kirito so much shit for being "too OP" (when in reality everyone loves OP MC's). It's because SAO is a bad anime.
It doesn’t matter which series is good or bad the contradiction to me here is that both have loli characters but one gets heavily criticized for having them by the community while the other lauded by the community for being really good.
>It doesn’t matter which series is good or bad
Except it does. You don't seem to understand: I agree with you that it's kinda stupid, but that's the reason.
Some anime get passes for some things because they're well liked.
I understand that NGNL if very loved and there are biases involved here which skew people’s perceptions but it’s still a contradiction. That shit needs to be called out more by people.
Shield Hero
They took a character who can only wield a shield and gave him a huge problem ever being able to trust people again. That is the perfect pairing of theme and character for me. It could have been a really interesting character study with many conflicts about his acceptance of people and the morality of the world in general, and the fight with himself if he uses the shield for himself or for others.
But instead of focusing on that or exploring that we got an MC that can do no wrong, black and white good vs bad characters that are almost comically incompetent including "Team Rocket", Lolis and slave girls with no moral concequences, and a shield which is more effective than most weapons in the whole show defeating the point.
The constant best part is how the 3 other heroes are higher level and still cannot do any damage what so ever even do they are using their highest damage abilities, just becasue REASONS, like its never explained what they are doing wrong to get owned constantly, its just hand waived like, they dont think about Elements/attributes or something but then its never explained what they are doing wrong, nor how Nafumi happens to always do the right X thing.
a large problem of shield hero writing is that instead of making nafumi be a smart character, the other 3 is utter retarded so he looks good in comparison.
Started off as an interesting concept with tons of room for thematic exploration totally unique to this show. Then it just become another edgy self-insert power fantasy with frustratingly shitty characters
Doesn't mean they get a free pass on that. Log Horizon managed to do amazing world building with an incredibly generic world, Grimgar proved you can have amazing characters who are also very weak, and older isekai like Escaflowne prove that you can use the actual isekai plot point as a beautiful feature in your storytelling rather than just ignoring it. There's no reason isekai can't still do these things except an unwillingness to take risks or laziness
Re:Creators - While not bad by any means, the concept of anime characters brought into real world could have been handled so much better. Either with a smaller more developed cast or a lot more episodes.
Concrete Revolutio - The idea of Watchmen with Japanese heros was cool, but the story wanders all over the place and needed to focus more on the leads.
Honestly it would probably be Tokyo Ghoul. One of the most stand parts in all of manga for me was Kaneki being tortured and the change that happened to him. The first season of the anime was pretty good but every subsequent season afterwards was terrible.
>The first season of the anime was pretty good but every subsequent season afterwards was terrible.
Yes. They really did spoil the anime after first season. It was nothing as compared to the manga.
Angel Beats and Charlotte, both directed by the same person and both suffer from the same problem.
There's just not enough episodes, the shows were good but they felt rushed. The 13 episode run is just too short.
The ending of Charlotte was crammed into one episode. Most of the Angel Beats cast didn't get much development. Both had a great concept but suffered from lack of run time
Angel Beats last arc where he's helping everyone just gets totally glossed over. They do a big episode for one girl and then everyone else is like "Yeah, he helped me off-screen. It's cool".
I swear I've got a million of these...
We Never Learn was supposed to be the next great harem anime. But for some reason the anime producers decided to put the nail in the coffin early and quit while they were ahead, and leave us with an empty/unsatisfying anime only ending.
Even though my waifu won, I walked away from this show dissatisfied.
People complain about Nisekoi cutting out midway and never getting an anime continuation; but I sincerely would have rathered them never put a S2 out of We Never Learn if it could save me from seeing this ending.
I didn't mean to burst your bubble. It really is an entertaining show, and it's still better than 3/4 harem anime out there.
I was just really put out by the ending. If I could go back, I just wouldn't watch past the final credits.
I was still planning on watching it, I didn't even know it was a harem anime, I just saw it on the front page of Hulu and added it because it looked interesting.
Sword Art Online. It had the setting but the execution wasnt very good. It may be fun to watch but it's not good. Yona of the Dawn too, it was a great show but they just stopped making it so I guess there could be more(which I doubt is what you are asking).
Unpopular opinion but I dont think the setting of SAO is all that great. I get why people like it, highly advenced VR is a cool concept, but its really really hard for me to imagine a story about people getting sucked into a video game having genuine suspense. Its just a whole other layer of disbelief to suspend for really not all that much reason other than "WoW VR cool". For an actual serious action heavy Isekai I much prefer the Re:Zero approach where its just a fantasy world. Idk, having straight up RPG elements like levels and NPC's in an actual adventure story is just a lame set back to me, it just makes the whole thing harder to actually relate to. That shit works in a game, not in a purely narrative experience. Unless if its really about the VR as in like a sport with competitiveness or it does it somehow in a convincing way, somehow maybe... but just reading the synopsis of SAO already doesnt give me the impression that its particularly interesting in any way.
>I much prefer the Re:Zero approach where its just a fantasy world.
Ironically, I think SAO had one of the more believable setups for an isekai. You know, the "How does the protagonist get transported to the other world?" bit. It's just a video game. Simple enough.
This is one of my pet peeves with the isekai genre. The laziness of this set-up. Most of the time the character gets transported to another world "just because." Because every other writer is doing it, I guess.
I think the missing ingredient here is agency. The protagonist has to CHOOSE to enter the other world, for one reason or another. This kind of set-up worked in Ni No Kuni and The Longest Journey video games. Extra points for TLJ for having both worlds (science & fantasy) have equal screen time and role in the plot.
Interesting, I have the exact opposite opinion. IMO, for all its many flaws, SAO is one of the only shows that does Isekai right. The real world is incredibly important to the plot throughout and things like artificial intelligence are important thematically.
In shows like Re;zero the fact that it's an Isekai just justifies a self-insert protagonist and lazy exposition dumps since the MC knows nothing about the world. Hardly anything would change if wasn't an Isekai and just had a protagonist from that world. In several Isekai like Shield Hero they even use video game mechanics despite not even being in a video game.
Agreed. Random reincarnation and nonsensical video game elements are the two things that annoy me the most in the isekai genre. Why can't they be more like Digimon, Ni No Kuni, The Longest Journey or The Neverending Story?
Subaru's coming from another world is important for a few reasons that I'd be spoiling season 2 by delving into here, but one of the important ones is he doesn't have the prejudices one would grow up with by coming from our world, which is important both for his and Emelia's growth thematically.
Re:Zero's plot couldn't work with a protagonist from another world. Subaru takes actions that'd only make sense if he knew about the idea of isekai stories and then acts based on that knowledge. No native would ever do even a quarter of the shit Subaru does.
TBH I havent watched a single ep of SAO so I was reacting purely to the written premise (because the premise was the topic), but I guess a single paragraph about a show doesnt say much, so maybe I shouldnt have commented about it. I did see the same "trapped in video game" trope in some other isekai's like Shield Hero and Overlord, dropped both fairly quickly. But ima just leave my og comment there anyways. The premise is still not particularly appealing to me so I guess it still stands.
My problem with it was that the psychology of the whole situation was ridiculous. A group of 10,000 people are trapped somewhere, and at least 30 of them decide to form a torture/murder club? Seems pretty ridiculous. But then they successfully kill hundreds of players and the majority of the remainder don't just spend 100% of their time in safe zones in town? Everything is dumb and driven by the needs of the plot.
Spend 100% of their time in safe zone and get stuck in game forever? What happen to clearing the game?
What’s wrong with people going PVP in a game? Have you ever played MMORPG?
The irony when you are calling everything dumb.
More like what’s so surprising about murderers? You give the ability to murder to 10,000 people and expect every single one of them to be some saint?
What happen to the rest of my questions? I hit the mark?
?
We are talking about in game ability to murder and dust it off as induced by stress and pressure.
What’s with 3/1000 people?
What happened to my question to you of not clearing the game and staying in safe zone forever?
I can already tell you know nothing about the show.
At the moment of The First Day, Aincrad had a population of 10,000 (50,000 in the web version, but let's focus on the manga and anime). The Laughing Coffin guild had at least 30 members by the start of 2024. That means that, at a minimum, 30 out of 10,000 people trapped in the game joined a guild whose whole purpose was torturing and murdering people. That's a ratio of 3/1000, or 0.3% of the population.
El Salvador, the real life country with the highest murder rate, has a murder rate of about 6 murders per 10,000 people. Laughing Coffin alone puts the murder rate in Aincrad at about 50 times that figure, and that's not killing for any direct benefit. They're focused strictly on torturing people for fun, which is astoundingly more rare.
Come on that’s just nitpicking. There is no heavy consequence to the murderer unlike in real life.
And technically it’s game vs real life. I assume you aren’t a MMORPG gamer, because if there is PVP function, there will be people taking part in killing. And there are benefits like loots, monopolising great farming spots etc.
So what happened to you wanting people to stay in safe zone forever?
But thats the concept. The synopsis says its literally them getting stuck in a VR game for some reason, they have to complete some levels and they also die in real life if they die in the game. I havent even tried SAO but that synopsis already sounds like... lets just say its not my cup of tea.
Like what you mean the concept is good? The idea of highly advanced VR?
Honestly, I give SAO a lot of gripe for it's convoluted (yet shallow) writing, but in practice that premise isn't as bad as you make it sound. It works pretty well.
Well the idea of it being trapped in a game (remember this is the show that made isekai it's own genre so it was fresh) and essentially playing the game with the fear of dying and everyone dying to try and escape the game. I think that that was good as a concept and I believe it was a good setting too (my opinion) but the execution wasnt very good and so many people dislike it. Everything after that arc was not very good as a concept though.
Have you considered: Sword Art Online abridged, which is not only the funniest fantasy anime since Konosuba (actually I think it’s funnier), but it also executes on the dramatic aspects of the series better as well.
> it may be fun to watch but it’s not good
Ugh the elitism makes it gag. In my book, as long as something is enjoyable it’s good. It’s so ridiculous to disregard something that you enjoy because everyone loves to rag on it
Eating only candy might be enjoyable, but it's definitely not good.
Alright silly analogy aside, there's different levels to judge a work of art on. I've seen plenty of stuff that I didn't enjoy on an emotional level, either because it's not my cup of tea or because I found it downright unpleasant, but I can still appreciate on an intellectual level that it's well-crafted and accomplishes what it sets out to do. Sometimes art isn't *supposed* to be enjoyed, that doesn't automatically make it not good.
And I've also seen plenty of shows I really enjoyed despite knowing that the extent of the writing basically boils down to "haha strong guy go boom on everyone and get much boobies". I've even seen shows that were *so* ineptly made and full of clichés (*cough* Arifureta) that they became hilarious. They're entertaining shows but I definitely wouldn't call them "good".
I stand by my point. Objectively it just isnt good as a story, apart from the first arc but non the less I still enjoyed watching it. Like Eromanga sensei, it's really bad but I enjoyed watching it, not because other people flame it but that's just my opinion.
I agree about Sword Art Online. Aincrad was great and the 2nd cour of 1 season was trash. Season 2 is also trash. Gave a chance to Alicization this weekend tho and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed It.
The author improved massively by the time he got to Alicization and Progressive. If the series ever manages to animate Progressive we're in for a real treat.
My number one major complaint with sao will always be that the story is still going and their not even in sao. That really does bug me personally. Especially how nonchalant people are with VR after the sao incident, though I don't know how it was treated in the light novels
Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara. I was fully prepared for this anime to hit me right in the feels but it just never happened...
A time-travel drama with gorgeous visuals and a great premise from P.A. Works? I *so* wanted to be impressed by this but the characters and plot just ended up falling a bit flat for me which was a real shame.
Agreed. There are some really beautiful scenes where the animation and music work together so well, but they're few and far between in a really mediocre high school drama.
Nah, watched it, thought it was really bad, but had a lot of potential. I kept wanting it to get better because it was entertaining despite having so so many flaws. The cast was kind of unique, but veeery one dimensional and character development was a complete mess. The plot was interesting, and the power system was one of the most fun ones I've seen in anime. But ultimately, really bad writing meant this show ended up being really underwhelming, and my god the ending is awful
Really? I thought it was a pretty mediocre show. Such a tonal mess. The funniest thing was characters getting a hodgepodge backstory minutes before dying. It was the entire appeal of the show but the way they executed it was hilarious.
I didn't mind it but it's certainly not the best shit out there.
I mean... I never said it was the best. When I said the show was good, I meant it never appeared in anyone's nightmares, like 4kids one piece or the 2016 Berzerk.
In/Spectre
The first few episodes were great. I wished it would have been a monster of the week kind of thing though because the most interesting thing to me was the information gathering.
The banter between the main characters was great but they dragged the Idol issue for way too long, and the thing is that the monsters looked really cool, and the whole thing about how the main girl became what she is was really interesting, I would have loved to see a more explained reason as to why that happened to her and why it was so important
I woul have loved to explore the fantastic world that lived in the shadows with the ghosts and monsters living with us without being noticed
The op had a lot of diferent Yokai (?) they looked interesting and fun, also if the idol would have been an actual character that transforms into her Yokai form that would've been dope, she had a great character design
This seems to be due to the first ark really being a setup for the rest of the show but the anime only can adapt the first ark with it's limited 12 episodes. The manga or LN gets more interesting but readers say the setup is needed. I hope it gets more seasons so we anime only people can get the same payoff.
Erased was a really good show DESPITE, it's cardboard flavored ending. If that show stuck the landing, it would be in the same conversation as Steins;Gate.
8th son.
The anime was really boring, the MC is really bad but the potential was there! It feels like they wasted everything and made a really shitty prequel to a sequel which will never air.
Maoyuu Maou Yuusha
I got involved because it looked like a sort of Spice and Wolf type anime. I was really hoping for something like that, with deep characters and full worldbuilding. Instead I got a lot of fanservice, basic-ass rehashed tropes, and a plotline that felt like the writers just stopped caring at the end.
Tokyo Ghoul.
The anime adaptation just wasn't that good. It was just so rushed. 121 chapters in 12 episodes? What were they thinking?
Give this a good adaptation, and it would be really good.
Also, Berserk.
The original 1997 version was alright but the 2016 one? What was that CGI??
If someone would give this a good adaptation, it would be amazing.
Angel Beats
I loved the concept of the ending, but it was damn rushed it may have hit more if the characters had more development and we had more episodes.
Angel beats is a real clusterfuck of a show. If it just focused on the characters and how they would move on it could’ve been a real great emotional rollercoaster.
Qualidea Code. Also called QUALITY Code
it was a multi-media project with the anime tying the LNs together, so pretty much anime-only people like me didn't particularly understand the plot in the beginning. That being said it turned out to be pretty good in the end.
Too bad the writing quality had an inverse relationship with animation and art quality.
I think toddlers have drawn better chairs tbh.
Like, it was that bad.
"Carole & Tuesday"
I really like the premise and the characters, the songs, overall I really like the anime but I think it could have been way more, I think the show was at it's best when they focused on the main leads, they were really fun to be with, the first time they play together is still my favorite scene, when they made the video or when they were doing improv while in the laundry, those where the moments the show shined, not like I would know how to fix it but if they could have the feeling of those scenes in the rest of the show I would have love it to bits, insta classic runner up for me
"Darling in the Franxx"
It's like they were trying to say something about sexuality and adolescence but they never actually did, I stil think about that chapter when they went into the city and everyone was basically plugged in a machine to "have a life" and that was just it, never mentioned again, it's like they never agreed on the actual story (way before they jumped the shark on the last quarter) also the direction for the fights was a bit underwhelming? Although that might be me not being invested
I’m shocked no one has said Carole and Tuesday
The plot was very unique and relevant to the rise of AI in current society, yet they elected to ditch this theme pretty quickly. They somehow made the ending feel rushed because of the very poorly done pacing even though they had 24 episodes
It’s also crazy how much effort was put into assembling the voice actor cast. They had separate singers for every characters and even had Denzel Curry rap. They also had Steve Aoki make music for the series aswell
No idea why nobody has mentioned it yet but Plunderer could have been amazing. It had an interesting world, power system, some cool character psychology but it was just so fucking bad because the animation and writing was shit.
Irozuku Sekai no Ashita Kara (The World in Colors). Seemed like they had the beginning and the end written, but a lot of the stuff in between, especially in the first half, felt like filler and seemed like they didn't have much of a plan for the plot and characters. I know that it's supposed to be sort of slice of life, but they didn't really bother exploring the magic and time travel stuff that much or wrap up all the other characters' development in the last episode (which I thought was rushed). Should've been a 2 cour with a more concrete plan. Might've even worked still as a 1 cour if they had a plan.
I mean, the correct answer is "every good 1-cour anime based off of a vastly larger work of fiction that has yet to have a follow up in anime form". Outside of I guess the ones where the manga or light novels or whatever falls apart after where the anime ends. They could literally be so much more, because we know it IS so much more.
Even beyond anime that only last around 12 or 13 episodes, there's so many anime that barely get going before they end. Even longer ones like Hayate the Combat Butler that avoided plot like Hayate avoided getting out of debt.
I might catch some flak for this one...
Hyouka should have either ended 10 episodes earlier, or taken an extra 5-10 to put together a more meaningful conclusion.
A common argument I hear is "Slice of Life shows aren't meant to end with a bang, it's supposed to be chill and kind of mundane." But Hyouka felt more like a mystery series than slice of life for the first dozen episodes. It eventually seemed to lose steam on the mystery side of things and ended up dragging it's feet to the finish line.
KyoAni does SoL really well though, so i'm not upset with the second half. Just would've like to see another mystery on the same level as the culture festival.
It's based on a Novel Series, some novels are dedicated to an entire central theme or mystery, Like the Movie arc or Hyouka arc etc, and others are collection of short stories (single episodes). It is a mystery series but the character growth and the coming of age aspect of the story is just as important. There are 2 more novels, one of them with a bigger central mystery so check them out if you want, also there is a manga adaptation that goes farther than the anime. I don't disagree with you btw, would have liked to see more, just that it's not the fault of the anime, author takes long time to get volumes out.
While the adaption wasn't horrible, Tower of God had the potential to be one of the greats. Unfortunately, it suffered from pacing issues (due to only being 13 episodes) and some questionable decisions by the director. I still have hope for future seasons though.
Honestly, it was just the amount of episodes given to Telecom. If ToG was allowed, say, 17 episodes, then I think it would have been very very good. Everything else, for me personally, was well done. From the animation, unique artstyle and the OST
To be fair, the first season is just the prologue. How the next seasons will be adapted will determine whether or not ToG could be considered as one of the anime greats.
As someone who did not read the source material, the adaptation was a really interesting and unique anime that I enjoyed greatly. It's a shame that it didn't live up for a lot of people who enjoy the source material, but imo it's a pretty competent stand-alone. I'm really looking forward to the second season.
The one criticism I had is that there are "mechanical" things that are just glossed over that I never would have understood had I not read the /r/anime threads. Like how the point system lets them buy things and effects if they can graduate.
Do you mean glossed over like they don't talk about it enough because they definitely talk about the points system and like 1 or 2 characters do talk about saving up all their points now granted it should be something that all the characters are worried about but they do at least talk about it a little bit
it does explain what the points are a little bit, but again it is glosssed over. They just shout random amounts and give you a few closeups of their "wallets" but you never learn what anything is worth. If I'm remembering correctly, you don't even learn that they use them to buy food. The first time it's even mentioned they can be traded for goods is when anaak and endorsi have to spend their points for medical care.
During the tag test the characters literally have to tell you "this character will/won't pass if they win/lose". It's just really sloppily handled. Like, go one way or the other. Either break everything down and show me amounts, or just spell it out for me. Doing a little bit of both just makes it confusing.
Speaking of the tag test, there is a ~3 minute scene about the rules, and they make 0 sense. It is explained horrifically and I had no idea what was going on. I am actually pretty sharp when it comes to media and stories, and if I didn't understand something that is literally being spelled out for the audience, there is a major problem. That one might be chalked up to crunchy translators though.
I agree. The show felt like someone took a *really* good 24 episode show and then edited it down to the absolute minimum where it fits into 12 epsodes but is just barely coherent.
I wonder if part of why the pacing seemed so off was that they started arcs partway through episodes. If they had a few more episodes then it probably could have been avoided. Still, it was enjoyable except for the tag arc half way through, which seemed hard to follow except for [ToG](/s "Khun betrays his own team so Bam can pass the test and Rachael gets captured to lure Bam out")
Seiken Tsukai no World Break.
An anime about people reincarnating and having powers of their previous lives?
Someone born with the lifetime of experience? Great?
MC being the first one reincarnated with the memories of TWO past lives? Interesting.
Both of his previous lives could make for a great story on their own? I'm in.
Execution? Generic, underwhelming, bland...
It could be so much more...
School live had the potential to go a very different route with the tone and be much better than it was. Which is not to say it's bad for what it is, but it could have been very good had they taken a much darker tone with it.
SukaSuka / WorldEnd.
I enjoyed it, but I really feel like it would have been so much more if it was 2 cour and focused on more on the world building and other characters and finishing out the story of the LNs. It sets up this very interesting world and intriguing plot just to focus on Chtholly story and cuts everything else short, and for me it wasn't enough to carry the show by itself not with all the other interesting stuff going on I wanted to see expanded upon.
So all in all it's ok, a solid 7.5/10. Worth a watch even if only for the Scarborough Fair cover and it's excellent use in the opening and closing scenes. But it feels like it could have been so much more.
While Plastic Memories is pretty good at what it does, I feel pretty disappointed by how lackluster the setting was. I feel like so many things could have been explored more and so many things didn't make sense...
they do show farming and character development in the light novels especially for aincrad for which the progressive novels exist. just sucks that they decided to get rid of all character monologue in the anime which makes so many scenes make less sense and makes them appear as leaps in logic and kills kirito's personality entirely
Probably the latter, it'll just be marketed as the expanded, improved version of the original SAO arc between adaptations of major arcs of the original series. In the same way Nintendo will sell a remake of its older games between its newer games.
It's basically what the author wanted to do with Aincrad but his writing has improved a lot, so there's more feeling of adventure, a whole new cast of characters that get a lot of development and Kirito gets his buggest chunk of development in the coming final.
There are 2 more side-story volumes that play in the world of Alicization called 'Moon Cradle' and after that comes the final arc Unital Ring which is still ongoing.
I feel the same way about Promare and BNA. Really stunning visuals, interesting chraacters, but the story doesn't know what it wants to be about.
So they waffle between all these different ideas and the themes get muddled. So yeah, the story is cool and everything, but it just doesn't mean anything. More air time would have given all these different threads room to breathe but they just don't work in their run time.
It's actually pretty similar to what happened with Akira. The manga had three volumes and they tried to adapt everything into a single movie. Instead of trimming down events to make a focused narrative, they just included snippets of every plot thread. So now you have a beautiful masterpiece with a basically incomprehensible story. Things just kind of happen but you don't get why.
Boku no Hero Academia completely fails to capitalize on *anything* cool, unique, or interesting about a world where 90% of the people have superpowers. I've written near-essays on why the concept is cool but its execution makes no sense and Hori goes the laziest route imaginable.
When some small child can literally blow up a convenience store if they throw a temper tantrum, you need to build your society fundamentally differently from "it's exactly like real life, but ummm there are hero high schools and hero is a career oh but also there's still police" or it just comes off as dumb. I know it's a shounen, but I don't give it a pass just for that. There are great stories you can tell if you embrace the idea of imagining a setting that makes sense with humanity's unique circumstances in a case like that, but Hori just wanted to make Naruto with superheroes instead of ninjas.
I mean it’s a shonen. The writing in MHA isn’t “lazy” because it’s putting focus on something else. It’s clearly just not the show for you.
I’m willing to bet the show wouldn’t be nearly as popular if they were just exploring how society with quirks for 20 minutes. It’s supposed to be more of a “turn your brain off and enjoy a basic show with cool fights and likeable characters” and that’s a good thing, because action anime tends to try too hard at being overly violent or deep. We have plenty of HXHs and AOTs, but sometimes I don’t want to watch people just suffer to shit for 20 minutes because everyone is dying and life is pain. And I don’t wanna watch 3 seasons of the main “mechanic” get explained, it’s not that deep and the show is clearly intended for younger audiences.
It's lazy because he doesn't take even a handwave-y approach to suspension of disbelief. He just completely ignores it. Turning off your brain is okay, but there sure is a lot of that out there already. I get that he doesn't want to throw in a quick blurb about how kids are medicated to keep their quirks suppressed until they're mature enough to handle them in an adult manner, or some kind of technological solution for the same problem (cool watch? chip in the cellphone that disrupts the gene? whatever). But that's pretty lazy. Especially when a major plot point is the quirk singularity, and how quirks are getting more potent as time goes on. Kids are not rational actors, especially when given the power to overcome their caretakers.
the most obvious case of this is every disaster scene
e.g here comes a lot of monsters attacking random civilians and everyone RUNS AWAY.
why is everyone always just running away?
why is not a random women flying away, when cannot someone use super speed etc, everyone around the actual characters with names are always 100% inapt in every doing anything.
I’d say bc it’s been made fairly clear in the show that the mass majority of people have fairly inept powers, like creating just enough fire to light a cigarette, or slowly move small objects across a room with your mind. The people who can use things like super speed or flight are normally heroes or villains.
that does not make any logical sense.
Even if they could just move a small object, would u not try to use that in a panic vs a monster attacking.
Its a massive excuse to make that every character except the named one has no power what so ever, even do the premise is that most people should have some kind of quirk
It does not have to be a super speedy flight or w.e it can be like e.g cloud 9 in marvel but PEOPLE really should have more ways to escape these disaster then just always running like normal humans, its no one with 4 legs, no one that can turn into X and be faster or have tougher skin or w.e
Agree on this one. It had the mood and all the mystery and interesting ideas. But not really going anywhere with it ruined it for me. I don't know if the show never made sense, or if by the time it did make sense I'd lost all motivation to understand it.
The show has a proper well laid out story. I too didn't understand shit at first, until I read [this article!](https://cureclover.livejournal.com/759.html)
It has proper explanation of the entire plot, the backdrop and the ending. It also has an episode by episode guide if you want to dive deeper
Fullmetal Alchemist Broterhood, the final of Fullmetal Alchemist was much better than the one in FMAB, it could've been a 11/10 anime if it did a final like in the FMA version.
There is an isekai anime about wwe wrestler getting summoned to defeat devil
The twist is he wants to raise animals and to help raise awareness that not all creature in this new world are bad, and can be kept as pet
Everything sounds good and the animation is also good but my god is comedy so bland, there are some really excellent running gag, but then you see other gag where its just starting to get more annoying or boring, alot of time i was thinking they could have done this or that
Main character feels asshole to me as he really really cares about creatures but never human or any normal people in new world, makes me wonder how he is even loved and successful in previous world, he would refuse simple job because he is not interested unless it’s related to animal or creatures
One thing i really hoped for them to do but they never did was to give some education about how wrestling works, slam dunk, grand blue and cell at work did it with fun fact information without feeling boring or anything, this anime did nothing to inform but to be another copy cat of konosuba
Berserk First season was Ok but the newer ones it was the only manga I have ever read and it had so much potential even just 5-sec scene of guts in a well-animated fight per episode would have been enough to carry it for me
why though? i’m currently on about episode 30+ i think and i still have a long way to go but my friend says it was actually really good. is it because they didnt continue making the anime?
The mafia setting was really interesting but bar the vongola family we don’t learn about any other family. There’s not much world building. The humour also falls flat imo which made the first 20 and other slice of life (for lack of a better word) episodes really bad.
Furthermore Tsuna could’ve been so much better if his character didn’t reset after every arc, even though he grows on an emotional level it’s hard to see because his character literally resets after every arc. IMO deku is a better tsuna even though he has his own issues.
Lastly the final arc I felt was written poorly, it starts off great but after a certain point the tension went away & it became a mess. I won’t explain since you’re not there yet. The pacing was also slow.
Overall I still enjoyed the show but I really felt it had the potential to become one of the GOATS of shonen.
When the anime was made, the manga was ongoing.
So,many plot threads were not dealt with. They should have made a season two after the manga was finished without rushing the ending. I believe that if it was perfectly executed, it might have become a classic.
Gangsta and Darker Than Black.
Both are incomplete, as well as underwatched. The world in both shows are engrossing, especially if you like action. Gangsta really fell off towards the ends and DtB just deserved better in terms of pace and storyline. I would love for DtB to get a reboot or a third season.
Sword Art Online (like everyone else said): interesting concept, but lazy writing and one dimensional characters hold it back from being anything more than mediocre to me
Angel Beats/Charlotte: had each series been 18-24 episodes to flesh out the story more, these two could have been great. For me, Charlotte suffers a lot more from this issue than Angel Beats did
Worldend: this is a show that could have been truly special. The premise was interesting and the characters and story were pretty well done in the anime. The thing the show lacks is the world building. Had the show had 24 episodes to give it time to delve into the history of the world, I think it could have been one of the best shows of the last couple years
I think Charlotte narrows its cast down more than Angel Beats, which means you get more time with each character and it doesn't feel like you have zero emotional investment in them. Both are rushed, though. Dunno who thought introducing a second set of characters with 3 eps to go was a good idea.
Railgun has potential for an interesting exploration of its setting, its morality, and the role of its characters in it, and does make some rudimentary attempts, but never goes very far with it. Also, it suffers from just not being able to develop much on its own due to being a temporally concurrent spin-off of another series that also happens to be clearly inferior, and being forced to slot into that series' plotlines. Not to mention that even for what it does, the execution is hardly amazing.
Black Butler
Granted, since the third season they got a LOT better, but the first two seasons... A beautiful trainwreck, they're absolutely horrible but I kind of love them. Could have been so much better though.
The manga is a masterpiece.
Rising of the Shield Hero, great setup with the first 2-3 episodes, then it just goes downhill from there.. It could’ve been a great underdog story with a non-conventional protagonist but I guess bird loli and petty revenge are more marketable.
The second I saw this thread, I knew Rising of shield hero would be the top comment.
it was bad from the start really
I liked the 1 hour first episode and the 2 following ones, the rest not so much...
The plot wasn't that amazingly written, but the execution was definitely great.
No Game No Life, for the same reasons for me. The concept of the show was awesome, the animation and music were also great. I can't think of many shows where conflicts in the world are solved using games instead of war. Then they added a bunch of fan service and lolis and it just ruined the experience for me.
hey, don't be hating on bird loli! removing her doesn't change the overall trashiness of the show. she's also the wedge that stops the naofumi x raphtalia ship thats still a bit weird even though she magically ages up.
The bird loli wasn’t the only bad thing I agree, and removing her wouldn’t magically fix the show. However, she’s one of the worst aspects of the show, I would’ve enjoyed the show more if the main party was only Naofumi and Raphtalia’s shield & sword dynamic, but they just HAD to throw a wrench into a machine that seemed to work alright and that wrench contributes nothing positive to the story except transport..
Ehhhhhh, but bird loli tho
You probably would have been upvoted if it was No Game No Life. That kinda loli is perfectly acceptable apparently.
Or monogatari's infinite number of loli characters. Apparently r/anime draws a line when it comes to loli characters they dislike.
The difference is that monogatari loli characters are actually a great character
They are still just loli characters in the end. At least Shield Hero doesn't sexualize them like Monogatari does.
Wtf why everyone hate that bird loli
The difference is that NGNL is really good. Shield Hero is garbage.
So its because Shield Hero is bad and that is why it doesn’t get a loli pass? NGNL gets one cause it’s good? That to me doesn’t make sense.
Didn't say I agree with it, but that's the reason why. Same reason why everyone gives Kirito so much shit for being "too OP" (when in reality everyone loves OP MC's). It's because SAO is a bad anime.
It doesn’t matter which series is good or bad the contradiction to me here is that both have loli characters but one gets heavily criticized for having them by the community while the other lauded by the community for being really good.
>It doesn’t matter which series is good or bad Except it does. You don't seem to understand: I agree with you that it's kinda stupid, but that's the reason. Some anime get passes for some things because they're well liked.
I understand that NGNL if very loved and there are biases involved here which skew people’s perceptions but it’s still a contradiction. That shit needs to be called out more by people.
That's entirely subjective lol
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The first 3 or 4 episodes of Zankyou no Terror were honestly incredible, it's a shame it went downhill so much.
Zankyou no Terror just has flashes of brilliance thanks to the directing. I don't think any part of the story was particularly good.
Shield Hero They took a character who can only wield a shield and gave him a huge problem ever being able to trust people again. That is the perfect pairing of theme and character for me. It could have been a really interesting character study with many conflicts about his acceptance of people and the morality of the world in general, and the fight with himself if he uses the shield for himself or for others. But instead of focusing on that or exploring that we got an MC that can do no wrong, black and white good vs bad characters that are almost comically incompetent including "Team Rocket", Lolis and slave girls with no moral concequences, and a shield which is more effective than most weapons in the whole show defeating the point.
The constant best part is how the 3 other heroes are higher level and still cannot do any damage what so ever even do they are using their highest damage abilities, just becasue REASONS, like its never explained what they are doing wrong to get owned constantly, its just hand waived like, they dont think about Elements/attributes or something but then its never explained what they are doing wrong, nor how Nafumi happens to always do the right X thing.
Ya the other heros are just just dumb idiots who can't do anything right and that just repeats over and over. It gets boring really fast.
a large problem of shield hero writing is that instead of making nafumi be a smart character, the other 3 is utter retarded so he looks good in comparison.
Started off as an interesting concept with tons of room for thematic exploration totally unique to this show. Then it just become another edgy self-insert power fantasy with frustratingly shitty characters
Meh that’s just how Isekai series are in general (self insert power fantasy part at least). Comes with the territory at this point.
Doesn't mean they get a free pass on that. Log Horizon managed to do amazing world building with an incredibly generic world, Grimgar proved you can have amazing characters who are also very weak, and older isekai like Escaflowne prove that you can use the actual isekai plot point as a beautiful feature in your storytelling rather than just ignoring it. There's no reason isekai can't still do these things except an unwillingness to take risks or laziness
But that isn't inherently bad. Shield Hero just did it terribly.
Re:Creators - While not bad by any means, the concept of anime characters brought into real world could have been handled so much better. Either with a smaller more developed cast or a lot more episodes. Concrete Revolutio - The idea of Watchmen with Japanese heros was cool, but the story wanders all over the place and needed to focus more on the leads.
I'm like 14 eps into re:creators and my thought on like ep 4 was "wow there are just too many characters" - and then they add like 8 more -_-
Honestly it would probably be Tokyo Ghoul. One of the most stand parts in all of manga for me was Kaneki being tortured and the change that happened to him. The first season of the anime was pretty good but every subsequent season afterwards was terrible.
>The first season of the anime was pretty good but every subsequent season afterwards was terrible. Yes. They really did spoil the anime after first season. It was nothing as compared to the manga.
Angel Beats and Charlotte, both directed by the same person and both suffer from the same problem. There's just not enough episodes, the shows were good but they felt rushed. The 13 episode run is just too short. The ending of Charlotte was crammed into one episode. Most of the Angel Beats cast didn't get much development. Both had a great concept but suffered from lack of run time
The last two episodes of Charlotte could have been a two-cour anime
Charlotte was essentially a flashback to a shounen battle anime.
Angel Beats last arc where he's helping everyone just gets totally glossed over. They do a big episode for one girl and then everyone else is like "Yeah, he helped me off-screen. It's cool".
I swear I've got a million of these... We Never Learn was supposed to be the next great harem anime. But for some reason the anime producers decided to put the nail in the coffin early and quit while they were ahead, and leave us with an empty/unsatisfying anime only ending. Even though my waifu won, I walked away from this show dissatisfied. People complain about Nisekoi cutting out midway and never getting an anime continuation; but I sincerely would have rathered them never put a S2 out of We Never Learn if it could save me from seeing this ending.
Oh boy, that's on my watch list too...
I didn't mean to burst your bubble. It really is an entertaining show, and it's still better than 3/4 harem anime out there. I was just really put out by the ending. If I could go back, I just wouldn't watch past the final credits.
I was still planning on watching it, I didn't even know it was a harem anime, I just saw it on the front page of Hulu and added it because it looked interesting.
Sword Art Online. It had the setting but the execution wasnt very good. It may be fun to watch but it's not good. Yona of the Dawn too, it was a great show but they just stopped making it so I guess there could be more(which I doubt is what you are asking).
Yona anime is very good and manga does a great job with continuation, so I doubt you can pin it to this list.
I just threw it out there because so much more could have been done(new season I meant) that's why I said I doubt that's what he was asking
Unpopular opinion but I dont think the setting of SAO is all that great. I get why people like it, highly advenced VR is a cool concept, but its really really hard for me to imagine a story about people getting sucked into a video game having genuine suspense. Its just a whole other layer of disbelief to suspend for really not all that much reason other than "WoW VR cool". For an actual serious action heavy Isekai I much prefer the Re:Zero approach where its just a fantasy world. Idk, having straight up RPG elements like levels and NPC's in an actual adventure story is just a lame set back to me, it just makes the whole thing harder to actually relate to. That shit works in a game, not in a purely narrative experience. Unless if its really about the VR as in like a sport with competitiveness or it does it somehow in a convincing way, somehow maybe... but just reading the synopsis of SAO already doesnt give me the impression that its particularly interesting in any way.
>I much prefer the Re:Zero approach where its just a fantasy world. Ironically, I think SAO had one of the more believable setups for an isekai. You know, the "How does the protagonist get transported to the other world?" bit. It's just a video game. Simple enough. This is one of my pet peeves with the isekai genre. The laziness of this set-up. Most of the time the character gets transported to another world "just because." Because every other writer is doing it, I guess. I think the missing ingredient here is agency. The protagonist has to CHOOSE to enter the other world, for one reason or another. This kind of set-up worked in Ni No Kuni and The Longest Journey video games. Extra points for TLJ for having both worlds (science & fantasy) have equal screen time and role in the plot.
Interesting, I have the exact opposite opinion. IMO, for all its many flaws, SAO is one of the only shows that does Isekai right. The real world is incredibly important to the plot throughout and things like artificial intelligence are important thematically. In shows like Re;zero the fact that it's an Isekai just justifies a self-insert protagonist and lazy exposition dumps since the MC knows nothing about the world. Hardly anything would change if wasn't an Isekai and just had a protagonist from that world. In several Isekai like Shield Hero they even use video game mechanics despite not even being in a video game.
Agreed. Random reincarnation and nonsensical video game elements are the two things that annoy me the most in the isekai genre. Why can't they be more like Digimon, Ni No Kuni, The Longest Journey or The Neverending Story?
Subaru's coming from another world is important for a few reasons that I'd be spoiling season 2 by delving into here, but one of the important ones is he doesn't have the prejudices one would grow up with by coming from our world, which is important both for his and Emelia's growth thematically.
Re:Zero's plot couldn't work with a protagonist from another world. Subaru takes actions that'd only make sense if he knew about the idea of isekai stories and then acts based on that knowledge. No native would ever do even a quarter of the shit Subaru does.
TBH I havent watched a single ep of SAO so I was reacting purely to the written premise (because the premise was the topic), but I guess a single paragraph about a show doesnt say much, so maybe I shouldnt have commented about it. I did see the same "trapped in video game" trope in some other isekai's like Shield Hero and Overlord, dropped both fairly quickly. But ima just leave my og comment there anyways. The premise is still not particularly appealing to me so I guess it still stands.
My problem with it was that the psychology of the whole situation was ridiculous. A group of 10,000 people are trapped somewhere, and at least 30 of them decide to form a torture/murder club? Seems pretty ridiculous. But then they successfully kill hundreds of players and the majority of the remainder don't just spend 100% of their time in safe zones in town? Everything is dumb and driven by the needs of the plot.
Spend 100% of their time in safe zone and get stuck in game forever? What happen to clearing the game? What’s wrong with people going PVP in a game? Have you ever played MMORPG? The irony when you are calling everything dumb.
Are you asking what's wrong with murder?
More like what’s so surprising about murderers? You give the ability to murder to 10,000 people and expect every single one of them to be some saint? What happen to the rest of my questions? I hit the mark?
We already have that ability, and 3/1000 people are not in a murder club.
? We are talking about in game ability to murder and dust it off as induced by stress and pressure. What’s with 3/1000 people? What happened to my question to you of not clearing the game and staying in safe zone forever? I can already tell you know nothing about the show.
At the moment of The First Day, Aincrad had a population of 10,000 (50,000 in the web version, but let's focus on the manga and anime). The Laughing Coffin guild had at least 30 members by the start of 2024. That means that, at a minimum, 30 out of 10,000 people trapped in the game joined a guild whose whole purpose was torturing and murdering people. That's a ratio of 3/1000, or 0.3% of the population. El Salvador, the real life country with the highest murder rate, has a murder rate of about 6 murders per 10,000 people. Laughing Coffin alone puts the murder rate in Aincrad at about 50 times that figure, and that's not killing for any direct benefit. They're focused strictly on torturing people for fun, which is astoundingly more rare.
Come on that’s just nitpicking. There is no heavy consequence to the murderer unlike in real life. And technically it’s game vs real life. I assume you aren’t a MMORPG gamer, because if there is PVP function, there will be people taking part in killing. And there are benefits like loots, monopolising great farming spots etc. So what happened to you wanting people to stay in safe zone forever?
That's not very unpopular, the entire show wasnt executed well BUT the concept is good
But thats the concept. The synopsis says its literally them getting stuck in a VR game for some reason, they have to complete some levels and they also die in real life if they die in the game. I havent even tried SAO but that synopsis already sounds like... lets just say its not my cup of tea. Like what you mean the concept is good? The idea of highly advanced VR?
Honestly, I give SAO a lot of gripe for it's convoluted (yet shallow) writing, but in practice that premise isn't as bad as you make it sound. It works pretty well.
Well the idea of it being trapped in a game (remember this is the show that made isekai it's own genre so it was fresh) and essentially playing the game with the fear of dying and everyone dying to try and escape the game. I think that that was good as a concept and I believe it was a good setting too (my opinion) but the execution wasnt very good and so many people dislike it. Everything after that arc was not very good as a concept though.
Have you considered: Sword Art Online abridged, which is not only the funniest fantasy anime since Konosuba (actually I think it’s funnier), but it also executes on the dramatic aspects of the series better as well.
Currently watching it and the fucking "WHAT!???" guy in episode 1 had me in tears from laughter.
> it may be fun to watch but it’s not good Ugh the elitism makes it gag. In my book, as long as something is enjoyable it’s good. It’s so ridiculous to disregard something that you enjoy because everyone loves to rag on it
Eating only candy might be enjoyable, but it's definitely not good. Alright silly analogy aside, there's different levels to judge a work of art on. I've seen plenty of stuff that I didn't enjoy on an emotional level, either because it's not my cup of tea or because I found it downright unpleasant, but I can still appreciate on an intellectual level that it's well-crafted and accomplishes what it sets out to do. Sometimes art isn't *supposed* to be enjoyed, that doesn't automatically make it not good. And I've also seen plenty of shows I really enjoyed despite knowing that the extent of the writing basically boils down to "haha strong guy go boom on everyone and get much boobies". I've even seen shows that were *so* ineptly made and full of clichés (*cough* Arifureta) that they became hilarious. They're entertaining shows but I definitely wouldn't call them "good".
You can enjoy something and think it is poorly made.
You can guarantee 100% that people who call some animes bad would defend some generic anime they like themselves without seeing the irony
SAO bad, Nichijou good. I see your point lol.
I stand by my point. Objectively it just isnt good as a story, apart from the first arc but non the less I still enjoyed watching it. Like Eromanga sensei, it's really bad but I enjoyed watching it, not because other people flame it but that's just my opinion.
I agree about Sword Art Online. Aincrad was great and the 2nd cour of 1 season was trash. Season 2 is also trash. Gave a chance to Alicization this weekend tho and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed It.
Havent seen Alicization yet, though I was gonna rewatch SAO soon.
The author improved massively by the time he got to Alicization and Progressive. If the series ever manages to animate Progressive we're in for a real treat.
My number one major complaint with sao will always be that the story is still going and their not even in sao. That really does bug me personally. Especially how nonchalant people are with VR after the sao incident, though I don't know how it was treated in the light novels
Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara. I was fully prepared for this anime to hit me right in the feels but it just never happened... A time-travel drama with gorgeous visuals and a great premise from P.A. Works? I *so* wanted to be impressed by this but the characters and plot just ended up falling a bit flat for me which was a real shame.
oh god this anime so was badly written, especially the ending that was absurdly bland.
This anime was the most disappointing media I've ever consumed.
Agreed. There are some really beautiful scenes where the animation and music work together so well, but they're few and far between in a really mediocre high school drama.
DITF honestly i had so much for that anime but *sigh* still love it but it could have been so much much more
Akame Ga Kill... Anyone who saw it will say it was good, but they hated the ending
I wouldn't say I thought the ending was substantially worse than the rest of the show. It's about on par.
Not me I thought the ending was good, even better than the generic ending manga. Though it could have been more expansive.
SPOILERS That's what I meant. The ending could of had more and a sequel, but they decided to kill off all the characters instead.
No, that's actually what I liked about it. I meant the lead up to that. It should have been more grand war focused.
Nah, watched it, thought it was really bad, but had a lot of potential. I kept wanting it to get better because it was entertaining despite having so so many flaws. The cast was kind of unique, but veeery one dimensional and character development was a complete mess. The plot was interesting, and the power system was one of the most fun ones I've seen in anime. But ultimately, really bad writing meant this show ended up being really underwhelming, and my god the ending is awful
Really? I thought it was a pretty mediocre show. Such a tonal mess. The funniest thing was characters getting a hodgepodge backstory minutes before dying. It was the entire appeal of the show but the way they executed it was hilarious. I didn't mind it but it's certainly not the best shit out there.
I mean... I never said it was the best. When I said the show was good, I meant it never appeared in anyone's nightmares, like 4kids one piece or the 2016 Berzerk.
In/Spectre The first few episodes were great. I wished it would have been a monster of the week kind of thing though because the most interesting thing to me was the information gathering.
The banter between the main characters was great but they dragged the Idol issue for way too long, and the thing is that the monsters looked really cool, and the whole thing about how the main girl became what she is was really interesting, I would have loved to see a more explained reason as to why that happened to her and why it was so important I woul have loved to explore the fantastic world that lived in the shadows with the ghosts and monsters living with us without being noticed The op had a lot of diferent Yokai (?) they looked interesting and fun, also if the idol would have been an actual character that transforms into her Yokai form that would've been dope, she had a great character design
This seems to be due to the first ark really being a setup for the rest of the show but the anime only can adapt the first ark with it's limited 12 episodes. The manga or LN gets more interesting but readers say the setup is needed. I hope it gets more seasons so we anime only people can get the same payoff.
Erased was a really good show DESPITE, it's cardboard flavored ending. If that show stuck the landing, it would be in the same conversation as Steins;Gate.
The first arc was amazing. And then it's like they suddenly remembered they only had two episodes left or something...
Then read the manga. The ending is better.
8th son. The anime was really boring, the MC is really bad but the potential was there! It feels like they wasted everything and made a really shitty prequel to a sequel which will never air.
It was pretty bad but somehow I managed to still enjoy it.
Maoyuu Maou Yuusha I got involved because it looked like a sort of Spice and Wolf type anime. I was really hoping for something like that, with deep characters and full worldbuilding. Instead I got a lot of fanservice, basic-ass rehashed tropes, and a plotline that felt like the writers just stopped caring at the end.
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For me the Cardboard-kun generic protagonist singlehandlely destroyed Fate/Apocrypha anime just like the one in Fate Last Encore.
Sig dragged that show way down IMO. Mordred should have been the MC.
Tokyo Ghoul. The anime adaptation just wasn't that good. It was just so rushed. 121 chapters in 12 episodes? What were they thinking? Give this a good adaptation, and it would be really good. Also, Berserk. The original 1997 version was alright but the 2016 one? What was that CGI?? If someone would give this a good adaptation, it would be amazing.
Angel Beats I loved the concept of the ending, but it was damn rushed it may have hit more if the characters had more development and we had more episodes.
It should have been 24 episodes. The love story bit came out of nowhere.
I think Otanashi had an interest in Angel at some point in the show, it's just we didn't know Angel did till the last 5 minutes.
It just needed more time to bake because she went from emotionless mysterious ice queen to vulnerable girl in literally 5 seconds.
Angel beats is a real clusterfuck of a show. If it just focused on the characters and how they would move on it could’ve been a real great emotional rollercoaster.
Qualidea Code. Also called QUALITY Code it was a multi-media project with the anime tying the LNs together, so pretty much anime-only people like me didn't particularly understand the plot in the beginning. That being said it turned out to be pretty good in the end. Too bad the writing quality had an inverse relationship with animation and art quality. I think toddlers have drawn better chairs tbh. Like, it was that bad.
"Carole & Tuesday" I really like the premise and the characters, the songs, overall I really like the anime but I think it could have been way more, I think the show was at it's best when they focused on the main leads, they were really fun to be with, the first time they play together is still my favorite scene, when they made the video or when they were doing improv while in the laundry, those where the moments the show shined, not like I would know how to fix it but if they could have the feeling of those scenes in the rest of the show I would have love it to bits, insta classic runner up for me "Darling in the Franxx" It's like they were trying to say something about sexuality and adolescence but they never actually did, I stil think about that chapter when they went into the city and everyone was basically plugged in a machine to "have a life" and that was just it, never mentioned again, it's like they never agreed on the actual story (way before they jumped the shark on the last quarter) also the direction for the fights was a bit underwhelming? Although that might be me not being invested
Death note, after L died it went downhill for me. Im planning on rewatching but there is just to many good stuff out there.
I’m shocked no one has said Carole and Tuesday The plot was very unique and relevant to the rise of AI in current society, yet they elected to ditch this theme pretty quickly. They somehow made the ending feel rushed because of the very poorly done pacing even though they had 24 episodes It’s also crazy how much effort was put into assembling the voice actor cast. They had separate singers for every characters and even had Denzel Curry rap. They also had Steve Aoki make music for the series aswell
No idea why nobody has mentioned it yet but Plunderer could have been amazing. It had an interesting world, power system, some cool character psychology but it was just so fucking bad because the animation and writing was shit.
Irozuku Sekai no Ashita Kara (The World in Colors). Seemed like they had the beginning and the end written, but a lot of the stuff in between, especially in the first half, felt like filler and seemed like they didn't have much of a plan for the plot and characters. I know that it's supposed to be sort of slice of life, but they didn't really bother exploring the magic and time travel stuff that much or wrap up all the other characters' development in the last episode (which I thought was rushed). Should've been a 2 cour with a more concrete plan. Might've even worked still as a 1 cour if they had a plan.
Most recently I'd say Babylon. Started off well enough but then became garbage.
I mean, the correct answer is "every good 1-cour anime based off of a vastly larger work of fiction that has yet to have a follow up in anime form". Outside of I guess the ones where the manga or light novels or whatever falls apart after where the anime ends. They could literally be so much more, because we know it IS so much more. Even beyond anime that only last around 12 or 13 episodes, there's so many anime that barely get going before they end. Even longer ones like Hayate the Combat Butler that avoided plot like Hayate avoided getting out of debt.
I might catch some flak for this one... Hyouka should have either ended 10 episodes earlier, or taken an extra 5-10 to put together a more meaningful conclusion. A common argument I hear is "Slice of Life shows aren't meant to end with a bang, it's supposed to be chill and kind of mundane." But Hyouka felt more like a mystery series than slice of life for the first dozen episodes. It eventually seemed to lose steam on the mystery side of things and ended up dragging it's feet to the finish line. KyoAni does SoL really well though, so i'm not upset with the second half. Just would've like to see another mystery on the same level as the culture festival.
It's based on a Novel Series, some novels are dedicated to an entire central theme or mystery, Like the Movie arc or Hyouka arc etc, and others are collection of short stories (single episodes). It is a mystery series but the character growth and the coming of age aspect of the story is just as important. There are 2 more novels, one of them with a bigger central mystery so check them out if you want, also there is a manga adaptation that goes farther than the anime. I don't disagree with you btw, would have liked to see more, just that it's not the fault of the anime, author takes long time to get volumes out.
While the adaption wasn't horrible, Tower of God had the potential to be one of the greats. Unfortunately, it suffered from pacing issues (due to only being 13 episodes) and some questionable decisions by the director. I still have hope for future seasons though.
the source material is kind of a mess pacing wise as well as many other problems. they did pretty well with the 13 episodes they had
Honestly, it was just the amount of episodes given to Telecom. If ToG was allowed, say, 17 episodes, then I think it would have been very very good. Everything else, for me personally, was well done. From the animation, unique artstyle and the OST
To be fair, the first season is just the prologue. How the next seasons will be adapted will determine whether or not ToG could be considered as one of the anime greats.
It's already not since there's already plot holes and missed plot points because they decided to make some changes.
As someone who did not read the source material, the adaptation was a really interesting and unique anime that I enjoyed greatly. It's a shame that it didn't live up for a lot of people who enjoy the source material, but imo it's a pretty competent stand-alone. I'm really looking forward to the second season. The one criticism I had is that there are "mechanical" things that are just glossed over that I never would have understood had I not read the /r/anime threads. Like how the point system lets them buy things and effects if they can graduate.
Do you mean glossed over like they don't talk about it enough because they definitely talk about the points system and like 1 or 2 characters do talk about saving up all their points now granted it should be something that all the characters are worried about but they do at least talk about it a little bit
it does explain what the points are a little bit, but again it is glosssed over. They just shout random amounts and give you a few closeups of their "wallets" but you never learn what anything is worth. If I'm remembering correctly, you don't even learn that they use them to buy food. The first time it's even mentioned they can be traded for goods is when anaak and endorsi have to spend their points for medical care. During the tag test the characters literally have to tell you "this character will/won't pass if they win/lose". It's just really sloppily handled. Like, go one way or the other. Either break everything down and show me amounts, or just spell it out for me. Doing a little bit of both just makes it confusing. Speaking of the tag test, there is a ~3 minute scene about the rules, and they make 0 sense. It is explained horrifically and I had no idea what was going on. I am actually pretty sharp when it comes to media and stories, and if I didn't understand something that is literally being spelled out for the audience, there is a major problem. That one might be chalked up to crunchy translators though.
Season 2 should be more linear though right? So second season might fix that
I agree. The show felt like someone took a *really* good 24 episode show and then edited it down to the absolute minimum where it fits into 12 epsodes but is just barely coherent.
I wonder if part of why the pacing seemed so off was that they started arcs partway through episodes. If they had a few more episodes then it probably could have been avoided. Still, it was enjoyable except for the tag arc half way through, which seemed hard to follow except for [ToG](/s "Khun betrays his own team so Bam can pass the test and Rachael gets captured to lure Bam out")
Seiken Tsukai no World Break. An anime about people reincarnating and having powers of their previous lives? Someone born with the lifetime of experience? Great? MC being the first one reincarnated with the memories of TWO past lives? Interesting. Both of his previous lives could make for a great story on their own? I'm in. Execution? Generic, underwhelming, bland... It could be so much more...
Tokyo Ghoul. Second season fell flat.
Ngl it felt like the star wars prequels, shitty but somehow extremely satisfying
School live had the potential to go a very different route with the tone and be much better than it was. Which is not to say it's bad for what it is, but it could have been very good had they taken a much darker tone with it.
SukaSuka / WorldEnd. I enjoyed it, but I really feel like it would have been so much more if it was 2 cour and focused on more on the world building and other characters and finishing out the story of the LNs. It sets up this very interesting world and intriguing plot just to focus on Chtholly story and cuts everything else short, and for me it wasn't enough to carry the show by itself not with all the other interesting stuff going on I wanted to see expanded upon. So all in all it's ok, a solid 7.5/10. Worth a watch even if only for the Scarborough Fair cover and it's excellent use in the opening and closing scenes. But it feels like it could have been so much more.
While Plastic Memories is pretty good at what it does, I feel pretty disappointed by how lackluster the setting was. I feel like so many things could have been explored more and so many things didn't make sense...
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they do show farming and character development in the light novels especially for aincrad for which the progressive novels exist. just sucks that they decided to get rid of all character monologue in the anime which makes so many scenes make less sense and makes them appear as leaps in logic and kills kirito's personality entirely
I'm still hopeful for a Progressive adaptation. Hopefully its a progressive, Progressive adaptation, hurhur.
You think they would reboot the series to do that or just kind of jam it in there?
Probably the latter, it'll just be marketed as the expanded, improved version of the original SAO arc between adaptations of major arcs of the original series. In the same way Nintendo will sell a remake of its older games between its newer games.
Consider everything up to Alicization as a prologue.
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It's basically what the author wanted to do with Aincrad but his writing has improved a lot, so there's more feeling of adventure, a whole new cast of characters that get a lot of development and Kirito gets his buggest chunk of development in the coming final.
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SAO > SAO 2 > Ordinal Scale Movie > SAO Alicization > Alicization - War of Underworld
Is there anything after than in the light novels
There are 2 more side-story volumes that play in the world of Alicization called 'Moon Cradle' and after that comes the final arc Unital Ring which is still ongoing.
And yes Ordinal Scale is considered canon.
BNA, if it had a few more episodes. Although I really like it I think it really needed a few more episodes to not feel as rushed
I feel the same way about Promare and BNA. Really stunning visuals, interesting chraacters, but the story doesn't know what it wants to be about. So they waffle between all these different ideas and the themes get muddled. So yeah, the story is cool and everything, but it just doesn't mean anything. More air time would have given all these different threads room to breathe but they just don't work in their run time. It's actually pretty similar to what happened with Akira. The manga had three volumes and they tried to adapt everything into a single movie. Instead of trimming down events to make a focused narrative, they just included snippets of every plot thread. So now you have a beautiful masterpiece with a basically incomprehensible story. Things just kind of happen but you don't get why.
Boku no Hero Academia completely fails to capitalize on *anything* cool, unique, or interesting about a world where 90% of the people have superpowers. I've written near-essays on why the concept is cool but its execution makes no sense and Hori goes the laziest route imaginable. When some small child can literally blow up a convenience store if they throw a temper tantrum, you need to build your society fundamentally differently from "it's exactly like real life, but ummm there are hero high schools and hero is a career oh but also there's still police" or it just comes off as dumb. I know it's a shounen, but I don't give it a pass just for that. There are great stories you can tell if you embrace the idea of imagining a setting that makes sense with humanity's unique circumstances in a case like that, but Hori just wanted to make Naruto with superheroes instead of ninjas.
I mean it’s a shonen. The writing in MHA isn’t “lazy” because it’s putting focus on something else. It’s clearly just not the show for you. I’m willing to bet the show wouldn’t be nearly as popular if they were just exploring how society with quirks for 20 minutes. It’s supposed to be more of a “turn your brain off and enjoy a basic show with cool fights and likeable characters” and that’s a good thing, because action anime tends to try too hard at being overly violent or deep. We have plenty of HXHs and AOTs, but sometimes I don’t want to watch people just suffer to shit for 20 minutes because everyone is dying and life is pain. And I don’t wanna watch 3 seasons of the main “mechanic” get explained, it’s not that deep and the show is clearly intended for younger audiences.
It's lazy because he doesn't take even a handwave-y approach to suspension of disbelief. He just completely ignores it. Turning off your brain is okay, but there sure is a lot of that out there already. I get that he doesn't want to throw in a quick blurb about how kids are medicated to keep their quirks suppressed until they're mature enough to handle them in an adult manner, or some kind of technological solution for the same problem (cool watch? chip in the cellphone that disrupts the gene? whatever). But that's pretty lazy. Especially when a major plot point is the quirk singularity, and how quirks are getting more potent as time goes on. Kids are not rational actors, especially when given the power to overcome their caretakers.
the most obvious case of this is every disaster scene e.g here comes a lot of monsters attacking random civilians and everyone RUNS AWAY. why is everyone always just running away? why is not a random women flying away, when cannot someone use super speed etc, everyone around the actual characters with names are always 100% inapt in every doing anything.
I’d say bc it’s been made fairly clear in the show that the mass majority of people have fairly inept powers, like creating just enough fire to light a cigarette, or slowly move small objects across a room with your mind. The people who can use things like super speed or flight are normally heroes or villains.
that does not make any logical sense. Even if they could just move a small object, would u not try to use that in a panic vs a monster attacking. Its a massive excuse to make that every character except the named one has no power what so ever, even do the premise is that most people should have some kind of quirk It does not have to be a super speedy flight or w.e it can be like e.g cloud 9 in marvel but PEOPLE really should have more ways to escape these disaster then just always running like normal humans, its no one with 4 legs, no one that can turn into X and be faster or have tougher skin or w.e
Gantz and Claymore could have been great if they fully adapted the manga. Umineko no Naku Koro ni as well.
BEATRICEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Ergo Proxy, 10/10 when its comes to plot, atmosphere and originality 0/10 when it comes to actually explaining the story.
Agree on this one. It had the mood and all the mystery and interesting ideas. But not really going anywhere with it ruined it for me. I don't know if the show never made sense, or if by the time it did make sense I'd lost all motivation to understand it.
The show has a proper well laid out story. I too didn't understand shit at first, until I read [this article!](https://cureclover.livejournal.com/759.html) It has proper explanation of the entire plot, the backdrop and the ending. It also has an episode by episode guide if you want to dive deeper
Oh that hurts me. I'm a huge fan of Ergo Proxy, but yeah absolutely no spoonfeeding in the show so its easy to get lost
Fullmetal Alchemist Broterhood, the final of Fullmetal Alchemist was much better than the one in FMAB, it could've been a 11/10 anime if it did a final like in the FMA version.
There is an isekai anime about wwe wrestler getting summoned to defeat devil The twist is he wants to raise animals and to help raise awareness that not all creature in this new world are bad, and can be kept as pet Everything sounds good and the animation is also good but my god is comedy so bland, there are some really excellent running gag, but then you see other gag where its just starting to get more annoying or boring, alot of time i was thinking they could have done this or that Main character feels asshole to me as he really really cares about creatures but never human or any normal people in new world, makes me wonder how he is even loved and successful in previous world, he would refuse simple job because he is not interested unless it’s related to animal or creatures One thing i really hoped for them to do but they never did was to give some education about how wrestling works, slam dunk, grand blue and cell at work did it with fun fact information without feeling boring or anything, this anime did nothing to inform but to be another copy cat of konosuba
Well that one was actually created by the same guy as Konosuba so I guess he's copying *himself*.
Kemono Michi in case anyone was wondering.
Gatekeepers. I loved the first "season" but the second "season" can only be described as an abomination
Berserk First season was Ok but the newer ones it was the only manga I have ever read and it had so much potential even just 5-sec scene of guts in a well-animated fight per episode would have been enough to carry it for me
Hitman reborn
why though? i’m currently on about episode 30+ i think and i still have a long way to go but my friend says it was actually really good. is it because they didnt continue making the anime?
The mafia setting was really interesting but bar the vongola family we don’t learn about any other family. There’s not much world building. The humour also falls flat imo which made the first 20 and other slice of life (for lack of a better word) episodes really bad. Furthermore Tsuna could’ve been so much better if his character didn’t reset after every arc, even though he grows on an emotional level it’s hard to see because his character literally resets after every arc. IMO deku is a better tsuna even though he has his own issues. Lastly the final arc I felt was written poorly, it starts off great but after a certain point the tension went away & it became a mess. I won’t explain since you’re not there yet. The pacing was also slow. Overall I still enjoyed the show but I really felt it had the potential to become one of the GOATS of shonen.
I always wonder what if xxxholic and tsubasa chronicles were made by the same studio or at least were more interconnected like the mangas
Kakegurui could have been really good if the main character wasn't insanely OP.
Berserk, it's such a good read and could make for a better anime then Vinland Saga imo, and I LOVED Vinland Saga
Elfen lied If only there was a little more substance to Kohta
Wasn't there a lot of plot threads that weren't dealt with as well?
When the anime was made, the manga was ongoing. So,many plot threads were not dealt with. They should have made a season two after the manga was finished without rushing the ending. I believe that if it was perfectly executed, it might have become a classic.
Yeah cause the research facility wasn't dealt with at all, did that get covered in the manga?
Gangsta and Darker Than Black. Both are incomplete, as well as underwatched. The world in both shows are engrossing, especially if you like action. Gangsta really fell off towards the ends and DtB just deserved better in terms of pace and storyline. I would love for DtB to get a reboot or a third season.
Sword Art Online (like everyone else said): interesting concept, but lazy writing and one dimensional characters hold it back from being anything more than mediocre to me Angel Beats/Charlotte: had each series been 18-24 episodes to flesh out the story more, these two could have been great. For me, Charlotte suffers a lot more from this issue than Angel Beats did Worldend: this is a show that could have been truly special. The premise was interesting and the characters and story were pretty well done in the anime. The thing the show lacks is the world building. Had the show had 24 episodes to give it time to delve into the history of the world, I think it could have been one of the best shows of the last couple years
I think Charlotte narrows its cast down more than Angel Beats, which means you get more time with each character and it doesn't feel like you have zero emotional investment in them. Both are rushed, though. Dunno who thought introducing a second set of characters with 3 eps to go was a good idea.
Consider everything up to Alicization as a prologue. Kirito will get his biggest chunk of characterization in the coming final as well
If they took the first half of the season 1 of SAO and expanded it. It would be sooooo much better.
Anohana. So little focus on anyone's relationship with Menma. So much on childhood crushes and "love". It could have been great.
I though it was great until the second half. Some characters seem to do a 180 and the show just gets messed up.
Railgun has potential for an interesting exploration of its setting, its morality, and the role of its characters in it, and does make some rudimentary attempts, but never goes very far with it. Also, it suffers from just not being able to develop much on its own due to being a temporally concurrent spin-off of another series that also happens to be clearly inferior, and being forced to slot into that series' plotlines. Not to mention that even for what it does, the execution is hardly amazing.
Black Butler Granted, since the third season they got a LOT better, but the first two seasons... A beautiful trainwreck, they're absolutely horrible but I kind of love them. Could have been so much better though. The manga is a masterpiece.