Series in one sentence:
Yaoi anime parodies yoai animes, and Deviantart, on a budget of 2 cents per episode.
Series in more sentences:
A teenage boy attends a school inhabited by "handsome" boys and men only. While he shows hesitance for starting a same sex relationship with his pursuers, despite what everyone around him says, he often finds himself charmed by the other male students. I'm trying hard to tie a plot to this.
I could not stop laughing over this terrible mess, I loved it. The idea someone spent even a dime on producing this is beautiful.
The episodes are short and the whole thing is obviously meant as a joke, please check this out.
Series in one sentence:
A realistic portrayal of a child lives together with a realistic portrayal of a middle-aged man.
Series in more sentences:
When Daikichi visits his late grandfather's house, he notices an unfamiliar guest at the funeral, and is informed that she is possibly the illegitimate child of said grandfather. As she is only 6 years old, though, the rest of the family is having their doubts and nobody wants to consider being the orphan's caretaker.
Before the suggestion of dumping her at a government facility can be further entertained, Daikichi decides to take her in.
A sweet and simple story that covers normal, everyday problems. Though, "problems" is a big word here.
I adored the characters and the pacing, the show isn't trying to be anything more than the description. There are some moments where you think shit might go down, but it never does.
I think this is the only reason why I didn't gave this series a "good" rating. There are no conflicts, it's just about the life of a man who's learning to be a parent, and this little girl of mysterious origin. I would've liked a heavier plot, but the anime is definitely worth checking out the way it is.
Series in one sentence:
A dumb girl gets an unhealthy crush on an antisocial and abusive boy.
Series in more sentences:
A girl tries to fit in with her new friends in class by lying about having a boyfriend, but when they want to see a photo of him, she takes one of a random person on the street, who happens to attend the same school and is quite popular. When she finds out about her mistake, she arranges a deal with him to play along, but he says only to agree in exchange for her daily service and self-respect; revealing that the most popular guy in school is actually an black-hearted sadist.
Despite this, she soon finds herself charmed by his small acts of kindness, and her persistence manages to turn their fake relationship into a real one. So far that's possible with an emotionless skeptic of love.
It was weird. The characters and story changed after just a few episodes, into nothing I expected. First we have this standard, but enjoyable portrayal of a relationship between an extorted slave and a two-faced master, but then this girl gets a rushed and unquenchable crush on him, and the series continues to focus on these two clumsily dating. I found it a very boring second half of the series.
When looking at the intro bit and this anime's title, you think it's about this girl who can't stop lying and is forced to be this sadist's "dog" because of it. And it is, in the first few episodes, but then it just switches over to these two being in a relationship, and you experience this unrewarding romance that truly should've been left out.
The show made this girl fall in love with this boy way too early. The guy hadn't done anything at that point to earn this kind of unhealthy devotion, while she, on her turn, had done nothing at that point to stand out from all the other squealing teenagers that throw themselves onto him on a daily basis.
The guy is being approached by annoying, loud, obsessed girls all the time, how does the girl even stand out? I remember enough characters asking this, but I don't remember him explaining it. Because, let's be honest, she doesn't stand out.
Some viewers commented it's an accurate portrayal of a sadist and masochist relationship and that's why we're seeing what we're seeing, but that can't be so, as this girl doesn't like to get insulted or ignored. If anything, she is an optimistic idiot who's trying to "change him", which makes this kind a relationship even worse. A masochist likes to get hurt and would not bother to make requests that would benefit themselves. The leading girl does not fit the description.
Even the prince stopped fitting the description of a sadist after a couple of episodes; it's more like his incompetence and unfamiliarity with love causes him to appear antisocial and uncaring. But it's not like he wants to be, if we have to believe his actions in some of the episodes.
I didn't like this change, it doesn't add up with what the series taught us about this character at the start.
The joke with the prince was that everyone at school thought he was a kind-hearted, angel-faced, pure blond, but secretly a devil who enjoys owning people like a pet. Together with wolf girl, he was pulling off a double facade, which opened up alot of comedic opportunities. Wolf girl felt embarrassed to be his slave and do stupid tricks for him, but this was the price she was willing to pay for spreading lies. The relationship was unpleasant for comedic purposes, and was way more entertaining than the more serious-toned bore that followed afterwards. I don't understand why the writers turned this girl into an annoying fangirl for the rest of the anime. Why not keep her tortured, but silly and gullible? The guy could've kept teasing her with fake kindness, but without it making her fall for him and getting all attached.
The prince did not change for the better, either. We see him in a continuously foul mood, but doesn't really show sadistic outbursts anymore. He stopped keeping up appearances at school as well, defeating the point of his original character. Was he not supposed to pretend to be a normal, popular kid? Now he constantly looks and acts devoid of joy and emotion.
I'd rather have a self-aware sadist.
Because these two started dating so quickly, the girl's undying love and the boy's hurtful responses just don't create any touching or funny scenes. I think it would've been better if she stayed his victim of extortion for the majority of the series and she didn't develop feelings for him after he had properly proven himself to be worth it. Punching one dude in the face and announcing her to be his possession is not worthy of receiving unconditional love, and it makes the girl seem extremely desperate and pitiful.
Series in one sentence:
Boy Bulge: The Series.
Series in more sentences:
A young teenage boy is held accountable for his travelling parents' ongoing debt and is punished by being dressed up as a girl for the purpose of selling him to a fetishist. He is saved in time from the perverted collectors by a trio of high school girls, who then become impressed by the young cross-dresser and are willing to pay off the debt, if he agrees to keep on his skirt and join their all-female student council. He agrees to this out of desperation, even though it makes his daily life a Hell and his heroes don't have good intentions themselves.
This might've been worth sitting through if the plot wasn't about raping and sexually embarrassing an underage boy for no other reason than to fulfil some pedophile's fetish. The only reason I managed to watch the whole thing is because every episode is only 4 minutes long.
What a waste for an anime with such nice animation, good voice acting, and good pacing. It truly could've been a great watch, but all the characters in this fictional world are perverts, and I can only imagine what the writer of this objectionable horror is like.
Series in one sentence:
A teenage boy and a feminine merman with the mentality of an onion have an unsubtle crush on each other.
Series in more sentences:
A boy finds a weakened merman in need and decides to have him rest in his bathtub, but his guest is quick to grow accustomed to the pampering he receives and feels no urgency to go back home. Other mythical water creatures soon find out about the "luxurious" bathroom, but the boy shows hospitality and golden patience for these weird creatures and their behaviour.
That something this short managed to waste my time. Every episode is only 3-4 minutes long, of which half a minute is devoted to the overly edgy intro bit. Why they animated that for a show this silly, I'll never know.
But I figured the short running time would make it easier to check this thing out and hopefully find myself entertained, so I sat through every episode, no matter how bored I was.
Because there's so little time available to tell a decent story, there is no decent story. Every episode covers a random topic; it was the kind of nonsense you'd find in a children's cartoon, but with an abundance of homoerotic vibes.
I think the series would've been better if it was an actual series, not a series of shorts. You don't understand why the relationship between these men is what it is, as nothing of substance happens in these episodes.
The humor isn't especially funny, none of the scenes were charming, it's like this anime portrayed a basic idea for an anime, but didn't bother to take it seriously. A bit of a shame.
Series in one sentence:
Pick your favourite love story from a repetitive yoai series, starring the exact same couple every time.
Series in more sentences:
A young man with an interest for proper literature decides to leave his father's business in order to prove his own worth, but ends up becoming an editor for girl comics. When introduced to his new department, he meets up with a face he had long forgotten; his old high school crush, who seems to remember him very well.
While he tries to learn the ropes of his new profession, his blurry past with his first love starts to slowly surface.
There was no need for this to be so unfocused. Every 2 episodes it jumped to some other guy's love story, and it took me a while to realize it starred different characters.
This series has the strange tendency to make every couple the exact same people with the same looks and voices. When you're not acquainted enough with the main characters yet, it's distracting. I mean, sure, I noticed that these people had a different hair colour from each other, but their presentation is awfully similar.
For example, the "man" in the relationship is always a tall, long-faced, serious-eyed, low-voiced character, while the "female" is always this shorter, big-eyed, higher-pitched teenage boy-looking thing.
The troubles presented in these relationships are similar as well. A reoccurring trope the show seemed very fond of is the situation where a guy spots his love interest with a woman, and immediately thinks they're being cheated on. Because apparently there are no homosexuals in this yaoi series, just once-closeted bisexuals with a preference, so women are a continuous threat, though only for the sake of drama and not because they actually are. I think the cheating trope happened 5 times in this very short anime.
It was interesting how it created so many clichés within itself, it looked like I was watching the same episode over and over. Definitely not entertaining, though my main issue was that it took away the value of all characters by doing this.
Why should we care about any of them if they act the same, look the same, and experience the same things? I don't understand why the creators inserted so many side-stories. Nobody has that short of an attention span, I would think, the main plot was good enough to leave out all this filler nonsense for. In fact, it was the only story that interested me, as the others just felt shoehorned in as an attempt to please its lady audience.
The more gays, the better, the internet would say. It was a mess and a waste of time.
Despite the decent main plot, though, it also suffered from repetition. You can make a drinking game out of it; whenever an episode is devoted to our two main leads, take a shot whenever the episode start off with work-related troubles, and halfway or near the end there's a private moment where the guy's boss grabs him by his wrist and forcefully kisses him. Or take a shot whenever this fool blushes in his presence.
Take another shot when he partially answers to his rapist's feelings, but the next day will act like he doesn't love him and nothing happened. Or says they can't be together because they're both men. Despite their past where they already dated. It's a terrible script. It didn't need to be. And you'll be dead because of alcohol poisoning.
It's needlessly complicated. The best episode is the last one, as it's the only one that breaks out of the repetitiveness we've seen in the episodes before it.
Series in one sentence:
A beautiful romance filled with everyday distrust, self-doubt and misunderstandings.
Series in more sentences:
A teenage girl has long given up on the concept of making friends and has accepted her status as a bully target, until the most popular guy in school notices her and is immediately smitten. He strives to become her boyfriend and have a proper relationship with her, but it proves difficult to win the trust of an antisocial and unconfident girl.
It was a good average, though the repetition frustrated me at times.
I adore simple romances, but this one got slightly ruined by the characters' never-ending obliviousness for each other's issues and the long silences during their walks home. The girl's excuse is that she's socially messed up, but I don't understand why the super-social, popular kid acted so distant at times. Wouldn't someone like him talk non-stop and try to get his girlfriend involved with his life every second of the day? Maybe not, when all things considered.
A more important question is probably: why is this boy in love with her? It feels like the girl is too much to handle for any normal person and there's little to like about her. She's distant and not someone you'd take with you if you want to have a good time.
As a character, I like her, but as a love interest for this guy who gets no response whenever he's trying his very best, she's painful to watch.
The distrust made sense at the start; when the girl still has to learn who this 7 feet kid is that just threw himself onto her, but when the super modelling plot starts, things turn extremely sour. They pretty much stop hanging out with each other, no idea why, and neither of them take the initiative to, until this bitter plot is finally saved by their friends butting in. Thank shit for them.
In general, the jealous supermodel student using her job to claim the good-looking boyfriend and have him work for her studio is an excellent conflict. She was a good "villain" and I had no problems with her, but what does bother me is that this episode made this otherwise kind and lovestruck boy look like a dick. He never stopped loving the main character, this is what is claimed by the series, so why did he stop meeting up with her at school? What reason did he have to not talk or text her? Why did he choose to have a routinely dinner date at this model's house, who had an obvious crush on him and even announced this to be so the very first time they met? Is he truly that stupid that he didn't think people would follow them after work and find out about this, or just gossip about their work relationship, and his girlfriend wouldn't get confronted by it? While they're attending the most expositional school in existence, where at least one pair of giggly girls are present in every hallway, spitting out gossip at the right moment for the main character to hear? Really?
One of their friends said it best when she called him out on his failure to inform his own girlfriend he's been having dinner at some other girl's place every time.
I found this level of ignorance not to fit his character, and with the long silences already dominating this fruitless love relationship, it didn't feel like it was going anywhere. If you have nothing to root for, the story falls flat.
Then again, the anime argued the boy is a rather spineless slut who does anything to please a girl.. then.. maybe it does fit his character..?
There were many sweet moments, but misunderstandings kept happening, these lovers kept doubting each other, the girl's lack of response to everything was annoying and deafening, these bits were not entertaining to watch.
Lovely intro song, though.
Series in one sentence:
An adult man kinda befriends and falls in love with a teenage Kikyo from Inuyasha, but not really.
Series in more sentences:
A man in his late 20s is down on his luck after he quit his job because of moral objections with the company, but then gets approached by a stranger who offers him a job as a test subject for his laboratory, involving an age reducing drug.
The man feels cornered enough to agree to play the role of a high school student for a whole year, whilst being monitored by the lab. His presence has a positive effect on everybody he meets; though the problems of his new teenage friends remind him of his past with his old job.
I was quite entertained, though I will say that after I read there won't come a proper second season, just 4 OVA episodes, I think this anime wasted too much time focusing on characters other than the main one. The volleyball plot alone was way too long and the guy hardly made an appearance in that. I didn't care about these other characters and their sudden problems, it didn't make them more interesting. It wasted valuable time that should've been given to the people this show is supposed to star.
The rushed romance plot at the end was rather weird as well. One of the guy friends basically gets talked into liking his best friend, and indeed, suddenly has romantic interest for her, just because the main character threw some simple questions at him. And the series then devotes more time showing off the romantic journey of these two kids than of the ones we actually care about;
The main character and his "love interest" are by far the most interesting elements in the show, and share the best interactions, which is why it's disappointing to have seen so little of them together. While they're lovely in each other's company, they don't hang out enough for me to dub these two friends. Rather acquaintances who only sometimes text each other. This makes the last episode, where they basically struggle to not jump into each other's arms, not make sense to me.
And they're not the only characters with a lacking relationship. Since every 2 episodes seems to skip a month, it doesn't feel like any of these people are really that tight with each other. They act like it when they're given a scene, but every other episode, they don't even speak to each other.
Also, what's with Japan's belief that a person in his 20s is old? The main character won't stop talking about it, as if he's one foot in the grave already. There's hardly even a difference in his appearance when he turns into his 17 year old self. Same thing with his guide.
27 is still young and 10 years is not that long ago, I remember high school vividly. Maybe the main character should've been in his 40s for his concerns to actually qualify as concerns.
Anyway, since I know I'll never read the manga, I'm still eager to see these last few episodes. Hopefully they'll make some things right, though I'd rather have the creators animate more seasons. As it stands now, my grade for the show is just barely "good", while it should not be a challenge to continue this thing and make it a top quality romantic drama.
Nobody will fault a slow first season, as long more seasons follow, which is why it's a sad thought that the TV version of ReLIFE will likely stay incomplete.
Series in one sentence:
Two kids are insanely in love with each other, but they never even kiss.
Series in more sentences:
A toddler is gifted with the power to read minds, but as nobody likes to get confronted with the truth of their own thoughts, she quickly finds the world turned against her and calling her a liar. When even her parents abandon her, she enters a depression that carries over to her new school, years later. There she meets the first real friend she's never had, opening up the door to more friendships.
I'm surprised by how disappointing it turned out to be. It only has 12 episodes, yet it managed to jump the shark around the halfway point. It became less interesting with every episode, it felt like.
The show had a good start. We learn the main character's slightly overdramatic backstory, which sets the mood and teaches us all we need to know about her past and current position. After this flashback scene, we see her getting introduced to her classmates at her new school, who are immediately skeptical of the gloomy-looking newcomer, making it appear like switching schools was a pointless effort.
But then she meets the absent-minded stranger positioned next to her seat, who snaps out of his weird daydream and asks her who she is. Cue the cute intro song.
The relationship between these two was fair, but only when they were left alone and not being cockblocked by all these other characters. Or when the main character cockblocks herself for no reason. It's a shame that this duo adventure was so short-lived, though, as the series would've been better if it was just about them.
What I noticed is that this show wants to give the main character friends way too badly. Right after the boy forced himself upon her, without given an explanation why he even likes her, we're quickly introduced to two other characters. They are the leaders of a psychic club and wish for her to join, which makes enough sense, I suppose. Still a bit convenient to have such a club at this school.
Some time after, the main character makes another extremely loyal friend, and nobody in class causes her trouble anymore, either. That's the best conclusion you can hope for a depressed teenager, but my issue with this is; how can there be people who want to be friends with a confirmed mindreader, when the anime argued nobody wants to? That was the whole point of its lengthy intro, was it not?
The club leaders treat her well, but for some reason the female leader pretends to secretly be this evil, selfish villain who only wants to use the main character's powers to achieve her own goal. I don't get what for. These people are friends, she could've just asked her to help her clear her dead psychic mother's name, instead of getting all shifty and evil-eyed behind the scenes and misdirecting the audience that way. Or whatever it was she tried to do there. How is her goal even "evil"?
It became obvious early on that the series likes to be dramatic for the sake of being dramatic. A good example of this is the continuous "GOMENNASAI, it's my fault that <insert drama> happened..!" that was being thrown around between characters. It was really tiresome, especially as the role of the one crying and the one consoling the other got switched around every time. So, in one episode you'd have one character needlessly blaming themselves for some accident that happened, and the other person telling them it's not their fault, and the next episode it'd be the other way around.
Something else that was strange was the sudden 180 one of the bullies did. She actually was a selfish villain, until she became best friends with the main character, practically overnight. I thought she had a believable reason to be angry with the new kid, as she's been in love with the boy since forever, and it rightfully bothered her that her efforts got ignored by him, while the girl did nothing to win his love. And like the boy himself confessed, he doesn't even know why he started following her in the first place. Who wouldn't get upset over such a shrug in the script.
But the moment these girls become friends, the bitter bully suddenly turns into this emotional, bouncy bodyguard who sees no problem in her new BFF dating her childhood crush. She even wants them to be together. What the shit.
Apparently this psychic girl is such a perfect embodiment of kindness, she also manages to convert a mentally broken school girl-abuser. The worst thing about that episode is that it ends with the police chief basically being like "well whatever, you beat up random children, let's get a meal after this, bud".
It's not the only disturbing thing this show has to offer, as it also introduces a pedophilic, incestuous grandfather. It's one of the most horrible things I witnessed in anime, and I'm thankful his scenes were short. The choice to make this elderly man lust after his granddaughter is so destructive to his otherwise fine personality, why did they ruin this man with these short, disgusting scenes? That priest character should've been the grandfather, he was as caring as he was decent.
But the most insulting moment was when the girl's long absent mother returned. This character was a total bitch who very well knew her daughter was telling the truth, yet she chose to call her a liar anyway and abandoned her after calling her birth a mistake. But the series tries to fix this dead relationship by having this character just break into her daughter's home one night, no proper excuse from her why, giving the girl the opportunity to read her mother's mind/dream while she's asleep on her bed. She then learns her mother didn't want to abandon her, but was just weak-minded, but really sad about it, etc, etc, and that makes abandoning and traumatizing your 5 year old daughter fine, apparently.
I don't know what conclusion disgusted me more, this one or the one with the child abuser.
Despite all this, I kept on watching, hoping at least the romance between the main character and the boy would go anywhere. By reading this sentence, I think you know the answer.
He continuously tried to get close to her, but either she ran away from him, or that villain-gone-good suddenly appeared to be the cockblock wall or punching fist nobody asked for. It was unsettling to see this boy get beaten to a pulp just for imagining the girl he loves in a silly, sexual setting. And after everything he's done for her, and the unsubtle love they shared for each other throughout the series, things don't even end with a kiss. Boo.
The last thing I'll mention is that for a show about a mindreader, not alot of minds were being read. It's not a power she can turn off, so she should hear voices all the time, but she doesn't. Many episodes go by where only 2 or 3 inner voices are heard, and I find that not to be very realistic when surrounded by people all the time.
Also. How can two dark-eyed and dark-haired people birth an orange-eyed and orange-haired girl?
NOTE: Series is still ongoing, at the time of this review I was at episode 7
Series in one sentence:
This was a thing.
Series in more sentences:
A girl with a frighteningly low IQ and an obsessive love for bananas tries every day to swoon her childhood "friend", but fails because of the aforementioned facts.
With her mother also trying to sell her to him, and the ever-growing group of odd friends surrounding her, the boy is starving for intellectual company, but so far has only found it with a dog.
Well. We can at least say this anime succeeded in performing a comedic portrayal of male-on-female violence.
We see it the other way around often enough, because boys apparently have no nervous system and are fine to beat up, but this show taught me that it's not impossible to make a boy uppercutting a young pigtailed girl funny.
The series has an interesting formula, as it's just a bunch of random stories jammed together. Every story is just a few seconds long, so I'd say there's no time to get bored, but enough time for the jokes to land. So far there are jokes; most of it is unfiltered nonsense. I quite like it.
NOTE: Stopped halfway episode 5.
Series in one sentence:
A group of friends show an unrealistic amount of care and patience for an annoyingly stupid psychopath.
Series in more sentences:
A high school boy has been playing an online RPG with a group of faceless friends for a year, but when they decide to meet in real life, he discovers all of them are girls and attend the same school. More importantly, the young lady he "married" inside the game appears not to know the difference between it and reality, and claims him as her husband. The group decides to help her understand the difference by setting up a gaming club at school, where they can live interact to each other's antics.
It started out good enough and I was convinced the show deserved the many 5 star ratings it got from other viewers. The subject certainly interested me, but the series is not so much about gaming as it is about dealing with a total fruitcake who is a drain on society. But as expected in Japanese animation, this anime treats such a character as "cute" and "misunderstood". I've seen the trope countless times.
While the other characters in this group of friends act fine enough, there is one girl who's so far gone, she thinks it's normal to skip school just to play video games. Or to advocate for the murder of anyone who doesn't play games every second of the day and has a normal, healthy life.
These could be traits of an obsessed RPG-er with social and mental issues, but I don't even consider her to be a good portrayal or parody of that type of gamer. She is relatively attractive and far from good at the game she's playing; she plays it like, what she'd call, a normie. With other words, someone who doesn't know what they're doing and are more concerned with dressing up their avatar nicely. It doesn't make sense.
I stopped watching, because I just couldn't take all the "treat her well, she doesn't have many friends" and "she knows she can be dumb sometimes.."-babble throughout the series. This Ako girl is an unpleasant drama queen, and I would've completely ignored it if the series didn't try to convince me she's a misunderstood sweetheart.
I don't even understand what the relationship between her and the guy is supposed to be. He doesn't want to date her in real life, because he once had his heart broken by a girl player he confessed to, who claimed to be an adult man, but what does that have to do with this very real human girl standing before him? Is it just the idea he doesn't want to mix up gaming relationships with real life relationships? What is the logic in that? These kids go to the same school, good luck ignoring each other and then acting buddies behind a computer screen. That's not messed up at all. And the anime proved that not to work.
And then there's the thing that he already confessed to someone to like Ako, which is something I understand even less. He doesn't treat her according to this fact at all. Never mind he doesn't tell Ako this or accepts the relationship this girl eagerly wants, just who in their right mind would even fall for this mess? She's a deranged halfblood-yandere, and everybody keeps catering to her.
We'd have a stronger story if the majority played off in this game world and we wouldn't know whether Ako was a real girl or not till the very end of the series. Have the main guy meet a mousy, acne-ridden girl, and conclude he still loves her, since they've spent episodes building up a relationship online.
It's easy to fall for someone who's pretty, and in addition, to excuse their stupid faux-cutesy behaviour and dub it a "misunderstanding".
Who knows, maybe the show comes around after episode 5, but I lost interest.
