(Average+) Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Mansion

Series in one sentence:
My Next Life as a Background Character: All Routes Lead to Doom!

Series in more sentences:
A girl is murdered and wakes up inside the body of a fictional character from a book she's read, destined to die at the hands of her fiance. Wanting to evade her fate, she blackmails the powerful and prestige male lead into acting as her new fiance, but their relationship grows more sincere over time.

With Raeliana now taking the place of the true female lead, Beatrice, it changes many things about the original story, and Beatrice herself is nowhere to be seen.

Started off alright, but I don't recall any of the episodes leaving me particularly satisfied to have seen it. There is this tame atmosphere going on, hard to explain. Perhaps calling the script and events "subdued" is the right description.

My main issue with the show is that there wasn't really an issue. Raeliana wants to get out of a marriage, because she knows this guy will try to kill her, but there are a million ways to resolve that. Raeliana takes the most dangerous route of blackmailing a powerful person with sensitive information, putting her at risk of getting killed by this duke. Which, quite honestly, should've happened right as she dared to open her mouth.
Go ahead and try to threaten royalty inside their own office, I can assure you your ass will be "going on a trip of self-discovery in Africa". Your clueless family will never see you again. What was she thinking?
And her plan will also end up embarrassing both her and duke Noah; because it requires them to publicly announce their union, then suddenly break up a few months later, basically turning the both of them into "damaged goods". I imagine that matters for people of their standing. What excuse were they planning on giving to the public?

I felt nothing for the romantic scenes. Noah could be rather rude to her outside of these moments, so you're not rooting for them, and Raeliana wouldn't stop inner monologuing about how fake their relationship is, whilst chewing him out whenever he actually tried to act the part of her fiance.

Beatrice makes an extremely late appearance, and I'm not sure what they're planning on doing with her, but I'm also unsure if I care for it. I think the anime would've been better if Raeliana had to deal with her since day one, because absolutely nothing's standing in her way of, well, anything.

(Average+) Mashle: Magic and Muscles

Series in one sentence:
One-Punch Saiki Mob goes to Hogwarts.

Series in more sentences:
Mash is a young man, abandoned since birth for possessing no magic in a world where one's status is determined by it. Out of future precaution, his foster father forces him to physically train himself every day and not venture out into the open where people may discover the truth about him.

But when the police finds his whereabouts, the captain wishes to make a deal; and Mash is tasked to attend magic school, earn high enough grades to earn the title of "Divine Visionary", and hand over all the wealth that comes with it.

The amount of stuff this show takes from the Harry Potter series is distracting at times, and Mash himself is a mix of other well-known overpowered anime characters, but I very much liked him and the general plot.

His friends, not so much. I didn't feel like they added anything and they would come and go at random times. Often, they were flat-out annoying. The episodes that focused on them were a bore.

The series itself started off nicely, but I couldn't really get myself to care as it progressed. I'd watch another season if it includes a whole lot more Mash, he's the only fun thing in this show. I liked his gimmick of how he turned into a psychopathic murderer at seemingly random times. You keep forgetting, since he's so monotone and otherwise harmless, then you fight him, and he talks about burying you alive because you might snitch on him. That is funny.

But, this just doesn't share the humor, excitement, and charming side characters of One-Punch Man, Mob Psycho, The Disastrous Life of Saiki K., or Harry Potter.
It attempts to, it really does.

(Good) My Clueless First Friend

Series in one sentence:
Little boy has an extra chromosome. Encrusted with gold.

Series in more sentences:
Nishimura has always been bullied for her dreary look, but when the new kid in class takes her nickname "The Grim Reaper" seriously, he becomes determined to befriend her and witness her supposed powers.

I liked this alot, it was a fun, though repetitive friendship. Nishimura often mutters how Takada shouldn't get involved with her, despite the guy having made clear since day one not to care, and you can do that for 2 episodes, but after that, it's time to get the picture and stop dictating how others should feel about you.
And then there's Takada himself. This guy fucks. His intrigue for getting cursed was strange and he didn't really come up with any other powers for his Grim Reaper interpretation, but he was enjoying himself and his unbreakable optimism was funny.

I did wonder early on: would people realistically speaking be fine with getting lovingly called something they're also vindictively called on a daily basis? The show addresses the question, and I suppose it's not bad to take a bad word and turn it into something silly or positive, but still.
I remember back in junior high, there was this troubled kid who called me "dragon fucker", because I'd draw dragons in class and often wore a necklace with one on it. Now, if some other guy came up to me, with stars in his eyes, and said "YOU FORNICATE WITH DRAGONS?! OMG, ARE YOU THEIR QUEEN, HOW DID YOU TAME THEM, SHOW ME YOUR OFFSPRING!", I'd worry more about his mental health than that of the one bullying me.

It wouldn't charm me, but I suppose "dragon fucker" is less easy to twist into something cool than "Grim Reaper".

Nishimura's classmates were awfully one-dimensional. They insulted her for the sake of insulting her, and I expected a more sensible reason for it. She has a penetrating stare, so she's The Grim Reaper? Alright, but what else?
Hino isn't looking that "attractive" either and has a tank top fetish, yet no one is making his life hard over it. His existence also raises the question where he was before Takada showed up. Why didn't he befriend Nishimura first, he clearly doesn't care about her bad reputation. The same can be said about Hino's childhood friend, who obviously doesn't enjoy the bullying Nishimura endures, so then, where was she when it mattered?
Her love story with Hino was also pointless. She rarely approached him. Just come up with a different reason for her and Nishimura to bond as friends if it's going to be like this.

As for the rating, I wondered. The series is cute, but it didn't feel like any of the episodes established anything new. Takada blindly adores Nishimura, that is the joke every time, and even when they realize to be in love with each other, they're not sure what they're feeling, since they're blissfully ignorant children. But well, I've given high ratings to lesser shows, so "Good" it is.

..Also, I couldn't have been the only one left confused by the bit where Nishimura had pigtails in. She had pigtails in the swimming episode that came way before it, so why everyone pretended she did something new, I can't guess.

(Average+) Barbie

Movie in one sentence:
It's only alright when women have absolute power.

Movie in more sentences:
In a perfect, pink world, where Barbie and Ken dolls live out their immortal lives, one Barbie suddenly experiences human emotions and a body that's losing its plastic perfection.

Understanding that this is likely caused by her demoralized human owner, she visits the real world to find this child and cheer her up. Her less popular and self-proclaimed boyfriend, Ken, comes along with her and feels inspired by the real world -a reality where men actually have value- and takes all he's learned back to the other shunned Ken dolls in Barbieland.

I was looking forward to this movie and went to the theaters for it. The trailers made it look like it was going to be campy nonsense, the likes of White Chicks, but I was unpleasantly surprised by what it ended up being.

About 10% is campy nonsense, I laughed, but the musical scenes really dragged and the rest of the movie was this exaggerated "patriarchy vs women" preach-fest. It portrayed the real world as this anxiety Hell for women (and women only), where men unabashedly catcall and assault them without getting scolded by bystanders. Like, really? In today's age? In America? And a woman gets arrested for defending herself after getting her ass slapped? All very unlikely situations, just like Ken not receiving a single homophobic remark for basically wearing the same attire as her.
"Toxic masculinity" is very selective in its toxicity, it seems like. Or perhaps Ken did the right thing by taking on a positive attitude and moving on, instead of getting depressed and teary-eyed the moment people made eye contact with him. The pervert touching Barbie deserved to get socked, but again, would any man today actually do that, let alone in public? Accompanied by whom people would likely assume is her boyfriend?

I suppose the idea in this particular scene was that Barbie had turned so far human -or rather, into her human owner- that she understood what was going on and felt uncomfortable by it.. but.. I would've preferred if the movie hadn't taken this route. Her acting like a downer isn't funny and is a wasteful use of the Barbie property. Couldn't she and Ken explore the world as their innocently clueless doll selves? The movie lost its comedic edge rather quickly and felt needlessly mean at times.

In a strange way, it attempted to uplift women by describing how much of a victim we are. And the more I think about it, the more it disgusts me. Stop telling me how hard my life is, shit man..! I live in a first world country, just like you!
Having that said, I didn't recognize myself in the pessimistic utterings of the female characters. Western feminists have the least to complain about, yet shout the loudest out of all feminists in the world, and I'm getting a bit tired of hearing about it in our entertainment.
The unsubtle pro-woman storyline is hard to take seriously when male dolls are introduced who're comically dumb and treated as subhuman by absolutely everyone. The end of the movie doesn't even introduce a proper compromise, but instead jokes that maybe one day the Kens will have the same position as women have in the real world, which is a ridiculous remark, because the one true thing that holds women back from achieving high positions is ourselves. How many more years will we blame the dicked ones?

The Barbies are patronizing, admittedly funny narcissists who rule Barbieland, while the real victims in the movie are the Kens. I could not pretend to be sad for the girls when they got dethroned, and honestly, how can anyone look at them as the heroes of the story, worthy of getting their power back?
Ken's pain far exceeds Barbie's, because that woman has only ever known comfort and blissful ignorance. None of the Kens even have a house to live in, and despite the disrespect they've suffered, they continued to jump out of their seats to help out any Barbie who pretended to be in need of assistance, which the movie portrayed as a bad thing. It called their generosity and love for them as their desire to have the women be helpless, which I found a severely uncharitable position.
Why is it fine for the Barbies to be at the top and infantilize the Kens, but when the Kens want a taste of it, they're painted as the villains? They've lived their entire lives as emotionally neglected props and simply wanted to be needed for once.
Them making the Barbies play their beer bringers was rude, but I took it as short-lived "revenge", since these men clearly want them as their girlfriend, not enslave them.

The movie didn't care to explain its supernatural elements, either. How can dolls come to life, how does Mattel know about it, what's the logic behind the method of crossing the border, why is the ghost of Barbie's creator living in a room of Mattel's headquarters, how is Barbie able to become a real human being, etc., etc.? It explained nothing.

The overall story was a mess, and while there were some good jokes and I really liked the Kens, there's nothing in here that motivates me to watch this ever again.