Kekkaishi review

Kekkaishi manga review
Overall, I would probably give this manga a 7/10.

This is what I wrote as a comment for one of the chapters, 145.
"This is my first time reading this manga. I'm kind of bored at how much of a typical shonen manga the story has become. Like the guy just gets powers. Kimetsu no yaiba came out a century later as a much more engaging shonen manga with great character build up. We saw his training and each steps that lead to his victory. He also was very human, getting hurt and losing at times to strong enemies. Gen had a good character concept, but died too fast. This is like the second major time he just 'happens' to win against a seemingly unbeatable enemy because of unexplained magic. (I'm thinking of kaguro for the other major time) I also hate how there isn't a likeable and engaging side character. Tokine is plain as they can come and... to be honest, she's even more boring than sakura."

The review on the bottom has spoilers.
I think that comment contains a lot of what I feel for this manga already.
The manga had so much potential and it really has a good concept. The world lore is built well and there are a few good mysteries that keeps you reading. We get lured into this mysterious place called karasumori and the main character Yoshimori's search for truth and ambitions to seal it away becomes our search for truth. There are a few interesting character concepts, but unfortunately, most characters are plain shonen style character that just has either no depth, or boring depth.
There are good engaging mysteries and there are really unsatisfying mysteries. Ones that doesn't even make you want to pursue or some that are just plain lame because the truth unfolded was something like 'hey look. It's just magic alright?'. This manga has a few of those. For example, Kaguro.

He's introduced as a super strong enemy. He has an interesting characteristic and has actions that are questionable, like killing Aihi. But his back story is cut short and not much information is given as to why he is like that. I just found out that in the anime series, they actually gave the character some life and gave him a better explained backstory. Great move. But then again, like he had a really lame death. Another example is Byaku.

His backstory this time, is given to us. But... uh... it's lame and doesn't add much to his personality. Basically his backstory was only given to explain why Heisuke and his ayakashi servant named Risa exists. As readers, when his story and arc is over, we still have no clue why he was so nice to the Princess. He lost to her and was his servant, but his attitude towards her was more like love. However, we're not explained anything beyond that. Like did he actually love her? If so why? Why was he so cold to Risa except the fact that she wanted luxurious things? Why did he become an ayakashi? Also when the Princess died... uh... he just... disappeared? Like we never hear of him later. 
Just like the mysteries, there are lots of good ideas that just ends so suddenly or in a lame manner. Gen character was basically that.

I legitimately hoped and thought he was going to be another main side character. He had a interesting backstory and had a good personality and the dynamics between him and yoshimori and tokine was well fitting that with him around, I actually liked Tokine more when he was introduced. But he was killed off early on as well. It wasn't a lame death like Kaguro though, which was nice.

Also I just wanted to rant about Tokine.

As someone who appears on a lot of the cover, right next to the main protagonist, she is as plain as they can get. She started off good and strong with an interesting concept. She was caring and she had her own sort of power. But these characteristics were killed off waaayyy too early and she became just a mere stepping stone for yoshimori to develop. Her caring nature only shined when Gen was around and after his death, she just became this unemotional character going around mosting uncaring about what the main character was doing. I found it funny when she got angry at yoshimori later on, when he basically went into the enemies den, since he even asked her and she just let him go. Then to get angry at him for being reckless?? are you kidding me? Also to cover for her weakness she refined her kekkai making moves to use it more like a weapon. I thought after that, she would shine a bit more, like fighting along yoshimori, or even going on her own battles where she shines. Nope. She went on very small mini battles of her own and got a new ability to travel into other dimensions, but nope... other than that, she quickly went back to being this unimportant side character that just shows up every now and again, and when she did, it was mostly just to make yoshimori act in a certain way. When I say unemotional, I really meant it. It's why the character is so boring. In fact, before and during the Gen arc, she actually had a bit of emotions and worries, like a normal human being. I was looking forward to her development because of that. She even made changes to her kekkai, which was a nice development and was wondering about her feelings towards yoshimori. After then gen arc though, the only time she showed any strong emotion was when yoshimori got into trouble and she scolded him. It became boring and repetitive fast. Maybe if the scolding leaded to her feeling more like towards yoshimori, I'd be happy to see it, but her emotions were purely to show yoshimori feel a bit remorseful.

Oh yeah. Another rant about yoshimori and his brother. Like, his brother is taking a huge load of the burden in fighting and getting power etc to protect the family. Yoshimori is annoyed that the brother is taking the burden alone. You know what annoyed me? Without having adequate power, he just kept either getting in his brothers way and kept repeating something like 'Listen to me! you never listen'... and then all he had to say was 'hey look you don't have to take the burden on your own', but like it's so deflating when he says that, because most of his actions are so thoughtless that he actually doesn't share the burdens of his brother. It happens twice and I just got annoyed at yoshimori rather than thinking, 'Oh, he's pure hearted'. Like he just doesn't get any proper character development to actually follow his words or start thinking straight. When he was at the

Assassination Classroom review

Assassination Classroom (Japanese: 暗殺教室 Hepburn: Ansatsu Kyōshitsu) is a Japanese comic science fiction manga series written and illustrated by Yūsei Matsui. (Wikipedia)

Synopsis: When a mysterious creature chops the moon down to a permanent crescent, the students of class 3-E of Kunugigaoka Middle School find themselves confronted with an enormous task: assassinate the creature responsible for the disaster before Earth suffers a similar fate. However, the monster, dubbed Koro-sensei (the indestructible teacher), is able to fly at speeds of up to Mach 20, which he demonstrates freely, leaving any attempt to subdue him in his extraterrestrial dust. Furthermore, the misfits of 3-E soon find that the strange, tentacled beast is more than just indomitable—he is the best teacher they have ever had! [Written by MAL Rewrite]

I don't know why I bothered putting in all that synopsis stuff since my review is quite bad and I'm not really going to finish watching the rest of the anime.

The anime was a good reminder of what I like and dislike when I'm watching anime. The anime I watch are quite varied, but for comedy purposes, I seem to like a certain genre. I don't even like sophisticated or complicated comedy, I'm not posh like that, I just like the good ol' slapstick, parody type comedy that has very little big-titty jokes or poop jokes. Also in that, I like when they put in a lot of random.
Here are some comedy anime/manga series I enjoyed:
Gag Manga Biyori


Arakawa Under the Bridge


... For some reason I can't seem to think of others, but I don't tend to watch comedy anime or series for long, since I tend to get bored easily. Movies is just one off so there're bundles more that I stuck to, like the Scary movie series, Naked gun series, Airplane! etc

In first look, Assassination classroom gives off a similar vibe, but it soon becomes clear that it's not really the case. The anime seems to be going for both comedy with a side note of serious which just does not work for me. There are times when they're laughing at themselves, but mostly, it's just... cringy.
So here are my 2 things that just made me dislike the anime
1. Students
If you're going to make an anime/manga about the growth and development of children, I think a good start might be making characters that are relatable and generally likable. These students were either so generic that it might have been relatable to some students out there, but were mostly just so god-damn boring. I mean, do people like watching the paint dry? That's development right? Nagisa, the main protagonist, probably falls into that area and he might as well have been invisible if they were going to make such a generic and boring character. I know this may be harsh, but it's mainly the storytelling that did his character no justice. I'll tell you a better 'wall-flower' story telling. Aku no Hana has a character just like him. A boy that was just a generic character, but the story revolved around him and made him into this most interesting center of attention and events as the story unfolds. However, in Assassination classroom, they did such a bad job of deciding whether he's a background character, or the main character, that for me, he was just a 'background character with a bit more focus, but is still boring because the character development is so shallow'.
Then there were a few students who were just downright annoying and unlikable. I'm guessing that should've been a part of the perk and we're supposed to like them after watching like 10 episodes as they develop through koro-sensei, but even after 10 episodes, my distaste for them either stayed or even grew further as some characters just became a ball of cringe. Like Karma for example. He's supposed to have a tiny little sob story where he is betrayed so he detests teachers and he jumped into the opportunity to kill a teacher. Well that's where the 'like' part seemed to have ended for me, because after that, he just became this silly little 'I'm so coooool' character that isn't actually really cool, yet his human side was so badly portrayed that he remained this weird try hard character. The episode where the students did a big term test and koro-sensei thought he failed everyone, Karma does this thing... which I'm guessing the writers thought was a cool move? Like he throws a knife at sensei and says something which I don't even remember cause it just felt so lame.
Anyway, enough about the students. I'll get to my last thing.

2. Unprofessional everything. (Professionalism is a word but unprofessionalism isn't haha obviously)
I've watched about 10 episodes btw. It might have gotten a bit more serious afterwards? but I wouldn't have a clue.
So this is where the imbalance of serious moments and not so serious moments just make this anime stupid. It's like watching a serious detective movie about homicide, but they try to bring in humor by making the detective a total joke, giving him a silly hat and making all the science or detective work ridiculous, like blood was actually ketchup, even though a real detective would notice that in no time. It just doesn't work. It's not silly enough to make me laugh, but it's also not serious enough to really make me engaged and find it interesting or smart.
This is a universe where people seem to take a huge threat to humanity as lightly as some sort of a joke. They even have fake knives and BB guns (in the pretense that it was specially designed to not hurt the children, just the teacher) and they can give whatever excuse they want because it doesn't even matter since everything else surrounding the whole situation seems ridiculous and child-like anyway.
Like they hire this 'professional killer' who's supposed to be the best of the best, speaks multiple languages and know the skill of seduction. What a joke. Not even a funny one. She had no professionalism, no sign that she had any secondary plans, her plan was stupid in the first place, she did not study her target carefully first from afar, second close but no too close, third from a close range after gaining trust, none of that. In fact, the sniper someone hired in another episode seemed ever so slightly more professional that this bitch. Just so you know, that's also her name. After they made a joke of a character, in order to emphasis to the audience that the character is indeed a joke, the author said, 'hey!! let's make all the students call her a bitch!! So the audience knows this is supposed to be funny!!" Listen, if you have to point out where the joke is to make people laugh, it's not actually a good joke.
Another hint of this stupidity is when they hired a robot and enrolled her into the class. The robot obviously immediately starts shooting at the target. Then you know what students did? They bound her up and told her she's annoying and bothering their learning!! Fuck!! And instead of doing the smart thing of saying "you know the world is going to end??? Studying won't matter or mean a thing if the world actually fucking ends???" The robot then asks her creators for help... and then koro-sensei re-programs her basically. She becomes this weird as kawaii character that is again, a ball of cringe. I just wanted to slap pretty much all the students (not the teacher, because he'll just stop me)

Naruto the real bro

I liked the early stages of Naruto immensely. I loved the character design and execution of their stories. Their powers, whilst unrealistic and defying logic at times, were entertaining and full of awesome action.
I got pretty bored half way through, pretty much after the Sakura vs Sasori fight where things became a bit... hmm... weirdly repetitive, dragging on and a bit dull.
But!!! I managed to pull through and actually finished the whole story. I never finished the anime, but I switched to the manga because the anime just had too many annoying fillers and slow story transgression. It was the right thing to do because after being a bit bored for a while due to the anime ruining the whole story for me a little bit, I soon got into the whole war and the background. It was a little bit ridiculous how they forged Naruto and Sasuke's connection like that, but overall, I loved the story of the Tsuki hime and her sons.
But here's one thing I also just loved in the end. Although Naruto was overly OP and overly 'nice' and 'loving' which made him all annoying, I loved that he remained a true bro to Sasuke.
Think about it. Sasuke, the emo, the rebellion, hurt a bunch of people, someone everyone hated and mostly lonely. His obsession drove him mad but Naruto kept saying he will save him, die with him and just be his friend. He never stopped called Sasuke his friend. As someone who suffers from loneliness and depression, I really appreciated that. I loved how one kid just kept fighting for a friend he cared about, that just fell into hardship in a way. Yeah, Sasuke was annoying. He was so engorged in his own little fantasy that even I cringed at a lot of things he did and say. But ultimately, he was just someone who lost a family and who wanted to find meaning in his life in his own way.

In any case, I loved the whole series in the end and I think I will revisit it in a few years time when memory fades a bit.

Sword art online review

I usually dont watch the full series of anime anymore. Sometimes I can bear it if it's only about 13 episodes long, but for anything longer and mainstream, I lose interest by the time I'm about a quarter way through or my anxiety kicks in and I want to avoid the whole series for some mysterious reason. So usually when I end up watching a whole series like SAO, it's usually because someone I know is forcing me to sit through it with them.
I probably don't have the rights to even review on the anime. During most of the series I was fixated on my phone or ds trying to deal with an unspoken anxiety and i don't remember the full series well.
It all began with a abridged series that was on youtube. I loved the abridged series. I love those types of parody humor and it just made fun of the whole scenario and my friend who also saw it decided it would also be great to watch the actual SAO series. I was interested what the fad was about for sometime as well so I obliged although I would've happily just not watched the series having watched the abridged.
About 1/3 of the first season was interesting (I gave up watching the second season btw). The scenario was interesting and I enjoyed watching different people's reaction to the situation and how they started handling it. When the girl suffered from hopelessness and depression, it was relatable. When groups formed up to get to the top as fast as they can to get out, it was also believable. The loss and guilt Kirito felt was also good.
But after that though... since Asuna got the second highlight, the series just lost something. Things like emotions and reactions started feeling forced and unnatural. Then suddenly we started to see more unrelateable crazy-ass characters, that felt so forced into this world to make it 'interesting'.
Like that group at the dungeon who had a leader that was pushing all his members just to carry on even though they're tired. The overly evil female character who doesn't mind killing other characters for some reason or those random characters who started being fine acting like a total npc in this world. It all just felt like a large joke than something to be taken seriously. This is why I enjoyed the abridged series. It showed that the whole scenario and character development was ridiculous. But to try and watch something that's that ridiculous is a serious manner was unenjoyable.
Then there was the ending of the first series. They destroyed the whole computer game, they got out and I wished that was the end of it. But alas. I guess the author was making a lot of money and needed to keep going. He made another universe. A universe more unrelateable, more forced to drag on the series a little longer. A universe where Kirito's sister falls in love with his brother for some poorly explained reasons. A series where Asuna is forced, yet into another game... um... then later on starts living in it basically? I mean, at some stage in the second season, she even says something along the lines of 'come back as soon as you can, since you belong in this world', like as if she's given up her life in the real world, which goes against all her character build up of how she wanted to get back... Anyway we're at a new game now with elf ears. For some reason Kirito's randomly strong again. The magical, digital 'daughter' Kirito and Asuna has, solves all the complicated problems the main characters face in the new digital world. By this time, I knew the conclusion and I knew it was shitty and I just wanted it to all end.
I won't even go into the second season of this ridiculous show and how much more it just covered itself full of shit to extend Kirito's gaming adventures by introducing guns this time, but really it was just hard to shallow.
In any case, I enjoyed the beginning of SAO and I enjoyed the forces romance between Kirito and Asuna since I am a girl of romance, but otherwise, I lost interest soon after the character development.
I'd probably give it a 6/10

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya review

Well... I didn't like it. Haha, I'll start off with that. (by the way, there're spoilers)
I usually like Studio Ghibli's animations. Mostly Miyazaki Hayao's work, but I like other ones made by them as well. When I saw the trailer, I had very high hopes for this animation. It looked like it had a very nice feel to it with a very distinct fairy tale theme which I like. I guess my problem was that I haven't heard of princess Kaguya before so I didn't know what to expect and when it actually hit me, it was a bit of an unsatisfying shock.
I know I didn't like it, but overall, it's a very good piece of film. It displays the various emotions princess Kaguya goes through vividly with their animation and I resonated with princess Kaguya's emotional conflict, feeling trapped, unresolved desires, joys, sadness, anger and many more emotional journey she went through. I very much enjoyed the first half of the film where it was mainly focused on the growth and development of the princess.
What I didn't like was how the movie ended. This wasn't necessarily a happy ending sort of movie. Most movies have a very general theme like, 'we endure sadness for the happy times' or 'keep working through issues and one day you'll get through them.' type of happy morals. This movie felt like it was more saying 'after happiness comes sadness' even though the songs and the speeches indicated that our lives goes round in circles, the ending was filled with unresolved problems and sadness. Kaguya never really found true happiness, always felt like a fake, she felt trapped in her own emotional conflict of wanting freedom vs making her parents happy or finding happiness the traditional way and after all that, she just left earth never even knowing what love between lovers feels like.
I think I didn't like it particularly more at this moment in life because I've recently gotten out of a relationship that wasn't very healthy for me. The man I was with had no job for more than a year whilst we were dating, stayed at home smoked weed all day and just played games. I felt more and more trapped being in the relationship having given up things I used to enjoy like dining out, going to the movies or just going out in general. In a way, a bit arrogantly I felt like I resonated with Kaguya's feelings. Her desires of freedom vs her desires to satisfy others was sad. Still being uncertain of my own choices to break up and move out I didn't like how the movie just ended with a "Hey, I have to go back to the moon now! Cya" type thing.
All and all, when my emotional issues have resolved, I probably would've enjoyed the movie and the movie itself is great, but right now, I'd probably give it something like a 6/10 haha