AnimeZone

Summer hit once again and, yet again, we have a new batch of anime. This time around we have romance and action, since I didn't bother with the comedy series this season.

Either way, there's a lot to talk about so here we go:

1. I want to Love You till your Dying Day

We start off this ranking with a romance. And not just any romance, a yuri romance.

The plot follows a 14 year old girl living at an orphanage that's training magical soldiers, named Sheena Totsuki.

Sheena is saddened by the sudden death of her roommate at said orphanage, who died in battle very recently.

One night, as she was walking alone through the orphanage halls, she encounters a pink haired girl who's seemingly the same age as her, covered in blood.

Wanting to be nice, Sheena shares her rice balls with the girl, which happily accepts the gesture, and the two immediately become friends.

Shortly afterwards, the girl is forcibly taken by the school nurse who begins scolding her.

The next day, the girl is introduced to Sheena's class as a new student. She introduces herself as Mimi Kagari. Mimi immediately recognizes Sheena as “the rice ball girl from last night”.

As luck would have it, being the new student in their class, Mimi is assigned to share the room with Sheena, as Sheena's previous roommate is now dead and she's alone.

While moving their stuff and learning about the school, Sheena sees two girls kissing in the hallway. Mimi also witnesses this and Sheena explains to her that this is a form of healing magic.

Sensing that Sheena's body is in need of healing as well, Mimi closes in and kisses her to practice this healing magic on her.

That's the gist of episode 1.

Now, with all things considered, there's a lot of things going on with this story.

For one thing, yes, this will be a love story between Mimi and Sheena. They are both 14 year old girls so, if this bothers you, you should avoid watching this.

With the warning out of the way I will say, I found the relationship between the two of them very believable.

Yuri is one of those genres that I like to dive in, from time to time, since I find it cute, but this is one of the few shows where the relationship actually felt both believable and organic.

I could easily buy into Sheena's and Mimi's relationship, simply because, it seemed to work quite well. Sheena would always act as the motherly figure to Mimi's careless and reckless, as well as childish, persona.

They complemented each other well and, whenever the two would end up on screen together, their banter back and forth always felt like it made sense.

Even when the two would end up fighting, which will happen, I could both understand and follow both of their thought processes. I could understand where each of them was coming from, I could sympathize with both and I could buy into everything.

The only part of the story that didn't work very well for me is the idea that, in a setting in which two countries are at war, the countries would be sending child soldiers on the battlefield, while the adults are behind and strategizing.

That didn't feel believable enough for me, and it almost pulled me out of the story whenever I remembered that this was a plot point.

But the show, cleverly enough, knew not to delve too much into this and kept the politics and the military details of the world to a bare minimum, only hinting that yes, the two countries do use child soldiers, and yes, sometimes one such child soldier is powerful enough to push back many enemy troops all by herself.

But, if you can get past these seemingly ludicrous ideas, the show is fairly well grounded into reality.

The strong aspect of the show isn't the story, though the story itself isn't half bad. I would argue it's the characters.

I loved diving into this world, understanding the relationships between all the main characters, their backstories, their interactions and dynamics, as well as their philosophies and reasons for fighting.

Yes, it's sad seeing 14 year olds going to the battlefield and having to fight for their lives, and the show knows this, but it somehow manages to pull this off in a tasteful manner.

The drama that the show portrays when a character dies feels very real, leaving you with a sadness that feels genuine.

In fact, even more than the romance, I feel like the drama is what makes this show stick as well as it does.

Death always feels like it's around the corner and the girls simply have to live with this, as a part of their lives.

But even when leaving all of this aside, the few moments that these characters had that were filled with happiness made me genuinely smile.

It felt like I could connect with these characters and feel their plight, their inner struggles and their ways of coping with them.

And, as far as the romance went, it was fine.

Like I said, the chemistry felt real to me, and I felt bad when I saw our leads have a falling off when it did. That's the sign that the show has impact and it made me care.

The kissing felt a bit tired, after a point, but given how so many romance anime tend to lack it, this felt like it was trying to make up for it, which I did appreciate.

Overall, this was a great show. I would re-watch it in the future many times. And, if a new season will appear, I'm sure to give it a watch.

2. Clevatess (Season 2)

This will be my review for season 2. If you want to read my thoughts for season 1, you can find them here

We continue with our journey following Klen and Alicia, as they will go to a renowned academy for magic, in order for them to be able to master magic and be able to tutor the Hiden prince afterwards.

Little do they know that the academy they will be joining has many secrets that it hides, among of which is a plan of one of the dark beasts to reenact the Hero Legend.

The last time I watched Clevatess, which was season 1, I thought it was a mid experience.

Sure, it had its ups and downs but it never did anything that I felt stood out enough.

Well, this season's premise really made me worry when I started watching it.

For one, I hate high school anime, and I was really scared that this show was going to go into a boring setting, with high school drama, that really had no place here.

Thankfully, it didn't do that.

While yes, the plot of this season will take place at a school, it won't be in the classroom.

Much like season 1, it gets dark very quickly, with students that seemingly lose their minds and start attacking their peers, as well as rumors that there is a special room in the school that hides a very powerful book that relates to the Hero Legend.

I won't go into spoilers but I will say that, for a lot of the episodes, I would stand at the edge of my seat, always trying to predict where the show would go next.

I like it when shows are unpredictable. For almost every single episode, it was difficult for me to say for certain which direction the plot will take. And, as the episodes went on, the story became crazier and crazier, but in a way that made sense and felt consistent.

By the end, I felt like I've been on an amazing journey that left me wanting to watch more.

And the ending, well, let's just say it left a strong mark on me.

As dark fantasies go, I don't think this can match other shows that I've watched like The Witch and the Beast, which was exceptional, but it still felt like a solid entry in the genre.

I can't wait for another season.

3. Though I am an inept villainess

This one, I wasn't too sure about initially.

The idea is fairly straightforward, though.

The story is about a kingdom that resembles ancient China, in which there are 5 noble families that are all grooming their daughters to become consort for the prince and, later, become the future queen.

During a grand party, one such daughter named Kou Reirin, while making a wish on a comet that's passing through the sky, gets shoved off a balcony into the pool below by another daughter of a noble family, a woman named Shu Keigetsu.

Reirin seems to survive unscathed, since she landed in the water and Shu gets arrested on the spot and sent to the dungeon.

As she wakes up, it's revealed that what's inhabiting Shu's body is actually Reirin's mind.

Reirin is confused at first but, by using a fire spell, the real Shu reveals herself to Reirin and tells her that she's used forbidden magic to swap bodies with her, the moment she shoved her down the balcony.

Now, she's inside Shu's body while Shu's mind is inside Reirin's body. Shu is sentenced to death because she attempted to assassinate Reirin but nobody knows that the real Reirin is inside Shu's body.

Shu also placed a spell on Reirin, preventing her from speaking of the swap, so she can't reveal the plot to anyone.

The reason Shu did this is because Reirin is the prince's favorite candidate and, also, Reirin has built a reputation for herself around the palace as being very kind and resourceful, earning everyone's admiration.

Shu, by contrast, has a very bad reputation for being cruel and scornful.

Now that the two swapped bodies, Shu plans to leave Reirin to be executed in her body, while she reaps the rewards of being the preferred candidate.

Soon afterwards, Reirin finds herself in a trial, where she has to face a hungry lion, without any weapons, to prove her innocence after her murder attempt. The prince declares that, if she can survive the trial, she will be absolved of her crime and return to the Shu clan.

That's episode 1.

I liked this show.

It did make me wonder, a lot of times, “How will Reirin escape this particular predicament?”. And, sometimes, the show did find clever ways to make it happen.

Other times, the way she escaped felt a bit forced, but never so much that it broke the illusion for me.

This is basically a “Rebuilding your life from the ground up” kind of story, in which the protagonist is unfairly sent to restart their lives from the bottom of the barrel, and see how they can recover by simply using their wit and optimism.

And I liked seeing how Reirin, despite having to go through all the stuff that she goes through, always sees the glass half full aspect of her life, is always optimistic and energetic, always finds a way out and tries to push herself hard to recover, never giving up on her dreams.

In fact, the fact that she never holds grudges and is even thankful for Shu's spell almost left me in disbelief.

Her character is written really well and I liked to see how the plot progresses. I'm usually not a fan of “From rags to riches” stories, since they almost always feel exaggerated and unrealistic but, strangely enough, this one didn't.

It felt believable just enough that I had no difficulties following it. Reirin's personality and upbeat demeanor also made me root for her very easily.

And I like the premise of the show, that being that life is just a series of challenges. How you approach them will define how well you will succeed.

You can start off with all the advantages in the world that you want. As long as you don't have the right mindset, you will fall behind.

And the ending was funny. I didn't expect it but it ended on a surprisingly sweet but not overly saccharin note, an ending that felt just right for this type of story.

Great show. Worth a watch.

4. Love Unseen Beneath the Clear Night Sky

Time for another romance.

The story is pretty simple to explain.

At a party organized by a group of college students that just enrolled, an introverted boy named Kakeru Sorano is encouraged by another guy to go at a table where two girls are sitting together and introduce themselves.

Despite his reluctance, Kakeru agrees and the two join the table with the girls. One of the girls, a young woman named Koharu Fuyutsuki, is blind, and is dependent on the other to help guide her.

Everyone has a fun time and, during their walk home, Kakeru gets roped up in promising to help Koharu out at college the next couple of days as well.

The two immediately become friendly, despite Kakeru's reservations about trying to help a blind person.

Not wanting to abandon her though, Kakeru decides to go against his introverted ways and tries to be nice and support Koharu in any ways that he can.

That's the gist of episode 1.

Now, there's some stuff that I want to say right off the bat: the first half of this show is quite boring and the stereotypical anime romance.

Kakeru and Koharu grow closer together, as he tries to support her, they learn about each other and, eventually, they develop feelings for one another.

Nothing felt out of the ordinary and, normally, I would have written off this show as just a standard romance story.

Then, the second half of the show came, and boy was I not expecting for the plot twists that came.

I won't spoil it, obviously, but I will say that tragedy strikes.

And after that point, the couple's relationship will really be put to the test.

With all the issues that the show has, I still found it charming.

After other shows like The Invisible Man and His Soon-to-be-wife and A Sign of Affection, I've become obsessed with anime about disability.

And, I'm happy to say, just as those other two shows, this one lived up to my expectations.

Unlike The Invisible Man and His Soon-to-be-wife, I had less to learn about blind people from this show.

Sure, there were moments that I did learn a bit about them, but this anime was mostly about the characters and how they grow closer together, rather than the disability itself.

I also like about this show that Kakeru, for all of his faults, feels like a believable character. He is initially reluctant in helping Koharu out, since he knows that dealing with a blind person will end up being troublesome.

He does, in the end, decide to help her out nonetheless but, it's the fact that he has that inner voice that makes him feel a bit like a jerk, that makes me relate to him.

The relationship between him and Koharu feels like it grows at a natural pace, never too slow or too fast, which I really like.

I like it when shows have a nice and believable pacing for a romance.

And, as far as the second half of the show is concerned, it was perfect.

It left me very sad but also with a sweet taste in my mouth, when the ending came around and revealed itself.

When all was said and done, it was a gripping love story that made me smile.

It had a lot to say about people with disabilities, but also about love and how surprisingly equal it makes all of us, despite our differences.

It had just the right amount of comedy, drama and romance, to make it a worthwhile watch. Highly recommend.

5. Liar Game (Second half)

If you want to read about my thoughts for the first half, you can read them here.

This next half continues our story with the Liar Game competition.

This time, there will be two teams, and each team will have to figure out how to smuggle money past the other team's chosen inspector.

If the amount of money that the team decides to smuggle in a suitcase is predicted correctly by the inspector, he takes all the money. If it's incorrect, the inspector will have to pay half the amount.

It's during this half that we get introduced to a new character, a strange and highly intelligent man named Yokoya Norihiko.

He controls the opposing team from the shadows, manipulating everyone on his team and calculating every move.

He is presented as a tyrant in this show, and that turns out to be quite true.

Nao and Akiyama will have to figure out a way to turn the tables against him and win the game.

Much like last time, there's a lot of strategizing and manipulation of characters going on.

Shows like these that are about strategy lend themselves well to plot twists, since it's difficult to predict what each character plans on doing.

Akiyama, as always, turns out to be surprisingly smart and well versed in figuring out how to game the system, but also be kind and a good team player.

We also find out more about Fukunaga and her more feminine side this time around.

Yeah, there's not much more I can say about this show.

If you liked the first half of the season, you'll surely like the second half as well.

It's pretty much the same as the first half, just with an evil antagonist this time around, that likes to play with mice.

Good stuff.

6. Daemons of the Shadow Realm (second half)

To read my thoughts on the first half, check them out here.

To sum up what I wrote there, I liked the show enough to keep watching it, since I thought the story was kind of interesting.

I didn't care much for the fish out of water theme that was going on with Yuru, but it slowly grew on me.

This second half, we get to learn more about Yuru and the village, as well as getting a new antagonist arrive in the series.

Also, Yuru slowly learns that some of his allies may not be as trustworthy as he originally thought they were.

There were a bunch of cool plot twists scattered about the season, some of which I didn't expect to see.

The show maintained the sense of mystery it had over its first half as well, which I really liked.

My only qualms with the anime, specifically, is that this second half ended on a cliffhanger, and a really bad one.

Usually, when I get a cliffhanger that's very cheeky from a TV series, especially on a season finale, I get quite angry; angry enough that I sometimes even drop the TV series entirely (check out my thoughts on Kaiju No. 8).

This isn't the fault of the manga that this is based off of, obviously, it's the fault of the anime staff that wrote the script and chose this particular point in the manga to end on.

But regardless, the ending wasn't enough to make me regret having watched the show.

Could it have ended on a better note? Absolutely. Would this show have ended up higher in the ranking had it had a better ending? I doubt it.

Even without the ending that it had, the pacing of the show made me dislike it enough rank it as low as it is here.

I've seen better shows this season, as well as much worse shows.

For this particular one, I'd say it's just your average action adventure TV series.

7. Jaadugar: A Witch in Mongolia

Here, we get another quite interesting entry.

The first episode focuses on Sitara, a young muslim woman who lives in the city of Tus, in Persia.

She's a slave to a wealthy family that treat her well and who embue the gift of knowledge seeking in her, and show her the value of wisdom.

The first episode ends with the Mongols invading Tus and taking over the city, enslaving everyone.

That's episode 1.

Now, there's a lot to like about this anime, and a lot to dislike as well.

The most glaring thing about it is the artstyle and the character designs.

The character designs are more rounded and more simplistic than traditional Japanese anime, which give this show an odd look.

Personally, I didn't mind the look that much, but I can see why others might be put off.

The backgrounds and visuals are also less detailed, giving this a unique look.

But other than the unique artstyle that this show has, it has the structure and plot of a regular anime TV series.

Now, I will say that I really liked the show simply because it is literally the first Japanese anime that I've seen that tackle Islam and Muslim life.

Given how large the population of the world is that believe in Islam, their representation in anime has been severely lacking, almost to a fault.

Here, this being a historical anime that takes place around the time when Genghis Khan lived, they had no choice but to show the life of people that lived in Persia.

I liked learning about Muslim culture and seeing the different aspects of it being shown. It's also interesting seeing a perspective in which a slave doesn't view their own enslavement as a bad thing, when their masters are kind and benevolent. That offered a very fresh and interesting take.

When the Mongols arrived and conquered the city and took everyone as a slave, I was worried that the show would lose its novelty, but it didn't.

I then got to learn about the Mongols, their customs, their culture and their society.

Granted, I'm sure a lot of this stuff is dramatized since it wouldn't show well on the TV if it wasn't, but I still feel like it was very educational for me to watch this.

Long story short, the plot is that Sitara eventually swears revenge on the Mongol empire for destroying her life, and she wishes to exact revenge on them, from within.

In order to do so, she has to find ways to climb to social ranks, from being a regular slave to someone more important, get close to high ranking officials and learn to plot from within the shadows.

Honestly, I liked the premise of this show.

My only complaint is that this seems to be a really long story and, as expected, it didn't end this season. The story will have to continue in a season 2, if that will even be greenlit.

The plot of season 1 was enough to leave me satisfied and wanting for more.

The show turned out to be more political in nature, talking about the social hierarchies of the Mongols and the power dynamics within its noble families.

That's fine, I didn't mind it, but it's just not my cup of tea. I don't like to partake in political drama as much as I used to.

But, as far as this show is concerned, it was perfectly serviceable. If a season 2 will ever get greenlit, I'm sure to watch it.

8. Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation (Season 3)

Out of all the shows that I watched this season, this was the most disappointing of the bunch (well, not really. The one after this is the most disappointing, but this comes as a close second).

My thoughts on the last season can be found here.

This time around, we get to relax a bit and see Rudy enjoy his life for a bit with his new family, thinking that all of his woes are solved.

That is, until a sudden sickness strikes at one of our supporting characters. Oh and Eris makes a (rather underwhelming) appearance here as well.

I can't say much more without going into spoilers.

Now, why I dislike this season? It comes down to the fact that the show feels like it's overstayed its welcome.

We got to a point in which the protagonist built a family for himself, has his own house, fame, pretty much everything he could have wanted.

That, to me, feels like a good point to end the story.

This season just adds stuff on top of that, which I feel are unnecessary.

I didn't care much for Eris and I don't see her return here to be of any great importance. The way I feel about Eris is the way Rudy did for most of the show up until now: I liked her enough at the start but her presence quickly became very much unwelcome after she left Rudy in pursuit of her own goals.

The stuff about Rudeus trying to find a cure for the supportive character was a bit interesting at first, but it felt like a side quest to me.

My problem is, now that Rudeus is happy with his life, everything else from this point on feels like a side quest, an addition that's just shoehorned in to keep the story going.

Eventually, near the end, we get a plot twist about the Man God that I didn't expect and I found to be quite interesting, and finally the plot felt like it was going in a direction once again.

Up until that plot twist came, I felt like the show was aimless and filling up time with side quests for no good reason.

But, by the time that plot twist came around, it was already too little too late.

The season, as far as I was concerned, was already pretty boring and that twist alone wasn't enough to save it.

I hope the next seasons, if and when they will come, will be a bit more interesting and pick up the pace. This one felt rather underwhelming to me.

9. Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World (Season 4) – Second half

Talk about a show that overstayed its welcome.

My thoughts on the first half of this season can be found here.

I can't say that the show improved much over this second half.

During the first half of this season, the show introduced a plot twist involving a memory loss which I found to be quite novel and cool.

This second half, that was gone. And that plot twist was the main thing that made that half to be interesting.

The idea of the world building and how cool it all becomes started to fade away for me, when I realized that this show just has too much lore packed into it.

This is a great case for why a particular story is very well suited for a light novel form, but not as well suited for anime.

The anime studio did their best, I can say that, but the amount of lore, back references, forward references, all the dialogue, all the small tidbits and easter eggs and stuff that this show constantly references, talks about, reminds you of and also new stuff that it adds on top of that, is just too much to keep track of.

The only people that I know that still enjoy the show well to this day are the light novel readers that just want to see this plot animated.

Which is fine, there's nothing wrong with that.

But as someone that never read the light novels, I feel completely left out.

The story feels too complex, convoluted and stuffed for me to keep following any of this. It became so hard to follow that, whenever I would watch a new episode of this show, I would just turn off my brain and just go “OK, stuff just happens. Let's just accept it and move on”.

There's too much plot, too much story and not enough plot twists to make it seem interesting.

The character development, of which there is a bit, helps but it simply cannot keep up with the stream of constant new stuff that needs to be introduced.

So many times I would ask myself “But why this? Why not that? How does this make sense?” but I would never get an answer. Maybe the answer was explained on some page of the light novels. Or maybe it was a reference to season 2, at some point, that I forgot.

I don't know. It's hard to keep track of all this stuff.

This isn't the case that the show is necessarily bad because of any of this. Far from it.

It's just that I'm starting to feel like this show simply isn't for me. It has its moment, it has its good sides and its bad sides, but, overall, this feels like it's for the fans of the light novels more than anyone else.

I'm not at the point in which I'm willing to give up on it yet, but I'm getting there. I'll probably watch the next season as well, before I decide if I want to drop this or not.

10. Black Torch

And we finally get to the end of this ranking. This is my most disliked anime of this season.

The story follows a teen boy named Jiro who comes from a long family line of people that train in ninjutsu. Uniquely, Jiro is capable of also talking with animals.

One day, after following a lead from a crow, Jiro encounters a wounded cat.

He takes the cat in and tries to treat it. The cat's name is Rago and he is actually a mononoke, a powerful spirit that claims to have been attacked by another mononoke.

That night, Rago attempts to escape by himself but Jiro tracks him down and they both encounter the mononoke that had previously attacked Rago.

This enemy attacks and mortally wounds Jiro when he tries to defend the cat. Rago, feeling pity for him, uses his powers to fuse with Jiro's body to revive him and, together, they both defeat the mononoke.

They are later found and taken into custody by a group of people called the Bureau of Espionage.

Thus ends episode 1.

Now, I really disliked this show.

Even from episode 1, I knew it wasn't going to be a masterpiece.

I've seen the trope of the protagonist fusing with another being and gaining powerful abilities as a result, enough in anime, since Naruto was thing, but also other shows as well like Tokyo Ghoul, Parasyte, Chainsaw Man and Kaiju No. 8.

This wasn't anything particularly new, because of this.

Then came the other cliches of the protagonist not knowing who to trust, he goes berserk when enraged, he cannot control his powers, there are many people that try to control or abduct him and so on.

It's the same thing over and over again.

This show barely added anything fresh on top.

I was hoping to learn more about the protagonist, about why he can speak with animals. What's his drive, his motivation for doing what he does?

Nothing gets explained, outside of “he just doesn't want others to control him”. That's pretty much his entire personality in a nutshell.

The supporting characters also bicker with each other constantly and this is used to show how well they mesh as a team, as part of their chemistry.

I hate that.

There's no real reason for them to hate each other, they just do because that works well for the plot, I guess.

There's the whole plot about why specific characters have very tragic backstories. Usually I like that, but they barely focus on that and they don't present anything more about the characters than just their backstories.

I learned so little about these characters.

The bad guy is also a generic ruthless bad guy without any redeeming qualities.

It's also just a matter of Jiro learning to control his powers, in the end.

Everything is just recycled shonen ideas.

I don't know, I really didn't get much out of this show.

Out of all the shows I've watched this season, this may not be the most disappointing (mainly because I had no expectations for this one at all), but it sure as hell wasn't a good experience.

Granted, compared to other low ranking anime from previous seasons like Tougen Anki and Dead Account that were also shonen style anime, this one is actually a very good show by comparison. And that's mainly because, for all its faults, this show at least has some sensible plot, some believable characters, some believable combat and some semi-interesting plot twists.

Those two other shows didn't have those.

So, out of all of them, this feels like a fleshed out TV series by comparison but, again, that doesn't make it good.

In fact, I'd argue that this was a below average TV series.

If a season two ever comes out, I'd be hard pressed to find a good reason to watch it. I'm not saying that I won't watch it or that I will, I just won't feel particularly compelled to keep on following the plot. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.

For now, I don't know.