Anime

One Piece – Fishman Island Arc (Episodes 523 – 538) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

Okay so the plan was to split this arc in half but upon writing the first review (523 – 553) it was far, far too long. Despite not really liking this arc at all there were enough subplots, flashbacks and new characters that there’s just too much for one review if I want to keep it to a reasonable word count, so I’ve split THAT review in half and I’ll now review it in three. With that, here’s the original opening paragraph:

So we have finally reached it, the point where a lot of more casual One Piece fans often tap out of the show. Hell, I was really enjoying watching it back then but these episodes once a week? Nope, I ended up dropping it and it took a few years for me to get back into the show, and even then I just skipped to the final few episodes of this arc and then continued from there, so this is actually my first time watching a lot of these episodes, and boy do I understand why. At least I could get a few out of the way in one week, but that didn’t help much. Is it completely irredeemable? Well, no, but what’s good about the arc is mostly contained in the next half (um, two thirds…) of the story, these episodes are pretty poor all round… Let’s take a look anyway!

Continue reading →

One Piece – Return to Saboady Arc (Episodes 517 – 522) Review

David Hogan1 Comment

At just six episodes long the “Return to Sabaody Arc” is pretty much just a reintroduction to the Straw Hat crew, revealing their post two-year time skip looks before moving on to the first proper story arc in the New World, which um… yeah, I’ll get to that next time. That doesn’t mean the arc doesn’t have some merits though, and certainly some future arcs could’ve learned a lesson about being more concise, but there you go. Let’s take a look!

Continue reading →

One Piece – Post War Arc (Episodes 493 – 516) Review

David Hogan1 Comment

It’s finally time to do another little run of older One Piece episodes, following on from my review of the all-time classic Marineford arc a while ago (okay, a good while ago… there was a lot of Wano in that time though!) I’ve actually had this and the next review on my PC for a good while now, it was just the soul-sapping Fishman Island arc that slowed the older reviews to a halt, but I’m happy to say I’m over that hurdle so let’s look at the next three One Piece arcs (because the first two are really short). The Post War Arc is less about the direct fallout from Marineford and more about Luffy coming to terms with Ace’s death by remembering his childhood with Ace and a young boy named Sabo, followed by preparing for the next era of the series. Let’s take a look.

Continue reading →

Psycho-Pass Providence Review

David HoganLeave a comment

I’m reviewing Psycho-Pass all out of order on this website, but to be fair they’re also released quite a bit out of order as well as “Providence” takes place after the Sinners of the System OVAs but before Psycho-Pass 3, finally filling in the last few gaps in the story so maybe we might be able to move forward should a Psycho-Pass 4 arrive? Maybe? Well, anyway, Providence itself is a fun ride throughout its runtime, so let’s take a deeper look!

Continue reading →

Monsters: 103 Mercies Dragon Damnation Review

David HoganLeave a comment

MONSTERS was one of Eiichiro Oda’s One Shot manga chapters he penned before creating that little known series called “One Piece” and due to his much… MUCH more famous work it has been adapted into a 20-ish minute special episode on Netflix (with the subtitle “103 Mercies Dragon Damnation”, one of Zoro’s moves from One Piece for that extra bit of connectivity) How does it fair? It’s fine, for a short story. Let’s take a look!

Continue reading →

Mobile Suit Gundam 00: Awakening of the Trailblazer Review

David Hogan4 Comments

Thanks to a production delay meaning the Gundam Seed movie wasn’t released until literally now as I type this in 2024 (blimey…) Gundam 00: Awakening of the Trailblazer became the first non-UC Gundam movie released in cinemas and with it a lot of controversy. You see, as teased at the end of Season 2 the main threat of the movie is an alien race known as the ELS (“Extraterrestrial Living-metal Shape-shifters”) making this the also the first Gundam… anything to have aliens in it, something more associated with Super Robot shows than the “Real Robot” ones that Gundam pioneered. Does it work? Well, sort of. It matches what 00 has been going for from the start narrative-wise but sadly regardless of the aliens I find the film a bit of a slog… Let’s take a deeper look!

Continue reading →

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – Season 2 Episodes 14 – 25 Review

David Hogan1 Comment

You can read my review of the first half of Season 2 by clicking HERE.

Gundam 00 reaches its TV series conclusion with a string of pretty crazy episodes, both plot-wise and action set pieces-wise. While there are some definite highlights and the final confrontations at the end are very satisfying it is hard not to once again look back at the more varied and interesting world of Season 1 instead of the more straight forward good vs. evil plot featured here, but that’s still not to say this season doesn’t have some great moments, just that I do now understand when people say that Season 1 was better, where as before it all sort of blended together in my mind due it being so long since I watched them. Anyway, let’s take a look at the end of 00! The series. The actual end comes after this…

Continue reading →

Jujutsu Kaisen – Shibuya Incident Arc (Episodes 30 – 47) Review

David HoganLeave a comment

As some may have gathered by a lot of the anime I review on this site, I like a good action Shonen show, dramatic bloody fights of good versus evil often (but not always) based around the idea of overcoming the odds through will power and the want to do good. Classic popcorn entertainment. What Jujutsu Kaisen’s Shibuya Incident Arc has shown me though is you can indeed have too much of a good thing, because by the end of it I was actually kind of fed up of large-scale and well animated fight scenes and for the first time I can remember I was “wondering where the plot was”, which is not something that normally bothers me when watching a show like this (see: my love of the Dragon Ball franchise). Well, with that initial thought out of the way, let’s take a deeper look!

Continue reading →

Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – Season 2 Episodes 1 – 13 Review

David Hogan3 Comments

Gundam 00 kicks off its second season with some fun revelations and scene-setting but also one of the worst cases of backtracking I’ve seen in any media that even though I knew it was coming it still made me shake my head. Thankfully once you get past that bit the series is once again really fun, with great character and mech designs, though the enemies are a bit more clear-cut this time, making for less political intrigue. Let’s take a look!

Continue reading →