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Nintendaro
10 -> Love it!
9 -> Great, highly recommended
8 -> Very good and generally solid within its own category, just not my top pick (occasional minor criticism)
7 -> Kinda good(?), might be ok or have ups and downs
6 -> Mediocre, but watchable (have major criticism)
5-4 -> Just bad
3-1 -> Shades of hot garbage
Ratings
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An error has ocurred. Please try againI recommend watching shows rated 8-10, shows with a 7 are fine or have some good bits and are generally worth it IF you find them appealing. I wouldn't recommend spending time on stuff rated 6 or less unless you really want to.
Note that IMDb occasionally lists OVAs/specials as an episode of the series, but when you watch these on Netflix or on other platforms that might not be the case. For this reason I prefer to keep these entries separate. Since there is no way for me to make my notes public, I recommend to check watch order recommendations before starting a new series :)
This list is mostly meant as a sort of travelogue for myself.
Reviews
Chiisana eiyû: Kani to tamago to tômei ningen (2018)
A nice concept with a poor execution
The core concept behind this movie is sweet, wonderful and touching. There are small things in everyday life that takes a great deal of courage and fortitude. There are "modest heroes" out there who deserves our recognition and I'm sure that we all know quite a few of them. Unfortunately, the three stories told here struggle to do justice to this idea. They range from meh to sort of ok-ish. On top of that, the music and the animation are often just too weak to support the narrative ambitions of this title. There are a couple of good ideas here and there, but the of lack pathos, weight and artistic direction results in a mediocre rendering of those ideas.
Alice to Therese no Maboroshi Koujou (2023)
Held back by a rushed buildup, but interesting
To my surprise this was better than its current 6.3 average would suggest. The animation is well done and the first half is quite interesting, but the ending felt a bit rushed and underdeveloped. I like that they didn't go out of their way to spell out everything leaving a few mysteries unsolved, but the final buildup just wasn't paced that well causing the narrative to miss a few important opportunities to develop the plot further and charge the twists with the necessary weight.
If you like stuff like Steins;Gate, Your Name, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, I want to Eat Your Pancreas, 5cm Per Second, etc. Chances are that you'll enjoy this one too to some extent. There are a few unnecessary anime tropes, the characters are a bit flat and the story is more cliché than it should/could have been, but all in all this is a good one.
Yasuke (2021)
A massive waste of potential
Easily the weirdest representation of the late sengoku period I ever saw. In the vein of Beverly Hills Ninja (another great example of westerners transforming eastern cultures and the color of the skin into a sorry joke), the protagonist of Yasuke is a black man and former slave who became samurai under the lead of Oda Nobunaga. Contrary to what you might think, Yasuke's backstory is pure history.
Nobunaga's anti-conformism is well known. Most people know about Toyotomi Hideyoshi (now celebrated as one of the three great unificators of Japan), a peasant who became samurai under Nobunaga and, later on, daimyo. Yasuke or Yusufe was indeed an African slave, most likely from Mozambique, who eventually became Nobunaga's personal guard and the first non-Japanese samurai in history. Needless to say, like Toyotomi (mockingly addressed as the monkey) and arguably more than him, Yasuke was strongly opposed. Yasuke served under Nobunaga until 1582, year in which Nobunaga was attacked and forced to commit seppuku. Yasuke managed to reach Nobunaga's son, but they were eventually captured. Oda Nobutada was then forced to commit seppuku, just like his father, while Yasuke was apparently handed over to a group of jesuits disappearing forever from the pages of history.
The anime uses history as we know it to contextualize fiction, which might not be exactly what I wanted it to do but there is nothing wrong about it per se. However, I believe that the way in which Netflix managed to transform this man's incredible story into a bad joke is really sad. Netflix managed to "rescue" a not so well known page of Japanese history just to transform it into an incredibly culturally offensive Euro-American-Asian mishmash of incoherent narrative choices. It's like the director - the American LeSean Thomas - couldn't decide what to do, so he decided to do absolutely everything. Telekinesis, weird magic, mutants, giant women, robots(!), telepathy, senseless inter-religious cross-overs, pretentious artistic/poetic moments, werewolfs(?), the quest for eternal life, distorted bushido (you're still in feudal Japan after all!), a distant dream to dominate Europe, etc.... Add to the mix an evil representative of the Catholic Church and some of the lamest attempts at being funny in the history of anime, shake until nothing makes sense anymore and you'll get Yasuke.
I'm not complaining about the lack of historical accuracy, after all we know so little about the man that fiction is all we can really do. What I'm complaining about is the lack of plausibility, coherence and artistic direction. I guess that if you can approach this as an anime equivalent of a B movie, à la Sharknado so to speak, you might be able to enjoy it for what it is and have some silly fun. However, if you expect this anime to respect your time you'll be terribly disappointed. Massive waste of potential.
Anazâ (2012)
Very good, but I expected it to be better
Halfway in I expected to rate this one MUCH higher. I like the dark theme and I think that overall it manages to build up tension really well. It's a solid title, but in its entirety it isn't as good as I expected it to be. I think that some of the most interesting mysteries - especially those surrounding Mei Misaki - were explained a little bit too soon revealing a reality that wasn't as compelling as it originally appeared. However, what really diminished my enjoyment of the show was the last episode (still worth watching, don't get me wrong). The establishment of the narrative climax was deeply rooted in omissions and miscommunications that felt forced. Suddenly, Hitchcock turned into Quentin Tarantino and the well-paced horror lost its tempo becoming a senseless splatter. Overall, the story escalated in the right direction but in an unnatural way.