Tag: Spring 2024

Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 Anime Review – 63/100

by Lenlo, posted in Anime Reviews, Finished Series: Action, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Reviews by Lenlo

Lets not beat around the bush, Kimetsu no Yaiba had a tough time last year. From lackluster and hard to follow fights to a nonsensical narrative and mediocre villains, Season 3 is Yaiba’s lowest point yet. So going into Season 4, seeing the title, knowing it was a training arc and setup for the coming finale, my expectations were rock bottom. And yet, as the episodes went on… I found myself enjoying it. Some how, some way, Ufotable and director Haruo Sotozaki have managed to breathe new life into this series, reviving some of my interest. It’s not perfect, Yaiba still has a long ways to go before it’s great. But the fact that it’s on an upward trajectory at all, after last season, feels like a miracle. So lets dive into Kimetsu no Yaiba Season 4: Hashira Training Arc and find out how a seeming filler arc, improved so much.

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for Kimetsu no Yaiba Seasons 1-4. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 Anime Review – 63/100” →

Wind Breaker Anime Review – 69/100

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Wind Breaker

Delinquents are a pretty common sight in anime. From classic Shounen like Yu Yu Hakusho to more modern series like Tokyo Revengers, we get plenty of them every year. So standing out amongst the crowd can be pretty difficult for a show like this. Do you get weird with it like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Season 4? Or more heartfelt and personal, like Great Teacher Onizuka? Regrettably, most shows never really figure that out. Whatever they try, most fall short and aren’t able to separate themselves from the pack. Well today I’m here to talk about one that manages to do just that, though only barely. A delinquent battle shounen that tries its best to fly and, by the end, is able to fly on its own. Originally created by Satoru Nii, animated and adapted by Cloverworks, directed by Toshifumi Akai, and with music by Ryou Takahashi and produced by Shinji Yamauchi, I give you… Wind Breaker.

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for Wind Breaker. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Wind Breaker Anime Review – 69/100” →

Viral Hit Anime Review – 51/100

by Lenlo, posted in Finished Series: Action, Viral Hit

How familiar are you with the Creator Clash? That boxing event hosted by iDubbbz where various content creators box each other. Ever heard of that? Well remove the rules and the stage, remove the big names and huge payouts, move the entire thing to Seoul, South Korea and suddenly you have Kenka Dokugaku aka Viral Hit. Originally created by Tae-Jun Park, animated by studio Okuruto Noboru, directed by Masakazu Hishida and with music by Yutaka Yamada, Viral Hit is about Ho-Bin Yoo’s quest to make money by fighting random punks in his community and livestreaming it on YouTube I mean NewTube, pulling himself up the social ladder along the way. Does that sound interesting? Do you want to watch knock-off LeafyIsHere get into a fist fight with Korean Logan Paul and slowly fall in love with fighting? Then read on, because that description is about the best sell Viral Hit gets.

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for Viral Hit. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Viral Hit Anime Review – 51/100” →

Ranger Reject – 7 [The Zigzag Road to the Final Exam!]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Ranger Reject

Welcome all, to another episode of Ranger Reject! This week continues the exam, revealing the true secret behind it and driving our cast to conflict, meanwhile in the background a greater threat is beginning to arise. Pretty ominous right? Well lets dive in and talk about it!

Starting with the test itself, the reveal that this wasn’t actually designed to test pairs of two but full teams of five was really interesting. Suddenly a seemingly impossible test designed to fail everyone instead becomes a measure of leadership, team work, and judgement on who you team up with. I still wouldn’t call it perfect, the way Ranger Reject presented it last episode was still very flawed, but this episode was a valiant recovery and may end up saving the arc for me. Shion’s betrayal despite everything Fighter D did for him yesterday, the way Fighter D is slowly building up his team of rejects to steal back the keys they need, as well as everything else going on in the background, was all around pretty good. It still suffers a bit from pacing, but not nearly as badly as the previous episode.

Continue reading “Ranger Reject – 7 [The Zigzag Road to the Final Exam!]” →

Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 – 3 [Fully Recovered Tanjiro Joins the Hashira Training!!]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kimetsu no Yaiba

Welcome all, to another week of Kimetsu no Yaiba! For how simple the premise is, how little promise the arc seems to have, I’m enjoying myself a shocking amount. It’s nice coming back and seeing these characters again, spending time understanding who they are and what they think of the current situation. It’s what the series needed! I just can’t believe we actually got it. What do I mean? Well lets dive into the episode and find out.

All things considered, this was a pretty straight forward training episode. Tanjiro returned, we caught back up with Uzui and saw what he was putting the Demon Slayers through, had a motivational speech, then moved on to the next Hashira. Nothing big happened, no fights or major revelations, just Tanjiro getting to show off how far he’s come and how great the difference is between him and a regular Demon Slayer. So why am I so happy with it? Well that’s simple, Yaiba executed a basic premise very well. Rather than being about empowering our lead, making him stronger, it was about how our lead can empower and raise up those around him. It showed us the nameless, faceless mooks and made it clear that, even if we don’t see them at the final battle, they will be there. Doing their part.

Continue reading “Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 – 3 [Fully Recovered Tanjiro Joins the Hashira Training!!]” →

Ranger Reject – 6 [1 Plus 2 Equals… Threat!]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Ranger Reject

Welcome all, to the halfway point of Ranger Reject This week is another fast one, blazing through content in way I’d rather Ranger Reject didn’t. That’s right, this is another 4-5 chapter episode, meaning we have a lot to talk about and not all of it is good. Lets dive in!

As I said, this episode moved fast and covered a lot. Ranger Reject was running a mile a minute this week as it speeds its way through the Final Exam. And you know what? I can’t say I’m particularly happy about it. We went from just meeting these people, these other cadets, to immediately getting thrown into a big exam where most of them are probably going to fail. The exam itself also serving as our proper introduction to the 2nd-in-commands of the various squads as they act as the “obstacles”, letting us meet characters like Hisui properly. This kind of sucks, because I was hoping we would get more time training and getting to know this large cast of new characters. That the final exam would be the climax of the season rather than the mid-point. Maybe Ranger Reject can make it work? But I’m starting to worried.

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Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 – 2 [Water Hashira Giyu Tomioka’s Pain]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kimetsu no Yaiba

Welcome all, to episode 2 of the new season of Kimetsu no Yaiba! I got some pushback last week to my disappointment with the series premier, and that’s understandable. Maybe I was expecting a bit much from a double-length premier. So it brings me great joy to report that this week, this episode? Yaiba gave me almost everything I wanted. I’m happy. Let’s dive into why.

So what is it that I like so much about this Yaiba episode? Well simply put, the entire thing is laser focused on a single character and his relationship with Tanjiro, Giyu Tomioka. We haven’t gotten a lot from Giyu until now, despite him being the first Demon Slayer we ever meet way back in episode 1. He’s not very emotional, doesn’t talk about himself, doesn’t really engage with anyone. So spending an entire episode letting us into his head, exploring his feelings of survivors guilt and relating them to Tanjiro’s own in regards to Rengoku, was great. The only misstep I would say would be the comedy. Yaiba likes to end most of it’s big emotional moments with silly faces and one liners, which I feel usually ruins the tension and emotion of a scene. This weeks weren’t terrible, the soba eating contest worked, but it definitely wasn’t needed.

Continue reading “Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 – 2 [Water Hashira Giyu Tomioka’s Pain]” →

Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 – 1 [To Defeat Muzan Kibutsuji]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Kimetsu no Yaiba

Welcome back everyone, to the 4th season of Kimetsu no Yaiba! It’s been a while. Gotta say, with a title like “Hashira Training Arc” I’m not that excited for this one. I’ve covered every other season of the show though, so I’ll be damned if I miss this one just because it’s lining up to be the worst entry yet. Anyways without further ado lets dive into a 45 minute double feature of an episode!

Diving into things, initial signs for this arc are… not good. As per the title, the whole thing is framed as one big training arc. We have no idea how many episodes this will be, 6? A full cour (12)? Two cour? No idea. The sad thing is that there is no right answer here either. It doesn’t matter how long the arc is if it’s nothing but Hashira training, that’s going to get old fast. The only good outcome for Kimetsu no Yaiba is if the title of the season is a lie and it covers far more than the training arc. Maybe it could cover some of the side stories or novels to fill out the season? I don’t know, the only thing I’m sure of is that if this entire season is just training arc, it’s going to suck.

Continue reading “Kimetsu no Yaiba S4 – 1 [To Defeat Muzan Kibutsuji]” →

Ranger Reject – 5 [Fighter D, as a Part of ‘Ranger Force’]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Ranger Reject

Ranger Reject is back everyone! Sports may have stolen our episode from us last episode, but I think that breather did the series good because this episode was much better than the previous one. Not perfect, and we’ll talk about why, but it’s nice to see Ranger Reject back on the upswing. So without further ado, lets dive into the episode!

So starting off, Ranger Reject slowed down a lot this week it felt like. Last episode we covered 5 or 6 chapters I believe, and you could feel it in the episode. We sprinted through content that, if we’re being honest, needed much more time to explore. And it looks like that’s what we’re getting this week as Ranger Reject circles back around on Hibiki’s past, how he got here and what his plans were. In fact, the only major issue I see with the episode is the sheer size of the cast it’s introducing. We got like… 9 new characters this week, none of which I’m going to bother remembering until they actually do something. Not because of any stubbornness on my part, I just have no idea which ones will end up being interesting so it’s up to Ranger Reject to make them worth remembering.

Continue reading “Ranger Reject – 5 [Fighter D, as a Part of ‘Ranger Force’]” →

Ranger Reject – 4 [The Soldier With Love, Hibiki!]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Ranger Reject

Welcome all, to another week of Ranger Reject. A lot happens this week, not all of it necessarily good, so lets skip the pleasantries and dive right into the episode!

Starting off, this was a really fast paced episode, and not necessarily in a good way. Ranger Reject covered a lot of ground, 5 entire chapters from what some friends have told me, and there were a lot of concepts in this episode that don’t feel like they got the attention they need or deserve. Take the Rangers and their power structure for instance. We get a small scene early on revealing their 2nd-in-Commands, as well as an introduction to the idea that the Rangers can be replaced and how little they care for each others lives. This was our chance to really dive into the internal politics of the Rangers, to show us they weren’t a unified force, using Suzukiri as our point-of-view character. Instead it’s a rather quick scene only showing us how ruthless they are, something we really already knew.

Continue reading “Ranger Reject – 4 [The Soldier With Love, Hibiki!]” →