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I recommend this show but with a big caveat: this show wastes A LOT of time. If all the time-wasting fat had been trimmed from the first season, I feel fairly confident they could have fit another four-episode arc into the 12-episode season.

First, I'll start with the good stuff: you can believe the hype about this one. The animation is top-notch. The story is fast-paced, interesting as hell, and always leaves you wanting more. The fight sequences are magnificent. The power structure of the world is well-defined. This is great entertainment.

But this adaptation has a big problem: it wastes so much time pummeling the ... viewer with information long, long before we'll have any need for it. It's not necessarily bad storytelling to let the audience in on information before the protagonist, but it happens WAY too much in this season.

The first two episodes are, quite literally, a complete waste of the viewers' time: a person could skip the first two episodes and perfectly understand everything they need to know based on the information that is conveyed during that third episode. During the season there are a bunch of cutaways to high-ranking members of hunters' guilds talking about plans to invade some quarantined island that is absolutely useless information to us because it's not even furthering any part of the plot: they're just talking about this thing they want to do, repeatedly telling us about this thing that will happen at some undetermined point in the future. There's a scene at the start of one episode with some mob characters talking for nearly two minutes about a group of disreputable hunters doing shady stuff that is pointless because we're already in the middle of watching exactly that very thing happening to the MC. In the first or second episode, we're introduced to a woman who's an S-ranked hunter -who basically has "the future love interest" tattooed on her forehead- for seemingly no reason: she gets about 3 minutes of screen time over the entire season, never comes close to interacting with the MC, and nothing she does during her limited screen time makes any impact on the plot whatsoever.

There is just so much time wasted on relaying so much information that has zero impact on what is presently happening to the MC; and since all of that info will have to be explained again once the MC actually does get caught up in these events, we're doubling up on how much time will ultimately get wasted on 'splainin' things. Imagine what it will feel like watching the second season when all seventeen tons of extraneous exposition they spewed out during the first season needs to be repeated so the MC can understand what the hell is going on when all of this stuff finally catches up to him. As I said at the start, I'm quite confident that if the storytelling were more efficient, they could have trimmed four episodes' worth of fat off the season and given another entire arc.

I'm giving the show an 8 out of 10: it's definitely worth watching, but inefficient storytelling really bothers me, and there's a lot of that happening here.

This is a tough one to review: it's an enjoyable, if generic, OP protag fantasy/comedy; but it's also really, really insulting if you happen to be over the age of 30.

We've got Rick, our MC, who is in his early 30s and just getting started as an adventurer. At first, he thinks he's got a long way to go to catch up to all these veteran adventurers around him who started much younger than him, but soon he realizes that due to his intense training, he's already got the power of an S-Rank adventurer despite just starting out. Cool, we get the OP thing and ... a few oblivious protag jokes too, but the oblivious thing doesn't outlast its welcome and we also get an underlying "it's never too late to follow your dreams" message, which is nice to see. Then it turns out Rick has a cheat power (it seems like it only activates when all is lost, so I call the power Deus Ex Machina), which undercuts that message a little bit, but it's a little thing and for the most part the show stays on message.

However, a lot of the humor in the story is built around the audience accepting the idea that "30 = old", which is completely unnecessary because Rick's supporting cast is a group of S-Ranked adventurers who are 5 times more overpowered than him, and none of them seem to understand the concept of "restraint". That is comedic gold right there, but instead of just relying on that for all the laughs, all too often the show goes for the "30 = old" joke, which is only funny to people under the age of 25. This is not to say they never utilize the supporting cast's craziness for humor, it is the main source of humor as the show gets past the first three episodes, but too often it tries to make age jokes that just fall flat.

For now, I'll keep watching and hope that the lame age jokes become less and less common because when it's not insulting every audience member over the age of 30, it's a generically enjoyable enough little show.

This show feels like no one working on it had any affection for the source material, and thus no one cared if they were releasing a quality product.

This show really irritated me because the first episode started with a lot of potential, but it was completely squandered. Our MC was abused as a child and is convinced that he's a terrible person because of times in the past that he lashed out in anger. This is surprisingly deep -and dark- characterization for an anime... but nothing is really done with it. The MC believes that he's an awful person, yet he's surrounded and bullied by ... truly horrible classmates, which is why he just takes any abuse that's dumped on him: he believes that he deserves it... until the whole class gets isekai'ed, he gets told that he is the weakest link and cast out to die. At this point, he decides that his life is worthwhile, and he's going to survive and get revenge on the goddess that summoned him and his classmates to this generic fantasy world.

That's actually a decent set-up; not particularly original, but the abused as a child thing is a new angle. However, that dark backstory gets backburnered almost immediately and he sets off on a generic doesn't-seem-like-he's-after-the-revenge-that-he-says-he-is quest to... do something... something that isn't made clear to the audience. After the first episode, the whole initial set-up is largely just tossed aside -barely even mentioned again after the third episode- and the audience is left guessing what was the point.

The show randomly flips back and forth between decent traditional animation and some pretty awful CGI; and I do mean randomly: be it a monster battle or a static conversation between characters, the show will flip from traditional animation to bad CGI on a shot-to-shot basis. Since it seems like CGI is used as a cost-saving measure in anime, I'm not sure why they didn't just make the whole show CGI: it would have looked horrible, but at least it would have been consistent.

So we've got a meandering story filled with awful people who are awful just for the sake of making the audience hate them; and absolutely terrible visuals. This is the sort of thing that happens when there's not enough money to make the show properly, and no one cares enough to try to stop the trainwreck. So this show is just a waste of time and streaming bandwidth.

Alya is easily the strongest new series of the Summer 2024 season. Unfortunately, that's not as big a compliment as it would have been in nearly any other season in the last couple of years, but this show still would have been a standout even in a much stronger season than this one.

The show doesn't break any new ground, but that's not a bad thing. Here we get a fairly standard love story of a tsundere falling for the lazy otaku who's actually a bit more competent than he initially seems, mixed in with an unnecessary -but cute- gimmick of her blurting out all her ... feelings in another language that she thinks he can't understand, but does. Add in a complex sibling relationship with a misleading public facade and the fact that the MC seems to be the most well-liked guy in school who's developing the faintest beginnings of a harem, and there are enough complications to keep this thing going for a while and keep it interesting that whole time.

If you've seen a few romcoms, you have the idea of what is going on here, but it's the execution that matters and they nail it here. All of these characters have relationships with one another that extend beyond the fact that know the main character. Everyone has their own personality and their own agendas. While we definitely get some tropes thrown in there, the characters are much more fully realized human beings than those in 9 out of 10 other romcoms. As the cherry on top of this great story, we also get Doga Kobo serving it up with animation that is leagues better than required... better than we could have hoped for... hell, better than we deserve. I'm not sure how, or why, but this is 8 out of 10 material that's getting a 10 out of 10 adaptation; that alone makes it worth your time to check it out.

It's fine. Everything is fine. Nothing is great. Nothing is particularly bad. It's... fine.

That is simultaneously the best and worst thing I can say about this anime: it's fine. The show manages to do everything that it sets out to do, which is basically to "not completely suck" and it manages to do that. However, when not being terrible is the height of your ambition, it's also the best you can hope to accomplish. So this show... doesn't suck; which is not praise. It is forgettable mediocrity: something to pass some time and then forget everything about it in less time than it takes you ... to click on a different show to watch.

The show's title tells you all you need to know about the concept, and once you start watching it, you get this vague feeling like you've seen this all before, and now it's all being delivered to you in the most-slightly-better-than-bad version possible. Everything feels like it's going down a checklist of what you expect to see: the harem that the protag doesn't realize is developing around him; the superior who passes all their work onto him; the overconfident, mustache-twirling villains; the inexplicably ever-increasing number of people who know the secret; and of course the OP protag. If you told me that this anime was written by an AI, I'd believe you.

So, it's fine. If you're just looking for some media content to fill the air, you can do worse. But you can also do better.

This show can't decide if it's a serious fantasy-action drama, or a comedic OP protagonist send-up.

What we have an OP protagonist fantasy, with an oblivious protagonist, which means this should be a comedy, right? Except this is all played completely straight-faced, and the larger story developing is very serious and high-stakes for everyone. But throughout all of this, our protagonist is oblivious to just to the danger he's in; how powerful he is; and what is really going on all around him. The thing is, Noor (the protag) isn't Forrest Gump: he does not have below-average intelligence making him see things in an overly simplistic ... way; rather, no one around him ever states the obvious thing like "holy crap dude, you just soloed an S-rank monster!"

This is where my frustration comes in: there's no reason for the protagonist to be this oblivious to his own power level for as long as he is; and there is no reason why no one points out to him just how incredible his accomplishments are. Quite simply, no one does the most obvious thing, and we're never given a reason for it. Noor's lack of confidence is the underlying cause of his obliviousness, but the thing is that lack of confidence radiates from him, so absolutely no one with half a brain is going to mistake that obliviousness for arrogance. Simply, the show needs a real reason that no one ever says "holy crap dude, you just soloed an S-rank monster!" to him, but never provides one (arguably the princess character eventually does have a reason, but it simply cannot be applied to everyone he encounters and she would not have had that reason when first encountering him).

Beyond that admittedly big problem the show has, there's actually a very intriguing plot about a war between two nations, and how Noor has gotten caught up in it. I'll also add, Noor doesn't seem so much like he's OP per se, but rather that everyone around him is simply under leveled in a world that seems to be balanced around his power level. Plus, OLM is going all out with the animation on this one: definitely one of the best looking shows of the season. If the show just dropped the oblivious to his own power thing and pushed on as a straight-up fantasy-action story, my current rating of 6 would jump to 8 easily; in that regard it's not the most original thing out there, but it's well done enough that it's worth your time.

I feel like I don't know enough about Japanese culture to properly enjoy this anime.

So, in the first half of the 20th century, a suicidal author (based on real-life figure Osamu Dazai) gets isekai'ed just as he and his lover are about to commit double suicide. In this other world he is told that he's one of dozens of Earthlings summoned there supposedly to save that world from the demon lord. He is not interested in that whatsoever, only wanting to find his lover here in this new world so they can finish their double suicide pact together. And so with the first two ... members of his harem, an goddess and a cat-girl, he climbs into a coffin to get dragged around this new life in a new world to find the love of his life... so they can both end theirs together.

It's dark humor, and I'm there for it, but it's just not landing for me. Watching this anime makes me feel like an American at a Robbie Williams concert: my impression is that it's not terrible, but I don't understand the appeal. There seems to be a common trend in the Japanese parodies/satires that I've seen: stepping on the punchline (this is when you immediately point out what is supposed to be funny about what just happened, which in turn makes it not funny), and that happens all over the place here. We get set up, then punchline, and then just as I'm about to laugh another character stomps all over the punchline, leaving me not laughing at the joke. I've seen this often enough in Japanese parodies (it happens all over the place in Nozaki-kun) that I think it's part of the joke, but to my Western sensibilities, it doesn't translate.

However, this series is doing some fun things in the whole isekai parody sub-sub-genre. The idea that most people from Earth would be absolute jerks with their cheat powers isn't new, but it's an interesting way to play with the genre. I love that our protagonist is a true anti-hero; not that faux-macho, unchivalrous hero who gets called an "anti-hero" because they're a jerk, but a true anti-hero in the literary sense: a protagonist who is actively avoiding the plot; one who (in a literal sense here) is dragged from plot point to plot point with little to no agency in what happens.

I think I'll stick with this one for a few more episodes to see where it goes. I really enjoyed "Love After World Domination" from this writer-artist team, but I worry that the humor in this one feels too culturally specific to me.

At the moment, I'm still unsure of how I feel about the series because I can't tell if it's supposed to be a trashy soap opera somehow completely lacking in fanservice or a high-brow romance.

The concept is you have two fraternal twin sisters who are both in love with the boy who's lived next door since they were 5 or 6. After a decade of the two of them both being infatuated with him passes, the short-haired tomboy-ish one finally confesses to him and they start dating. Cool: it's like a standard rom-com, but we skip right to the confession; story over... right? Obviously ... not.

The tomboy feels guilty for being the first turtle across the finish line, so she dumps the boy and tells him to ask out her sister, even though she's totally in love with him. So after some prodding from tomboy, boy next door asks out the other twin, the pretentious girly-girl. So now the boy next door is in a bind because he's still not over tomboy, but now he's dating girly-girl (who seems like she's already sussed out that boy next door is still hung up on tomboy) while tomboy is hanging around to inadvertently make sure that the sexual tension between her and boy next door remains high.

Yes, my description is glib, but that's because conceptually this sounds like a follow-up to Domestic Girlfriend, but it isn't. This series is a slow-burn, serious approach to soap opera fodder. However, they've yet to justify the reasoning for having the girls be twins versus being best friends. The boy next door is mostly a blank slate: he's kind and smart, but still not much in the way of personality to speak of. They've set up a side character who is obviously meant to be just as good as or even better a match for girly-girly as the boy next door, and who's already flat-out admitted that he has/had a crush on girly-girl. Tomboy has a friend who keeps pushing her to steal boy next door back from girly-girl, like he's just a trophy to be passed around until everyone has had a chance to hold it. All of this is pure fodder for an amazing dumpster fire, but treated as ponderously serious, which I have problems taking seriously.

Thankfully, this series is devoid of "omg... that would be like an indirect kiss" or "I brought you lunch because I accidentally made too much: it's not because I like you or anything" or any other overdone rom-com trope. It handles teen sexuality with refreshing seriousness: it shouldn't take a couple of fifteen-year-olds six months to hold hands and another year after that to kiss. I really like the fact we're not being presented with the standard idealized life of a Japanese teenager that is common to teen love stories.

If it continues this slow-burn approach, it'll just be a bunch of adolescent navel-gazing posing as serious thought; but if it doesn't tread the line carefully, it'll just turn into Domestic Girlfriend without the T&A, which would be unbearable. So for the moment, I'm cautiously keeping this one on the watch list, but if something doesn't up the drama quotient soon, I think I'll drop it.