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Jan 2, 2026
Life is Money is a very interesting concept of combining a sort of death game-esque trope with the idea of sensory confinement, and how that plays with, if given the correct specific outside stimuli, it can lead to the entire breakdown of the psyche. The manga would make a solid premise and story for this; however, this often ends up not being the case, with points in the story where it falls flat right before able to hitting the nail on the head. Either done with suddenly taking narrative shifts out of nowhere, having characters built up one way only to act in anything but
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said way, or just weak executions ingeneral .
The main premise is that our main character is tricked into a death game where each day he has to roll a dice with strangers, and depending on that outcome they can either lose a sense permanently for the 10 days they are confined, causing a negative feedback loop should someone get too unfortunate, leading to total sensory deprivation or luck up and have their senses saved.
This isalso also where the second part comes: if someone’s stress gets too high during the confinement, a monitor on their body will go off, instantly killing them. Thus forcing them to outlast the life or death game while controlling their level of stressors with their slowly reduced sense so they don’t die.
In premise, that’s a really, really good idea, and I personally was really stoked to see it play out. And although the manga at times does a good job of showing what it’s like to lose your major senses, it does a terrible job of showing the deaths due to mental overload (death by being stressed over the threshold).
Just imagine, you know the way to kill someone is by psychologically torturing them and making them die due to the stress, so one of the manga’s kills plays this off by having everyone circle around a character so they can’t leave and they call the character mean names. This entire whole scene genuinely feels like how kids would bully each other during middle school. Most of the deaths play out with being confronted: one of the characters somehow discerns a character’s deep-rooted insecurity based off a single convo (at times even no conversations), they begin talking down to the other person about said insecurity, and then they freak out and die. (There’s only a single death in the entire manga where this is executed to a somewhat dissent level.)
This formula wouldn’t have been so bad if the manga just tried to build things up marginally better, like if there was more investigation behind a person’s history to get their flaws to surface, or if they changed how they caused a mental overload, maybe this would be more palatable. But it feels like because the series is so short, everything moves at a breakneck pace with the story.
Not to mention, the main character and those around them feel sloppily written. There are times where the character witnesses a death or something traumatic and because of it they feel the need to lock in and suddenly take things seriously, only to then be pressured and instantly back down and revert to their helpless selves from how they were in the beginning, and it feels like that cycle just continues up until it suddenly doesn’t for the last few chapters. Along with other characters serving nearly nothing to the plot because they have so little relevance and interact so barely with other characters that it would have been more effective to write them out from the story entirely. This can lead to things being frustrating in how the situations play out.
The ending personally wasn’t bad and didn’t leave any bad taste, with it being basically the best-case scenario ending. And the art style wasn’t personally anything bad. I do wish that at times they did tone down how comical they made the depictions of people getting stressed out, since the over-animating of characters from how they are drawn normally almost came off as “Looney Tunes-ish’, but that’s only really the problem for the first half for the most part.
Overall, not the worst thing, but just an alright series. It’s a good series to just read in a day if you have time to kill and want to burn some time and forget it afterwards. You’re not really going to actively want to read what happens next, but it’s not like it’s a punishment either to read it. Just an overwhelming meh.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 17, 2025
Darwin’s Game is a series that does a great job playing out a premise until conclusion and writing situations where the sole deciding factor is tactical know-how and strategic thinking rather than just overwhelming force.But endss up not really sticking the ending near the end. The after taste of finishing the series isn’t bad but not its not really anything to have you remember either.
The MC is given an initially weak ability from the game he’s bean put into, and it’s through refining it over the series that he learns the true strength of the actual ability. For example, in early fights, since he hasn’t
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fully grasped the wide rage of use of his abilities, he’s often using buying items from the store mid fight to either find ways to escape encounters, or when he does choose to face them head-on, he tries to plan their actions ahead to create traps to get out ahead. And ash the series progresses, he gets a grasp on his powers and is actually able to go toe to toe in firepower, but when he does, he still keeps that smae mentality of using his ability as minimally as possible to try and find a way out, which is nice since it doesn’t feel like he becomes a different person, just because he’s only been fighting semi compenet players.
Also, the actual action in the series isn’t bad either. The fights are nice and you do a solid job having it play out, and you never really struggle. The only gripe with the action would be that a lot of the scenes and panels almost felt bland and muted. I understand that that is a large part due to the art style, but often throughout the series when you’re seeing two players face off against each other, most panels feel relatively still and not very dynamic with barely any real movement from the players or whatever objects they are using.
The story, however, was well written for the most part. The major overarching plot/idea is the conspiracy behind the actual D Game and who’s in charge of it,. Which makes sense for or a normal superpower death game series, that seems like a fine premise. However, the series only keeps that premise for atmout 60–70% of the way into the story, and once it’s revealed it feels like the entire genre of the series changes.
You go from high-stakes, “death-is-around-every-corner” style death game series to suddenly some sort of time travel/sci-fi/fantasy MCU-level plot. Having a series change its direction after an arc or major reveal in and of itself isn’t a problem, but it feels like the writer stopped writing for a few months, forgot what the series was about, and then started again trying to write it into a blank slate from scratch mid storuy. I wouldn’t have had a problem with the story telling shift, however there wasn’t a single chapter at any point or any mention/breadcrumbs that would allude to the story taking the massive change in direction it did into a time travel sci-fi multiverse story, and that’s honestly the biggest turn off in the series for me when I was reading it.
I personally don’t hate it, but reading through the series it’s a great and fun read up until the main reveal, and after that high point much of the narrative honestly feels like a slog at times. Overall the series just felt “meh,” and after reading it feels like I honestly just kinda passed forwards in time a bit, with nothing of the story really memorable or of note left after finishing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 11, 2025
The movie Knights of Sidonia: Love Woven in the Stars feels like a storytelling fuck you to the fanbase, written by some random fan who wanted to canonize their ship last minute before the series ended, with all the enjoyment (if you can even get any) coming from the life support of the studio’s massive VFX and sound design budget, and the fun (for the most part) action scenes.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, time to discuss the movie. Warning: I will be talking about VERY SLIGHT spoilers but will do my best to be as vague as possible.
Let’s talk about the good
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first. The movie was made 6 years after season 2 ended, and the tech behind the animation and special effects took a massive step up and you can very clearly tell. Also, the original cast does reprise their roles, and they are just as skilled and great at VA work as in the previous season. And the music score is just ear candy, and I was physically singing along when they played the season 1 OP during the high points of the battles, like how it was done in season 2.
Okay, that’s literally everything good I can say about the movie; now to get into the movie.
In my review of season 2, a problem I had was how, after characters had their respective screentime to play love interest to our main character, the series moved on and so did they, and along with that it feels like every interaction between the respective love interests during that specific arc gets undone and everyone else in the story moves on as if it never happened. This movie does that but suddenly amps that up by a hundred. The entire driving factor of season 1 and mainly season 2 was the budding relationship between Izana and Tanikaze. However, the series opens up to a 10-year time skip where that entire relationship just either never happened or ended off screen. And less than 10 minutes in after that, the relationship between Tanikaze and Tsumugi is suddenly the main focus of the romance plot of the series, and based on the title you can expect how that goes.
This wouldn’t have been a problem if in the previous seasons small interactions were established throughout the series to allude to budding feelings, but after rewatching the entire season 2, never once did Tanikaze even show an ounce of romantic affection for Tsumugi; and inversely, all the “romance” Tsumugi had for Tanikaze was presented as her wanting to have friendships with people since, keep in mind, she is presented as essentially having the psyche of a child. So you can imagine how it feels out of nowhere when you’re just told, “yeah, these two love each other and, by the way, this was always the case.” It feels genuinely frustrating, as it feels like it reduces all the character writing and plot developments between characters from all the previous seasons.
Forgetting the baffling choice of direction with the romance, the entire movie leaves nearly every plot hole and inconsistency from the previous season completely unanswered, and those that the movie does discuss it proceeds to contradict itself on many times over. For example, when the Big Bad gets revealed, it’s meant to come across as terrifying, since it’s revealed that none of the weapons the Gardes have can harm him; however, the final confrontation occurs with the very same weapons we were told just earlier can’t harm him, only to see them working despite the only difference being that Tanikaze just happens to be the one shooting them this time.
Beyond this, the ending feels extremely out of place, and it’s almost like they took it out of a fairy tale book for kids beat for beat, and everyone goes home happy and nothing bad ever happens again. Which, if you saw season 1 and to a degree season 2, you can understand why this feels like you’re watching a completely different show.
It honestly feels pretty disappointing to watch the movie after having a 6-year wait, and to be honest I really struggled to finish, with the only thing keeping me from dropping it being the massive production value the studio put into the fights. Frankly, my advice would be to watch season 1 and just read the manga, or season 2 as well if you really want. This movie feels like a trainwreck of a story and ultimately is better off being skipped entirely.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 10, 2025
The second season of Knights of Sidonia feels like a significant departure from what made the first succeed in both vibe and storytelling. It upholds the solid action scenes and space dogfights that made the first season so great. In that regard, it maintains the gold standard; however, in all other aspects it feels like a downgrade that finds itself severely lacking in cohesive storytelling and as a series as a whole.
Fortunately, the drop in quality has nothing to do with the animation that so many anime season 2s' often suffer from, nor was the change in writing so bad that I felt like I
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should have just dropped the series. But it feels like the anime tried to tell multiple lines and multiple stories at the same time, and doing so required bunching each arc back-to-back before they could start something new, which often led to significant plot points being dropped to the wayside.
What I mean by this can be seen by the tonal shift the series takes. Season 1 focused heavily on how unfavored the fights were between the gauna and pilots, with each encounter being a make-or-break moment for humanity, and along with that the atmosphere the series took was often very tense between the characters, and the main focus on everyone’s mind was getting through to the next day and surviving. Even when we saw characters interact with each other during their downtime on the base, the series made sure to stress how temporary the peace was before thrusting us into a major battle where anyone could die at a moment’s notice.
And so, reasonably, the first episode starts off by showing what happens after opening the vault at the end of the season, and instantly the stakes are raised and you’re introduced to a sense of dread. You’re made to believe that now suddenly humanity is at risk because of the new character who’s introduced and that now we’re going to follow the battle on both sides; only for that to not happen.
Instead, suddenly the series spends the first few episodes on the action and atmosphere of season 1, only to transition into a “will they, won’t they” romcom harem bit for nearly half of the show. It ultimately ends with the entire “romance” (if you can even call it that) arc going nowhere: no major change in the relationships, no real confessions, moments of intimacy, or interaction between any characters beyond several hours of blushes and your regular anime harem tropes. And then it cuts back to fights for the last 3 episodes. And that massive reveal at the end gets brought up out of nowhere, despite the anime actively having spent the last 11 episodes telling us that,, this evil person actually isn’t evil and is helping fight the gauna rather than help them.
Although it’s frustrating seeing this happen, the issue isn’t the writing itself (although the writing majorly needs reworking). It’s the fact that every point the series tries to make needs to happen isolated from another. Much of the series would flow much better if they instead told the overarching plot of evil governments and space conspiracy in the first half of an episode alongside the fights, and then during the downtime after they come back from missions they could explore the romance aspects, in the second half of the episode. Yes, this approach doesn’t fix any of the plot holes or statements made between characters clearly alluding to a larger subtext between them which go unanswered by the time the series rolls around. But the choice to cut off arcs often feels like you’re being hit by a brick wall between major story beats.
Ultimately, I don’t “hate” the new season, nor do I think it was bad. But if you absolutely “loved” the first season, you’re going to just “like” the second. Watching the second season doesn’t feel like it’s something to regret, but it feels like I’m just watching an anime to continue season 1 rather than watching something because you can’t wait to see what’s next.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 8, 2025
It not that often that we get a decent true "Space Mecha vs Aliens” anime, that isn't connected to the Gundam-verse. Knights of Sidonia works to scratch that itch without forcing you to dive headfirst into the chronological mess that is the Gundam series. If you prefer the militaristic dogfight style that space Mecha anime is known for with modern day animation fluidity; and a mature engaging story that keeps you wondering "How are they going to get through this fight, without everyone dying", tons of near misses and a greater overarching plot of something nefarious is going on behind the scenes that everyone's trying
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to hide. This series would make a solid recommendation and a good watch for when you’re in the mood for something with a nice premise and solid action.
Now that the TLDR is out of the way, it’s important to address the elephant in the room. This series is not your typical "anime" and what I mean by that, is that the series is fully directed in CGI. This isn't to mean that the series is doomed from the start, as many series succeed with the entirely CGI approach (Girls Band Cry, Land of Lustrous, Trigun, etc). But it noted that to many people that would make this series a immediate turnoff and that's completely reasonable. It should be noted however the choice for CGI is more a stylistic choice as the manga that this series is adapted from, is the same author of BLAME!; And the uncanny valley nature of the animation style ironically in a way ends up complementing the series causing it to feel more inline of a faithful adaption to the manga. If your someone who doesn't mind a different visual format of story telling this is essentially a nonfactor for the most part.
As far as story and action goes; despite the full CGI never at any points does the action ever feel wrong, nor does it lag behind at any point. However, the Story does fall short at points. The strength of the series is that it starts out strong on all aspect of the show, and including main overarching story, the show does a great job keeping that momentum until the end of the season. However, that comes with the caveat that as the season continues it feels like many character plotlines are essentially put on ice. Most key characters get their 15 min of fame and then become a background spectator for much of the show; or in other cases feel like they are forced to take a rapid 180 degree turn in their character without any reason explanation the show moves on as if that was fact.
For example, without giving anything away, a major character death & reveal occurs part way through the season which kicks off the escalation in the second half of the show. Which in of it self was fine, but the character who was the sole cause for instigating it afterwards gets written out of the entire show and even in most episode they are barely featured; with at most a cut away to them just moping in a room alone. This was kept up for nearly the rest of the series, only for them to reappear in the literal last 3 minutes to introduce a cliff hanger to lead into the next season.
Another such example was how part way into the series there a love rival subplot with the main character. this ended up being a focus of entire episodes; Only for the characters in question to wake up the fallowing day and suddenly one of the previous main love interests no longer feels or acts remotely the same way, with every action being purely platonic between them and the main character; and for the rest of the series this is never brought up nor is there ever a reference ever made back to this by anyone at any point. It feels like the entire dynamic is some sort of a fever dream that was hallucinated into existence in your mind.
Ultimately as much as there are flaws with the story telling of some of the aspects of the show and its respective sub plotlines, the key bread and butter is the action and political mystery and intrigue. After each episode the key memory will be the epic climatic fights between the Knights and alien threats. The times where the writing does fall flat it is heavily carried by an interesting story full of exciting development and memorable fights. The show isn't perfect by any regards and its not hard to pick out potholes or inconsistencies but its certainly never has you walking away from a episode feeling like you wasted time or at the very least you didn't have fun.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jul 20, 2025
Let me make something clear right off the bat: Vivy is not just good. Vivy is transcendent. This is that rare sci-fi anime that actually dares to do something different and sticks the landing, and I cannot stress enough how hard that is. This show came out of nowhere, hit like a truck emotionally, and by the time it was over, I was just sitting there—staring at the credits, dead silent, because what the hell did I just witness?
From the jump, it tells you exactly what it is. A beautiful android singer designed only to bring smiles to people through song is suddenly thrust into
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a 100-year war against AI gone rogue. Not because she wants to save the world. Not because she’s some chosen one. But because she’s there. Because she’s the only one who might be able to rewrite fate. That premise alone? Fire. But how the story actually unfolds? Unreal.
This anime doesn’t hold your hand. It’s not about exposition dumps or mindless fight scenes or cheap emotional bait. It’s about purpose, identity, the soul of an artificial being who was never meant to think beyond her programming...but learns to want to.
And the format? Chef’s kiss. It skips through decades at a time, dropping you into self-contained arcs—each with their own cast, their own problems, and their own resolution—but all connected by this slowly unraveling web of events leading to the AI apocalypse. Every arc feels like its own short story, and yet nothing feels disconnected. Every moment builds into the next. It’s clean. It’s purposeful. It’s poetic.
Now let’s talk about Vivy herself. This isn’t some emotionless robot girl slowly learning how to love or some "android waifu" bait. Vivy is painfully human. She’s unsure. She’s scared. She fails—a lot. But she keeps going. Every decision she makes carves new scars into her programming. She remembers everything. She lives with everything. By the end, you’re not watching a robot—you’re watching a fully realized person, breaking apart under the weight of a century of regret and responsibility.
And Matsumoto? The smug little AI cube with sarcasm for days and a mysterious agenda of his own? Their dynamic is peak. He’s not a sidekick—he’s her opposite. Logic to her emotion. Control to her chaos. And watching their partnership evolve is just as compelling as the action.
Speaking of which—THE ANIMATION? Stupidly good. Every fight scene is movie-tier quality. Like, no joke, WIT Studio cooked with this one. The choreography is fast, fluid, brutally impactful, and gorgeous. Vivy’s fights are elegant and devastating, like a ballerina with a kill switch.
The music? Don’t even get me started. It’s literally part of the narrative. It’s not just there for vibes—it matters. Vivy’s songs become emotional throughlines for the entire series. "Sing My Pleasure," "Fluorite Eye’s Song," "A Tender Moon Tempo"—every single one hurts. And when that final song hits? When the last performance begins? I was DONE. Emotionally annihilated.
This show doesn't just explore the consequences of AI advancement. It doesn't just question the definition of what it means to be human. It feels like poetry written in binary. It’s heartbreak. It’s sacrifice. It’s about struggling to find meaning in a life that was never meant to be your own—but still choosing to fight for something bigger than yourself.
I walked into this anime thinking I’d get a cool action series with a singing robot girl. What I got was existential dread, emotional devastation, and one of the most beautifully executed sci-fi narratives in recent memory.
Final Score: 10/10.
This is what it looks like when anime fires on all cylinders. No filler. No fluff. Just raw storytelling, top-tier animation, insane music, and a main character you’ll never forget.
It hurts in the best possible way.
Watch it. Rewatch it. Then cry about it again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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