Back to Franktamas's Profile Franktamas's Profile

t is a fitting ending for the series, both in its positives and negatives.

The plot still remained contrived, with many events and character actions clearly serving to push the story in exactly the direction the author wanted. Regardless, it retained some of the positive momentum carried over from the previous season, including narrative causality and coherence.

The story itself was fairly predictable, which took some emotional weight out of the action scenes, as it was often obvious who would live and who would die. Still, the emotional payoffs were there, they were built upon the foundation of the previous four seasons, and many of those arcs ... culminated in the finale.

It wasn’t anything exceptional, but it maintained the lukewarm quality the show had established since the beginning. And with the writing slightly improved compared to the early seasons, it served as a decent conclusion to an okay-ish series.

Its strongest points are definitely the emotional payoffs; sadly, its biggest weakness is how contrived the writing had to be to get there, which definitely cheapened their impacts.

Still, it can be quite enjoyable if you're willing to overlook the conveniences and the painful number of idiotic decisions. Honestly, it feels like everyone’s IQ in this universe is halved compared to ours.

On the more subjective (and less consequential) side, the visuals have improved since Season 4, making the fights look pretty good (even if there weren't any real stakes in them). The music is as awesome as ever, and the voice acting remains top-notch, just like it’s been throughout the series.

7.3/10

Review for both part 1 and part 2:

I'm genuinely surprised by how much of a step up this season is compared to the earlier ones.

For the first time in the series, there's a clear sense of narrative causality and coherence. Characters act according to their personalities, knowledge, and circumstances. Most events feel motivated, grounded in logic and built upon prior developments, rather than emerging randomly at the writer's whim.

It almost feels like a different writer took over. The first two arcs in particular enter a territory I can confidently call great. They’re well-constructed, narratively driven, and offer a sense of logical progression that’s been sorely ... missing in past seasons.

The non-linear time jumps can be a bit confusing at times. They're not incomprehensible, but they occasionally disrupt the flow and require the viewer to piece things together more actively.

The biggest improvement, without question, is the characters. They finally display agency. They're no longer just tools (literal or metaphorical) but individuals with goals, doubts, and actual thought processes.

The season isn’t flawless, though. The final episodes unfortunately drop the ball. The story slips back into predictability, culminating in possibly the most underwhelming fight sequence I've ever seen. The characters' plans are either nonexistent or so impractical that it becomes hard to care. They don’t win through strategy or strength, but seemingly through the writer’s will alone.

When a viewer can pause and sketch out a staggeringly more coherent plan in three minutes, that's not a good sign.

Still, the good far outweighs the bad, especially since these issues only surface in the last tenth of the season.

7.6/10

Review for both part 1 and part 2:

I'm genuinely surprised by how much of a step up this season is compared to the earlier ones.

For the first time in the series, there's a clear sense of narrative causality and coherence. Characters act according to their personalities, knowledge, and circumstances. Most events feel motivated, grounded in logic and built upon prior developments, rather than emerging randomly at the writer's whim.

It almost feels like a different writer took over. The first two arcs in particular enter a territory I can confidently call great. They’re well-constructed, narratively driven, and offer a sense of logical progression that’s been sorely ... missing in past seasons.

The non-linear time jumps can be a bit confusing at times. They're not incomprehensible, but they occasionally disrupt the flow and require the viewer to piece things together more actively.

The biggest improvement, without question, is the characters. They finally display agency. They're no longer just tools (literal or metaphorical) but individuals with goals, doubts, and actual thought processes.

The season isn’t flawless, though. The final episodes unfortunately drop the ball. The story slips back into predictability, culminating in possibly the most underwhelming fight sequence I've ever seen. The characters' plans are either nonexistent or so impractical that it becomes hard to care. They don’t win through strategy or strength, but seemingly through the writer’s will alone.

When a viewer can pause and sketch out a staggeringly more coherent plan in three minutes, that's not a good sign.

Still, the good far outweighs the bad, especially since these issues only surface in the last tenth of the season.

7.6/10

The season has three arcs, each with vastly different levels of quality.

The first arc is, honestly, quite good by the series' standards. It follows a plotline that, for once, develops more or less naturally on its own. Most characters behave logically based on what they know, and their actions show a basic level of human competence. It’s still fairly predictable, which cheapens the impact of character deaths—you can see them coming from a mile away. (As soon as a new character was introduced in Episode 1, I jokingly asked out loud, 'How are you going to die this episode?'—and sure enough, I got my answer ... by the end of that episode.)

While there are some interactions driven by plot convenience, they don't pull the audience out of the experience. The main character remains a rare positive outlier in the series, seemingly immune to the writers' worst tendency to ruin characters in service of the plot.

Then arc two happens, and every small flaw gets amplified, while the good elements are gradually abandoned. We fall back into the show's typical habit of forcing characters into imbecilic behavior to make the plot work. The writing clearly wants certain dramatic moments to land, but doesn't always earn them through natural progression.

Once again, characters are violated to force the plot in a direction the writer clearly wanted, but couldn't achieve organically. Even previously well-established side characters are bent out of shape just to keep the plot moving. It becomes painfully predictable, frustrating, and, most of the time, just plain boring. The drawn elements looked good, but the generated ones looked terrible.

Arc three is essentially a multi-episode exposition dump. To the show's credit, it does resolve a lot of worldbuilding questions that had been hanging over the series since the beginning.

Overall, the first arc deserves genuine praise for its structure and character work, but the second arc drags the season down significantly. The final exposition arc is important, but nothing remarkable.

7.2/10

The season has three arcs, each with vastly different levels of quality.

The first arc is, honestly, quite good by the series' standards. It follows a plotline that, for once, develops more or less naturally on its own. Most characters behave logically based on what they know, and their actions show a basic level of human competence. It’s still fairly predictable, which cheapens the impact of character deaths—you can see them coming from a mile away. (As soon as a new character was introduced in Episode 1, I jokingly asked out loud, 'How are you going to die this episode?'—and sure enough, I got my answer ... by the end of that episode.)

While there are some interactions driven by plot convenience, they don't pull the audience out of the experience. The main character remains a rare positive outlier in the series, seemingly immune to the writers' worst tendency to ruin characters in service of the plot.

Then arc two happens, and every small flaw gets amplified, while the good elements are gradually abandoned. We fall back into the show's typical habit of forcing characters into imbecilic behavior to make the plot work. The writing clearly wants certain dramatic moments to land, but doesn't always earn them through natural progression.

Once again, characters are violated to force the plot in a direction the writer clearly wanted, but couldn't achieve organically. Even previously well-established side characters are bent out of shape just to keep the plot moving. It becomes painfully predictable, frustrating, and, most of the time, just plain boring. The drawn elements looked good, but the generated ones looked terrible.

Arc three is essentially a multi-episode exposition dump. To the show's credit, it does resolve a lot of worldbuilding questions that had been hanging over the series since the beginning.

Overall, the first arc deserves genuine praise for its structure and character work, but the second arc drags the season down significantly. The final exposition arc is important, but nothing remarkable.

7.2/10

The sequel certainly builds upon season 1. With surprisingly high, but still a marginal amount of questions answered.

The plot itself follows a semi-non-chronological order (namely parallel storytelling) but remains easy to follow, thanks to the coherence it holds throughout. The events are fairly intriguing and advance the story at a relatively well-maintained pace.

The characters do not develop much, but stay true to the traits established in season 1.

The worldbuilding, a significant problem in season 1, received a substantial upgrade. It not only answered some questions but also attempted to fill in plot holes. Several questionable decisions were reconsidered and, while still problematic, were at least ... given a rationale.

The biggest virtue of the season is undoubtedly its portrayal of human reactions to extreme events. It is logical, realistic, and intrinsically human.
The show does not shy away from portraying mass murderers as such and even calling them out on it. There are revelations and even a verbal promise of impending punishment for their sins—something much awaited for the arc's completion.
Another example is the depiction of how atrocious events affect the human psyche, making the perpetrators' subsequent actions not only more understandable but also showing how their own sins impact them—offering a partial remedy for the audience.

A very competent but pointed portrayal that improved upon the lackluster season 1, though it still carried many of its weaknesses.
It certainly satisfies a very specific type of curiosity, but beyond that, it does not offer much else.

Also, just a more subjective part, but currently the setups are fairly simple and easy, this isn’t inherently a flaw—it creates a sense of stability that holds the audience in a lull of predictability. However, it raises an intriguing question: will this predictability persist, or are the creators preparing to pull the rug out from under the audience?

Shingeki no Kyojin

The synopsis is rather easy to understand: a post-apocalyptic setting where the human group we follow is stuck inside a big city, cut off from the outside world, which seems to be overrun by giants that operate on the level of infinite-energy zombies.
Its simplicity, while having the vice of not providing an overly intriguing setup, gives a good foundation for the story.

The plot follows certain characters in the city as they struggle for ultimate survival against worsening odds. The city is besieged again and again, giving the characters enough challenges to struggle and strive through

These characters are relatively simplistic, each having just one ... or two characteristics, but they remain true to these traits throughout, with their backstory and circumstances provide reasons for these characteristics.

On the surface, it is a well-set-up story, complemented by good music, well-made shot compositions, and high drawing quality. The series also excels in creating an oppressive and dread-filled atmosphere, effectively capturing the despair and tension of humanity’s struggle against extinction."
But my compliments end there.

The worldbuilding does not go into detail in any part, to the extent that it even withholds information necessary for the plot. Now, it could have an excuse that it only reveals as much information as the main character knows, but that method only works if we get the worldbuilding through character interactions and dialogue; we don’t! Almost all worldbuilding is done out of universe through narration or info cards on the eyecatches. (You often need to pause because they sometimes present a wall of text — one time literally about the wall, funnily — that you’re supposed to pause and read, or somehow absorb in about three seconds.)

With this method of delivering information through out-of-universe sources, it should be mandatory to provide the viewer with the information necessary to understand the plot. But this just doesn’t happen, leaving huge gaps and unanswered questions about certain elements that the anime does not answer at all.

The plot does not have much to offer. It is fairly simplistic in its portrayal of war and humanity's struggle for survival, aside from one aspect: (almost) all the characters are brain-deficient, incompetent morons.

It feels as if whatever created this titan epidemic also reduced every human’s IQ by half. Characters make the worst decisions without any reason to justify them. Plans are made while conveniently forgetting half the information they possess, causing these plans to fail in the most predictable ways possible. Humans throw away their lives through incompetence at record rates (outside of a couple who do have genuine talent in certain areas, but just get bogged down by everyone else). And the worst part? These characters are introduced and regarded as the best in their craft.

Spoiler section:

At first, I wondered what stopped them from making radial walls to create separate structures (baileys?) within each ring, or why they didn’t just fortify or repair sections of the walls. But again, either the epidemic halved their IQ and made them forget how to build, or the wall itself was crafted by some higher entity (one infocard on an episodes eyecatch section did suggest the latter). We don’t know much about their structure or technological level, which is emphasized by the fact that their level of technological progress is inconsistent. They seem to possess technology that is almost dependent on other technologies they haven’t “researched” yet.

While most plot problems can be explained by the simple statement that all characters on the protagonists’ side (the city) are incompetent buffoons, it makes me question: why not replace them with competent ones? Or, as I ultimately concluded, perhaps all people inside the city are idiots to such an extreme degree that they brought death upon themselves. (You could say they deserved it, though I prefer to use “deserve” in a more moral sense, which they aren’t guilty of.)

My third issue is the anime’s attempt to be edgy and “big-boy” (somewhat like X-Men 3: The Last Stand), but this approach quickly loses its impact. At first, I started to get invested in two characters as they showed some potential for development. But no — Boom, they’re dead. From that point on, I knew the next two characters with potential would be the next to die - Right on the money. Then the anime introduced new characters to invest in, but by then I had already recognized the pattern - Sure enough, they died soon after. You cannot pull the SAME rug out from under people more than once anime, and quite honestly, it’s offensive that they tried. At first it might offer some shock value, but the repetition quickly diminishes its emotional impact.

The fact that the characters’ incompetence makes all the flaws in their plans obvious to the audience ruins any suspense. Instead of being gripping when their plans fail over and over, it’s just basic pattern recognition — something they seem to lack. By around the 16th episode, I found myself rooting for the mass-murdering antagonists responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people, because at least they possess basic competence.

7.35/10

Quickly summarizing it, this feels like it is written by someone who has seens stories before, but has no idea how to create one themselves.

The world-building is virtually nonexistent. There is something, a couple elements that are cosplaying as such, but that just aggravets how badly it is written.
The isekai element is literally only there so the writer can skip on introducing the world, but he/she completely forgets to then introduce anything as he/she just though that making something isekai just gives an automatic 'get out of jail card' for the writer, and makes them able to skip wroldbuilding as a whole.

The plot is ... as basic and cliché as possible. Scrappy group of heroes getting better as they learn to coordinate and situate themselves better for their predicament. Nothing much happens elsewhere. They are not even feel fully autonomic as they just mechanistically following the path the story puts them on, without even thinking about deviating, which partially circles back to the problem of the worldbuilding. They get (isekai'd) there "just because", they are shown the one path the story wants them to take "just because" , they follow that path as good little lemmings "just because". Not even one question or explanation about how objective oriented the whole world is just for them to follow the route the story needs them to take.

The characters are basic as well, but at least the original (cliché) that Grimgar copied from is competently written. There are some good, there are some bad. The entire structure is ridiculously predictable as every character is more or less a cutout of cliché characters. But the MC, the ?love?interest girl, and some side-characters' arc are entertaining, because the archetype arc is entertaining.

Of course there are some worse ones, one of them acts in such a way that I was halfway convinced that it is the matrix and he/she is just a tutorial NPC to start the characters in their journey.
In fact the entire story could've gotten a Matrix (it's just a simulation) coating, and it basically would've made it better and more coherent.

To summarize the experience itself this whole story was like a badly/more badly written SAO if we would've followed Klein's group, but they were boring/even more boring; and they would've been stcuk in a pocket dimension without even being to communicate with Kirito or anybody else.
[The most obvious machanic is to show them interact with other groups while questing, and the author even missed to include that, which just made the world even more barren and feel like just a simulation / something artificially written to vaguely resemble a story.]

5.1/10

Somewhat of a letdown for me after S1.

The Worldbuilding got a little bigger, still as an SoL it doesn't need huge work and it is not in the focus of attention, but it was a competent and nice plus.

Plot continues the story relatively well moving forward, sady it rushes too much which means a lot of changes are drastic and important parts are basically just skipped over. Especially problematic in that it even happens with the inciting conflict of the show, the teaching of the girls. That entire plotline jarbled and half-assed.

Regardless of that, the Characterwork is maybe the biggest flaw of the season. Some ... got nice arcs, even if certain ones subjectively can be little repulsive, but they are true to character.
There is a complete 180 in almost every sense of relations, but teenage girls do that, so while it is really weird it is realistic.
One of them I cannot describe any other way than 'being a manipulative cow' using people in their lowest for her selfish needs (worded like this to avoid spoilers). This wouldn't be a problem if she would've got punished for it (like the first example with the 'repulsive one'), but she didn't. The person knows that she used her, but hasn't retaliated yet or made her responsible. It can be a card to play later, but waiting for the opportune moment could've created a big issue with another problem (it sorted itself out, but it was a huge risk). Without knowing the end of that plotline I cannot really know how to rate that scene, but treating it open ended (for S2) it is a huge issue for the story, which has a huge negative stamp on the entire story.
The last Nakano just amazed me to the point that I cannot describe what she did other than being the master tactician. Even thinking back at it, she did have the first confession, she did sneak in the first kiss on cheek, and she grabbed the first kiss on lips of the MC, all while cheering and helping her rivals.

It is somewhat weird, but true to character for her to be this cocky, and if she "wins" it does just coming out as savages, but she has every right to it.

It is both a bonus and a flaw that S2 does almost needs everyone to continue with the story, on one hand because there were a lot of unfinished sub-plotlines, some which should have been at least partially resolved, but on the other hand because of how masterfully the anime plays with mysteries.
There were parts where it might've been too far (onsen), but most of the time it does balance it fairly well.

The MC is still really good, all the praises from S1 still stand of him being realistic, believable and acting as a logical human would, which gives heart to the story and makes it engaging.
Some problems did arise though, where the inability of him to act or decide cost him and his friends, most of them are at least partially believable and understandable, still it should initiate a character growing moment where he realizes his flaw and try to amend it, which didn't happen yet (as of S2).

Which does circle back to the plot, and what makes some reason out of universe wise for the anime to rush, but does damage the story. Events wise too many things happened, and those weren't 'unfolded' satisfyingly. But in terms of character growth, it lagged behind.
To signify it in numbers the 12 episodes enclosed 8 months of plot in 12 episodes, but only 4 months of character.

The highs were relatively high (higher than S1), but the lows were really low. At one point (I think E3
) reminded me of Mando [S1E3 specifically, but entire Mando] of how bad that moment was. It is a really damning sign if some story elements scoop to the 3-4/10 of Mando [S1].

In its entirety:
7.6/10
master tactician girl, repulsive actions girl and girl at last ep kinda saved it from being a disaster (compared to S1).

Technically one of the first SoL, Romance, Harem I've seen, so it is hard to really get a hold how to properly measure it.

As with a Slice of Life the WorldBuilding is not something that's needs an overemphasis, this time I do find it that they play fast and loose of how similar the twins look like. This doesn't break anything but creates a question as sometimes people easily mistake them and sometimes, they don't even notice that they look alike so must be siblings.

Characters are really nicely done; it is paced really well. The rate of us learning about each person is efficiently done, ... which radiates competence from and confidence for the story.

The plot is somewhat haphazard, but it does work in tandem with the character arc, so even if a lot of minor parts are shuffled over, all of the important elements remain in focus, which makes little mistakes negligible.

Somewhat of an example, but mostly as the entire media hinges on him, I'd highlight the MC.
His interactions with the world and the other characters are nicely done, his own actions are mostly competent and logical of a human so it always feels lifelike. When he makes mistakes, they are believable and well-reasoned, which just makes both the comedy/embarrassing and the romantic elements hit real.
That 'realness' of him that makes his interactions with the Quintuplets really engaging and entertaining.

In summary (again without anything really to compare) this does feel like a standard for SoL Romance stories. The characters are well rounded, believable, act by their logic, consistent and feeling real. Their actions are coming from their characteristics and they are well reasoned.
The whole story has the atmosphere that it very well could've happened, and this is the diary of it. Which goes phenomenally well, especially with its Slice of Life genre.

8.1/10