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The flashbacks are excessive, to the point that some of them are from minutes ago in the same episodes. And it's getting boring, I'm in the middle of the season and I'm already tired. Oh, and pausing the story on one place to continue with another is poorly executed. The scenes that should hit you (like in S3/S6) do not because you're immediately hit with a jump at another place where the it's suddenly calm or a cut / episode end.

And just like earlier seasons, plenty of things don't make sense as they happen, but it is well past the point of "anime being anime" ... or goofiness. At this point most characters and/or their actions are borderline idiotic. Don't want to spoil anything so here's an equivalent: it's like The Flash TV series where he could move faster than time, but not fast enough to avoid getting caught by a slow-moving criminal's hand.

And I don't get what people mean when they say that animation is high quality. Have you guys not watched any of the recent greats? Or are you comparing to PowerPoint series like TBATE? This would only be considered "great animation" if compared with 20+ year old anime... The very few well-executed scenes (yes, there are some! like the fight in the middle of the season) do not outweigh the >90% of meh animation.

After excitedly binging the previous 6 seasons again before watching the last two, this is only "meh".

The first time I watched this I was positively surprised because it was better than what I had expected, and I gave it a 7. Now I've finished rewatching it, and I'm downgrading to a *lenient* 6.

The animation is meh overall, but when it comes to the fights it becomes almost atrocious. Magic is very uninspiring, and Pram's sword-"fighting" has got to be one of the most boring, exaggerated crap I've seen. We're in 2025, and we're no strangers to even crappier animation, so let's move on.

The story has so many cuts and holes. At one point, there was a "chess" game (extra pieces, inconsistent ... & stupid rules) that was supposedly a major plot point, but we weren't even shown the outcome. I decided to look it up. I found the chapter online and read the whole thing, and it was bad. By bad I mean the author contradicting himself in the span of ~20 or so paragraphs. He basically invented a new game, with nonsensical rules, delivered through a crappy dramatized narration. You better believe I'll judge a whole book by only reading it's 30th chapter, and my judgement is that it's crap. Back to the anime, pacing was okay, I guess, setting had some interesting points (although by now you've seen it all before), but that's it. No real character development other than their magic/sword skills improving a bit.

It had at least one fun part, the "huh? huh? huh?" scenes in two different episodes, but overall the humor was pretty bland too. Character design is nothing special either.

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But you like this category and have watched tens of similar series already, right? This is why you're here, no? In this case, YES, even though it's mostly meh/crap, you should watch it because many of the other choices are at least as crappy if not crappier.

I thought the rating of 4.5 was just because a bunch of kids decided to brigade the show because of their unreasonable expectations about the animation, but no, it's actually bad. They fumbled worse than Shield Hero did.

Before we begin, the key topic of interest to most reviews: animation. Yes, there are a few egregious scenes like Garou's slide, and it's clear that this is not a show with an immense budget, but it's also clear that the team did try to make it work (by employing trickery and (attempts at) comedy) and there are a few battle scenes that have decent animation, which is ... much better than most of the isekai anime that get ratings around ~6.5. But if the only issue was the animation, I wouldn't be giving this a 3, so what gives?

Well, the same jokes / patterns / tropes get old really quickly. It's basically the same as S1/S2 but it's not just repetitive, it's also less funny and (almost) poorly executed.

The allocation of screen time is very poor too. Why would anyone spend so much time introducing nameless characters that die a few seconds after they appear? Why spend such an amount of time on the side-side-characters? Yes, it's interesting to see more of Flashy Flash, Atomic Samurai, Child Emperor, Tatsumaki, and so on, but half an episode or so dedicated on each of them is a bit too much, especially when the "fights" are mostly dialogue anyway, and while the "most important event" (=raid) is taking place.

And what the heck was that ending? It ended so quickly that it simply felt boring. You're left with the the bad kind of "what's next?", or maybe not even that, or maybe just <insert saitama S1 face> "okay".

In what is likely his most viewed lecture, titled "How To Speak", professor Patrick Winston says that you need to start with a promise, 'the reason for being here". From the first few seconds, Girls und Panzer makes a promise to you, and then spends the next 12 episodes, few OVAs, and 7 or so movies, constantly delivering on that promise.

Many will argue that is is a mediocre series, argue about the technical aspects, mention realism (wut?), drop a "CGDCT", and all that. I disagree; in my opinion, what makes a series great is delivering on the promise it gave you. This is one of ... the best series in terms of how it delivers on its promise.
* Over 50 easter eggs & references over just 12 episodes? Check.
* Appropriate music choices for each school / country theme? Double check.
* Decent (but admittedly *VERY* simplified and *OVERLY* silly) preview of tank warfare? Check.
* Probably the best fanservice (=giving the fans what they want, not panty shots and boob jokes) ever? Quintuple check. We even got OVAs and specials.

The only reasons not to like this series are:
* you expected a serious depiction of warfare -> did you miss the promise given you in the first minute of the show?
* you expected a better art style or animation -> fair, but there's nothing bad about this. It might not have been Unlimited Budget Works, but it is not the lazy animation you see in almost every quarterly isekai of the last decade. The CGI is surprisingly decent, even by today's standards. And once again, the series showed you the level of animation it would have from the first minute of the first episode, why did you expect anything else for the remaining ~11.9 episodes?
* you take this way too seriously -> fella, did you miss the name, key visuals, trailer, *and* first minute of the first episode? Could you not tell that it wasn't going to be a WW2 documentary? Could you also not tell this was going to be light-hearted? Seriously, this isn't a Kings and Generals playlist.

The first episode starts with Sadistic Magic Mommy Marin... uhm, I meant Merlin, and concludes as the most average first "kicked from the party" episode. The second episode introduces us to Milim... uhm, I meant Yui, and the rest of the party, and makes sure to remind us that this is a low budget by reusing a whole minute from the previous episode, but only after some non-linear storytelling that was pretty badly done.

Together with the crap story, we get crap animation, crap fights, okay-I-guess OP/ED (and maybe a questionable type for this kind of series), poorly (or not at all) explained story details (e.g. ... was Lloyd a random child?), unintroduced characters, and of course plenty of small holes/mistakes. I have seen worse, but not by a lot.

I paused watching after the third episode, which made me feel so bored that I wanted to go and read a textbook instead. I'm out of things to watch, so I may finish this at some point, but I'd rather go rewatch something for the 5th time or read a biography or something.

This is truly the "perfect average" of all isekai:

☑ Bland OP protagonist.
☑ Consistently inconsistent animation quality: not uniformly good or bad, but jumping from good to still images, and mostly just meh.
☑ Irregular and inconsistent pacing.
☑ Elf love interest, adventurers, dragons, skeletons, goblins, dwarves, curry rice, incantation-less magic.
☑ Hit-or-miss music & sound (a couple pieces were pretty good).
☑ Mostly predictable story

I used to think that "average" is bad, but no, bad is bad, and this anime isn't bad. It's average. Literally average, in the strict mathematical sense. If you could sum all the isekais and divide by their number, you would get the Water Magician. ... And the best part? The series knows what it is and doesn't try to pretend it's anything different. Normally, I'd rate "average" as a 5, but it's unfair to the series, and I actually enjoyed watching this and wanted to give it a 7, but I decided to stay true to the theme of the series and I instead averaged (*wink wink*) the two scores!

I **wholeheartedly recommend** this. Go watch it! You can finally experience what the True Average™ of the isekai genre is.

The amount of missing content and time skips made this less enjoyable a watch than it would otherwise have been. I'm not sure if the missing content was there in the source material or not, and I don't care, but when you show me Thorfinn as a slave (which from S1 we knew he'd never accept) and give me 0 explanation when we're 20 episodes in, it pisses me off. When in one scene X character says "we can use [Y character]", and then everything that this line refers to is skipped and we just see the result with no explanation of what happened, I'm ... even more pissed. When you cut *critical* content to give long screen time to dreams and hallucinations that are completely irrelevant to what's actually going on in the real world, well, you get the picture. There is a brief explanation (<30 seconds) a couple episodes before the end, but that's it; it still doesn't sit well with me.

In season 2, the action was toned down, life has slowed down, anti-war sentiment goes as strong as ever, we do see progress, all is good. It's appropriately heavy, and it's still entertaining enough to watch (at least for me), although a bit slower than what I'd have liked. The animation quality is as great as ever, sound is an 8.5/10 (some sound effects are wrong/misplaced, most are great), OP/ED are not my style but the music is good anyway.

It could've been an 8-9 season for me, but the choices of what to show and what to skip is taking this down. Yet somehow, few/none other reviews mention this. Fellas, did you watch a different thing? Are you okay with these skipped scenes in favor of long, slow, pointless dreams? Anyway, it's worth a watch, and I guess since most people didn't even notice or care, you likely won't either.

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The series was filled with so much anti-war sentiment that I feel like I need to rewatch Vikings, Overlord, or Youjo Senki... Viking Gandhi was not on my bingo card.

If Rudeus and Komi (or Bocchi, for the new kids) had a child, it would be Monica. Similarly, the series is the average of those two, toning down both the good and the bad parts of both.

This show is simply a good, enjoyable watch but not much else. I came with *very* high expectations (my bad!), and was quite disappointed overall:
* the animation was not bad... it was good and flashy, plenty of eye candy, but way below what I was expecting.
* the story was not bad... but did not anything new and was basically just a another school slice of life, shoujo, way-too-light on ... fantasy
* the sound was not bad... but aside the 1 piece of music that plays when she casts some spell, everything else (if there was anything at all) just doesn't stand out. In fact, I think it was that 1 piece of music that gives everyone a high impression simply because it's used with impeccable timing almost every time.

The first episode or two hook you in, promising to show you this awesome silent witch, and give you the idea that this is going to be a high-7 / low-8, but by the middle of the series it becomes clear that this deserves at most a 7.3-7.4 (which is still a "good" score) because of how over-covered every single theme touched by the series is (down to the last detail, like likening the MC to a squirrel!). We barely get to see the witch and her magic, and instead we mostly see yet another high-school / shoujo anime. I don't want to sound to negative, *it still is well-made and well-executed series*, just not "great". It's sad because this was the #1 series I was most excited about for the season, and perhaps year.

If you want a witch-theme anime and haven't watched many, I'd recommend these instead, each with their own strengths and weaknesses but at least they are not yet-another-school-anime in disguise:
* Mahoutsukai no Yome - THE witch anime (which somehow is lower rated that Silent Witch, wtf is wrong with y'all?!)
* Majo no Tabitabi - more emphasis on the journey, hit-or-miss MC
* Aru Majo ga Shinu Made - complete opposite MC personality, pretty decent all-around, almost tear-jerker
* Flying Witch - chill, slice of life

Maybe a 6.7-6.8? I've rounded up to 7. It has its good moments, and I also got bored at some point.

I enjoyed the first few episodes, quite a bit more than I expected. Although it's clearly not top-tier, and it's there's obviously nothing new here, the execution was pretty good and kept me engaged for a bit over half the series. That said, I think by episode 9 or so I just wanted to get it over with. There's nothing incredibly wrong with the show, I think I just got my fill and got a bit tired of the repetitiveness.

The whole premise of the series ... is a single joke: we have these 3 sister prodigies, and the complete failure dude living with them, but he's actually Rizzmeister Househusbandason in disguise. In almost every episode, every time our MC breathes, the heart rates of the three of them reach 200 BPM, while he just wants to view them (and they him) as siblings. It was funny maybe the first 20 times. Furthermore, since our MC lost his mother (who one could say was negligent), each time we see him reminiscing and daydreaming about it, it was almost heartwarming and sad... for the ~5 seconds that it took until the show decides to throw a gag.

Roughly one third of the series is dedicated to each sister, but nothing much is shown about them, and minimal character growth and background. I think I liked the side character at the end (Yaotome?) more than the 1+3 MCs.

So yeah, it's fine, almost good, but nothing more, and nothing special. I'd put it somewhere in the high-6 range, but want to give it a "6" because it's better than that, hance I rounded up to 7 instead.

This season really annoyed me. And what annoys me even more is that this reached 4 seasons and will get a 5th season, instead of us getting a 2nd season for "No Game No Life". Anyway...

Two days ago I decided to fast-forward the first 3 seasons, kind of like a recap, because last time I watched them I didn't like the series enough to make me want to rewatch all of it... or so I thought. I actually fast-forwarded very little, and watched 60-80% of it judging by start/end time that day (hard to tell). I enjoyed it more than I expected (probably an ~8(!)), ... and had high hopes for season 4, but it was not meant to be.

The constant bait-and-switch made me consider dropping it multiple times, and the final episode is the tip of the iceberg. I still haven't "toppled over" as it seems some progress might finally happen, but man... my patience is really running thin. And although I usually don't paying a subscription service to binge all the seasonals (CR costs less than a pizza), this time I didn't and I can confidently say *I'm glad I pirated this*.

Yet again, this season is filled with a barrage of text on the screen. Probably fine for the Japanese-speaking folk and those listening to dubs, but for me watching the subbed versions, it was way too much, and most of it was kinda useless and even disrupting to the flow of the actual conversations. If I really wanted to read so much, I'd pick the manga or LN, but I don't.

Oh Ruka... She was a half-decent character for the first few seasons, all things considered, but she got incredibly annoying this season. Mami is the same, which is fine, I guess. Our boy Kazuya is a bit less trash, and he mustered his courage about 13657214357 times thus far, to try to be less trash than he was, but as I said two paragraphs earlier, he gets to be interrupted and/or denied for nearly everything he tries to do at any given moment by some silly coincidence or gag. It's exactly like those romcoms in the 2000s, but 20 years later. And all other characters are basically absent.

At least the summer season is over and I now have plenty more new trash... uhm... I meant totally-unique-and-top-tier isekai series to watch?