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I AM A SUCKER FOR MIND READING TROPES AND THIS MANGA EXECUTES IT PERFECTLY!!!! It's so cute!!! I loved the contrast between the outer and inner thoughts of Asaba, who is a tsundere and picks fights with Satori but secretly loves him.

This manga was pleasantly surprising and one of the best BL manga I've read in a while. I was actually very disappointed to see the low score as in my opinion this is better than many yaoi manga, even putting aside my own personal trope biases. As you can tell, I was lured in by the mind reading plotline, which was really cute, but ... I also think the storyline was good and it is overall just a really enjoyable manga to read. For starters, I am totally in love with the art style. The bold lines and the way the author draws eyes and hair is such eye candy, the art looks so cool and it makes the manga look visually appealing and the characters and interactions really pop. The character designs were also good (satori is really cute and the art style really helps them to feel like unique characters with attractive designs).

I also loved that this story had a plot! I'm all for wholesome romances, but it gets a bit tiring when every other BL is "two generic looking guys become friends, chill and hang out, then they're in love and kiss the end." Satori-kun to Tsundere-kun is a breath of fresh air in that it has a very unique and memorable plotline about a psychic whose powers keep changing uncontrollably and causing trouble for him. The author does a great job of cramming the narrative they want to tell into a single volume while still making room for character development, relationship development, and sex scenes, and in the end it actually ends up being really touching and cute.

Which brings me to my next point! Normally I dislike smut in yaoi manga as it feels forced and I would just rather read wholesome stuff. But this manga was one of the very few that actually sold me on its smut. I will admit that it can feel a little forced at some points (it feels like the author was like "OK WE NEED ONE SEX SCENE PER CHAPTER TIME TO GET IT ON") but the scenes were enjoyable enough and most importantly I enjoyed the characters enough to actually care and be happy when they get it on!

All in all this is a very good BL manga, I've reread it multiple times and even bought a physical copy haha. I highly recommend it!

Occultic;Nine is a show I have many mixed feelings on, and I don't think I've ever changed opinions on a series as much as I have with this one. Its high points are some of the most gripping mystery and storytelling I've seen in anime, and its low points were so low that they made me avoid the series altogether for weeks. While I won't go into too much plot detail, this review does contain mentions of spoilers.

Let's start with the positives. Occultic;Nine has a very strong start. While the first episode mainly serves as introduction to the characters without any real plot development, ... it leaves enough bread crumbs of a mystery that leave you interested in the characters and the story to come. From that point on, the mystery only thickens of what is going on with the murders and deaths and how everything connects. How did an artist predict a murder scene almost exactly, and why did 256 people suddenly drown themselves in the night? How is the brutal murder of a professor related to the drowning incident, our nine protagonists, and everything else seemingly supernatural? The mystery is extremely compelling and kept me interested in the show in spite of its negative points that I'll discuss later.

Another highlight that I enjoyed about the series is its fast-paced, non-linear style of storytelling. Instead of following protagonists Yuta and Ryouka from start to finish, each episode quickly jumps between about eight characters, showing flashes of their lives and mysteries and leaving you once again wondering how each character relates to each other and how they'll come together in the story. With so much going on in the plot, I think that this was a good way of telling the story and heightening the mystery while still coming across as coherent.

I also liked the premise itself: the overall supernatural theme was really interesting and I loved the way it was tied into the sci-fi nature of the SciAdv series with its explanation. The depiction of ghosts as lingering electromagnetic particles is so interesting and something I would have never in my wildest dreams come up with for a story. I loved this plot point so much that it motivated me to explore more of the SciAdv series. However, this is unfortunately the last positive thing I can say about this series.

While the story is very strong (initially), the same cannot be said for the characters themselves. Most of the characters were either completely unbearable or underutilized. For starters, Yuta and Ryouka, two of the three characters who receive the most focus, are some of my least favorite characters I've ever seen in any anime. From Ryouka's disgustingly large breasts that make me angry to just look at her to her irritating personality where she'll just run and dance around obliviously (often involving a decent amount of screaming, often over Yuta who is also being loud and annoying), I felt my blood pressure rise every time she and Yuta were on screen together. As for Yuta, he's so unbearably pathetic and useless that I don't even feel sorry for him (and this is coming from a Shinji Ikari fan), I just hate him. He absolutely WILL NOT SHUT UP, which combined with the fast pacing of the show is just overstimulating, his narration and dialogue is annoying to listen to. These two characters made the show genuinely painful to watch during many scenes.

While the two protagonists are the most insufferable I've ever seen, there are several interesting characters amongst the other main nine. Unfortunately, in my opinion many were seriously underutilized. While the show is called Occultic;Nine because of the nine interconnected character stories, there are arguably only between 3-6 characters that actually feel relevant and present. I really liked Aria's character arc and backstory, which WAS present, but it felt like she didn't really DO anything in the plot and could have easily been removed with little rewriting. Her ghost partner was similarly underutilized: he felt like a very interesting and promising character at the beginning only for his character to amount to nothing but a vessel of giving Shun the answer to how to revive the rest of the characters, and his "arc" concluded in a short conversation in which his connection with Aria was explained. The doujin artist Ririka is introduced early on as a major suspect in the investigation, but only shows up in a couple of episodes with a total screen time of maybe 8 minutes (very generously). While her role in the end was very cool, she was pretty irrelevant for most of the series, so I'm conflicted on how I feel about her character.

Lastly, the story kind of falls off near the end, pretty much as soon as everything is revealed. Since the mystery was more compelling than the characters or conflict, once that's solved there's not much left to the series to keep me interested. I was turned off by several plot points near the end: I wasn't into the secret organization conspiracy as the main conflict as it felt rather dull, and the whole plot point of Izumi actually being the leader of the religious cult that killed Yuta and Sarai's fathers was stupid. It wasn't shocking, I honestly couldn't have cared less, and the fact that him attacking the MCs was resolved in like...3 minutes before he was arrested and never mentioned again made the whole sequence just feel pointless and like a failed attempt at shock value. Pretty much everything that happened in the last 2-3 episodes I had a hard time bringing myself to...I don't know, care? None of it felt compelling or interesting, and the final stretch felt like a chore to get through. I think the ending had a lot of really cool ideas (the scene between Yuta and his dad was really touching, and the final scene was great) but it was rushed and poorly executed, so it was hard to really sympathize with the characters or take it seriously (not to mention the scene where Yuta learns to fly was so corny and felt out of place).

Overall, my feelings on this series are too conflicted to give it any more or less than a 5/10. That being said, do I think it's worth watching? Absolutely. Give it a shot, even if there are a lot of elements that aren't so great there are also some aspects about it that I love and I did enjoy watching the first 9 episodes.

The main thesis of Cells at Work as a series has always been "take care of your body." But while the main series takes a motivational, lighthearted approach by showing tons of lovable characters going about their jobs as if to say "look how hard they're working! Don't you want them to be happy? Don't disappoint the cute little platelets, work hard and take care of yourself!!", Cells at Work Black takes a darker, more cynical approach.

In Cells at Work Black, we see the conditions inside an overworked man who does not take care of his body. Every character is jaded, and the question ... of "what's the point of even going on?" is raised each episode, representing the severe decline in health that comes along with poor lifestyle choices.

Seeing the heavily fanserviced white blood cells, I was very skeptical about this anime coming in, but it ended up being every bit as lovable and interesting as the main series, with episodes about ailments ranging from caffeine addiction to kidney stones.

The story follows a dedicated red blood cell who comes face to face with the horrors of this mistreated body. Almost every episode is a life or death situation for him and his friends, sometimes resulting in actual character deaths as the body's condition just keeps going downhill with each episode.

The main thing I enjoyed about this series was the portrayal of more mature and serious conditions. Don't get me wrong, the original Cells at Work was great, but when most of those episodes were covering things like minor infections, it was an interesting change of pace to see episodes about addiction, ulcers, heart failure. It certainly helped the story's central theme of "take care of yourself": I certainly became more mindful of my lifestyle after watching this. Plus, I loved seeing the portrayal of different organs based on their real life functions (kidneys being a bathhouse, the liver basically being Shinjuku).

The characters and their relationships were also great: I thoroughly enjoyed the relationship between the main red blood cell and White Blood Cell, both as individual characters and their friendship in which they motivate each other. I also loved the way stress was portrayed by putting all the cells on edge and unable to make rational decisions, reflecting the way stress can actually harm the body. But even aside from the main two, I loved every character.

The art was also amazing, I loved the art style and the way it looks "sketch-y" and less "clean" than the original, giving the characters a sort of rugged look that fits with the dark atmosphere. Some of the bacteria and environments were truly horrifying as well.

Cells at Work Black is a great and enjoyable series that succeeds in everything the original series did, plus having darker themes that are more interesting to watch. I highly recommend it

If I told you there exists a "time travel bowling drama anime," would you believe me? Turkey! is a strange, one-of-a-kind show (in the best way), and if you want to see something unique that makes you think, "How did someone even come up with this?", this is the anime for you.

I don't usually watch seasonal anime, but this one caught my interest (see the username), and I thoroughly enjoyed this bizarrely amazing anime. Unlike many viewers, I went in with some expectation that this was not a normal bowling anime: the change in poster and genre tag after it started airing tipped me ... off, but I didn't know what kind of show it would be nor where the plot was headed. I believe this is the best way to experience this show: it maintains the shock factor of getting to the end of episode 1 while not disappointing someone who came in wanting an actual bowling anime.

Now, if this were my personal rating, I would have given this show an 8-10/10, both due to personal enjoyment as well as out of spite for the low average score. However, for my official review, I can say this show deserves a solid 7/10.

I won't lie and pretend this show has a groundbreakingly amazing story, despite its concept being so original and well executed. The premise? Five girls in the bowling club find themselves transported back to the Sengoku period during a game of bowling. Amidst the time travel incident, they meet their historical counterparts, and they have to work out both drama amongst themselves and conflicts that arise as a result of the time period they're in.

It present such a bizarre concept as bowling-linked time travel with complete seriousness in a way that's just fun to watch. Sure, there are times when it takes itself a bit too seriously for a bowling anime of all things, but it gets you really invested in the characters and their stories in a way that is genuinely moving.

The story meanders a bit during the middle (about episodes 3-6), and for a bit it seems like it's unsure the direction it wants to go for these few episodes: it's mainly just the girls bonding with their historical counterparts and getting used to living in the Sengoku period. In addition, it feels like the focus shifts about every 2 episodes rather than one single plotline being built up. In this way, it does feel a bit like "stuff's just happening."

However, these slight weaknesses are not to say the story is lacking: it's still very good. No spoilers, but the last two episodes were amazing and managed to mix the bowling and historical drama in a way that not only somehow makes bowling exciting to watch but is also genuinely emotionally moving. The last episode made me want to cry.

The best part about the show is definitely the characters. Though some are extremely unlikeable at first, by the end I loved each and every character. I loved the bond between the main girls and the characters from the past. My only complaint is that most of the Sengoku characters felt like they were cast aside after their main story arc ended, and they never really got a proper resolution at the end nor any relevance outside of their own arc. I definitely would have liked to see more of them.

Turkey is a show that's not afraid to push the envelope and be something DIFFERENT. I think everyone should watch it and come in with an open mind. I do not regret having watched this, and I am really glad I am, this show is amazing and got me back into anime. Give it a try, please.

What. The. Fuck.

This manga is so absolutely bizarre and disgusting, it's almost offensive to read. It takes itself way too seriously and from the way it's written, you're clearly supposed to side with the MC who RAPES AND JACKS OFF TO A DOG. WHAT THE HELL. Almost every panel left me sighing in disappointment.

The first chapter starts out fairly promising, seeming to be an interesting romance between two characters. The art is fairly pretty, too, so I expected to enjoy this manga. But the implied sexual attraction of the MC to a dog he sees at the end of the chapter ruins it, and the ... manga only goes downhill from there as his feelings escalate until he eventually acts on them...many times, in many disturbing and hard-to-read scenes. Despite this, I still found the manga hard to put down, though largely for the wrong reasons. The only thing that kept me hooked on this manga was pure morbid curiosity as to how much more fucked up it could get and the fact that the art is quite nice to look at (with the exception of dogs, which are pure nightmare fuel to look at).

TL;DR: Gross bestiality manga

I'm not sure how to feel about this manga.

On one hand, it's a trashy ecchi harem manga, but on the other, it's a REALLY REALLY fun read that leaves you both genuinely invested and laughing your ass off at the crappy concept and writing.

This manga is my guilty pleasure. I know it's awful, yet I can't stop reading, and I hate the fact that I'm starting to genuinely enjoy this manga.

There's not much to say about the story. It's a trashy ecchi where the MC tries to sleep with as many girls as possible while also exploring a dungeon that just appears in ... his basement for some reason. But somehow it manages to be just interesting (and hot) enough that you just can't stop reading, despite there not being much going on.

I originally wasn't going to write a review, but after reading the final chapter, I feel the need to at least express my thoughts. Koigokoro♥Koushinchuu is infinitely better than its prequel Koigokoro Senpukuchuu, though that's an incredibly low bar and it's not that great. Unlike Koigokoro Senpukuchuu, the story is at least passable, as it presents itself as more of a slice of life of a couple rather than trying and failing to write a proper story. There's still the occasional forced drama, but it's infrequent and brief and is written much better. Like its prequel, the art in Koigokoro♥Koushinchuu is nothing spectacular, ranging from ... just alright to mildly bad.

The main problem that this manga suffers from is its godawful characters. The main character is without a doubt the most annoying manga character I've ever seen. I almost can't decide if she's more annoying when she's upset or when she's happy. 95% of interactions end in her getting upset, usually for absolutely no reason, and another 90% of interactions result in her bawling, which is extremely annoying. The love interest isn't much better. His "cool bad boy" character gets old really fast, and he becomes extremely bland and forgettable. I don't feel like going into much more detail, but every recurring character is absolutely insufferable.

If Koigokoro Senpukuchuu's weakness was its story, Koigokoro♥Koushinchuu's weakness is the characters, but it could have excelled in both, which is disappointing. The last chapter was legitimately the best chapter out of both manga, as it focuses on two different (and actually likeable) characters: Aya and Shizuku. These two are so much better than the garbage MCs we got, and if the entire story had instead focused on them instead, this manga would be at least a 7/10 instead of a generous 5/10. I loved seeing the tension between these two childhood friends who couldn't confess their feelings to each other because of a promise they made years before. This chapter was kind of cheesy at times, sure, but I'm willing to cut it some slack since the characters were enjoyable. If the main couple had been anywhere near as interesting as Aya and Shizuku, I would also be less harsh in my judgement of the series.

Using lots of tropes and cliches in your story is not inherently bad. The problem lies when the tropes ARE your story: you can't just write a series of cliche scenes for the sake of it and fill in the blanks with story. This is the problem with Koigokoro Senpukuchuu. Instead of having its cliche, cheesy, generic shoujo scenes for the purpose of elevating what the manga already had story and character-wise, it feels as if the author put a bunch of classic shoujo tropes in a hat, pulled out several, and half-assedly wrote a story around them. Even what's supposed to be the main ... premise—the main character tries a bunch of superstitions around the school to get a boyfriend—wasn't properly written, as the manga feels like it has no plot and is just aimlessly showing a bunch of romantic scenes between two characters. This premise could have worked and made for a fun manga, but the length of the manga limits it on that front.

Which brings me to my next point. Because the manga is only four chapters long, the pacing is atrocious and everything is incredibly rushed. The beginning of the manga didn't really have any exposition or setup to anything at all (which in hindsight makes sense considering how little actually happens in the manga): things just sort of start happening. Within approximately 30 pages of the main character and love interest meeting (which I might add occurs about 10 pages into the first chapter), the love interest: a) gives the MC his jacket, b) gets jealous of another guy who is close to the MC, and c) pulls an "I'll always protect you" after coming to save her from a ridiculous and forced situation that makes absolutely no sense. I want to emphasize that this is supposedly the first time they've met, and this chapter takes place over the span of a single afternoon. On the opposite side of the spectrum, so little actually happens that the only thing moving the "story" and the characters' relationship forward is forced drama, which comes out of nowhere and is very obviously just because the author had no idea how to progress the plot. In addition to being extremely unnecessary and forced, to the point of being cringy, the drama is extremely poorly executed.

*Spoilers*
The last chapter of the manga was legitimately baffling with how horrendously it created and resolved drama. The drama is so terrible that not only does it lead to extremely confusing dialogue, but I legitimately had no idea that it was even present until it was resolved as the MC sobbed. To be slightly more specific, the MC wants to swap headbands with the love interest at the sports festival, as one of the superstitions is that if you do this with someone you like you will be together forever. There's a brief scene showing a pile of headbands with a hand picking it up (which I guess was supposed to be someone else accidentally grabbing it, but it wasn't clear). This is immediately forgotten and the MC asks the love interest to swap headbands (basically a confession), to which he rejects her, saying the confusing line: "as a student of my school, having this kind of relationship would be troublesome." So she got rejected for...reasons. Cool. Makes sense so far. The MC runs off, understandably upset, and the love interest soon learns that her headband was misplaced. Immediately after learning this, he runs to the MC and accepts her confession. Aside from being a confusing mess, the story just changes what the conflict actually is in the middle of it occurring. His rejection had nothing to do with the headband, so why did he immediately regret rejecting her? It feels like it was just conflict for the sake of conflict without giving any thought to what is actually happening in the scene.
*Spoiler end*

To give Koigokoro Senpukuchuu credit, most of these problems (aside from what I just discussed with the last chapter) are at their peak in the first chapter, or at least aren't as bad in other chapters as in the first one. But the problem is that the characters and story aren't compelling enough to make this manga good even once these issues are gone. The main character is annoying and inhumanly stupid and has absolutely no chemistry with the love interest, who just seems to develop feelings for the MC out of nowhere.

All in all, it was mildly enjoyable (except for the first chapter), but I didn't like the characters or the story, so it's mainly just that it's a decent way to pass time without being completely miserable. I'd recommend it if you have nothing better to do, but if you're actually looking for a decent romance manga, it's not worth your time.

Say what you will about anime adapted from video games, but the Persona 4 Golden anime is genuinely amazing. It does Marie so much justice that she doesn't get in the game, even in her social link. Before watching the anime, my thoughts on Marie were "Eh, she's alright. At least she has a cool design." After the anime, she is probably my favorite female character from Persona 4. Even her tsundere-ness is more charming in the anime, while in the game it's the main thing I disliked about her. In addition to all that it does for Marie, the visuals are also gorgeous. Probably ... my favorite visuals in any anime. It's so colorful, bright, and shiny, and it just brings so much life to the characters.

The story is presented very oddly, skimming over the main plot points of Persona 4 to focus on the new Marie segments present only in the Golden version of the game, but I got used to it after a few episodes and I find it a unique and oddly charming way of telling the story. Because of this, it's not a good anime to watch on its own: you should have at the VERY least watched the original P4 anime first if not played the game, otherwise you'll likely be confused by new characters suddenly popping up out of nowhere.