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*TL;DR available.

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(CAUTION: Lots of I and Me statements below. I believe personal opinion is an extremely important topic to touch on during reviews, but nonetheless, you have been warned.)

Hypothetically, this show couldn't have been better. It's a mystery/psychological horror with some good ol' homoeroticism sprinkled in for flavor, because why not? That sounds absolutely sick. You've maybe read the manga, and enjoyed it enough to be interested in an anime adaptation (personally, I had to force myself to enjoy it because everyone around me did, but fill this scenario in for YOU). You watch the trailer. The art style is on par with the manga, ... and the animation seems decent. You add it to your plan-to-watch. When it airs, you watch it.

Though the plot is decent, I still couldn't find myself enjoying it. What about this show went so wrong for me?

1. Both the mystery and the horror aspects are very, very watered down. There are barely any actual horror segments in the show, and none of them are scary. Horror animes usually aren't scary, but this one doesn't even make you cringe out of disgust or anxiety. The show only starts dabbling in the mystery genre a bit more than halfway through the first season, and the mystery itself isn't given any time to develop. The season ends with no proper cliffhanger because the amount of information given wasn't enough to put anyone on the edge of their seats. It doesn't succeed as either a horror or a mystery.

2. The psychological aspect is also, like the horror and the mystery aspects, extremely weak. I genuinely felt nothing during this whole show. The ending of the first season is quite dramatic, and I feel like neither Yoshiki's nor Hikaru's reactions are true to the types of characters they were portrayed as. Even if they did make sense, it wasn't all that sad...

3. The homoeroticism is just here to be here, which would be alright if it didn't feel so out of place. For the love of whichever god is up there listening to my prayer, please send down a divine messenger with the sole purpose of letting Mokumokuren know that absolutely nobody acts like this with their best friend, dead or not.

Despite all of this, my negative feelings for this show are still mixed with quite a few positive ones. Which ones, per say?

1. I really like the switch-up from the usual cityscape setting found in most animes to the rural Japanese countryside. It's a breath of fresh air, and I think it elevates the supernatural aspect of this show a lot more. There's something more scary about a secretive family ritual happening in a small town, where everybody knows everything but has yet to truly learn about this thing. It just feels more natural with this setting than with a huge city.

2. The art style is absolutely lovely. For manga readers, this was probably a given, but the addition of colors truly brings out the art of the show. I personally like how warm-toned everything in this anime is, despite the topics it deals with.

My point is: I hope to someday find a show with this artstyle, this setting, and a completely different genre. I feel like this could make a very good slice-of-life, as there are already some fun slice-of-life snippets scattered throughout the episodes.

(TL;DR: The genres that this show was actually supposed to be are all barely there. It fails to deliver effectively as both a horror and a mystery, but I really, REALLY like the art for this one!)

*TL;DR available.

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(CAUTION: Lots of I and Me statements below. I believe personal opinion is an extremely important topic to touch on during reviews, but nonetheless, you have been warned.)

I get it. Working is tiring. Jobs are tiring. To work is to die. Planning the mass extinction of the human race as an occupation is definitely bound to take a toll, and I doubt that a villainous organization secretly planning to wipe out all of humanity from Earth has a healthy work environment. Villains are people, they need breaks too. Which is why villains turn to pandas, ice cream bars, and steamed buns for comfort on ... their days off. Just like you and me.

And that is what makes this anime so laughably plain. Why would I watch a twelve episode show about me?

Kyuujitsu no Warumono-san (or simply "Mr. Villain's Day Off") is a slice-of-life about, you guessed it, a villain on his day off. I was originally drawn to this concept because most animes that belong to this genre are about high schoolers doing high school things, and I didn't want another show about high schoolers doing high school things. What's the fun in that? But this... a show about a bad guy...? Who is only bad for the sake of his paycheck...? Who hates his job but is also relatively passionate for the cause that he strives for...? "Count me in," I thought with much enthusiasm. (SPOILER: most of that enthusiasm has long since dissipated.)

This show is REPETITIVE. All caps, would be double-underlined and bolded if MAL allowed it in reviews. The quips were cute at first, big bad guy is actually an introvert who likes pandas and ice cream. However, jokes usually don't stay interesting when they're recycled for the next episode. And the next. And the next. And so on. Nothing ever happens. Nothing much really happens in slice-of-life shows, but it's not like other slice-of-life shows that at least show character development throughout each episode, building and building until the viewers get to see a rewarding (or, at the very least, comforting) payoff for spending time with the characters. Instead, this show just reuses the same premise for each episode, and only ever letting its cast grow somewhere during the last three episodes. You'll also be quick to notice that each episode is formatted exactly like this: "Guy is an evil villain paid to be an evil villain. But guy is different when he isn't being paid to be an evil villain. When he isn't an evil villain, he does normal people stuff." And sometimes, the show features background characters that nobody gives a shit about to accompany the plotline that nobody gives a shit about. Hooray!

There are no other redeeming qualities for this show, either. Art style was teetering on the ledge between bad and acceptable, animation was nothing special, and I don't even remember what I thought about the soundtrack.

So, what about the three episodes of character development at the end? Turns out, those episodes are even more uneventful than the episodes that repeat the same panda jokes over and over. The backstories are boring, and it's apparent that the writers really tried to evoke emotion out of me with these episodes, but it's a bit hard to sympathize with characters that the writers gave nothing for me to connect with, and the backstory that we got to see wasn't even the backstory of the main character, the one character that everyone might be able to relate to. It was about the rangers. The people who appear once every sometimes for 5 minutes during each sometime they appear in. Backstory wasn't unique in the slightest either. The only thing that kept me going was my adamancy against dropping shows.

My whole point is: slice-of-lives have to at least be either unique or relatable to be engaging. And this slice-of-life made the one relatively relatable character a demon overlord. I am not a demon overlord.

(TL;DR: Nonexistent storyline, soulless little husks of characters, and bland animation. If this anime was a seasoning, it would be flour.)

*TL;DR available.

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(CAUTION: Lots of I and Me statements below. I believe personal opinion is an extremely important topic to touch on during reviews, but nonetheless, you have been warned.)

Neon Genesis Evangelion is one of the most popular and influential animes out there, and for good reason. The characters were some of the most realistic and meaningful of the time, and the ending was unique, exploring complex themes like trauma, depression, and the nature of human connection with quite an experimental approach at first glance. But once you look, really look, at the production process of the anime, view the entire plot through a magnifying glass, ... everything starts to sort of crack and crumble.

I'll say what I think everyone else is thinking about this show and its popularity deep down: Neon Genesis Evangelion is welcomed warmly with open arms by the anime community because it is extremely relatable. Not because of the story, not because of the aesthetic, but because of the characters. Especially because of the main character, which seems to be a divisive topic both within and outside of the initial Evangelion community. Everyone, regardless of whether they enjoyed the show or not, seems to walk out with a profound understanding of a specific character because of their similarities to one's own experiences. This anime is very dear to me, and I hold it close to my heart, but if you take away the relatability of the characters while keeping their cores intact, I doubt that Evangelion would be regarded as highly as it is.

First off, the ending, and maybe a little history lesson, if you don't mind. The odd and famously abstract ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion was largely the result of severe budget constraints and mental burnout, not the result of a planned shift from a mecha anime to an avant-garde with deep philosophical meaning. Gainax just ran out of money before completing the final episodes as originally planned, and the team had to scale back and improvise the SHIT out of their show. This resulted in the introspective ending you see today. And introspective it was, because besides the characters, these last few finisher episodes are the anchor in a storm that pulled this show from the deep, murky depths of the 1-4/10 reviews for a lot of people. Along with these financial restraints, the director Hideaki Anno was suffering from severe depression during the production of Evangelion. His mental state influenced the psychological themes of Evangelion, particularly in the second half of the series. The internalized final episodes reflect Anno's own struggles with emotional numbness, but what may first appear as profound comes across to me as nothing but a personal catharsis, a meaningless cry for help and a desperate last resort.

Secondly, the actual episodes, the buildup for the critically acclaimed and iconic ending that everyone has heard of. If the ending was this good, then the episodes that precede it should entertain me to an extent, right? Not exactly. This show was absolutely boring. It took me about a month to pull through it. The only thing that kept me going were the hopes of getting to the ending everyone loved and adored. And Kaworu. I blindly watched the show for Kaworu, which if you finished Evangelion or even just read the manga, you'd know that this was a BAD idea. Then, when I finally got there, staring at a gyrating Rei as "Fly Me to the Moon" played for the last time ever, I thought to myself, "Was all this really worth it?" While thinking about all the painfully long and grueling episodes that try and fail to get a point across, all the nonsensical bits of vague and rather vacuous lore scattered throughout the entire show like breadcrumbs at a duck pond, I got my answer. "No." I click off HiAnime, feeling rather bitter—leaving with a looming sense of disappointment and a scarcely filled, Kaworu-shaped hole in my heart.

Despite my descriptions of this show, it isn't all in despair. Like I said, the saving grace of Neon Genesis Evangelion was the characters. Most die-hard fans that I've met hold this show with such high regard because they resonate with it. And to that I say, media, when consumed, is at best supposed to resonate with the consumer, and there's no point in consuming something that won't resonate. People go through rough patches in life, turning to something that will help them understand themselves or at least lets them know they're not alone. And many find that in Evangelion, in all of its authentic-feeling variety of characters to relate to. Though I also hold this show in pretty high regard, I have to admit that I personally think how much you liked the show directly connects to how much you were struggling during it. Let's just say that I wasn't exactly struggling at the moment.

My whole point is: an anime doesn't have to be god-tier to be treated as such, and reading this review probably felt like watching Evangelion.

(TL;DR: Good ending, good characters, but the buildup is so slow it drags down the entire show. And please, for your own good, don't watch this exclusively for Kaworu.)