Tag Archives: writing

The Observation Deck: Brothers Conflict

November 27, 2022 Jack Scheibelein 2 Comments

Welcome, weebs, to Animated Observations

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Ladies, gentlemen, and non-binary folks, we are gathered here today to talk about an anime. Not just any anime, mind you, but the one, the only, Brothers Conflict. This is a show that is so genuinely awful it is honestly not worth it to even pretend there are redeeming qualities about it, an adaptation so lazy that the cast barely has a workable personality split among its almost 20-something-odd list of characters.

I could sit here and do any amount of research about the development process or its source material, but honestly, I do not care that much and yes, the source material, both the light novel and the game adaptation, are almost certainly better than this garbage. Calling this show Oreimo levels of trash is frankly insulting to Oreimo, because that would imply that anything about it is remotely interesting or worth caring about. With that being said, let’s get started, I guess…

What is Brothers Conflict?

Some-no, most-no, nearly all of you probably read the title of this review and went “huh?” and yeah, that is totally reasonable. In short, Brothers Conflict is a light novel/Otome dating sim adaptation about Ema Hinata, later Ema Asahina, a girl whose rich and famous dad remarries a mom with 13 other sons. As part of this new stage of their life, Ema moves into her mom’s luxurious mansion with room enough for all of them. However, Ema quickly discovers that nearly all of her brothers have some sort of romantic feelings for her…yeah, it is one of those.

Boring Main Character is Boring

Ema is the main character in the same way that your avatar during a multiplayer fps game is technically the main character. Literally, the only purpose she serves is to show you around and get a better view of the brother characters who you are supposed to fall in love with. She is so shamelessly a self-insert that when I did bother to look at the Wikipedia page for this franchise, I was genuinely surprised to find out the light novels were the original source material.

Ema not only has no personality worth mentioning, but the only interests she is given are also to better connect her with the potential relationship matches she might have. Her liking video games? an excuse to get more involved with her brother that works at a video game company and her brothers that work as voice actors respectively. Her interest in flowers? so she can talk to the one that works in their home garden and give a nice romantic background for later romantic encounters. Seriously, how was this not a dating sim first?

Fun fact, I wrote most of this review and almost completely forgot to mention Juli, the talking squirrel character who only Ema and Louis can understand. This is never explained and is treated as totally and completely normal.

Boring Brother Characters are Boring

I could sit here and give you a sentence-long blurb about each of the other main characters and pretend like I care about their development, and yeah, that would probably be the responsible critic thing to do. However, this is an anime blog, and also there are thirteen of them, none of who have any remotely notable personality traits outside of their occupations and their insatiable lust for their 16-year-old step-sister.

I will mention that Louis and Hikaru, two of the older brothers, have mildly more interesting character designs, but that is only because it seems like they were intended to be some flavor of queer, but of course, the anime would never dare to be that interesting. The ongoing antagonism between Natsume and Subaru ends up being the “main” storyline near the final few episodes, but that is only because it is really the only plotline the series bothers trying to resolve.

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Yeah It’s Problematic, But Man It’s Hard to Care

It absolutely should not be overlooked that much of what happens in this series is older, college age and above men going after a 16-year-old girl. It is most definitely weird and creepy and Brothers Conflict should be criticized for it, especially since at no point is this fact ever addressed, let alone framed in a negative light.

At the very least, when it comes to a show like Oreimo, there are points where the weird incest vibes are less distracting because the characters are notably interesting and have conflicts outside of that dynamic. Because this show is only interested in romantics to the point of being one-dimensional, it becomes hard to ignore. So, not only is the show painfully boring, but it is also incredibly gross and creepy.

Animator? I Barely Know Her!

For how much the characters and backgrounds in this show actually move in any dynamic or interesting way, they might as well just have ported over the png files from the Otome adaptation, which I will remind everyone for the third time came after the light novel (seriously wtf?!). The most “well-animated” moments in the series, if one could even call them that, are the sequences at the beginning which only serve to remind you just how interested her brothers are in f***ing her.

This is by no means meant as a criticism of the animators themselves, as they were likely operating with pretty spare time and coordination and thus just had to put something together. Rather, it is pretty clear that Brothers Conflict was only greenlit as a way of selling merch and copies of the existing materials.

Conclusion

I’m sure there were some amount of people who saw this series and genuinely enjoyed it, mostly in the sense that it did something for them sexually. Still, I just do not get it. There are so many other series in this same lane that are not only better at being hot but are also legitimately more interesting from a storytelling and character perspective.

Brothers Conflict is a half-assed, quantity-over-quality approach to making a reverse harem that does not come close to overcoming its problematic and boring execution. I reached some of the highest highs this year when it came to the medium of anime, so I suppose it only makes some sort of weird cosmic sense to torture myself with the lowest of lows.

25/100

Have you seen this abomination? Let me know in the comments.

If you are interested in reading more from me, check under blog to read my most recent stuff, or look below for some related posts. Also, if you would like to support Animated Observations, consider donating on Ko-fi or through paypal, or pledging on Patreon. You can even support by just liking and sharing this post.

Check out my writing blog, Solidly Liquid!

If you can’t, or just don’t feel like it, no worries. Thank you all for reading, and goodbye, for now, friends!

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Blog Updates

Sorry For Being Gone

October 9, 2022 Jack Scheibelein 2 Comments

Welcome, weebs, to Animated Observations

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Hey friends, hope all of you have been doing well. As many of you reading may or may not have noticed, I have been gone for about a month.

I genuinely try not to take huge unannounced breaks from blogging for a couple reasons. First, the fact that anyone is willing to read my articles makes me truly thankful, and so I usually try to stay working on something. Second, for me personally, I use this blog as a way to keep my writing skills honed, and so when I’m not writing, there is a sense of personal responsibility.

That being said, I always try and let people know ahead of time that school is going to be my primary focus when the semester begins. Given that it is currently the fall semester, and also the last semester of my undergraduate degree (assuming everything goes ok), I don’t feel as bad for the sudden departure.

Outside of the more obvious reasons, however, part of it is a bit of burnout. Writing two plus decent quality posts every week alongside my normal school assignments can be a bit much sometimes. I don’t mean to complain when I say this, because generally speaking, I enjoy writing those posts. Still, I do tend to experience a bit of mental fatigue when doing that much writing all the time.

This past summer season definitely did not help either. While I enjoyed covering some of the newer shows, keeping up with that many shows was not always easy. I wanted to do the same with the fall, considering how many fantastic series are gonna be airing, as well as the seasons to come. However, trying to do that with all of the other stuff I have going on just did not feel feasible.

As for what that means for this blog…well, mainly just a bit more irregularity. My goal is to finish up the shows from summer relatively soon and write some reviews on them. Outside of that, however, it will be a lot more sporadic. I would like to finish Utena at some point and cover that, plus I will more than likely still be watching things from fall. I just won’t be giving as frequent of updates.

As far as regular content goes, that will probably be back sometimes in December after the semester is done and graduation is over. Probably. I definitely do not want to overpromise and under-deliver, so anybody who cares about this blog at all should consider me still on hiatus for at least the next few months.

Also, I want to clear that this is not the beginning of the end. Probably. As I have highlighted in the past, writing is definitely my preferred method of expression. Still, experimenting with other formats and forms of content is also something I like to do. So, if a video or two pops out on the YouTube Channel or Tik Tok, or Solidly Liquid randomly comes back to life for a bit, that also should be taken without much surprise.

Basically, this is just an extended way of saying I’m taking it easy for a while. Still want to be involved in the community, of course, but content creation just isn’t a priority, at least for right now. That will likely change in the future, though, once I have a steady job and time to work on my passion projects, including this one.

Thank you all for understanding!

Check out my writing blog, Solidly Liquid!

As always, special thanks to Jenn for the support on Patreon.

If you can’t, or just don’t feel like it, no worries. Thank you all for reading, and goodbye, for now, friends!

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Blog Updates

A Quick Update Because I am Incredibly lazy

December 21, 2020 Jack Scheibelein Leave a comment

Welcome, weebs, to Animated Observations

Hey friendos! So, I know I haven’t put out any kind of update in a while and I feel really bad about that, because I said that I would make them a regular thing. But, to be honest, every time I establish an actual time window, I never actually find that much to write about. So at this point I think I’m just going to limit update to whenever I have something important going on, which might mean they come more or less often depending on what’s been going on. Speaking of what’s been going on:

Streaming!

Streaming was always something that looked interesting but I never really had the tools to do. Well, now that I have a half-way decent computer, I can do just that, and I have been. I’ve only had a few streams so far, and so far the streams have just consisted of Hearthstone and…well, yeah just that. However, I do have plans to stream other stuff, plus if there is something specifically people would like to see from me, I am more than happy to hear suggestions. Its been more so just something fun to do while I am sitting at home, but if I definitely wouldn’t be mad if you dropped a follow.

Writing Poetry

I have found out something extremely important about myself over the last couple of months. It is something that I think I knew about myself but just did not want to admit: I hate writing longer things. As much as I enjoy writing and will probably continue to do it for the rest of my life, unless I am getting paid to do it, the chances of me finishing a novel are pretty slim. My attention span is not long, so it takes me a while to even finish one project. Poetry works for me because I can spend more time obsessing over specific lines making sure they are perfect, which, if I tried to do with an actual novel, I would literally never finish.

So, because of this, I am spending most of my time writing on poetry and flash fiction. Currently I have plans to enter a number competitions, and I will also be looking for journals to submit to as well. If any of you know of journals that are looking for poetry submissions, feel free to leave those links in the comments as well.

Nintendo is a Trash Company

I know this isn’t as important to most of you reading this, but I want to bring to light to it anyway. For those who do not know, Super Smash Brothers has been around for a long time, and for a large part of its history, there has been a strong grassroots competitive scene for all of its games, even fan modes like Project M. Recently, Nintendo has become a lot more active in shutting down events and organizations it does not like, despite the fact that they have pretty much no infrastructure of their own for a competitive community.

Now, I totally understand that, as the publisher of Super Smash Bros, they have full rights to green light broadcasts and distribution, as well as shut down whatever they do not like, even without any justification. However, apart from being a bad business decision, the shutting down of events related to both Melee and Ultimate because the competitive scene not being how they envisioned people to enjoy the game just feels wrong. Competitive players of these games are usually the most dedicated fans, and many of them have made it their livelihood to play and create content for these games.

Basically what I’m saying is that if you care at all about smash, it might be worth sharing some support on social media. Most people have been using #freemelee and #savesmash. The idea is to just create enough noise that eventually Nintendo will have to address it in some capacity.

Getting Back into Seasonal Anime

While I still do not want it to be the entire focus of this blog, I do plan on getting back into seasonal watching. It is still enjoyable to watch a show while its airing and talk about it with others. Here are some of the shows I plan on watching:

The Promised Neverland 2
Log Horizon Season 3
Dr. Stone Season 2
Beastars Season 2
2.43: Seiin Koukou Danshi Volleyball-bu

So, if you are planning on watching any of these, stick around for coverage.

Check out my writing blog, Solidly Liquid!

If you can’t, or just don’t feel like it, no worries. Thank you all for reading, and goodbye, for now, friends!

OWLS Posts, Series

OWLS May “Happiness” Post: Anime, Writing, and The Endgame

May 7, 2019 Jack Scheibelein 14 Comments

Welcome, weebs, to Animated Observations

Hello again, friends! For this months OWLS post, I’ll be talking on a bit more of a personal level, as the topic for this month is Happiness.

Happiness is subjective. We all have different definitions of what happiness means to us and we also feel happiness in varying degrees. This month we will be exploring several questions describing our happiness in our fandoms, communities, and hobbies. Why do we find enjoyment watching anime or reading manga? Why did we decide to join the anime or pop culture communities? Why do we blog about our hobbies or cosplay as our favorite characters? This topic is all about the passions we have for our interests and why they are important to us.

As always, make sure to check out more of the OWLS by looking at some of our other members posts, such as Karandi whose post will be coming after mine.

With that being said, here is the post:

Anime

Most people get to a certain point in their lives where they all start asking each other the same two questions: how and why are we even here? This is no less true in the anime community, a group of people who have come together to bask in the glory of Japanese animation. It seems like most people in the anime community have a fairly interesting story to tell when it comes to these questions, so for anyone who cares, here is mine.

Before I found anime as a hobby, I pretty much did nothing. In middle school, I played games on my Nintendo DS and that was about it. Every day was me finishing my homework and chilling alone in my room. I also did not have many friends at the time, and it seems like the ones I did manage to find were constantly moving away. One day, however, the person who would become my best friend introduced me to two different shows: Bleach and Fullmetal Alchemist. This was around the time I got my first computer, so of course, I looked them up and started binging them. Bleach was technically the first show I watched, with FMA coming Immediately after.

After watching these two shows, I was hooked and I wanted more. For a while, I went on a quest to find new shows like Bleach and FMA, watching all manner of YouTube top ten videos and reviews for shows that looked interesting. Before I knew it, I stumbled upon what would be one of my favorite shows for a long time to come: Fairytail. After that, I met a friend in the seventh grade who was also an avid anime watcher and gave me even more great recommendations like Death Note, Fruits Basket (the original Deen adaptation), and Hetalia. With that, anime was a part of my life.

Writing

Writing as a passion for me came much later. It was not until I joined my school’s newspaper that I found out just how much I enjoyed writing. Every week I would find something new to report on and make an effort to deep dive into that topic. Sometimes I would even be opinionated enough to make an article talking about something I cared about.

Later on in high school during my sophomore year, I took a creative writing class, where I met a lot of similarly minded people like me, and we just took time enjoying and creating whatever we wanted. Creative writing is also where I discovered my love of poetry and short stories, so there is that.

It wasn’t until my Junior year of high school, where I was overwhelmed with the amount of work I had going on, that I decided to create a blog for fun. At the time I just needed something to get my mind of all my stress and just have control over something creatively. Quickly, though, it turned from something to do in my free time to a hobby to something I love doing (almost) all the time.

Where Do I Go from Here?

Honestly, I don’t know yet. I still want to try and make this something of a part-time or even full-time job if possible, but I also still have a lot to learn when it comes to being creative on the internet. I’m still not even fully sure if what I am doing with my blog now is what I will be doing in a few years from now. However, I do know one thing, that it is enjoyable for me, and right now that is a lot of what matters. Anime, Writing, and this blog are a lot of what brings me happiness.

What are your guy’s plans for the future? Let me know in comments below. Also, if you would like to support The Aniwriter or are just feeling generous, consider donating on ko-fi or using one of the affiliate links below:

Check out my writing blog, Solidly Liquid!

If you can’t, or just don’t feel like it, no worries. Thank you all for reading, and goodbye, for now, friends!

poetry

To All the People I Could Not Say Hi To

October 24, 2018 Jack Scheibelein 7 Comments

Welcome, weebs and authors alike, to The Aniwriter.

Sometimes my introvertedness gets the better of me, so here is a poem about that.

Isn’t it amazing how much work goes into saying just a few words?
First, the mouth takes in air,
then the brain sends signals to fire thousands of neurons.
The mouth must then reopen and with the help of vibrating air,
words then flow seamlessly out, or so we would all like to think.
There is actually a lot more to saying a few words than that.
Speaking is actually a lot like cooking,
because every ingredient is chosen carefully and used in a specific way.
If you leave a sentence in the oven too long it might burn,
but take it out to early and it becomes cold.
Saying “hi” is hard, not because of the ingredients but because
every time I try to cook with that word it always goes missing.

How do you guys feel about this poem? Let me know in the comments below. Also, if you want to support the Aniwriter through donations or are just feeling generous, consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi. Otherwise, thanks for reading and bye for now, Friendos!

poetry

The Comet

July 29, 2018 Jack Scheibelein 2 Comments

Welcome, weebs and authors alike, to The Aniwriter.

Today, a poem titled “The Comet.” Enjoy!

The night sky shines beautifully.
The moon glimmers and brings light to the dark.
But, while the stars clash, blasting their light at one another, somebody else arrives.
Like a dance through cluttered terrain of the clashing stars, in comes the comet.
This rare specimen makes its presence known, gallantly gliding into the center of attention.
The comet sticks around only for a little bit, then retreats.
Just as quickly as it came in it leaves, with the stars and the moon all having felt its presence.
Sometimes, I wish I could be a lot more like the comet.

What do you guys think of this one? I know my poems have been a little bit shorter lately, but that’s largely because of a lack of inspiration. Let me know in the comments below. Also, if you want to support the Aniwriter through donations or are just feeling generous, consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi. Otherwise, thanks for reading and bye for now, Friendos!

30 Day Anime Challenge, Anime/Manga

30 Day Anime Challenge – Day 7: My Anime Crush

April 29, 2018 Jack Scheibelein 3 Comments

Hello, Anifriends

For the 7th 30 Day Anime Challenge, I’ll be talking about my anime crush.

This one is a category I really had to think about, mostly because I usually just enjoy the relationships between the characters in the show. But there is one character that sticks out in my mind:

Saber from the Fate Series

I’ll be honest, I do not really have a reason as to why Saber is my anime crush. She just kind of is. Through all of the iterations of the Fate franchise, she has always been my favorite part of the show.

One of the reasons might be her fighting. At least for me. the action scenes with her are always the coolest because of Excalibur. Using magic as a way to keep her sword invisible and thereby reducing the ability of her enemies to counter it is one of the things that I feel like is not explored enough by any of the iterations. I assume this is because it was originally a visual novel, and there was not a lot of action scenes to begin with.

Either way, I really enjoy her character. Is she best girl of the Fate series?

eh…

But she is certainly one of the more interesting characters, and that’s why I like her.

What anime character do you have a crush on? Let me know in the comments below. Also, if you want to support the Aniwriter through donations or are just feeling generous, consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi. Otherwise, thanks for reading and bye for now, Friendos!

12 Days of Anime 2017, Anime/Manga

12 Days on Anime #7: What Anime Means to Me as a Writer

December 20, 2017 Jack Scheibelein 1 Comment

As both an amateur poet and a journalist, I’ve always been obsessed with stories. How they’re told, the characters involved, the choices made by those characters, the elements that support a story in a given medium of entertainment, all of it. Picking apart those elements and then putting them back together as part of my own work is something that is something that takes a lot of skill, and something that I hope to perfect some day.

It is weird too because I wasn’t always a writer. I didn’t seriously consider writing as a career until I got to my Journalism class in Freshman year of high school. I hadn’t done much in terms of quality writing up until that point, mostly because my skills were, to put it lightly, trash.

When I think about anime, I think about all of the staff that has to work on a single project in order to tell the story in the most interesting way possible. Whether that be through stage direction, exposition, or even just a few scenes overlooking characters or a vast landscape.

What I want to be, and what I aspire to, is a level of sophistication in my writing that matches even shows like Psycho-Pass. Getting there will mean that I have made the greatest possible advancement, and the only thing left would be to work on my style. Hopefully someday.

Thanks for reading, everyone, and bye for now, Friendos!

Anime/Manga, Opinion

Log Horizon: The Better Written Sword Art Online

November 7, 2017 Jack Scheibelein 16 Comments

I’ll be honest, When I’m deciding what shows I would consider good, as opposed to a show that I just happen to enjoy, I generally tend to reward more points to a show that has more in-depth writing than one with huge flashy action scenes. That’s not to say that shows with flashy action scenes are bad, or that those shows can’t also have good writing or interesting ideas. I think a lot of the Fate series makes that point well. My point is that a show needs more than two characters trying to beat each other to death in order to be considered good. This is where the debate between Log Horizon and Sword Art Online comes in.

Log Horizon in a lot of ways borrows elements of Sword Art Online’s premise, although at that point it would also be fair to say that Sword Art Online borrows a lot from the .hack franchise’s premise. Both of the show’s start out in familiar situations in their respective first episodes. A male protagonist who plays a lot of video games suddenly gets sucked into a world based on a game he’s playing and can’t get out. However, even though the show’s start in similar places, the show’s both take radically different approaches.

SAO-and-Log-Horizon-anime — Sword Art Online vs Log Horizon. Source: TheMarySue.com

Sword Art Online is quick to focus on Kirito and the people around him, with the first couple of episodes actually remaining quite tragic. Kirito is trapped in a world he can’t escape from with a bunch of people he doesn’t know. Not only that, he is hated by a lot of people for simply having been a beta tester and thereby having a stronger character. A lot of this focus is quickly replaced by a focus on Kirito and gang’s quest to get out of the game. Kirito meets a lot of female companions and the show quickly turns into Kirito’s Not so Happy Harem Time with fighting.

This shift away from unique character development is ultimately what leads to the show’s lackluster finish. Full disclosure, I am not the biggest fan of SAO, if you couldn’t already tell, but even I would admit its strength are indeed strong. The show’s animation is extremely detailed and its musical score is impressive to be sure, but as I said at the beginning, a showy presentation can only do so much for a show’s quality.

Log Horizon, while admittedly losing out on things like animation and musical score, does what Sword Art Online tried and failed to do: write an interesting story and build an interesting world. Log Horizon chooses to focus on its characters in the beginning and stay focused on developing those characters throughout the entire series. Log Horizon’s main character Shiroe, in comparison with Kirito, has a distinct personality (an intelligent, sensible leader who knows how to engage in Diplomacy and work behind the scenes to achieve his goals). Kirito comes off most of the time as a typical shonen protagonist who thinks that he can achieve anything he wants by just believing hard enough.

Log Horizon’s writing also speaks for itself in the way it uses details to build its world from the ground up. It is explained in the first episode that world that the characters are in a world like the one they knew as Elder Tale, but not Elder Tale itself. Many of the world’s rules function the same way as in the game, but some details like the types of monsters in specific locations have changed, and also the way that they travel to other parts of the game (mainly through the transportation gates) no longer works. This hints to us that the world they are now is not necessarily what they think it is.

The show also differs in how the characters feel about the world they are in. While almost all of the characters in Sword Art Online agree that breaking out is the immediate focus, Shiroe takes a much more pragmatic approach. He, of course, is worried about getting back to the real world, but he also feels that there needs to be a sense of order in their new world for the time being. In order to accomplish this goal, Shiroe sets up a council with the leaders of the group’s largest guilds and hammers at a plan to cooperate and keep the people happy. Parts of this plan include trading agreements for different clans, organizing what is effectively a standing army, and also solving the problem of food not tasting like everything.

One criticism that is fairly leveled at the show’s story is the arc during the first part of the show where Shiroe and company go and rescue a little girl from a guild of thieves. Most of this arc does very little in terms of the overall story except for introducing us to two new characters. However, what the show presents in those first few episodes is enough to keep us interested. It explains the basics of combat in an MMORPG setting, as well as explaining the class system, all stuff that while boring to someone who has experience with desktop MMOs like this, is vital to someone who doesn’t. Sword Art Online, meanwhile, does very little in establishing much of anything when it comes to rules in its own world, and often times resorts to Deus ex Machina plot explanations of “Kirito is a beta tester, therefore he is invincible to all damage ever.”

Titan's_Hand — Source: Sword Art Online Wiki

Not every show can be perfect. In Fact, most shows won’t excel at everything. There is always going to be something a show could have improved on and made itself better. Log Horizon, while certainly having its flaws, is unmistakably a much better-written show than Sword Art Online.

What do you guys think? Am I right? Am I wrong? Is Asuna worst girl? Let me know in the comments. Bye for now, Friendos!

Anime/Manga, Initial Results

March Comes in Like a Lion Season 2 Episode 1 Reaction: It’s Back!

October 16, 2017 Jack Scheibelein 1 Comment

If the title makes it sound like I’m excited, it’s because I am. March Comes in Like a Lion is arguably one of the best shows to come out in the last few years, for a multitude of reasons – good characters, fun episodic storylines that still culminate in a powerful overarching story – and now its second season is finally out.

I’ll admit, the first episode isn’t what I thought it was going to be, but looking back at the first season it makes a lot of sense. The first episode picks off where the first season ended, with Rei now being a member of the newly formed Shogi Science club and teaching the former science club members how to play.

Throughout the episode, Rei comes to terms with his current situation and looks back on the progress he’s made towards coming out of his shell as a person. While in the lab at school the former science club members and Rei watch an important Shogi match between Souya and another famous player. During Souya’s match, Rei realizes that his newfound clubmates and his teacher Takashi are not only having a good time with Shogi but are also interested in his well being.

In the second half of the episode, Rei finds himself making Ramune in the science Lab after they see Souya and his opponent eating snacks during their match. Rei, being a recluse who doesn’t know how to do much for himself, needs help from Noguchi in making the snack. The episode ends with a much appreciated happy note for Rei: that he has friends.

So much of the story of the first season was Rei battling with his tendency towards loneliness and not relying on others for help, but now it seems that has changed for the better. Rei has found a lot of people who he loves and considers family. His days of being lonely are, for the most part, over.

Even though I’m going to say it here, it goes without saying that this was a strong start. The first episode was everything fans of the show expect for a show of its quality.

The animation from Shaft and Akiyuki Shinbo were exceptionally expressive, and on the same level of quality as the first season. The colorful art style combined with Shaft’s unique storytelling style is present for this first episode and will likely continue to be here.

The opening and ending theme were both phenomenal, as was the case with the first season, being performed by YUKI and Brian the Sun respectively.