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Shinsekai Yori is one of the most intelligent anime I've ever watched. The dialogue, the plot and characterization are all top notch. None of the main characters feel like flat cardboard cutouts. An example is how the main characters often debate about the motives of other characters, trying to predict what the next actions of other characters may be, and the right way to act so as to achieve their objective. Characters such as Satoru, Inui and Kiroumaru for example are very strategic in their thinking and almost everything they say and do is entirely rational. The plot is very good, logical and consistent. The ... plot is not particularly convoluted like in some detective stories, which is a good thing as it makes the story more easily checked - there are no loose ends that I could find, everything is neatly tied up by the time the anime finishes.

Actually the main reason I watched this anime is because of the violent scenes involving psychokinesis. These are regrettably few and short. I would have preferred more and longer violent scenes. This is one of the few shortcomings of the series in my opinion, is that it shied away too much from violence and gore. Also the music isn't very good, like, I wouldn't listen to them outside of the anime. But the voice acting is okay. Saki can get annoying but then again she is probably the most emotional character in the series, if you ignore her and focus on the other characters you'll find the anime very enjoyable. And at the end of the story she becomes a conduit for Shun anyway, so at least she does something useful. There is some feudal allegories that may or may not be relevant in the modern world, depending on which perspective you look at things. Satoru says at the end that monster rats are not humans may or may not have significance depending on whether if you think that all homo sapiens are truly human or not. Mamoru and Maria having dun goof'd was probably the "darkest" part of the anime, plot wise, but really it could have be much worse, considering some things people have done in real life.

All in all an excellent anime that I would recommend for anyone who likes an intelligent plot, intelligent rational characters, or violence (although there are only about 10 seconds of violence throughout the whole series added together, these scenes are admittedly pretty gratifying).

A word of warning: This movie is 95% documentary, 5% action. So if you expect an action-heavy movie, you will be sorely disappointed.

That having been said, the documentary is certainly a fresh perspective on Musashi. I'm not going to comment on how accurate it is, but it's certainly a different perspective than the one espoused by most fictional narratives on Musashi, as it tries very hard to integrate real historical background in an attempt to dispel the so-called "myths" surrounding the legendary swordsman, it explains (or tries to explain) Musashi's obsession with battles.

Now, let's delve into the real important stuff (the action scenes):

Art: ... The art is very good, characters are well drawn and look like real men, not moeblobs. I would say the character drawings are at least equal to Shigurui in terms of quality.

Animation: Very fluid. The animation is very smooth and fluid and is easily some of the most fluid swordfighting I've seen in anime.

Choreography: Excellent. The movie actually provides examples of Musashi wielding his unconventional two-sword technique to devastating effect, how he uses one sword to parry and the other to cut, simultaneously. It's amazing.

Warning to anyone planning to watch this: DO NOT EXPECT THE PLOT TO MAKE SENSE. The plot is a complete and total clusterfuck and does not even begin to make sense no matter which way you look at it. If the ending says what I think it says, being Kuro is the worst hell. The recursive plot reminded me of Highlander: Search for Vengeance.

Okay, now that I've got that out of the way, let's focus on the specifics.

Art: Amazing. The art is really well polished, on par with Hellsing Ultimate.

Animation: Smooth fight scenes, lots of slow-motion and special effects. High quality animation. ...

Choreography: Pretty good, the sword fights are quite nice to watch, Kuro utilizes a lot of acrobatic moves which are nice to see. I would say that it's at least on par with Highlander: Search for Vengeance if not better.

Story: Cliched fanfiction-level shit. I could talk about the shitty underage romance subplot (a loner encounters a 13 yo girl and they fall in love...in the river), or how fucking socially retarded Munto is: appears out of nowhere and demands a girl give him her "power", when she doesn't even know who he is or what he's talking about. Tells her to "believe in herself", and she actually says "I believe in myself" when all she did was touch Munto. That was literally all she had to do. "Believe in yourself" is literally the most overused line in the history of shitty fanfiction. I would ... give a 0 for the story if I could.

Character designs: Terrible. All the girls have fuckhuge bug eyes and Munto looks like a skinny 12 year old...remember this guy is supposed to be the king of the Magic Kingdom. Just look at that ridiculous hair.

Animation: Average. Nothing to complain about, but it wasn't amazing either. The fight scenes were a letdown. Actually there is only one fight scene in the entire 54 minute OVA, Gas vs the chick with two swords. It was okay animation wise, I mean it's double framed. But in terms of choreography it wasn't that great. It was just Gas dodging the double swords. Was somewhat similar to the Darker than Black OVA where Hei was dodging the chinese contractor's double swords. Gas grabs the sword and vaporizes it. If the sword doesn't cut you then why bother dodging it? Seems kind of pointless really. Anyway that was it. The OVA's only fight scene and was mediocre.

Overall piss poor story and underwhelming fight scenes, really disappointing.

I wrote a review for Fate/Zero before but it got deleted because it only talked about the fight scenes. So I'm including the story in this review as well. Enjoy.

Warning: spoilers.

The story can be summed up in two words: Forced Grimdark. Characters suffer and die for no apparent reason other than to make the show darker and edgier. [spoiler]Why was Kariya even in there? Most of these characters don't even become relevant until FSN. That Rin episode was fucking awful, it had no relevance to the plot whatsoever. As was the Kiritsugu backstory which I thought was two long episodes of nothing but ... forced drama. Kiritsugu keeps being put into implausible situations where he has to kill his own parents. He killed father because "he might accidentally turn everyone into zombies". Natalia forgets to bring a parachute on a mission where she's on a plane containing wasps that turn people into zombies because MUH FEELS. Kiritsugu could have put Avalon into Maiya healing her wounds instantly instead of letting her die, but didn't, because MUH FEELS. Lancer died like a bitch because MUH FEELS. Totally didn't steal "lancer kill yourself" from the original FSN. Kariya strangles Aoi even though we're told earlier on that he loves her because MUH FEELS. Why are there so many irrelevant characters and why do they all have to die in the most pathetic way possible? Example: Iskander. Big hearted and funny guy right? Better kill him off in the most retarded way possible to increase MUH FEELS. And yes, it is retarded because Iskander had absolutely no reason to gallop 5 miles away from Gilgamesh when he could have put Gilgamesh slap bang into the middle of Ionian Hetairoi giving him no chance to pull out Ea. It's funny because the historical Alexander the Great was a shrewd and cunning general, the polar opposite of the F/Z Iskander. Was the serial killer couple put in there for any reason other than to make the anime darker and edgier? This is what I call forced grimdark - having characters suffer and kill each other for no reason other than to make the viewer sad. [/spoiler]

Fight scenes are badly directed. I could pick out so many things wrong with Fate/Zero fights. In all Lancer vs Saber fights, all they do is talk talk talk and compliment each other on their skills. They're not even trying to kill each other. The Kariya vs Tohsaka fight was fucking dumb. It was just Kariya throwing wasps at Tohsaka. "Huh, wasps all getting burned to crisp? Throw more wasps!". The Berserker vs Gilgamesh "fight" was just Gilgamesh is throwing weapons at Berserker. The "dogfight" was just Berserker going pew pew at Archer. All of Berserker scenes are painful to watch because of the terrible CG. The Kiritsugu vs Kirei battle was fucking dumb. Why was it set in the fucking batcave? There's no lead-up whatsoever. The entire fight consisted of Kirei punching Kiritsugu in the chest, Kiritsugu shooting Kirei in the hand, and then the retarded knife blocking scene. Kiritsugu managed to get hit with the most telegraphed punch to the chest in the history of the universe. He had like 10 minutes to react. A 1 year old could have dodged it. I don't understand why they wasted the animation budget on slow-motioning this scene with single framing when it was just Kiritsugu getting punched in the chest, whilst really fast scenes like Kirei throwing his black keys only got double framed, which made it difficult to see what happened. He didn't even try to dodge or block it, he was just standing there not doing anything. Fucking dumb. The next scene was even dumber. Kirei getting shot in the hand was just stupid. Not to mention the massive anticlimax with the black mud crashing through the batcave ceiling JUST AS Kirei and Kiritsugu are about to kill each other.


The most annoying thing about the fight scenes is that the movements look wooden and robotic. Characters standing still just moving their arms. There is distinct lack of whole body movement. You can see in the Kirei vs Kiritsugu fight that all Kirei does is move his arm when blocking Kiritsugu's attacks. The rest of his body is completely still, not showing any changes at all, not even redrawn for like 20 frames. This is just laziness.

I might mention again the level of disjointedness in the fight scenes. I've said before that the Saber vs Berserker fight scenes were completely disjointed, as in consecutive scenes did not even match each other. If you look at any of the fight scenes closely you'll see that disjointedness permeates from the highest to the lowest level. The Maiya vs Kirei fight scene was disjointed in that one scene shows Maiya's knife hand being deflected by Kirei's right hand, and the next frame shows Kirei's left hand grabbing Maiya's wrist, with no intermediate scene that shows how we got from here to there. The scenes don't match each other at all. The animation is not smooth, as in one second it speeds up and another second it slows down again randomly. This is a prime example of bad directing.

Summary: All of the Fate Zero fight scenes were underwhelming due to the stiff, awkward and wooden movements and disjointed action sequences.

Art: There is nothing glaringly wrong with the art. The character designs are fairly decent for the most part. The main problem is inconsistent drawings, as in a character with a bulging belly from one angle would suddenly have a flat belly from another angle. This is quite annoying. Also the tentacles are extremely thick, causing the rape victims to scream "I'm going to break", yet the vagina is never depicted as torn. Also, from that amount of rape, there should be a considerable amount of internal trauma, yet this is not drawn either. So overall, there is a lot of room for improvement.

Animation: ... The animation has several problems. The first is that scenes are often glossed over too quickly, as in gone in literally a blink of an eye. For example the scene where Oboro seemed to be sitting on Asagi's sister. That had like 2 frames dedicated to it. And it's not fully drawn, so it's unclear as to what is really happening. Actually the camera angles are a big problem with this anime, because they're nearly always shot from close ups where you can only see part of the body and not really make out what is really happening. There are also a lot of and reused animation which is really boring.

Choreography: This is the major problem really. As mentioned earlier the tentacle rape should have caused considerable internal trauma yet this is never depicted. The characters seem to recover all energy instantly after being raped. The fight scenes were terrible, as in they didn't animate any movement except for sword entering chest. You couldn't tell what happened at all. Also it's weird how Oboro was depicted to have paralysis powers or telekinesis or whatever but in the end fight she fought like she had no demon powers at all. It didn't make sense. If Oboro really wanted to kill Asagi she could have done it easily. I could also mention the demon with the huge penis which should have torn Asagi's body apart but it somehow magically shrunk upon entering Asagi and didn't tear her apart. That made no sense. Also the billion scenes where Asagi chewed on semen repeatedly was also weird and out of place, it seemed to be there for no apparent reason and was really annoying.

Conclusion: A badly directed piece of annoying nonsense.

Art: Character designs were decent, though perhaps too similar to Kawajiri's previous works. Marcus looked too much like Gemma. Clothing, backgrounds, weapons etc were all fairly detailed.

Animation: Pretty decent. Fight scenes were fairly well animated, with some slow motion scenes here and there. Could have really done with some single-framed sword fights though, that would have been really awesome.

Choreography: Bit too much sword bashing and sword breaking in this anime. I laughed when Colin's thin katana cut straight through Octavius' thick sword. Sword deflecting bullets was really dumb as well. So overall the choreography isn't that great really. Certainly nothing breathtaking like Sword ... of the Stranger or VHD:Bloodlust.

Conclusion: The movie felt really disjointed. Like it was just a bunch of random unrelated scenes of two guys swing swords at each other. And I wouldn't have minded that if it was done better. Also Marcus not killing Colin when he had like 50 chances to do so was really dumb as well. The whole "I know I have better things to do than chase the same faggot for 2000 years and repeatedly failing to kill him but I'm still doing it anyway" thing was also retarded.

Art: Fine. Character design is decent, faces are shaded (at least in close ups), objects and backgrounds are well drawn as well so no complaints here. A big annoyance is when Chiba's face is sometimes drawn with no shading other than under the nose and lower lip making her face look completely flat other than the aforementioned areas.

Animation: Mostly double or triple framed with minimal single-framing that you probably can't even notice unless you went through it frame-by-frame like I did. Intense action scenes like the tentacle scene could really have done with single framing but I guess the budget couldn't allow for that. ... Overall the animation is not noticeably choppy so it's acceptable I guess.

Choreography: What choreography lol. There are no fight scenes in this movie which is the biggest disappointment for me. Actually the dream sequences really let me down because I was expecting more lurid sequences and fight scenes but there were none. The only action consisted of Paprika running around to escape tentacles or whatever. Pretty boring.

Conclusion: Not as good as I had been expecting. Dream sequences could have been more lurid, no fighting, very little violence. A shit ton of movie references for seemingly no reason other than "the police guy didn't finish a movie that he was making with a friend". Makes no sense. I didn't like Paprika, she seemed too artificial and forced. Chiba acted like a bitch. The fat genius guy also seemed too stereotyped. None of the characters were convincing at all. What's the theme of this story, really? Is it a beauty and the beast, as in, the fat genius as the beast, and Paprika as the beauty? Why is every male character in the movie madly in love with Paprika? The dream rape scene felt weird and out of place. In the novel Chiba actually does get raped, physically. That's pretty edgy dude. Thought this was supposed to be fun and not serious and adult. Oh well. That's what you get for thinking that popular = good.

art: All the women look the same. As in they all have the same face. This is a problem shared by all Miyazaki films and not just this one. At least Porco Rosso has a unique face. The art isn't very detailed, and the characters have only 1 level of shading (base color + a light shadow). So it's quite a simplistic art design, so I expected good animation.

Animation: I didn't go through this movie frame by frame but the airplane movements were pretty smooth. The choppiness was not noticeable except for a few scenes. However I didn't notice any particularly fluid scenes either, ... like the fluidity of VHD:Bloodlust. So probably very little if any single framing in this movie. Overall it's better than TV quality, but it's not particularly smooth.

Choreography: There was only one fight in this movie and it was a slugfest. There was no attempt by either participant to dodge or parry or block any attack. Instead they just swung wildly, taking all the hits, like two drunks. So the choreography really isn't anything to write home about.

Conclusion: Not as good as people seem to think. Art is not particularly detailed, animation is not particularly smooth, and the fight choreography really sucks ass.

Art: Fairly decent. The style is quite nice, faces are usually shaded and not flat-looking (Czeslaw is the exception). The character designs are actually quite memorable. I still remember Chane's face when she got mad at Ladd for saying that she was just being used by Huey.

Animation: Really not all that great. Watch episode 3 the Firo vs Dallas fight. It was choppy as fuck. It actually used triple framing. Yeah okay, it's only a TV series, so you can't expect it to be like VHD Bloodlust which had single framing, but even fucking NARUTO had double framing. Baccano uses triple framing for its ... fucking FIGHT SCENES which makes them look choppy as fuck. Really bad fucking idea. Whoever directed Baccano deserves a slap for not prioritizing fight scene animation.

Choreography: It might have been good, but due to the choppy as fuck animation I couldn't tell what was going on even when I went through the anime frame-by-frame. Yes it was that choppy. Some fight scenes looked like they might have been quite good if they hadn't been animated at 5 frames per second.

Conclusion: A potentially good series ruined by shitty animation. Fight scenes like Firo vs Dallas deserved received better treatment. I was really looking forward to the Claire Stanfield vs Ladd Russo fight too, which was also ruined by choppy animation and directing. Very disappointing.