Psycome is a comedy about psychos. I'm using the term "comedy" and "psychos" incredibly loosely, but I guess this is supposed to classify as both. Technically speaking, it's literally all it is and there is absolutely nothing more to it than that. And by comedy, I meant the wacky silly overdone harem hijinx that continuously repeat like a broken record. And by psychos, I meant kids who identify themselves as one while tipping their fedoras and maybe pretending Kool-Aid is blood to impress their friends on Facebook.
Here's the premise: This kid named Kyousuke gets into trouble with some thugs, beats them up, goes home, and
...
gets arrested because those kids ended up being killed by someone else. So on false charges, he's sent to this school on an island that supposedly serves to rehabilitate these terrible murderers. But to not get those silly parents involved, they are taken out of the picture in a form of the MC living alone with his sister. Typical LN formula.
In his class, he encounters three relevant characters- One being his teacher. She's basically this violent little kid that likes swinging around her metal pipe while speaking vulgarly nearly all the time. Oh, joy. The other two are his classmates- Maina and Eiri. Maina is this clumsy girl who apparently kills people unintentionally all the time. Wow, that's really wacky and funny. Furthermore, her personality and dialogue solely involve her saying "I'm sorry/I shouldn't have been born" nearly all the time and just completely caters to the type of people that eat up moeshit. Eiri is this supposedly skilled assassin who apparently killed six people, and that's really all there is to her. Three volumes in, and her personality is completely flat. Just like Maina, it usually involves her saying "Go die" or something along the line. Are you entertained yet?
Look, if you're going to introduce two relevant side characters, at least make their personality fairly normal so that there is an actual interaction between the MC and those characters. One being a flat character and the other being an overly apologetic moeblob isn't going to do anything. How does this even qualify as comedy? The farthest development Kyousuke goes with these two is him saying that he'll protect them or something. Flawless. But he's not the only one that's painfully generic- Every other side character is a walking trope. Kyousuke's sister is a completely generic yandere that plays the trope down to the tee, for example- Whereas Saki is that crazy noblewoman type of character.
The one and only decent character is Renko, and that's about the only positive thing about the series. While she's not exactly well-written, she at least fits with the theme of the story. She has a wacky personality and does a good job in giving off that strange vibe which is reflected by her character design. So yes, she's the only good (relatively speaking) character in this series because she's the only character that feels remotely psychotic without being a trope copypasta cardboard. Unfortunately, a single character cannot carry a series, and because of how utterly awful the MC is, the entire thing just gets dragged down.
Kyousuke's relevance in this series is excused by his false charge- Since he is labeled as a killer who murdered twelve people at the same time and that's apparently a very impressive record at the school, he is instantly given the 'popular' badge without him doing anything relevant. And at that point, it really does feel like a forced characterization because it's not about him interacting with other characters, but other characters just magnetizing towards him. All he ever really does is resolving a conflict by being fairly sensible and nice, and that's his entire character. The most generic of generic harem protagonists- There is not a speck of personality to be found. If there is one, it would be him being a complete puss- He actually legitimately cries and gets depressed when his little sister refuses to cook for him because they got in a small fight. The most significant thing he does in the first three volumes involve him calming down Renko all the time whenever she goes berserk. Incredibly interesting. And despite his complete lack of character, every female character is magnetized towards him- Renko, Maina, Eiri, Saki, Bob. I don't think there's enough wish fulfillment in this series yet.
As for the tone of this series- As I claimed earlier, this series is absolutely not "dark" or "grim" in any shape or form. Despite it being about a school full of murderers/assassins, there is very little to no murder/killing. In fact, what these characters like doing the best is talking about murdering/killing than actually doing it. You know, like those edgy middle school kids you see all the time on the internet. Because of that, the "threatening" tone of these supposedly terrifying characters is nowhere to be found because it doesn't feel real. In fact, it wouldn't be all that surprising if all these characters were sent to the school on false charges- Because that's what it feels like. And when there are actual murder attempts, they are usually just easily taken care of and are just glossed over like they were irrelevant. Clearly the series is not trying to be comedic in this department, so what is it doing, exactly? There is a huge difference between talking about doing something bad and actually doing something bad because the latter actually affects the characters in the long run, so why? What's the point?
Unfortunately, the problem doesn't end there. All the conflicts in this series have been so far, inconsequential (and mostly solved by Renko instead of Kyousuke), and the most significant character out of them all is Renko. Outside of Renko, there is little to no mystery or anything worth speculating over- That's how little plot this series has. You can argue this is a wacky comedy series, and that's fine- But if it's trying to present a plot, it's doing so at the pacing of an amputated snail. This is all the more offensive when Kyousuke just simply doesn't care about Renko's past and the school's shady intentions. He doesn't even care about the fact that he was enrolled on false charges that was likely caused by the school itself for his supposedly "impressive physical talents," which he barely makes any use of. Even the whole thing feels forced- It's like they couldn't come up with anything that made Kyousuke stand out, so all they could come up with was "eh he's strong I guess."
The school doesn't particularly care about him getting killed either because he has been under those threats, no matter how inconsequential they have turned out in the end, and later the shady people behind the school even regret having him enrolled in the school in the first place for interfering with Renko. Why not just kick him out, then? Oh right, they can't. He's the MC. All he cares about is graduating because he was promised to graduate normally as long as he doesn't commit any murder. This small possibility that he might commit a murder is also completely eliminated because there is very little to no murder outside of flashbacks and character backgrounds, so there is no speculation over that either. Completely boring.
Don't read this series expecting anything good- In the end, it's just yet another generic harem series with wacky unfunny overdone harem hijinx and unoriginal gags involving tit size. The supposed dark/gritty setting that this series promises is nowhere to be found, and is pretty much played for jokes nearly all the time outside of character TALKING about murdering people than actually doing it. And because of how mediocre this series is, it's guaranteed to get animated. I sure love this medium.
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May 8, 2014 Not Recommended Preliminary
(9/46 chp)
Psycome is a comedy about psychos. I'm using the term "comedy" and "psychos" incredibly loosely, but I guess this is supposed to classify as both. Technically speaking, it's literally all it is and there is absolutely nothing more to it than that. And by comedy, I meant the wacky silly overdone harem hijinx that continuously repeat like a broken record. And by psychos, I meant kids who identify themselves as one while tipping their fedoras and maybe pretending Kool-Aid is blood to impress their friends on Facebook.
Here's the premise: This kid named Kyousuke gets into trouble with some thugs, beats them up, goes home, and ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 13, 2014
Akame ga Kill!
(Manga)
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Not Recommended Preliminary
(80/80 chp)
Over the time, the term "edgy" has become something that people throw around for just about anything like Halloween candies. Therefore, when people label something as "edgy" these days, the chances are that it's not an appropriate term to describe that something. Fortunately, that term has found a perfect place just recently, and it's called Akame ga Kill. The more of this series I read, the more I'm convinced that the author is working on his 100% run of Shadow the Hedgehog and DMC as he's writing this masterpiece.
The biggest problem with this series already starts with the first chapter- The main character, Tatsumi, ... is a rather generic shounen protagonist who starts off with his two best buddies on some unexplained journey. Unfortunately for him, the group gets separated at some point, and when Tatsumi finds his buddies again in the Capital, the main setting of the series, it's shockingly revealed that they have been tortured to death by the very mean woman, Aria. (Don't bother remembering her name since she's irrelevant) Later, she gets killed and Tatsumi joins up with his actual group. What a fake out! Such a ruse! Deconstruction of a typical shounen manga! Now, what's wrong with this? It seems to be a nice introduction to the grim-dark setting the series seems to be going for, and serves as a possible motivation for the protagonist to stop the corruption that festers the Capital. Well, nothing, really. In fact, that's a good thing. So why did I state that the problem starts here? Because this becomes a gimmick. The series really seems to like emphasizing that the Capital just happens to be full of terrible people who seem to take their ideas from Comiket guro doujins. Even when the first chapter establishes this idea already, the author just has to beat the dead horse over and over in order to invoke some sort of emotion from the audience. Unfortunately, it's not very effective by the 10th time, and especially more so when the victims are extremely shallow or just so obviously fodder. The extra chapter later in the series is a perfect example of this- Three random girls, suddenly tortured/raped and dead. (one by suicide) What was the point? Nothing. The villains were irrelevant, and so were the 3 girls. The point emphasized? Uh, the Capital is full of bad people? Wait, that was already established by first chapter. It's really just another half-assed attempt to invoke some sort of emotion from the audience, and it doesn't work at all because it's just really trying too hard and eventually becomes just annoying. The author seems completely incapable of portraying something as "evil" unless some gory scene is involved. This baffles me because plenty of shounen manga-tier antagonists are fully capable of murder- But apparently visually showing that process in detail, despite it leading up to the same outcome, makes it any different? Eventually, the series introduces a rival group called "Jaegers" to oppose the protagonists. Mind you, these characters, unlike most of the random fodder Monster of the Week villains in this series, are supposed to be actually relevant. Now, how would the author try to differentiate these guys from the rest? Give them the panel time instead of the protagonists, and write them just like how the protagonists are written with random SoL segments. Of course. It's sort of already painfully obvious what the author is trying to do here- By humanizing them, clearly the audience will feel some sort of sympathy for these guys when they die, and question the morality of it all. No, it doesn't work that way. This is a great example of cherry-picking. Just showcasing some moments of these characters being not murderous psychos does not make them any more sympathetic than the rest. No, all that does is show that these characters are human beings, not some cardboard cutouts with the label "I am evil" attached to them. And the last time I checked, a character being a human (i.e. having emotions and personality) isn't an attribute. It's a requisite to even qualify as a character, so this really doesn't do anything to develop them at all either. And as for the central antagonist the protagonists are supposed to be aiming for- He's some overweight guy in charge of the Capital behind the puppet monarch who has a headgear that vaguely resembles devil horns, which I guess it's supposed to be deep and symbolic. And just like all the cardboard cutout antagonists outside of Jaegers, he has nothing going for him other than the fact that he's a dick. What a fucking joke. Of course, you can argue that maybe later in the series, whatever his motivation might be would be revealed or something, but I think it's already far too late in the series to give him a personality. So while I was busy describing how awfully written the antagonists were and the plot driven by them, I forgot to mention the protagonists in much detail. Well, there's an excuse for that- There really isn't much to them at all either, except maybe Leone, who is one of the first characters Tatsumi meets. First of all, outside of their personality quirks, they aren't given much time to develop as characters. One reason is that some of their would-be panel time is given to Jaegers instead, who are even more shallow. In fact, two of the characters who die later in the series are given some sappy flashbacks (which is an obvious death flag- and this is rather offensive since this shows that the author is at least partially aware that these characters would be too shallow without addressing them before their deaths) and the author calls it a day for those characters- And one other character who dies is introduced much late in the series, only to be killed very quickly. It's like the author couldn't decide to kill off one of the existing characters, so he introduced a new one instead just to make that possible. Again, shallow characters dying to invoke emotions. Nothing could be more forced. On the other hand, here are some more relevant plot points regarding the protagonists: There's the whole drama between Akame, the other main protagonist, and Kurome, a member of Jaegers. They're sisters. They also used to work for the Empire/Capital. Akame left because she wasn't brain-dead enough to work for people who treat their comrades like shit. Kurome didn't. Now they're enemies and want to kill each other. Okay. Here's the weird thing- There are few possible reasons as to why Kurome didn't leave the Empire like Akame did. One being that Kurome needs to rely on drugs to survive due to heavy experimentation on her body- So does that imply that she agreed with Akame's decision to leave and that she couldn't because of her physical condition? Considering the fact that they want to just kill each other and neither of them seem hesitant at the idea, that doesn't seem to be the case. Then the other reason must be that Kurome doesn't really care for her own comrades as much as Akame did, and therefore didn't want to bother leaving the Empire, right? No, because she clearly does care for her comrades considering the scene involving her after Bors (another member of Jaegers) was killed in battle. So there's one last possibility- Kurome is being brainwashed to a degree in some form/shape. Or maybe she's stupid and just accepts all the awful things the Empire does. And at that point, it's just forced sibling rivalry. I guess the author really had to check that off from his trope list. There's also this drama between Tatsumi and Esdese, the leader of Jaegers and the strongest soldier of the Capital. There's supposed to be some sort of romance between the two- No, of course it's not developed well at all. Esdese just outright falls in love with Tatsumi on first sight for literally no reason- What better way to make the main character seem more relevant than forcibly tying in a fairly significant character into it, right? Brilliant, AgK! Truly a sign of a masterpiece in the making. And the last plot element that warrant mentioning is the Teigus- Most of the time, these are just fancy weapons with special abilities, which seem to be like the requisite for every generic shounen ever, but there is one very important key point about them that I'd like to go over. The author points out that there is not a single Teigu that can resurrect the dead- Basically, this is the author's way of saying "This is not a generic shounen where dead characters can come back to life like dragon ball and therefore deaths are final." However, this is how I see it: "Characters die in this series and if they do, they're likely going to be very irrelevant in the end." Even though this plot point could've been brought up much later in the series, it's introduced rather surprisingly early- Almost as if author is just desperately attempting to show how grim-dark his series is as much as possible. I think the term "edgy" fits in perfectly here. Overall, this series is just a perfect misunderstanding of what makes a series "mature" and dark- And while it's perfectly fine and possible to make your series mature/dark through some creative writing, inconsequential deaths and completely unnecessary gory scenes leading up to them sure as hell aren't the way to go. So in conclusion- This series is just another overrated generic shounen with completely unnecessary gory scenes and characters to make it seem more mature and dark than it actually is, despite it being an extremely shallow, boring work as a whole. I suppose, in a way, that this series is trying to be really pretentious in that aspect. In the end, it's just one of the flavor of the month series, where after you read it for a while, you quickly lose interest in it because it's far too formulaic and the characters are too shallow to even care for. And then you sort of forget you ever read it in the first place. This is what happens when you focus on one particular trait of your series so much that you forget about everything else that makes a story interesting. However, even after all that, if you're interested in how this series can redeem itself, I suppose it doesn't hurt to keep up with it. Maybe it will stop shoving forced characterizations, drama, and gore doujin materials down your throat at some point. But I highly doubt that will happen any time soon because this series is all about forcing something up your face while endlessly trying to make a point about how dark and serious it is. Being a generic shounen manga isn't that terrible of a thing, though it makes the series relatively forgettable- And even then, one could still have a generic setting and make it interesting and fun to read. Akame ga Kill, however, just tries really hard to paddle away from the generic shounen manga territory, while at the same time, not knowing where it's actually paddling towards. So far, it's been a truly revolutionary trainwreck.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Dec 23, 2013
High School DxD
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Surprisingly, despite this being labeled as "harem," this show didn't feel much like harem to me. Really strange. In fact, Sword Art Online felt even more of a harem than this, but ok. Issei only had like one real love interest, and that was Rias. Maybe it's the perspective of socially awkward people who think that if a girl talks to a guy, that means that the girl is in love with the guy that makes them think this is a harem. So I guess harem now means having a bunch of female characters and having one relevant male character in a same show. Oh,
...
and I guess the main character constantly went on about how he likes harem or something. But I'm pretty sure that doesn't qualify a show as harem either.
Obviously one of the most important factors in these shows is the main protagonist. Everything centers around them, after all. Harem genre in general, unfortunately, does not have much variety in what main characters they could have. Very rarely you have protagonists like Keima, who is on a class of his own, or Shidou, who's at least likeable despite being incredibly generic just because he's not an annoying piece of shit that causes more problems for himself than everything else in the show. And then you have Issei. This protagonist just happens to be one of the obnoxious protagonists you could have in a show, harem or not. Did you ever watch other shows and saw that silly "perverted guy" who always hangs out near the main character and only exists as a brief comic relief? Yeah, that guy is a main protagonist now. Hope you liked those brief comic reliefs, because that's definitely not going to get old after an entire series. If that wasn't bad enough, he's also "that" guy who happens to have one of the most powerful McGuffins in the series, which makes him suddenly important. Normally this wouldn't be too offensive since it's done by literally every other show, where the protagonist happens to have that special trait that gives him unfair advantage no matter what, but the way this show handles it is just terrible. You see, the side characters that Rias has under her are supposed to represent what Issei lacks- Outside of them being awfully shallow as characters and merely existing to pander to specific parts of the audience as overdone archetypical tools that are in nearly any JRPG ever, they are supposed to exist to make Issei feel comparatively inferior. In fact, in the last episode, Issei talks about how he lacks the strength, healing ability, magical ability, or swordfighting skills while fighting the obligatory final boss of the season- Does this all matter? No. He has the most powerful weapon shown in the series so far, so why is this relevant? What was the point of making him seem "inferior" to others when all he has to do is do the typical resolve speech and it will make him just instantly more powerful than everyone else? Let's put that in this context and see if that sounds any less ridiculous: "I may not have a bamboo stick, boxing gloves, or a first-aid kit, but I have a rifle that I can shoot you with." No, it still sounds dumb as shit. I also liked that chess analogy that the show kept bringing it up, though. It's almost like it's just there for the sake of being pretentious. And it is. As for Rias, she's just bland as any other character in this show. She even goes on a speech about how she wants to be seen as Rias/herself and not be carried by her family name and nobility- Huh, that sounds awfully familiar. Oh, that's right- That's every Disney princess speech about how they're so perfect that it's bad. Outside of that, she falls in love with Issei because he's the main character and also because her fiancee conveniently happens to be a pretty huge dick like again, every Disney princess plot. While I'm not looking for super originality here, it's pretty bad if you're ripping off the fucking Disney routine. Of course, it doesn't help considering the second half of the show involves this Disney princess routine being played out for too many episodes while the first half involves this clearly not evil girl suddenly calling Issei out on a date only to show her true evil nature in the same episode. The asinine pacing can be further shown by how Issei goes on later about how he truly cared about this girl he met for less than a day and how he's sad to realize that she was evil all along. Am I supposed to feel sad here? Later, Issei meets this other random girl, who he also met for less than a day, and later on she gets captured by the aforementioned evil girl, and then she experiences a horrible Disney death on a techno-cross. Good thing Rias can resurrect dead people, so that didn't matter in the end. The great part is that there was supposed to be this time limit about saving her before it was too late, but that turned out to be totally irrelevant too. Way to build tension and break it in the same episode. Trivialize an already inconsequential death of a girl that the MC has met for less than a day is truly the best way to invoke emotions. As for the other elements of the show, the music is pretty generic, but not painful to listen to. The animation is also incredibly average, which is about what you'd expect from a show of this genre. Though if I had to point out a flaw, it would be that the character designs were just really generic. If you can't give your characters any depth, at least make them look interesting. Overall, the show is bad. Shallow characters, annoying main character, irrelevant consequences (including how the MC "sacrificed" his arm for a power up, which was completely inconsequential), lack of an actual antagonist with an actual motive, and just overall being boring. It's downright offensive. The pacing was all over the place, and including quarter of the show with fillers is probably the most retarded idea one could come up with. Frankly, for the longest time, I've been wondering why these harem shows were mostly awful. Maybe it's the overwhelming amount of pandering shoved into my face that is causing me to not enjoy these shows very much. Maybe. But more than likely it's just because they're fucking terrible. I tried to watch this all the way through while ignoring all the pandering so that maybe I could appreciate the hidden depth within. Or the lack thereof. It didn't turn out well after all. Let's not try that again. And neither should you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jun 11, 2013 Not Recommended Spoiler
What happens when you mix a zombie, a necromancer, a vampire ninja, and a magical girl? You get this steaming pile of shit.
This is a sequel to the moderately entertaining, yet painfully average first season of the same title. The problem with the first season was that it had no idea what it was doing- It tried to be some strange mix of serious plot and comedy, yet it failed spectacularly. No, I'm not claiming that because it was a mix that it was bad- It was bad because it was just very poorly done and because it was actually really bad. Not only ... were the relevant plot elements very briefly skimmed over to make room for overdone comedy sequences which were only funny the first time, but the main conflict of the show turned out to be extremely uninteresting and generic. In the end, it delivered neither, and just ended up being a very average and generic harem show. After that mediocrity, one would expect that the sequel would be much more interesting- It could give the audience more background information regarding the world of this series, and not have rehashes of the same jokes, right? Well, too fucking bad. Have more of the worst parts from Season 1. THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS There is practically no story. Well, there is- But there are even less relevant plot materials to work with, the pacing is even more garbage, and the villain somehow manages to be even less interesting and less relevant than the previous villain. Every episode is given some brief "foreshadowing" segments with a certain character, which seems to be this series' attempt at building up for something. That something turns out to be an unrewarding episode of sudden exposition dump eight episodes into the series, and the villain turning out to be a character the audience has seen for few minutes every other episode or so. The villain spouts out some uninteresting monologue that audience would've cared about if the series did a better job in getting the audience to care about the characters or plot at all. Also, nobody ever really "dies" in this series, so there really isn't anything threatening or 'climactic' about this at all. It's just there for the sake of trying to have a plot, and nothing else. Even the last few episodes didn't do anything- Was there a conflict? Sure. Did that conflict ever become something more relevant than a Saturday morning cartoon villain threat? No. Overall, none of these plot elements that were supposed to be relevant turned out to be relevant at all, leading the audience to question why they were introduced in the first place. At least make the jokes funnier than the typical MC is a pervert gag routine, which isn't even really a joke, but more of an excuse to show more 2D tits under the premise of a joke. The art style is pretty bland and the animation is nothing spectacular, since it's a DEEN show. Though to be fair, I didn't expect much in the first place- And I don't think anyone would've either. I mean, it's fucking DEEN. I guess the OP sequence is quite misleading as to showing how much effort actually went into the animation, though. Despite a lot of mediocre shows having average to pretty nice music, this is not the case here- The soundtrack in this show is dreadful. While it would be silly to judge a show based solely on the soundtrack, I think this needs to be pointed out. Most of the tracks sound pretty much exactly the fucking same, and obviously there's no effort put into any of them. Nearly none of them feel appropriate for the scenes they're played in, and since the show shifts the mood way too frequently, even the track is appropriate on one rare occasion, it doesn't stick for very long. And the characters are definitely the worst part. The characters are barely given any depth outside of the cliches they established themselves into during the first season- Meaning, these characters do not develop in any shape or form. While I'm not really looking for some masterful character development from shows like these, there literally is none. Seraphim keeps saying vulgar words to the MC because that's totally hilarious, and stopped being funny since her introduction episode in the first season. Eucliwood still does her overdone VA gag and Ayumu following it up with fantasizing about it. Haruna is that generic tsundere, Yuki is that character that wants Ayumu's dick, and Sarasvati is that character that wants Ayumu's butt. Hey look, I just dumped every single gag this show utilizes. So brilliant. This also leads to one of the worst character destruction I've seen in a series- Kyouko, a character that had some semblance of plot relevancy as the direct murderer of Ayumu, which would then lead up to the events that began the entire fucking series, becomes a trashy harem fodder. Despite this character being pretty threatening in the first season, and making people believe she would play a similar role in this season with the opening, she was instantly written n the last five minutes of the episode where she was reintroduced to love Ayumu. She was misunderstood all along! Flawless. Why even try, right? Of course, it turns out to be even more of a baffling writing direction since this character actually stops being relevant canonically since she gets thrown into the prison and is never shown again. Strip the character of all their dignity and quality and kick them out of the series permanently. Nice. Glad you were part of the show. Never show your face again please. This series is very confused. Clearly the series' biggest problem is that it tries too hard to pander to the terrible part of the audience- And it ultimately turns out to be forgettable, even for those that it's pandering to. From the perspective of fans that only look for fanservice in a show like this, once they're done watching the show and finished caressing themselves gently over it, they're more than likely to just forget about the show completely and move to a different series with the same trashy material. Meanwhile, people who would otherwise like the series because of its unique and catchy premise have been annoyed by all the pandering are going to forget because this show is just bad due to its lack of focus. Why not just stick with one audience? Why introduce serious plot to begin with? Ok, so let's pretend this show didn't have any serious plot- Would it be good? No. While comedy may be very much subjective, when that something is overdone, then it's objectively stale by definition. And when comedy is stale, then you're doing an awful fucking job. Just because this might be a fanservice focused show doesn't mean it has to be bad. No one should try to justify a show's shortcomings by artificially lowering their standards based on its genre because that's stupid. Just like this show.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Mar 28, 2013
Kotoura-san
(Anime)
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Not Recommended
Have you ever tried rubbing lemon on your eyes? Because that pretty much describes what this show tries too hard to do. Forced drama, everywhere.
So the first five or so minutes of the first episode is the part where all the people ate up for some reason and it apparently managed to leave such an impact that people thought that this show was going to be good just from those five minutes alone. So this girl can read other people's minds, but her feelings get hurt because she doesn't realize she has such powers, and she's a bit insensitive because she was young. Alright, ... that's not too bad so far. It's fairly realistic as far as fictional mind reading powers go, but then stuff happens. Namely, the "everyone is conveniently an asshole and stupid" cliche- Where if you are too lazy to give a character a well written tragic backstory, then fuck it, just force it! Just make everything around them happen conveniently to drag them down! What makes me baffled is that it's not like the writers did not have the time to devote a whole episode for this; Instead, it's just rushed and feels completely forced, leading to an extremely lazy writing. In its original form as a 4Koma comic, this wouldn't be a necessity, but as an adaptation, I think it needs some more attention especially if you're trying to tell a serious story. So, apparently Kotoura remains stupid about her mind reading powers while growing up and doesn't learn to shut up about it, and eventually pisses off her parents because her father is the most irresponsible father ever and her mother is just genuinely retarded. Instead of believing multiple doctors claiming that Kotoura is not a compulsive liar, she decides to believe her homeroom teacher who says she is. Who needs those PHDs? Then she sort of ditches Kotoura in her grandfather's house, and then the actual plot happens. Well, not before showing us that Kotoura gets more traumatic experience out of her favorite cat not being at the usual spot than being ditched by her parents. Brilliant. She eventually comes across the main character while still showing off that she can read minds, although she fully realizes that she's going to get her feelings hurt anyways about it because she's retarded- And what a surprise, the main character's mind is all wacky and funny! It's almost like some people honestly don't give a shit about Kotoura for once because she's the most important person ever! Realism! This apparently causes Kotoura to take interest just because he just so happened to not pay attention to her presence like every other human being that was ever around Kotoura in her life. That being said, this main character is awfully written too. He's solely characterized by his wacky silly perverted mind, and the writers can't seem to stop making overdone jokes about this, and this continues to drag on every episode in this show. Of course, outside of this, he acts like the most generic main character ever and serves as a white knight of sorts to Kotoura because everyone around her happens to be conveniently a dick just so that the main character can have a role. But wait, there's more! More dumb characters are introduced; Daichi and Yuriko. They're both members of some stupid ESP research club, which I don't see how it got approved in the first place. Yuriko's initial plan was to use Kotoura's ability to prove to people that psychics were real because her mom died because nobody believed that she was a psychic. Now, I don't see how showing off that Kotoura is psychic proves whether her mom was ever a psychic in the first place, but that'd be too logical. Furthermore, why would Kotoura even agree to help Yuriko when clearly mind reading only makes her depressed? There's literally no reason. But there was a reason after all- The show uses this as an excuse to introduce the next half-assed character. This character is named Moritani, and she is in love with the main character because of whole ten seconds they shared in the past. This causes her to get jealous of Kotoura because she was attracting all the attention from the main character. And then the next part is just awful: Kotoura makes a mistake, and accidentally ends up reading someone else's mind, so clearly this means that she has to actively target someone visually to read their mind. It's not something passive where she just 'hears' other people's minds. Therefore, she can technically just choose not to read minds at all, which is precisely what she doesn't do ever and she barfs all over herself because that's what people do when they're depressed and realize that others think badly of you. Then the main character defends Kotoura because she gets bullied yet again despite it being her own fault completely, which triggers Moritani to become even more jealous and causes her to order her friends to beat him up. Yeah, I'd call someone else to beat my secret love interest too because that's a smart thing to do. And she even manages to ask for help from people associated with her family dojo, so it's clearly impossible for that someone to realize she was responsible for it. So at this point, it should be pretty noticeable that every 'drama' in this series is half-assed, forced, and just completely caused because the characters are mentally deficient. It's like watching a movie about zombie apocalypse where everything bad happens only because the characters are dumb and one just lets the zombies in because he thought he needed some fresh air- Except worse, because at least those movies are visually fun- This show is just boring, forced conflicts happening just for the sake of having a conflict. Then they constantly try to cram what they classify as "comedy" in, which includes a scene where the main character imagines Kotoura in a swimsuit or something. It's like the writers can't make up their mind about what they wanted to write, so they just taped the two together without any regard for transition. And unfortunately the show only gets worse from here- The show eventually introduces a mystery arc, where in theory, it should be interesting in conjunction with Kotoura's mind-reading powers. Summary of the "mystery" arc: Kotoura does something stupid and she gets into a trouble. In this particular case, she walks alone at night when she fully realizes it's dangerous to do so because there's a culprit somewhere in the local area, meets a person who's pretty much a stranger at this point, and follows that person only to realize that person was the culprit all along. This sort of twist would make Shyamalan shake his head in disapproval. And then the last episode just quickly resolves the whole mother-Kotoura conflict that the series has been building up to for the entire cour in five minutes. Brilliant pacing. Considering how much useless filler there was in this series, this wouldn't really be classified as "rushed." Now one may argue that since this is an adaptation of a 4-koma comic, you shouldn't expect a well-written story. But that is the silliest argument, because if the series is going to attempt to take itself seriously, then it should be treated as such. The fact is simple; They tried to cram some drama in and failed pretty hard. Hopefully after this show, people won't decide that a show is going to be "good" just from the first five minutes of the first episode.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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