Drifters and Drifters OVA Review

Overall Rating 6.8 out of 10 - A rather unique take on isekai that works in its own way.

I recommend watching.

This is a show about what will happen if three WoW Raiding guild members would be isekaied into the world where they can conquer stuff.

Technically they are renown historical figures of our world, that were transported to another one to help them fight a war over their own issues. The pick of historical personalities could not have been better, one of them is Oda Nobunaga and two others are less known personalities of Sengoku Jidai and Minamoto Taira conflict. Later you also get to meet Hannibal Barka, Jean d'Ark, Rasputin and even Jesus himself as an antagonist.

All of these personalities are twisted in their own way, yet at the same time they somewhat reflect their historical inspirations. Oda is lecherous towards women, but also smart to figure out how to manufacture gunpowder. Shimazu is brutal and single-mindedly focused on conquest and killing.

Story revolves around conflict between two sides of the world, one is called Drifters and the other Ends. They have different vision for the future of their world, and each takes famous historical personalities from our history to fight for their cause. Drifters are protagonists and Ends are antagonists.

Art is rather unconventional for anime, but well done with attention to details. You can clearly see the creators laved this show. Whether you will love it or not will depend on your own tastes.

Overall, I do recommend watching it. It's clearly better than average and it's worth it to at least try. No feminism here.

Drifters OVA

Drifters OVA is more of a partial season 2 rather than a standalone story. The three episodes released so far only build up to the future conflict. You can see that it can develop into something awesome but so far there is too little to write about.

.hack//G.U. Returner Review

Overall Rating 7.5 out of 10 - Nice little epilogue, that lets you meet the characters again.

I recommend watching for those who saw previous shows such as //Roots.

This is a nice epilogue for .hack//Roots anime and possibly .hack// games as well. You get to meet all the characters again in a relaxed Traditional Japanese Festival Settings. The show has pleasant, gentle and welcoming feel to it. It allows to reminictent of the past and enjoy more of Shino and Atoli again.

It does not offer much of the new ideas and probably not a good starting point for those who are new to .hack// franchise.

Instead, it's something veterans who watched other shows can enjoy and reminiscent of things they love .hack// franchise over. Characters on screen reminiscent together with you, a very interesting idea that no other Special episodes tried. The only other analogue I can think of are Tea Parties of Umineko no Naku Koro ni, some of them. It's a well-done epilogue.

It's just a single episode long and I recommend it for those who watched the mainline series or played the game.

Themes of Unrequited Love in .hack//Roots

There is surprisingly few anime that deal with issue of unrequited love. Most of those who include it, typically do it for comedic effect or to spice up the plot. Such butt of the joke meme characters who are clearly out of their league, for example, that guy from //Legend of the Twilight who says Tres Bien all the time, hardly represents how unrequited love really is. There is also that meme: "You vs the guy, she tells you not to worry about", that do not do justice to this issue.

Hardly anyone ever tried to depict unrequited love seriously: as an individual tragedy of wishing for that special person to reciprocate the feelings but unable to achieve that. .hack//Roots did manage just that. I touched this issue in my review of the show, but I felt that it needs its own article to fully explain it. 

Here we have plenty of non-meme no-joke characters who all suffer from unrequited love for no particular fault of their own. All of them often delude themselves as they keep trying their luck in getting object of their interest to care for them.

Shino deeply cares for Ovan even if she knows that he does not care for her. 

Haseo tries to bring back Shino by finding Tri-Edge, despite not having enough power to defeat Tri-Edge or even guarantee that defeating him can bring Shino back. Phyllo tried to talk Haseo out of it, but to no avail. Haseo ended up become a half-monster in process of looking to Tri-Edge.

Finally Tabby thinks that one day Haseo will care for her instead of Shino and keep stalking him for more than half of the show as well as talk to Phyllo about that. She even rejects love of Seisaku because she wishes to be with Haseo.

All three kept clinging to their feelings and deluding themselves of their chances to succeed in that. There was no sure way to bring Shino back, yet Haseo kept trying and trying. Haseo made it clear that he finds Tabby annoying, but she kept stalking him, hoping in vain that one day she can be with him. Finally, Shino just managed the Twilight Brigade Guild for Ovan to find that Key of the Twilight for a slim chance to be useful to him in some way.

That just shows us many things about unrequited love.

One is that that people can sometimes do illogical things and cling to hair brain ideas for the sake of their love. They delude themselves that one day their love would come to fruition by some magic.

Second is: not just losers and incels are single. Both Haseo and Tabby could have relationship if they wanted so, but choose not to because they preferred someone else, even if that someone else was not available to them. 

All had their reasons to do prefer that someone unavailable or rejecting someone who was available to them. Haseo thought that Shino was better than Tabby and would not settle for lesser girl. Tabby thought that Haseo was better than Seisaki and would not settle for lesser guy.

All that shows us that human feelings are complicated matters that sometimes make people act in such strange and irrational way because of love.

Fundamentally show gave us no answer to the problem of unrequited love. However, that would be too much to expect. A solution to such problem is as complex as cure for cancer if not more so.

There is just no girl as sweet, cute and intelligent as True was. 

Engage Kiss Review

Overall Rating 4.9 out of 10 - Has many good points, but the bad here outweighs the good.

I do not recommend watching. I dropped after 4 episodes.

Most of the good about the show is depicted in picture below. The rest is waste of time.

Now this show has reasonably good plot, great art and even nice characters design. It's so unfortunate that the way directors use it is bad. Their horrible personal tastes ruin it.

This show does have the scenes and moments where it's really enjoyable to watch. The creators are not completely stupid and capable of occasionally making a nice fighting scene or even dialogues. A shame they are few in between.

What ruins this show is that is some sort of feminist wet dream. Women are depicted as smart and capable. A lot of them are in power, enjoying fine things in life and so on. Men in contrast are depicted as stupid and many relegated to menial roles.

Main protagonist has one nice demon girl Kisara, but instead of enjoying her, he simps over stupid snarky blue haired tsundere who love-hates him. Watching male MC doing so many self-sacrificial things is unpleasant.

One character that somewhat redeems the show is Kisara. She stays with Ogata and takes care of him even if he cares over some other bitch instead. However, Kisara alone is not enough to make it worthwhile to watch.

Overall, the show had all the ingredients for success, but feminism ruined it. Yet another victim of feminism that shows that feminism is cancer that ruins out world and must be stopped.

Music of Darker than Black

Darker than Black had diverse but compelling soundtrack. It helps to set stage for this rather unconventional anime that has all sorts of characters in an action-packed show.

The opening sequence, both music and the clip, helps to showcase all about this show.

However, action is not all there is to this show, it has many ideas to ponder about in calm, peaceful situation.

 The rest of the soundtrack is available below.

Subaru, The Unwilling Leader of Crimson Knights

 

When I was writing review for .hack//Roots, I mentioned that Subaru is a nuanced character that has an interesting story of her own. So here is what I meant by that.

In .hack//Sign Subaru, leads Crimson Knights, a group of players dedicated to enforcing rules of "fair play as they understand it" on other players. The group clearly goes much further than what actual rules allow and more often than not harass all sorts of players who stand out in one way or another. A recurring theme of .hack franchise. Similar group, called Cerulean Knights also exist //Legend of the Twilight and in //Roots TaN Secret Service (Naobi/Yata, Ender/Pi) is a clandestine version of the above. //Sign's Crimson Knights ended up making the show's protagonist. Tsukasa, their number one enemy due to his unusual powers. 

Subaru herself however is a poor fit to lead such a group. Unlike a female leader of the Cerulean Knights in //Legend of the Twilight, who clearly enjoys punishing people, Subaru does not have any passion for punishing anyone. In general, she is very mild and gentle person. In the group she often acts as a voice of moderation and restraint, refusing to authorize many actions despite arguments from Silver Knight and the rest of the members.

It's pretty clear that Subaru struggles to fit the role the Knights have chosen for her. It was not the role she chose for herself but rather something Silver Knight and the rest choose for her. She alters between simply agreeing to their wishes and acting a rubber-stamping figurehead and arguing with them over whether the Knights should take action in this or that case. 

That dilemma she constantly facing only got worse when she met Tsukasa. She grows to like him, but her obligations to the Knights prevent her from being with him. Eventually, unable to put up with all that pressure, she simply dissolves the organization.

Without the Knights protection many of the players, who were once harassed by the Knights, take out their frustration with their actions by abusing Subaru. However, she persevered because she wanted to be with Tsukasa rather than with the Knights. Eventually she got to him, and they shared a moment together.

I think this is an interesting subplot in the show. Sure, it helps to develop Subaru as agreeable, self-sacrificing, person who is willing to follow wishes of those around her and fit the role the chose for her. However, there is more.

That also shows that no matter what role you are stuck in, you can play it differently. Some would zealously follow the prescribed functions, while others would either minimize the effort or even sabotage the role and organization from within. In fact, a disenchanted manager, who keeps making excuses for inaction, can slow down organization from within a lot more efficient than if he was outside instead. That can be a useful tool of struggle against unfair management and unfair regimes.

That also shows that not all people are suitable for every role out there.

.hack//Roots Review

Overall Rating 7.6 out of 10 - A true successor of .hack//Sign and mostly a great show on its own.

I recommend watching.

Out of many anime that are part of .hack franchise, this one can be considered a true successor to the .hack//Sign. 

Compare to its predecessor its darker and somewhat meaner. I do not mean that because Haseo. Sure, Haseo is indeed dark and maybe even mean character, but that is not because he is a bad person. In fact, characters around him are in many ways are to blame, particularly Naobi and Ender. 

Naobi and Ender of the TaN core (later Yata and Pi of Raven) with their meddling with players out of desire to "protect the game" actually caused many of the problems. They are like a clandestine version of Crimson Knights form .hack//Sign. They kidnapped Ovan, that caused mental breakdown of Shino and later Haseo.

In .hack//Sign most of the characters were on Tsukasa's side. They wanted to help him and protected him from Crimson Knights as well as Macha and the game AI. Even Subaru was on his side despite leading abovementioned Crimson Knights. Together they made show somewhat warmer and friendlier. 

Art too was brighter; it had both eerie and magical, but also cozy and idyllic feel to it. Most of the time World in //Sign felt like the place you wanted to live in.

In contrast in //Roots, a lot of characters plot things behind the scenes and groom Haseo and few other select characters to their undisclosed aims. Naobi/Yata and Ender/Pi constantly monitor every Haseo move, like creepy stalkers they are. Even Tarawaya/Tohta eventually got disillusioned with his bosses from TaN. 

Art too got darker and much more dilapidated, but it managed to retain some of the magical feel of the //Sign era.

Both //Sign and //Roots dealt with more complex existential and psychological issues, that is one of the reasons I give these show such high marks. Topics they cover are different. //Sign was about nihilism and self-preservation (fear of being hurt). In contrast //Roots is about loss and drive for revenge. That is if you take main characters only. As many of the support cast have story of their own, too long to mention them all here.

Since this review is about //Roots I will cover these here. I wrote a few separate articles about //Sign to cover such topics for that show. A lot of characters in //Roots suffer from unrequited love. There is an unrequited love chain: Shino loves Ovan, Haseo loves Shino, Tabby loves Haseo and that other guy loves Tabby. Struggles of all these characters with their feelings occupy significant time of the show.

Haseo got obsessed with defeating Tri-edge after he witnessed him killing Shino and turning her in to Lost One, someone who is unconscious IRL. Such feelings are relatable for me, as is Haseo's characters in general (most of the time). Tabby wished to help him, but she actually wished he cared for her instead of Shino. Neither of them wanted to give up on object of their interest, but neither could progress anywhere with their love. Such a tragedy. Done in best tradition of the Ancient Greeks.

Then there is issue of plots around Haseo. Ovan wanted to set him up to his own ends. Naobi/Yata too had some ulterior motives on him. The difference was that Ovan wanted Haseo to develop some qualities and Yata to prevent him from developing these. Haseo got caught in showdown between these two and arguably suffered from both. In general, these two treated Haseo like guinea pig for their experiments. Sad that they were not defeated in the end.

Then there is Shino who is nice and my type waifu material. Her preference for Ovan somewhat complicates things as I do not want to be stuck in unrequited love. Other than that, she is nicer than say Subaru from //Sign, though Subaru deserves a separate article to explain her nuanced role in //Sign.

Tabby is clearly nicer than Mimiru, but somewhat lacking compared to Shino. At times you can sympathize with her dedication, but other times she just complains and gets distracted.

Overall, despite some flaws, it's a very solid experience. It somewhat less pleasant that //Sign, but no less deep and profound. I clearly recommend watching it.