Greetings, readers, breeders, and those who mentally peaked at the age of 16. Welcome to this season’s preview guide. The Ancient Magus’ Bride In what must be the setup for the strangest BBC 4 sitcom yet, there lives somewhere in rural England la talking goat litch named Ainsworth, a talking dog/guy named Ruth, some Rozen Maiden cosplayer named Silky who says nothing, and a random normal Japanese girl named Chise. Chise is there to apparently learn the wizarding ways from…

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91 Days Ah, the Prohibition Era. A wonderful time for many, but only if you’re a creator of course. Where others see blood, some see art. Endless classics have been influenced by this period, from The Untouchables to Baccano. So much violence, betrayal, and chaos all because of some booze. The stories and madness that take place during Prohibition are enough to rival Jacobean drama in their bloodshed and intricacy. Just thinking about it puts that moonshine aroma in your…

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Berserk (2016) So I was digging ’round the web looking for something to pass the time, when I found an old Playstation 1 game called Berserk: The Phantom Pain Revengeance Part 2: Return Of The Patriotic Revenge-Eater: A Hideo Kojima Game. As a sequel to a cult classic, it’s only natural this series would fall into obscurity. Which in retrospect is mostly deserved. Putting aside the fact that the animation hasn’t aged well at all, this game is a slow,…

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I tried reading the Days manga a couple years ago, and couldn’t really get into it. I found it to be a pretty run of the mill shonen sports manga with a rather unimpressive sense of pacing and paneling, and few characters I could really get behind. But as they say, execution is everything. Like Haikyuu!, the Days anime takes a mediocre sports manga and uses the medium of animation to make it a more engrossing, engaging experience. The show…

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Berserk needs no introduction. The manga and original anime from the late 90’s is lauded for it’s intricate fantasy world, multi-faceted characters, gut-wrenchingly gory violence, and a hauntingly tragic Shakespearean narrative. Unfortunately, the original anime left viewers at a loss, ending with a unsettling and emotionally soul-crushing episode that left Guts’ journey far too open-ended and unsatisfying given the events transpired. A decade and a half later, Studio 4°C finally brought the series back to animation…remaking the same material already…

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[For this Clusterfuck, I’m planning on cutting them into parts because I think readers would find 10 2000-word articles easier to stomach than 1 20000-word article. So when the word counts go over 2000 words, that will be the time to go to part 2 and so on.] Bananya – Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort D. Gray-Man Hallow What is it with long-defunct anime adaptions getting new seasons all of a sudden? Yes, D. Gray-Man has returned after an eight-year…

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Guten tag, my working-class brethren. May you insist on taking a bite of our Eastern Animation First Impressions, yes? Ace Attorney (Turnabout Courtroom) AUTHOR‘S NOTE: The Phoenix Wright franchise is notorious for its rather overzealous NA localization which transplanted the series from a Near Future Tokyo to a magical fantasy land version of Los Angeles where World War II never occurred. Although Crunchyroll does provide subs with the US names spliced in, I watched it with the original Japanese names and…

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This season’s clusterfuck dedicated to the memory of David Robert Jones. May your spirit soar higher than 100,000 miles while your spaceship knows which way to go. Active Raid: Special Public Security Fifth Division Third Mobile Assault Eighth Unit That’s A Lot Of Words Seriously Who Thought This Was A Good Idea? Active Raid! An anime with a title that sounds like a brand of either roll-on deodorant or insecticide! After yesterday’s crap I watched, how bad could it be???…

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Anti-Magic Academy: The 35th Test Platoon I looked at the Japanese title for this show and thought this was another season of Health and Physical Fitness for 35 Year Olds, so I’m both pleasantly surprised and disappointed to see this is only moderately sexual. Instead, it’s just another one of the LN shows about a guy and his quest for the regular mix of magic and poon. There’s really no structural difference between this and the other two, Asterisk War…

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EDITOR’S NOTE: We’ll be adding Shadow’s entries later this weekend hopefully. Asterisk War: The Academy City on the Water Greetings all and welcome to the umpteenth edition of AR’s Anime Clusterfuck, in which we once again probe the dark crevice that is modern television anime and end up with something long and yucky! And what better way to start this off than yet ANOTHER show about magic schools and bitchy pink haired tsunderes!………goddammit. So after the lamest apocalypse ever, a…

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