Update: These are now being posted over here instead~
My AniList is here! I will take recommendations/suggestions based around what I liked/disliked here~ Also not all of the review scores will line up with the list scores - I go back and change things on reflection fairly often.
Old posts are here:
.hack//Legend of the Twilight [3/10]
.hack//LIMINALITY [5/10]
Amagi Brilliant Park [6/10]
Another [7/10]
Beautiful Bones -Sakurako's Investigation- [8/10]
Bleach [6/10]
Bleach the Movie 4: Hell Verse [7/10]
Bloom Into You [8/10]
Bocchi the Rock [6/10]
Bokurano [6/10]
Chainsaw Man [9/10]
ERASED [9/10]
From the New World [8/10]
Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl [8/10]
Haikyu!! [7/10]
Hell Girl: Two Mirrors [7/10]
Hidamari Sketch x ☆☆☆ [8/10]
Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni + Kai [7/10]
In Another World With My Smartphone [4/10]
Kaguya-sama: Love is War Season 2 [8/10]
Kaiba [7/10]
Land of the Lustrous [8/10]
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury [10/10]
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury Season 2 [8/10]
Monogatari Series First Season [9/10]
Monster [10/10]
Myriad Colors Phantom World [7/10]
NAKAIMO - My Little Sister is Among Them! [7/10]
Natsunagu! [6/10]
Pan de Peace! [6/10]
Persona 3 Movie #4: The Winter of Rebirth [10/10]
Persona: Trinity Soul [6/10]
Plastic Memories [9/10]
Princess Tutu [9/10]
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- [9/10]
Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- Season 2 [9/10]
Redline [6/10]
Saint Young Men [7/10]
Strawberry Panic [6/10]
Summer Time Rendering [9/10]
Talentless Nana [9/10]
Venus Versus Virus [5/10]
Violet Evergarden [8/10]
Vivy: Fluorite Eye's Song [8/10]
Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou (both OVAs) [9/10]
Reviews will have the AniList link at the top - this is the best way to get a spoiler-free synopsis in places where I've said I can't manage that.
6/101
AniList: Series | Bonus Episode
The concept for Amagi Brilliant Park is a wild one. On its surface, this is a show about an amusement park trying to gain visitors, but it adds a whole host of twists and turns to that to spice things up.
That ends up being a bad thing, mostly. The base show and concept are good, but it's massively let down by a combination of uninspiring - or just downright awful - characters and getting tripped up in the weeds of the needless twists.
More below, including some fairly major spoilers - one key point that I want to bring up is a pretty big spoiler, so it's a little necessary here.
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The series is rated as a 6. The bonus episode is notably worse, a low 5 individually, but not enough to pull the series below a 6 as a whole.
First things first, the show reveals incredibly quickly that the staff aren't actually mascots and characters - they're from an actual magic kingdom that thrives on the beliefs and emotions of people. gasp!
This is the sort of thing I mean when I say that the show adds twists that feel needless: bringing in the fantasy elements where it doesn't contribute anything ends up having a negative effect here. I'm not one to question a setting if it works - I've been asked before "why does this story need magic?" and simply answered "why not?" - but it actively hurts the show in this case. What could be an interesting and partially relatable plot becomes a fantastical, larger-than-life spectacle that ends up losing impact without having anything to show for it. The one major spoiler I wanted to discuss is the one thing the show gains by doing this: the park closing isn't just a case of losing memories, a home, careers, etc. It has to now be a life-or-death situation, as though the stakes aren't high enough without that, and again, this ends up hurting the impact. All of the memories within, all of the work put into running the place, seem to mean almost nothing until someone's life is at stake.
The characters, meanwhile, range from 'decent but underused' to 'get this fucker off my screen'. The four elemental fairies are a fun side-cast, falling pretty harshly into stereotypes but playing off each other well enough that it works well, while the park's mascot characters are horrendous, basically consisting entirely of jokes about harassment and not much else. The main cast are fairly bland but play off each other well enough to be engaging still. The show never quite hits the point of being good with characters, but it's mostly not bad unless Tiramie, Macaron or Tricen are on-screen.
Beyond that, there isn't much to say. Despite taking a fairly interesting concept and then making it into a grandiose spectacle, Amagi Brilliant Park ends up being a really bland show to watch. There are bits and pieces that really stand out - mostly in terms of character interaction - but there are just as many that stand out for the wrong reasons. It's a perfectly watchable show for the most part, but I think it'd be difficult to recommend this to anyone; whatever it does that seems interesting, it probably either gets mostly ignored by the show, or there are countless other shows that do the same thing better.