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Sep 12, 2026
This one is a bit of an odd animal, which is why I give it an 8 out of 10 while still having mixed feelings about it. I’m not going to get too deeply into an analysis of the story, and I’m guessing most people reading these reviews have either already watched the show, seen part of it, or read enough about it by now to know what it’s about.
At a time when so much anime feels formulaic, especially the "cute girls doing cute things" genre, I found this refreshing and subversive. It’s both a spoof of CGDCT and a genuine CGDCT anime, because there
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are plenty of genuinely cute moments. Those moments are offset by a lot of killing, some blood, and, more importantly, the strange way the show treats those killings. You never actually see most of the murders happen.
For the most part, the killings are played for comedic effect, but every now and then the show reminds you of the darkness underneath it all. There’s a hole in the world where the dead person would have been if she were still alive.
Unfortunately, there’s one killing in the show that I found simply unforgivable, and it’s the main reason I came away with such mixed feelings.
I’m not sure whether we, the viewers, are actually supposed to like Koga Konoha, or whether the show is quietly pointing a finger at us for liking her. But given the way she’s written and presented, she is clearly portrayed as likeable, albeit with the questionable morals of an assassin for hire and a handful of major character flaws, many of which are gradually softened as she grows as a person over the course of the story. I enjoyed watching her relationship with Satoko develop throughout the show, but *spoiler alert*, after Konoha kills Aoi Satou, an innocent schoolgirl who has a hit placed on her simply because of her good grades, I lost all sympathy for the character.
Not only that, but she murders the family of a classmate who has done nothing but be kind to her.
Ultimately, that ruined something for me. I found myself caring much less about what happened to Konoha afterward. I’d genuinely love to hear what the writer’s intention was here, because it feels like such a departure from the way the rest of the violence is handled.
Most of the other killings are treated with humor because the people she kills are themselves assassins. Part of the joke is that they’re all these exaggerated "main character" types who get a few seconds of screen time before being abruptly offed. The fact that we later see many of them in the afterlife also takes some of the darkness out of it.
But with Aoi Satou, there’s nothing like that. There’s no joke, no karmic justification, no afterlife gag, and no redeeming element to soften what happened. It is simply the murder of an innocent person.
In other words, it’s an act of genuine evil, and because it happens in episode seven, it somewhat lessened my enthusiasm for everything that came afterward.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Oct 1, 2025
Good yuri anime is sadly few and far between. More often than not, these relationships are portrayed as either toxic or perverted (Bloom Into You, Citrus, Fragtime, Sakura Trick), or as silly infatuations between immature girls. The latter can certainly be fun (YuruYuri does it to perfection), but genuine yuri romcoms are extremely rare. To the point where WataNare might be the only one that truly gets it right. And it does.
This show is a delightful watch from start to finish. The characters are likeable—though rather eccentric (except perhaps for best-best girl Ajisai). The MC is instantly relatable to any introvert who has stepped outside
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their comfort zone in order to fit in or build a social circle at school. The way she collapses after coming home from a day of being around others is something every introvert will recognize. I have no doubt the manga’s author knows exactly what he’s talking about.
This yuri isn’t bait. The fanservice is minimal—if it can even be called that. With the exception of Mai Oduka, who not only has no doubt about her sexuality but also no problem announcing her love far and wide, all the other girls are still coming to terms with it. Each of them is on a journey of self-discovery. And even Mai learns humility. The characters all grow throughout the story, as they should. They are not one-dimensional—and that, I think, is where the true strength of this series lies. It’s a comedy, but it also takes its characters seriously. It’s funny, but also heartfelt, with touching and deeply relatable moments. It really has it all.
All I can say is: more of this, please! We need more yuri—and better yuri. WataNare could help break new ground, and I hope its success inspires more writers and studios to give us more. And more!
Technically, WataNare is very well executed. The animation is solid. Time and effort went into the backgrounds, and the character animation is undeniably high quality. The voice acting (sub, not dub) is flawless. I’m not personally a huge fan of Mai Oduka’s design, but it’s faithful to the manga and that’s not on the anime itself.
Overall, WataNare feels destined to become a yuri classic.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Dec 4, 2024
I'm watching this show for the first time because it comes highly rated by Shoujo aficionados and I'm at episode 14 of season 1. I had to stop. I had to Google if anyone else found this show as insufferable as I do. I'm typically a sucker for a good romance and I don't even mind the oblivious, socially inept stereotype so many of these kinds of stories feature. Miyamura from Horimiya is likeable, because, first of all, he isn't stupid and secondly, he has agency. He stands up for himself.
Kimi Ni Todoke takes social awkwardness a level or fifty too far. Sawako is simply
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not a likeable character. I get that she's supposed to be and that her innocence is supposed to be endearing, but she doesn't work as a character because her flaws go far beyond just social awkwardness. She lacks a number of very basic human traits, like a complete inability to get angry or offended, regardless of how unfairly she's being treated. In fact, she lacks even the ability to understand when she's being treated unfairly - something most humans learn to understand while we're still toddlers.
Any good story depends on its ability to suspend the disbelief of its audience. But Sawako is not a believable character. Even 14 episodes in, she still gets flustered and red faced when people who have been friendly with her for the past 10 episodes are still friendly toward her. She keeps stuttering and blushing around Kazehaya, regardless of how much time they've spent together. She keeps seeing the best in everyone, regardless of how badly they treat her. She never, ever stands up for herself. She's like someone who fell from the Moon without ever having interacted with humans before.
It's not that I expect anime characters to be 100% realistic, but any good fictional character must be relatable in some way for us to bother. Sawako fails the test. While most of us can relate to social awkwardness, few of us can relate to being so utterly estranged from the most fundamental social cues that a small tree dwelling gibbon could outwit them. And since she's the focal point around which all the other characters act and develop, they too become unbelievable through their interactions with her. And since the entire story is predicated upon misunderstandings based in the above mentioned unbelievable social defects, it falls apart at the seams because it fails to suspend disbelief.
I barely managed to sit through 14 episodes of this. There's lots of good anime out there that manages to tell a coherent and compelling story, complete with full character arcs and satisfying conclusions, in just 12 episodes. I'm less than halfway through season 1. And I've read that season 2 is even worse.
I'm dropping it. Sawako defeated me through sheer annoyance.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Mar 24, 2024
The fact that this sits at a 7.22 score (4.8 on Crunchyroll) at the time of writing, almost makes me want to give up anime for good. Are standards truly so low today?
To call it an imitation of HameFura is an insult to HameFura. At least HameFura has funny characters and decent comedic timing. Akuyaku has none of it. The characters are as vapid as they are boring. The story is a complete mess (it's full of all these tropes, but none of them are developed into anything remotely coherent) and has about as much substance as a soap bubble. The art + animation
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are below subpar and looks really really low budget. There's nothing that made me sympathize particularly much with any of the characters because none of them had any personality or likeability. Aileen, the man character, is very predictably written, though I will say her stubborn persistance has its charms.
The final battle with the other chick is deeply underwhelming and annoying. You get the usual villain evilly giggling through the battle while our hero is struggling and doing her best. It's the trope of tropes. She doesn't even actually defeat her. It's the stupid bird that saves the day.
All in all, Akuyaku brought nothing new to the table. Had it at least been funny it might have been worth it just for the gags, but it isn't. I think I half-chuckled once and I can't even remember why.
This is yet another conveyor-belt isekai in a genre that keeps deteriorating with each new installment.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Oct 27, 2023
This is the most absurd thing I've seen in a while. The story makes absolutely zero sense and keeps hinting at some deeper lore and backstory that's never elaborated on. There's witches and magic and action and we're never told why. There's a couple of main characters who have some kind of past with each other that seems significant to a virtually non-existing plot, but their memory of it has been erased. Are we told what it is or why it was erased? Nope.
The writing truly took a backseat here, so why is it still a fun watch? Simply put, because of the characters.
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They're charming, stupid and weird and mostly female. The man guy is a boring weakling, as is often the case in this type of anime, but it never gets too annoying. The villains are fun and there's a bunch of great gags, some poking fun at tropes.
So if you don't mind the lack of coherent story and just enjoy watching stupid characters do fun stuff, this is a fine little entertaining show. Quite well animated too.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 30, 2023
Well, I guess I’m one of the four or so people on MAL who didn’t like this show. It’s not the first time this has happened. I’ll watch a show, then check MAL to see what people think, and end up feeling like I watched an entirely different thing.
Bocchi the Rock was a major disappointment for me. It’s been hyped to the skies everywhere, with TikTok clips, Twitter memes, and all the usual fanfare. But why?
It’s hardly the first anime to deal with social anxiety. A significant number of slice-of-life stories feature at least one character struggling with it. It’s everywhere, and it’s been handled
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in countless ways. That’s one of the things I love about Japanese manga and anime: the fact that issues like anxiety, pathological shyness, and introversion are brought up at all. Sadly, we rarely see these kinds of characters in Western media.
Hitori Gotoh (Bocchi) is in a league of her own, though. Her social anxiety borders on full-blown mental illness. She’s essentially a hikikomori character who hasn’t yet become a complete recluse. She undergoes very little development throughout the show and, for me, it started to grate on my nerves around episode 4 or 5. I’ve had my own struggles with anxiety, but I could not relate much to Bocchi’s way of reacting to things. I related to her inner monologues and fantasy world, but not to her almost pathological self-loathing and inability to even pretend.
Still, that isn’t the real problem. The show isn’t aiming for realism. It’s a comedy, and there are certainly many funny scenes. I also appreciated the visual experimentation with claymation, 3D animation, and real-life footage. The art was good, the voice acting solid. Technically, the show was often impressive, and I particularly liked the concert scenes.
Where it falls apart is in how Hitori Gotoh is set up as a character. From the start, we learn she’s a prodigy who can play guitar like Hendrix and has a massive YouTube following. Naturally, you expect a payoff. When will people finally see how talented she is? When will she blow away an audience? We are told she’s that good, and the only thing in her way is social anxiety. The story would make sense if it were about her overcoming her fears through music and friendship, with recognition as the reward.
But it never happens. In a 12-episode anime about a band, there are only three concerts: one on the street, one at a club, and one at the school. At the street and club performances she does show flashes of her ability, but the reactions are underwhelming and anti-climactic. Only one bandmate comments, with a casual “oh cool, you’re that chick from YouTube, nice to have you on board.” That’s the one and only time Bocchi gets praised for her talent in the entire series. In the final concert her guitar breaks, she’s ignored, and the lead singer gets all the attention. Instead, Bocchi is once again reduced to comic humiliation in front of everyone.
Why bother setting her up as a major talent if we almost never see her use it? Even when she does, the reaction is muted at best. The Ijichi sisters recognize her from her videos and their response is a shrug.
I sat through the entire show waiting for Bocchi to finally earn the recognition she deserved, to overcome her fears and show what she could really do. That payoff never came. Her social anxiety is played for laughs, but it becomes repetitive and takes the place of a stronger story lurking underneath: the story of a gifted guitarist who grows as a person and musician through her band. Instead, we get twelve episodes of clownish humiliation, with her talent—the one redeeming quality she was built on—pushed aside.
There’s a narrative principle called Chekhov’s Gun, named after Anton Chekhov. It states that every element in a story must serve a purpose, and irrelevant elements should be removed. If a writer introduces a gun, it must eventually be fired.
In Bocchi the Rock, Hitori Gotoh’s talent is the gun. The show begins by telling us she’s a great guitarist admired online. She has an enormous gift to share but is prevented by crippling anxiety. That’s the setup. The expectation is that she’ll eventually break free and earn admiration. It sort of happens once at the club, but it changes nothing. She doesn’t grow as a person, as a musician, or in the eyes of her friends. The rest of the series is just more awkwardness and, in the last concert, failure.
In this show, Chekhov’s Gun is loaded with blanks.
That’s why I can’t recommend it. It’s unfulfilling and frustrating. There’s no payoff, no real character growth, and the strong story that could have been never materializes. All in all, Bocchi the Rock is a dud.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Feb 21, 2023
I'm pretty sure I watched Ao Haru Ride a few years ago, but recently came across it while browsing for romantic/romcom animes and decided to watch the first episode to jog my memory. I ended up watching the entire thing and the OVA's. And while some scenes did remind me that I had watched it before, most of it had been happily forgotten. And for good reason. I guess my brain pretty much treated it as useless information and binned it.
Because, wow! This is one of the more annoying and frustrating stories I've had the displeasure of sitting through.
Let me sum up:
Kou is
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a clinically depressed and rude douchebag who, back in elementary school, talked to a girl a couple of times ("talked" might be too generous here - more like exchanged a few words with her). Back then he was a sweet, soft spoken kid and the girl was also a sweet kid and they developed a crush on each other. Then stuff happened in Kou's life and he had to move away.
Years go by and now we're in high school. Our main character is the aforementioned girl. Even though it's now like six years later, this girl, Futaba, never forgot those 10-20 minutes in total she spent with Kou back when they were 12 or whatever. Because yeah - that's certainly something that people do. Unbeknownst to her, Kou moved back and now (surprise surprise) attends the same high school as her.
"Everyone likes tall, broody, sullen hunks with genius IQs." - The Love Hypothesis, by Ali Hazelwood.
Kou is now a tall, broody and sullen hunk who also used to be in the advanced classes for smart kids, but because he's sullen and broody and doesn't care (in that attractive way hot guys with great hair don't care) he falls behind on his studies and ends up in Futaba's class. She hadn't noticed him before then, because he had changed a whole lot. You see, his mom died (which we find out very late in the show) and he's so traumatized by it that he's turned into a very boring, standoffish, depressed and extremely passive-aggressive jerk who wallows in introspective self-pity, the way only anime characters can. In short, he's miserable and if he existed in the real world, he'd make everyone around him miserable too.
However that doesn't stop Futaba from obsessing over him, because it's pretty clear that Kou is supposed to be a tragic antihero kinda guy, the sort of dude that teen girls find hot because he's "mysterious".
The rest of the story is pretty much about Kou negging Futaba and playing hot and cold with her. Futaba on the other hand is a pathetic slave to her emotions who won't back down, regardless of how big of an a-hole he is to her (but just enough to still be cool and mysterious). Somehow Futaba gets 3 other classmates (none of whom are worth mentioning due to their lack of personality) to obsess over him as well. So they basically spend the entire show trying to get through to Kou because, yes, it's very normal for a bunch of high school kids to spend every waking hour talking about one guy, trying to interact with that guy and do whatever they can for that guy, just so that guy will bless them with his attention.
That's basically it. However, to add insult to injury, the romance between Futaba and Kou is never realized, because both of them are a couple of emotionally immature kids who can't get their acts together and confess despite every goddamn stolen glance, embrace and touchy feely moment between them. By the end it's so bloody obvious how they feel about each other, but because this is Japan, they're apparently both too obtuse to read the signs and act on it. And that's how it ends. We've all been blue-balled. Kou and Futaba don't end up together in the show - but there's a whole bunch of internal dialogue platitudes about not giving up and so on. There's actually one scene where Kou seems to have an epiphany and that particular scene works well. But then, the next day, he's more or less back to his brooding self.
And that's how it goes. The story doesn't deliver on any of the promises it sets up. Kou does go through some minor character development, I guess. But not enough to salvage this mess of a narrative. Futaba pretty much spends every scene chasing after Kou and that's basically her entire reason for existing. 99% of every thought of hers we hear, is about Kou. Kou this, Kou that. Kou, Kou, Kou. Frankly it ends up being kinda creepy. And what a sad message for teen girls (Ao Haru Ride's target audience). As if there isn't anything else in life than the man you are in love with. By the latter half of the show, I was praying for a scene where Futaba slapped Kou in the face and told him to get his s*** together. But no. Lots of tears and lots of pleading. But no well-deserved kicks to the groin. Futaba's reason for existing is Kou. Without him, she'd be air. As an independent character she has very little substance beyond her schoolgirl crush.
If Ao Haru Ride is a representation of the romantic hopes and dreams of writer & illustrator, Io Sakisaka, I can't help but feel some pity for her and hope she didn't end up with a Kou of her own.
Since I know it's based on a manga series, I looked up how the rest of the story goes and as far as I can tell, Ao Haru Ride is to manga what terrible American soap operas are to Television:
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"...just when Kou is about to move on from his past, Yui Narumi, his friend from Nagasaki, moves to his town, and he stays with her to help her through her father's death. When Futaba realizes that she cannot change Kou, she decides to move on. When she begins a relationship with Toma Kikuchi, Kou realizes that his relationship with Yui is holding him back and preventing him from accepting positive changes in his life. After he removes himself for good, he begins actively pursuing Futaba. Futaba's lingering feelings for him complicates her relationship with Toma, and they amicably break up.
During Christmas, Futaba agrees to meet Kou in the same place where they promised to meet years before until his transfer, but it is cut short when Kou is involved in a minor accident. At the hospital, Futaba and Kou admit to each other that they are in love. At the end of the series, the two, along with their friends, move on with their lives as they establish new relationships and accept new changes within each other. Kou changes his surname back to Tanaka, and Futaba believes that something interesting has finally started for her."
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It's hard to imagine a more unfulfilling and anticlimactic ending after sticking with these generally unlikeable characters through such a slog of a story. A story, by the way, which is so popular with fans that it not only spawned a 13-episode anime, but a series of books, a serialized spin-off ("Ao Haru Ride: The Affinity of the Stars"), an audio book, a crossover comic and a live action movie.
Why are vulnerable and "damaged" men so attractive to so many women? It is said that women see men as projects they can 'fix'. I don't think that's a universal truth, but it's very much the core story of Ao Haru Ride. It's a fantasy about a guy who needs fixing and a girl who will do everything emotionally possible to fix him, regardless of how much of a dick he is to her. Maybe this appeals to Japanese girls and women because Japanese males are notoriously bad at being males. Or maybe it appeals to women because these types of guys trigger their maternal instincts? I don't know. But it's probably safe to say that had Kou and Futaba ended up together, their relationship would likely have been a codependent toxic mess. So... yay, I guess?
Why this story needed to be told remains a mystery, though.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Sep 15, 2022
Started out entertaining enough despite all the re-used footage from the game (yeah I noticed) then basically turned meaningless after the story jumped forward in time and by the finish it pretty much no longer had a story to tell except "yay everything is shit and then everyone brutally dies. The end".
The animation is fine enough and conveys the world and mood of the game quite accurately. But there's just not much of a story here (just like the game itself, coincidentally - or not). I'm not sure what the deal is, but it's like they are more into worldbuilding than coming up with
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anything approaching a satisfying narrative or likeable characters. This show had none. In fact, the least likeable character in the story is David. And he dies the way he lived - as a nobody.
If that's what you consider a great tale to tell, then sorry I'm not gonna subscribe to your newsletter.
Oh, spoiler alert by the way.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Apr 28, 2022
I have not played the game this was based on and after watching the anime, never will.
This show wants to be everything at once - drama, comedy, isekai, harem, battle anime - and fails at doing any of the genres well.
First of all there's the obvious issue of the story referencing a bunch of stuff that is never explained to viewers and which, I assume, only makes sense to those who played the game and read the manga or light novel or whatever the basis is.
Secondly, the whole thing is just so boringly generic and predictable and huge chunks of the main story arc
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makes no sense at all. Especially the Karyl character is just terribly conceived.
Thirdly, in the last 3 episodes they introduce like 70 new characters without explaining who they are and where they come from and stuff the story so full of false endings and mythology grabbed out of thin air, that I was loudly begging for it all to just end already.
The only thing Princess Connect! Re:Dive has going for it is a few mildly amusing running gags. It should have stuck to being comedy and quit the whole drama thing, because it doesn't work, it's predictable and we have seen it all a gazillion times before, but rarely so incompetently done.
This is garbage.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Feb 26, 2022
As usual I am at odds with the majority opinion on this site.
I did enjoy the first two seasons of Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai, which were mostly comedy and satire.
I haven't read the manga, so this is purely from the observations of someone who watched the anime:
Season 3 begins by introducing a bunch of characters who were conquered off screen by Keima Katsuragi. They all apparently have their own stories in the manga, but we get them as flashbacks in the anime. And it basically continues like that through the season. References to things that never happened in the previous shows, but
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only have backstories in the manga. Even at the very end, a completely new character pops up that Keima Katsuragi knows by name, but who no one who never read the manga will know who is. Elsie - who is a major character in the other shows, hardly even makes an appearance. However, since she's pretty annoying, I'm ok with that. It is, though, a super inconsistent way to conclude a story.
Add to all this one of the single most unsatisfying and frustrating endings I have ever seen in any anime ever, I have to give Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen a measly 4 stars. And that's primarily for the art.
The story is a complete mess and there's no conclusions to any of the characters, least of all the protagonist himself who just returns to the darkness of his room.
What a total letdown. What a disappointment. What a waste of time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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