Anime Report: Tokyo Ravens, Kingdom, Magi

I've finally finished Tokyo Ravens and it wasn't too bad. The pacing picked up towards the end even though how they wrote the story wasn't that good. Harutora may be a nice and oblivious guy, but having all the supporting female characters fall in love with him just isn't fair. Haha I don't think he deserves that love. The ending was not so much of a cliffhanger, but more like highly open ended. It's still a happy ending and they still didn't answer a lot of questions. I suppose the light novels may have more answers, but the anime certainly didn't. At least they gave Tenma some more screen time as opposed to being a quiet side character. Saotome was a familiar according to the novel, but disguised as a disciple of Douman. There's no mention of that at all in the anime like many other relationships. I think for now its assumed that the Twin Horn Syndicate survives and Tsuchimikados are hidden for safety reasons. I still don't get what Yakou's ambition was and what ritual he messed up that brought Japan into spiritual disaster. You would expect that by the end of the series it would explain why things happened in the beginning of the series.

I am on Kingdom episode 22. The second season has been completed so far and just like with season one, I'm always very behind. The animation used in this series always bugged me because it's highly inconsistent. They jump from hand drawn to 3D models very sharply and sometimes the drawing just isn't that great. The surprising lack of blood is also striking because this is a series about war. I also refer to Kingdom as the people with intense eyes and eye liner. See examples below. I picked out the well drawn scenes.

Just look at those intense eyes.

As of episode 22, I thought General Huan Ji (Kan Ki) was a total badass. He just struck down old man Xuan Feng like nothing. Huan Ji being a total ruffian in his roots resorted to very dirty  but effective methods. Still Huan Ji lost half his own army because he neglected to see how the enemy too is ahead of the game. Xin is still being a total greenhorn soldier with too much hot blood running through his head. I find it pretty annoying because I see it in too many shounen protagonists. Now let's see if the three units can pull their plan through to defeat Lun Hu of the enemy army. I don't know how many casualties they will suffer like last time when Wang Ben nearly lost his own head with that cut in the shoulder.

Magi is almost ending. Just one more episode to go and it'll be done. I'm hoping for a season three and I don't know if the anime is going the same way the manga is going. They might go for an original ending. It was depressing to hear Marga talk to Titus. She basically told Titus that even if he has only a few days to live, do something to change the world in that short time. There was a lot of life and death stuff and I just felt so upset hearing about it. If I were Titus, I would be conflicted as well. Titus carried through his thoughts to the end and it appears even though Marga was sad she supported his decision. It was a good series overall and fun to watch. You won't see that much of Sinbad in this season. Morgiana and Alibaba disappear halfway because they went separate ways and screen time is given to Aladdin and supporting characters. Hakuryuu was also one of the characters that slowly slipped out of the story. I know the anime changed a lot of things around him and I think because they don't want things clashing, they eventually decided to write him out of the story for now. I'm pretty sure they probably wrote a lot of other things out.

I'm going to start Kyoukai no Kanata soon (since I only finished 2 episodes) as well as finish skimming through Toriko. Why do I even follow Toriko in the first place? It was pretty good at first and I followed closely with the manga too. I think I'll switch to the manga after I finish up the anime.