Black Torch

BLACK TORCH. Oh man, this could've been amazing. There are so many missed opportunities to make the story great. What I like about this anime is that it looks stunning. Fluid animation was also great on some episodes. Episode 1 was definitely in the top 10 of the summer season because it had all makings of a good shounen. Freaking bait and switch because that's when a balanced episode of action, comedy & surprisingly good world building. After that, it just goes bad. What the writer likes doing is glaze up Jiro & Rango through the villains, and they just get chummy. Episode 5, if I'm not mistaken, is when we see a momonoke that threatens the lives of Jiro and his team. Of course, they get their asses whooped, but they get chummy & friendly all of a sudden. The really strong characters get introduced at around episode 7, or 8, but the writer doesn't use them for some reason. They're there to humble Jiro because they are strong and have seen many momonoke than him. The writer pushes them aside so that every meaningful battle is fought by only Jiro and the rest of BLACK TORCH. Speaking of BLACK TORCH, this team was pretty useless, but the fault falls onto the writer. I'm still thinking, why didn't Reiji defeat his brother, considering that it is a huge part of his story? I ask this because his brother served nothing to the story, except for being a big motive for Reiji's search for strength & being a momonoke hunter or whatever it's called. Now, I didn't dislike the build-up to the final battle, but man, it could've been better. Amagi is a huge threat in this world, and his motives are somewhat valid, but the final battle sucked. One would think that the animation would be awesome given the fact that episodes 1 & 5 had stellar fluid animation, but it just sucked. Felt like I was watching a filler fight in DBZ. Amagi gets defeated and glazes the heck out of Jiro. 🙄. All in all, this is my opinion and I would recommend the show to someone who hasn't seen it because it looks mainstream and both op & ed are wonderful. Grooooovy by I Don’t Like Mondays is an amazing song. It has a good original soundtrack & the animation and visuals were amazing. This could've been a good anime because it had all the makings of a good, standard shounen. I mean, the power system is easy to follow & Momonoke vs. humans is an intriguing topic to bring to shounen.

Animasinya bagus dan ceritanya lumayan, meskipun sepanjang menonton cukup terasa ada unsur-unsur yang terinspirasi dari manga lain. Dari segi karakter, menurutku tidak ada yang benar-benar menonjol. Dari awal sampai akhir, sebagian besar karakter terasa tidak mengalami development yang berarti. Ada beberapa karakter yang sebenarnya menarik, tetapi sayangnya mereka tidak mendapatkan screen time pertarungan terakhir yang layak. Overall, kalau kalian ingin menonton anime shonen yang pendek, anime ini mungkin cocok untuk kalian, tetapi sebaiknya jangan memasang ekspektasi terlalu tinggi.

Rago es muy astuto y hace lo que quiera. Me gustó éste episodio

That flower petal bridge over the water looked gorgeous and then immediately the bug mononoke swarm ruined the mood in the best way

call me crazy but the villagers are the real monsters here. Amagi defended them for years then they sold out a kid to keep their rice fields. hes not a sore loser hes a guy who learned what people actually are

Amagi's flashback carried this one. warm village light against the cold present day stuff and you can feel exactly where he broke. whether that excuses him is another thing

I can't get over how they spent half the runtime on backstory with the finale next week. worried the Jirou and Amagi fight is gonna get crammed into twenty minutes

The villagers offering up that girl to heal him was the moment this whole episode turned for me she was the one he saved and they just handed her over like firewood no wonder he stopped believing in anything

I keep thinking about the elder choosing the sacrifice as the logical call. that's the horror of it. nobody in that room was evil. they just did math with a life and Amagi watched them do it

that flower petal bridge from Fuyo is one of the prettiest things this show has done and then it's gone in like forty seconds. give me more of that

the fact that Amagi thinks he's the true mononoke while standing on a sacrifice he never asked for is the whole tragedy. he absorbed their worship and their cowardice and called it his own identity

I really wanted to be into this one but the whole thing zips from Amagi's origin to Jirou transforming in like twenty minutes and none of it breathes. big swings landing with no room to feel them

Reiji calling Jirou baggage again after barely surviving whatever happened to him is so on brand. also RIP that new suit it lasted like ten minutes

Kouga showing up yelling about his wife and then actually smashing a path open for Jirou is the kind of nonsense this show needs more of

the villagers sacrificing that girl to heal him is the exact moment the show earns calling him a monster. not the red moon stuff. that one choice. everything after is just consequence

that warm golden lighting in the flashback versus the cold purple skies when Jirou shows up at the gate is doing so much quiet work and nobody is talking about it enough

Amagi's whole arc with the village girl hit me way harder than I expected. He saved her. They gave her back to him as food. I sat there staring at the screen when the elder made that call

you can tell they're saving the budget for the finale because half the episode looks like it was keyframed during a lunch break. Amagi's backstory deserves better than this

That ending hit me in a way I was not expecting. Grandfather just sitting there praying with his hands together asking why his grandson always has to suffer. I lost my grandfather two years ago and that scene brought it all back. The old man surviving while worrying for younger blood is such a primal pain this show nailed in like forty seconds

The mushroom poisoning gag saving Jiro's life twice in one episode is pure comedy. He literally unlocked the power of equality with Rago and then face-planted into the lake because of bad food. Also Amagi eating Fana's heart on screen felt way more brutal than I expected for this show