Akuma no Riddle – 12 Review

Uhm, I’m pretty sure, that’s NOT how multiple-choice-tests works. Also, it’s important to note that none of the questions this guy had sent Tokaku were ‘multiple-choice-tests’.

Was Akuma no Riddle a Yuri-series? Actually, I would say no. First of all, there’s hardly anything romantic about its plot and second, the romance that was there was just THE WORST. I don’t even understand how anyone could’ve fucked up writing a script for such a mediocre concept…?! A bunch of assassins try to kill a girl, one of them decides to protect her, they fall in love, turns out the original victim is somewhat complicit in the crime that’s happening, protector-girl needs to make a decision, love wins in the end and everyone involved somehow lives happily ever after… HOW THE HELL COULD YOU FUCK THIS UP?!

Akuma no Riddle – 10/11 Review

Ha, I bet they regret saying that, now that they’ve been hacked into pieces because of her!

Look, I just don’t buy it. Ms. Potatohead REEKS… and people LOVE it?! I’ve seen those ads for deodorants, perfums and whatnot, all making you believe that your smell matters. But it just isn’t true! Those ads are total fiction! Even the name of this phenomenon: Animal Magnetism. Animals are things that breath, shit, piss and then die horribly to turn into a smelly corpse. Just a stinking affair all around, if you ask me! Magnets are inanimate objects that push and pull other certain inanimate objects you need to have around, it’s like gravity but with more work involved. So, fuck that! How the hell would these two words ever result in something you want to have?! If you ask me, animal magnetism just isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

Akuma no Riddle – 09 Review

So whoever sees her strength will say the opposite of the blatantly obvious? That’s some strength this Tokaku is supposed to have…

I would really like to know how the author of the manga-series would describe the kind of story she has produced with this. Even putting all the usual anime-stereotypes aside, this series just can be SO stupid at times. And it’s not even very self-aware about it, the story just keeps a straight face when one of the girls destroys a room with a big-ass hammer as if it’s the easiest thing ever and the story doesn’t even flinch when one of the girls just throws another girl across the room as if she weighs nothing. Just a little bit more craziness and this series would actually be campy enough to become somewhat entertaining.

Akuma no Riddle – 08 Review

I know, right? These days it’s SO hard to make a killing on the job-market… (Ha, assassin-humour!)

The more episodes pass the more I start to wonder: How exactly did they choose those girls? The first ones to go made somewhat sense in regards to why they would be killers and why they needed to kill Ms. Potatohead… but with each new backstory it seems less and less about explaining a motivation instead of simply explaining why these assassin-girls aren’t as bad as you might think they are. Just remember: They apparently didn’t know that one of the girls they chose for this Black Class wasn’t there to actually do what she was supposed to do. And then there was the girl who was somewhat immortal, just being like “Yeah, that shit sounds like fun, I guess… maybe I even get a cure for eternal mopiness out of it…”. They really seemed to just take anyone who had nothing better to do – but if they had it would involve weird shit like killing people for a living.

Akuma no Riddle – 07 Review

Ms. Potatohead’s deductive skills in action while she’s looking for a card that is supposedly in a body of water somewhere.

Look, assassinations… I figure there’s a person on one side and then there’s this other person on the other side. And the first person tries to kill the second person. Then the second person dies. That’s an assassination in theory, right? And you assume there’s a reason. You can’t just like assassinate anybody. Because you need to have plan and that guy who’s gonna die better be worth it. Maybe the target is an asshole, who knows? Assassinations are real hard work, some frying pan doesn’t cut it. And so you come to this series where girls are assassins, people who work hard to kill people… presumably. Because so far… not really that much hard work involved in the whole killing-process of those assassinations. Guess, no one’s really surprised that Ms. Potatohead is still alive.

Akuma no Riddle – 05/06 Review

Yeah, schools are pretty funny that way, I guess…

What if it’s all a big allegory for life at an elite-all-girls-school? Life at home sucks, you’re forced to be in that weird school and you’re peer-pressured into bullying some innocent girl because she’s uncool. And the only girl protecting the uncool girl is too cool for normal life as one day she accidentally lands in the middle of another bullying-attempt so the cool girl is like “Guess I gotta do this shit now…” and with that she becomes the uncool girl’s protector. Also, it turns out cool girl wants to fuck the uncool girl because she has weird daddy-issues (well, I assume that’s what’s going on in this series… anything else would be too romantic for what this series is doing). And the teacher is young, energetic and – male… which makes him completely clueless in regards to the deadly world girls live in. That’s what’s going on, I think… and it all leads to a massacre. I’ve seen Carrie, I know what shit girls are capable of. Haru definitely develops telekinetic abilities in the final episode and murders everyone! All in all, a pretty sound allegory for school-life, isn’t it?

Akuma no Riddle – 04 Review

Considering Ms. Potatohead is the target of a bunch of assassins she seriously gotta get her priorities straight.

Sometimes I wonder… I know that writing some kind of story that ends up being a product for everyone to buy is hard but there are classes teaching you how to write, there are editors making a living out of giving you their honest opinion of how shitty the drivel is you’ve written, there are companies telling you what kind of stories they want to sell (and want you to write) etc., etc. … There are so many people telling you how to write a story but how come all these minds collaborating together can still result in a story that makes you go “Huh? Someone wrote this…? And nobody commented on it that it needed improvement…?”. Akuma no Riddle wasn’t my favorite series of the series by any stretch but this episode… How come the yuri-slice-of-life/romance-bits are better than the assassination-attempt bits in this episode?! And no, the whole slice-of-life-part is still dull but this episode’s assassination-stuff is on another level entirely when it comes to being bad.

Akuma no Riddle – 01-03 Review

I don’t think there’s any murderer in the history of mankind who has used THAT to get close to his target… Also, Akuma no Riddle’s interpretation of this effect is one of the assassins claiming that her birthday is one day after the day the victim-girl’s birthday is. I’m pretty sure that there’s a bit more to it than that.

I think this kind of mystery-thriller is an actual genre when it comes to animes. Chasing Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None it’s always about a group of people who are in some way involved with at least one of them trying to commit murder. Umineko no Naku Koro ni is certainly one of the better ones in that genre and I think it’s telling that Akuma no Riddle just strips away the mystery-part and just goes straight for thriller-action. And Yuri, it just needed to be Yuri as well, of course. I mean, the Yuri-part just makes as much sense as killing someone by letting him or her attend classes while planning to kill that person.