Tatakau Shisho: The Book of Bantorra

[TwEeD]

Seeing the comments here i'm happy I dropped this one after 7 episodes... seems it didn't get any better

[erious]

watching the episodes that involve her is what made me finish the series.

Frankly, after two episodes I'm partial to the director myself(even despite those hideous blobs of fat on her chest). A homicidal maniac is sometimes fine too.
And damn, a sniper sling? How can I not dig something like this.
As long as they're going to have at least some bit of action an not too much of the retarded drama(scene where meatboy talks to a girl whose boyfriend got blown up was so ridiculously bad...), I'm going to watch this.
EDIT:
After 4 episodes, it's not that bad, writing is mostly horrible, but the whole witch x meatboy love affair was... elegant? I expected it to be dragged out, but it ended quickly and turned out quite nice.
EDIT 2:

(click to show/hide)

at one momment, that blonde chick realized shes in love with one of the Librarians who eloped with a weapon and was branded a traitor, this plot could have been interesting, and what they did ? they erased her memories of that guy and her emotions for him, utter fail, and it could have been interesting.

The way it was handled was actually... pretty damn nice. The way Mirepoc(damn, are the names retarded) was developed in this episode was pretty interesting, and Miyuki Sawashiro's voice acting was perfect.
Episode 5 was the first episode which I can call simply good.

[smoke123]

this is a good series....yes even i was about to drop it after the incident in the 4th or 5th episode...but stick with it...

[Havoc10K]

it gets worse after a few more eps, stuff becomes simply stupid.

[erious]

I never for a split second thought that this was going to be an intelligent anime, oh no.
I disliked first 4 episodes because I thought that the first meatboy was going to be a protagonist of sorts, and his existential whining was horribly annoying. But I liked them for the setting, action, and characters. After watching another four, it certainly got better, although resolution this time was much less dramatic, and even more contrived. And this is probably the biggest weakness so far, resolutions of plot-important parts don't make any sense. While it might be argued that the first meatboy was able to stab the bad guy because his dead witch girlfriend somehow set this up when she used the weapon, it doesn't seem likely. But why did the weapon's defense fail then? And the second meatboy, why exactly was he able to overpower the original consciousness after being eaten? All the others were just faces in the wall, or mud figures at best, while he retained his form, consciousness, and powers.
So far(and from what I know from your spoilers) it's shaping up to be utterly forgettable fantasy action fluff, with some pretty standard drama thrown in for good measure. The way it's going, I don't think killing Noloty is such a bad thing - but I'd probably still be annoyed if I didn't know that beforehand, she's such a nice character. Of course, they might butcher this up, but as long as it plays out at least the standard way(the pure and innocent girl dies to strengthen the resolve of the other characters/push them to action), it might be okay.

EDIT:
Oh, and with every passing episode I like Hamyutsu Meseta more and more.

[Havoc10K]

Hammy isn't such a bad character in itself, but shes overpowered, the later episodes make less sense,
what makes less sense is they never explained why noloty really had to die, they only wanted her to make the kid kill her or her killing the kid, but that plan failed, so they killed Noloty on his eyes, the later events made the fact that Noloty is dead a gloryfication of sorts but the real problem is there are huge holes in the story, solutions come out thin air, if they focused on explaining things it would have been a good show but they simply gave up on that, thats why this is a big annoying anme in my opinion.

[erious]

Yeah, but it's just THAT kind of anime. You stop thinking and enjoy the show, the action, the drama. Kind of like hollywood movies, really. It's not deep, but I find it highly amusing.
The director being overpowered is precisely why her character is good, if she had this much self-confidence and self-destructive behavior WITHOUT being ridiculously powerful it wouldn't make sense. She kind of makes the show for me, and she definitely is the most interesting character so far.
Plus she looks GREAT with glasses.

[Havoc10K]

keep watching and tell me what you think mor on this.

[mgz]

good action show overall some of the fight scenes were really good. plot is stupid although the premise of the whole life in a book is pretty cool although im confused how u fast forward through the books

[Havoc10K]

maybe there is a menu or something, yeh l like that aspect of this show, but plot is total nonsense wich makes me say constantly this is a fail, if the plot was perfected a bit, made much more sense, this show would be a real hit.

[erious]

Fi-ni-shed.
THAT WAS SO STUPID.
And so good.

No, seriously, great anime. Oh, of course, the plot was filled with gaping holes and constant logical fallacies, while the writing was at times horrible, but in the end it was extremely entertaining. Because it was so silly, not despite it.
You see, if the anime was better, all the bad shit that happens, all the people who die, would make me annoyed - but the way it was done I was able to enjoy the drama without getting too deeply emotionally involved. It was extremely over the top(people of the world lending their power to save it - what the fuck was that supposed to be, Dragonball?), and even ended with a correct moral - something I completely didn't expect from an "everybody can die" show with a universe-specific afterlife of sorts.
There were pretty much only two things I thought were pretty bad - one that objectively didn't make any sense and broke great character development of Hamy - killing Volkec. It was unnecessary, and didn't fit her character almost at all.
The second one is that Matt and Hamy's relationship didn't get a proper resolution, with the way the show ended I expected something more... common? Just having Matt die and them both reunited inside Ruruta would be enough. The way it ended it still seems like Hamy got the short end of the stick.
Other then that, fun show.
And I must admit, while the plot was at times horrible, there were moments were it was really clever - the writer has some nice potential, I really wonder where he'll go from now on.
Also, some things that I think came not from the light novels but from the series scriptwriters were amusing too. No one probably cares so I'll just say one - when Noloty climbs the mountain and talks with Arkit, displaying her non-violence in full power, we're treated to two scenes with animals killing each other. The symbolism was so obvious it hurt.

In the end I enjoyed this greatly. I'd probably enjoy it a good deal less if I weren't falling in love with Hamy, but it's still worth watching. Just don't take it too seriously and you'll be okay.
Although I'll probably forget all about it in a month or so.

[HazukiChan]

I was going to drop this after the 5th or 6th episode, but I kept with it, and I decided to just go with the flow  rather than try to figure it out and enjoy it.

[Havoc10K]

have to say the yactually pulled it off and redeemed the stupidity of this show in the last two eps, l was positively surprised, all questions from all 26 episodes had been finaly answered, l don't think it was worth it tough, doing all that stupid stuff for 26 eps, tha twas a great risk, ppl that do look for some logic dropped the show most likely, l'll say if they did they wasted time indeed, the last two eps did a good finish to the story, and at least Noloty still had a part to play, even as fanservice, it's worth to see her smiling again, l think she has the best smile lately in the recent shows.

l'm not gonna upgrade the level of my opinion tough, the redemtion of the show is too late.