Under One Person: The Outcast

This could have been a quite good anime series, because Under One Person has some potential for mystery in places, although there are a lot of things that trip the show up. For example, there is the main male protagonist. He hovers somewhere between being boring and being a douchebag in my book, and throughout the entire twelve episodes, he seriously had very few memorable scenes or any kind of redeeming moments. The main female protagonist Houhou was a bit better, she is kind of the quiet, mysterious, unemotional type that I mostly have no problem with, and occasionally find intriguing. Houhou actually turns out to be quite a good character, which is helped a lot by her interesting and mysterious past. The rest of the cast are quite forgettable and hardly impressed me in any way... It is supposedly supposed to be part horror, although please do forget about that, because apart from a couple of rather awkward zombies in the opening, there is nothing really horror-like, so I would definitely remove that genre tag from the description. Add to that the fact that some of the scenes are also very problematic in terms of their underlying logic, and the fact that the fight scenes could have had a lot more momentum, these are the negative aspects. Anyway, enough with the niggles, what do I think is actually good about "The Outcast"? I have already mentioned there is some amount of mystery in the narrative, the main female protagonist is good too, the fact that the animation and soundtrack are not that bad has already been mentioned by someone else, and unfortunately I have nothing else worth mentioning at the moment. So I guess it is more or less evident that I was not extremely excited about this anime series, however, it also did not manage to piss me off to the point where I wanted to just quit watching it. That said, I am definitely sure - 4/10. (03/10/2021)

This second season delivers twice as many episodes (twenty-four) as the first one, and it needed them because the tournament our protagonists reached was so damned long. We also got quite a generous helping of new characters of which someone like me will only remember a few. The main protagonists are also given plenty of screen time, especially Chou Soran, who has bulked up and no longer strikes me as mindless and boresome, no, he just does things his own way and even manages to surprise you on occasion. Houhou is still the same and is quiet, sort of unemotional and I still enjoy following her. Although the anime’s creators were trying hard, the fight scenes were not epic by any means, though thankfully they are not boring. On a positive note, I am starting to find the fact that Houhou's mysterious backstory and the storyline surrounding Soran's grandfather are slowly unraveling - because these two points have some potential, and if there is another season I would probably find the revelation of these secrets quite appealing. After the second season, I am awarding it a total of 4.5/10. (03/10/2021)

This third season has really few episodes, plus it was really hard to find because it was not streamed by Crunchyroll and even Tokyo MX gave up on it, instead it was put on YouTube with English subtitles (and the dubbing is Chinese because they have stopped producing the Japanese version...). The narrative is so - well, not interesting for me because I was expecting more of a focus on issues of more interest to me (see the review for the second season). However, be warned - this season has one of the best-animated fights (the battle in the park) I have ever seen! That kind of reanimated my slightly waning interest. 4.5/10. (03/10/2021)

Well, I finally finished the fourth season of Hitori no šita: The Outcast. It took me so long mainly because after the first few episodes, I had to force myself to keep going because I did not enjoy the story dedicated to the main male protagonist and his group at all. Even though the last few episodes were interesting, I could not be bothered, really, as I had lost heart somewhere in the middle of the season. There were at least a few action-packed scenes that were good and affected the rating positively, although otherwise, I am awarding a mere 3/10, and I do not know if I can go on, although I hope not to lose any sleep over it. (13/05/2022)