Vampires' Melody (Vampires just aren't what they used to be)

 The only thing that drew me to this thing was the "vampire" word. Quite shallow, I know.

Plot Reminder: you are in some sort of civil war, and things don't look good; you've been shot in the leg and there's no backup.

Or at least so it seems, for some she-monster dispatch the enemy's rank with ease, and still make it on time to return to slumber for the MC to find her inside a hollow tree.

MC tries to check the vampire's pulse, only to get bitten in the neck. Next thing he knows three hundred years have passed, and both miss vampire and Mr. main character are cluelessly wandering through an unknown country, very much like ours.

So, as expected, there are huge displays of naiveness to the absurd point of confusing an excavator with a yellow dragon. A few hours later, he understands what a car is, and what's its function without confusing it with any mythical creatures. Miss Vampire is a prepotent showoff of physical prowess and the MC lacking these skills gets mistreated and reduced to a "thrall" condition.

Not much happens unless you are interested in a not-very-coherent romantic comedy.

On the positive side, if you have the patience to endure all the "I don't know modern devices, I don't know what's an ID, and basically, I'm a parody of a pre-industrial revolution character" the game can be pretty entertaining. (edit 2024: does it, thought?)

For me though, it just wasn't what I expected.

The characters seemed simply too flat for me to believe their story.  

Let the Right One In (It's refering to the vampire, not the other. I think.)

Behind!-- err, nevermind. Actually, I don't even remember this character. Who the hell are you?

 Practically disregarded as "the remake of a remake", Let the Right One In fights not only with the usual problems of a TV series but also against the problem of dealing with an over-exploited plot driver.

 The director is straightforward and presents a Vampire burning in the sun right off the bucket, and then slowly proceeds to merge the zombie virus with vampires, as it has been done before.

 The series' main hooker is the relationship between the two main characters, a certain dad and his vampire daughter. Both have to fight the problems that her blood-bathed immortality: Is she a monster for drinking human blood or is he for providing it? Will they find the cure they've been seeking for the last ten years or one of them has lost faith? Etcetera.

 Minus points for lack of originality, plus points for great management in the aforementioned relationship. 

My Vampire System (Trust your inner child? Like hell!)

 One is often against the question "What would the child me would think of my actions?" but rarely one ask "What does the actual me think of my past actions?" mainly because memories are deceitful and one thinks better of things done in the past- except for that love letter written to your crush, a poem included. 

And I found myself in this rare situation with "my vampire system", a web novel I used to like. After 246 ten-page chapters, I can say with absolute certainty that this book is a guide on how NOT to write a story. Beginning with the grammar errors, and we're not talking ONLY of mixing "your" with "you're" or "they", "their's" with "they're", putting "two" instead of "too" or "hear" instead of "here", and a lot of other mistakes like these, which would be annoying enough, but outright mixing up character's names, i.e. character A is talking with character B and suddenly, instead of saying "character A answer" it says "character Z, that's not even on the scene, answer"...

 Not to mention misspelled names ("Quuin", "Vodreen", "Peeter", etc.) not to mention punctuation errors, and again, we're not talking of semicolon or colon mistakes. We're talking of. Interop, ted phrases, like. This. Worst thing? The author is from the UK, name's Jack, no ESL. But let's forget about that for a moment. 

 Let's assume that the story was originally written in Sanskrit or something and let's suppose that whatever internet translator the author used is at fault. 

That doesn't justify the absolute lack of content and character development. The characters are flat and constantly act against the ideals they had allegedly lived their whole lives for, and there's a constant feeling of unnecessary deus ex machina.

 There's a character, Logan, that's a walking deus ex machina. Some machine is presenting difficulties. Logan can hack them. Making a circus on the internet, showing off unprecedented powers, drawing a LOT of attention? Logan has a private server, that BTW doesn't have any limitations. Lost in a cave system on another planet? Logan knows the exit. The whole school is after you? Logan can hide you and has a teleporter lying around his room.

 Other Deus ex: "Quuin" is lost on another planet, one that formerly belonged to the humans but was run over by monsters, and finds a locked important building. He uses the "inspect" skill and, whoops! It levels up at that exact moment and now it can tell the door's password. The plot itself goes nowhere, monsters pop out here and there, but "Quuin" is rarely pushed to his limits which is the main attraction of this kind of story. What was I thinking? Doubt your child self!      

Barbarian (Named after the chief editor or the scripting crew)

 PR: Sexual offender in '80s Detroit kidnaps at least twenty women, rapes them pregnant, and starts inbreeding until he creates some sort of super-strong she-monster that haunts the dungeon/super-sized basement/cave system the old guy built in his free time. Gotta love the shovel! Guy knew his holes, that's for sure. Now four characters battle against the monster and pretty much everyone dies, including the old guy but excluding the final girl prota that miraculously survives. 

The old guy's timeline is kind of sketchy since even though in just one generation of inbreeding there can be defects here we're talking of a barely human monster, so let's be generous and say that's three generations. Meaning, an old guy (50yo) kidnaps a woman and rapes her pregnant, then she has a girl baby, let's suppose on the first try, and then, supposing he's also a pedophile, has to wait at least 13 years for the little girl's reproductive system to sufficiently develop.

 So, now he's 64 and has to wait for another 14, making him 78, which means he's probably no longer fertile, but let's suppose he is, he'd have at least 82 years old, living in the basement dungeon without any source of food or other dailies for twenty years, making him 102.

 If you ask me he should be dead by the start of the movie and the monster shouldn't exist. But enough with all that minutiae.

 The movie is a minefield of plotholes, starting with the weird confusion of how they rent their house twice, how both characters agree to sleep one next to the other being both strangers, the fact that all motels are conveniently unavailable, the whole descending into the cave system without even a flashlight, the superhuman monster that apparently can live out of thin air, same as the immortal old man, the uncaring police is brought to an absurd point of thinking the protagonist that claims having being held prisoner is a crackhead, even though she clearly isn't, absurd shots and physics laws defied.

 Taking all these problems into account and the fact that the plot was already quite boring, the result would be disappointing enough, if it wasn't for the ENORMOUS advertising it received from many, many critics. Saying it provokes long-lasting reflections (?), wildly unpredictable (??), bracingly chilling (???), and truly unique (????), making the disappointment at this shallow,  predictable, boring, and quite generic movie even greater. 

Ozarks (Trying to set yourself apart from Breaking Bad)

 Marty and Wendy Byrd compose a dysfunctional family along with their two children that make a living out of laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel.

 The story is filled to the brim with the typical elements of crime drama, extorsion, murder, torture, infidelity, treason, and so on. They make good use of the "the enemy within" concept. The series is catching, and the plot develops quickly. 

Killing Eve (Drama obsessive love TV series)

Don't do that. Don't give me hope.

 Plot reminder: Eve Polaski works for the MI6 in the pursuit of Villanelle, a serial assassin that works for an organization called "the Twelve". They become obsessed with each other, swinging between love and hate at all times, while each deal with their issues mostly involving "the twelve".

 The first two seasons concern catching Villanelle and the last two are about destroying the organization, if that's possible. Power plays get increasingly more important.

With at least one assassination in each episode and the conflicting emotions of the main characters, the series as a whole keeps a well-round balance of suspense, thrill, and action. 

All the actors, and especially the lead actresses, are spectacular and thorough. This is one of my favorite series and I don't say that lightly, it stirred in me many emotions, especially at the end. Contrary to what some of my predecessors have said, I believe that although the focus of the series shifts midway through, this is not a decay but a necessity to make a satisfactory, anguishing ending.

Supreme Magus (spoiler alert, he doesn't get near to supreme in the thousand chapters I read)

(30/9/22 - 1/11/22) 

 Plot Reminder: Some cynic, bitter old man that grew up in a dysfunctional family avenges his run-over brother after finding out that he has cancer, and later commits suicide. Then he reincarnates as some alien soldier and dies miserably. Then he reincarnates again now in the familiar scenery, a baby in a fantasy world with magic and elves with an unfair skill that provides him with unlimited power growth and embarks on a quest to kill monsters to get more powerful to kill more monsters and so on, with his trusty sidekick the talking stone that happens to be a mage tower conveniently compress in pebble size. He goes on exciting adventures, such as killing magical bad guys, curing magical diseases, saving the magical girl in distress, and saving the world from magic daily. Contrary to a certain someone his success rate seems to be pretty high.*

Maybe point the lightning towards the enemy instead of your feet, pal?

 As most "claw your way to the top" type of fantasy, it starts great, and as the chapters go on the quality decreases. Battles pass from being innovative and exciting to becoming almost a chore, around ch. 550 I realized that there were two to five battle chapters and one or two interlude chapters to introduce new enemies. In comparison with other web novel authors, the grammar is impeccable and the characters have some depth to them.

 The distinctive trait of the novel is the uncanny detail of the magic system, which looks a bit patched up but quite complete and consistent. As far as I got it's not entirely true that the story is about the character's growth (personality-wise) as the author sells him. The character remains cynical and bitter, but now he realizes that one can't keep people locked in a tower. Sort of. He didn't lock anyone in a tower in his previous life and in the current world, he has moments of recession when he considers people objects of his possession. Not to mention that his stinginess, at first funny, starts irking after a while. So, did he grow as a person?

 The details in magic around ch. 250 at the magic academy becomes boring and redundant, and afterward, they simply disappear and turn into vague notions, the most powerful magic uses all elements so the distinction between them is irrelevant, and the tier-five spells start to repeat themselves. Burial grounds were used thrice in less than a hundred chapters to defeat powerful enemies. I'd say that is recommendable to read up to when Lith (or Derek whatever) enters the magic academy.  6/10

(Edit 2024: NOW I GET IT! I was refering to a Penumbra dialogue line where the parasite antagonist says "Okay, on the to-do list. Find this damsel in distress, kill the bad guys, cure infection, save the world! Chances of success? Nill! Chances of survival? Well, you got old Clarence on board, that should speak for itself. Chances you buggering things up royally? Almost certain!" MC effectively fails to save damnsel in distress)