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Probably one of the most blatantly obvious train-wrecks of bad writing in the history of serial visual narrative production, shamefully destroying its own at first stimulating concept of alternate reality with awful characterizations, extremely weak script and cheap developments that only serve the purpose of working as a “shock-factor” to keep the audience entranced beyond the notice of a very clear lack of sequential planning.

Honestly speaking, the show is certainly fun and even held itself within certain quality standard during the irregularly interesting initial 11 episodes but as characters exponentially lose their own minds and personalities we are nothing else but witnesses of the now classical conceptual phrase in entertainment: “jumping the shark”. By the badly plotted twist in its “praised by the masses” stage 22 the series barely keeps itself as dirty and trashy fun that that makes you willingly embrace the filth of Japanese animation: the very price of marketing in a ridiculous attempt at dramatic storytelling that takes to oblivion without any justification its own suspension of disbelief.

The core problem is, of course, Lelouch. Some may argue it’s hard to portray a genius but in the end it’s as simple as keeping him from committing underdeveloped mistakes just for the sake of progressing the chronicled history. Not to mention how the rest of cast just acts without any justification whatsoever and never lives up to their indicated development or makes any attempt at decently stopping their inevitable crash into mediocrity. Nevertheless I got to admit that despite her poor dialogs Cornelia remained amazingly likeable, and that must say something about the value hidden in the idea of her original concept.

And so, with the lack of any real literary theme so to speak besides the hilariously exploitative Machiavellian motivation of its ridiculous excuse for a lead, the show honors the words of director Goro Tanigushi and exists as just an excuse to create a “hit show” to appeal both males and females. He succeeded for sure, shame it was at the cost of all the artistic merits of the finalized production. read more

I found no problem with the movie at all, other than the melodramatic overstated mood they went with for the ending considering the natural and low-key presentation they used for most of the running time, although at least they left the science fiction concepts as a subtle wink and kept it as just a medium to the true story of character interaction. It’s amazing how entertaining and delightful the overall product was, and with my words here I am doing no justice to the real feeling behind my statement but want to avoid needless hyperboles and keep this the more down-to-earth I can for now. Safely can be said that as a whole, be it for artistic attributes, good story telling or the really lovable protagonist and those charismatic personages surrounding her, this is seriously one of the most enjoyable films in recent years, animated or not.

As a “time-traveling” tale the script does has it share of faults but even so I can’t find any as idiotic as what we could already see in “Back to the Future 2”, which even when finding itself in the middle of such paradoxes managed to keep itself a classic thanks to the fact that it can be resumed as juvenile yet somewhat meaningful fun from beginning to end, and by the finale the point of the plot wasn’t really to develop the whole physical mechanics of moving in a temporal plane but rather how such an ability, in a metaphorical sense, affects the life of a young girl, who is by the way one of the most wonderfully done and likeable female teenagers in the medium.

Interesting was also to see how the directorial maturity of Hosoda is much more firm now, the melancholic stylishness is still here but for some reason with a major focus when compared to his still brilliant Digimon movies. He remains both trendy and lyrical but perhaps now he turns out even more restrained and introspectively social than before, probably a reflection of the natural movement beyond Tai and his pubescent friends, or the Superflat Monogram girl, towards a state that borders adulthood.

Besides Hosoda’s firm commandment the other incredibly remarkable technical aspect was the graphical design, which turns up as pure urban magic achieved through visuals, a thoroughly endearing representation of youthfulness, with simplistic and amazingly humane movement that retains a cartoon-like expressiveness that helps it in going beyond the representation of reality and achieving much more aliveness through un-noticeable and at the same time deeply underlying exaggeration. The team went with a very modern interpretation of what “old-school” signifies and they did a brilliant job at that approach.

As a whole TokiKake is as a film unpretentious and sincere, eradiating enchantment in every minute it is shown on the screen. Besides, even if you can’t empathically sympathize with the characters you can’t deny their charisma, the entirely believable naturality of the presence they represent as individuals. Go watch this now, at worse you'll be entertained. read more