After the first half (50 minutes):
The awesome fight at the beginning without any words spoken for a couple minutes made it easy to get into this quickly. The great backgrounds, especiall during the 'OP' helped too. What we know of the story so far is interesting, but not terribly original (clones, split society, mechas etc...). However I like the topic, so I'm enjoying that front.
My only problem so far is with the characters, or rather with the 2004-ish CGI character designs. I'm really no CGI hater, but it was still less developed as an animation technique in 2004 than it is in 2012 (see Kingdom or the Berserk Movies) AND I always enjoyed it less for characters than for everything else (I think that front still needs development. Kingdom looks a lot better than this movie, but I would have still preferred the character designs to be less CGI-ish.
Anyway, I'm not one to let something like this drag down the whole viewing, so I'm pretty confident I'll keep enjoying this to a solid degree in the second half too. Even if it doesn't stand out much, except maybe the aforementioned fights and backgrounds, it's very much within the boundaries of what kind of setting/story I really enjoy and that's more than enough so far to keep me interested. Though I suspect that if I had read the manga I would find the movie to have some pacing issues. But I don't know if that jumping-from-scene-to-scene without much breathing room isn't just the natural narrative that the author chose for this.
I'm a bit disappointed though that the good/bad sides seem to be easier distinguishable than I thought at first. The terrorist attack that is most likely linked to General Uranus made that clear.
After the movie:
They really pulled a lot of plot twists on us in the second half. I liked how the difference between the radical Hades and the more reasonable Uranus was shown in the anti-bioroids fraction. Also the plan of the elders was one of the rare cases where anime pulled it off to make them come off as somehow reasonable even though they weren't established as main chaarcters from the beginning (like in LOGH for example). I liked that. The last showdown boiled down mostly to visuals though, but I was okay with that.
Overall I'm going to give this a strong 7, definitely an 8 if the CGI-faces hadn't bothered me that much. The movie combined a lot of the most popular and interesting sci-fi elements and made an interesting story with believable twists out of it - plus great visuals for the most part. However the length restriction of a movie hindered properly paced character development and a general fleshing out of most side characters and the amazing environment. Considering all that a high 7 seems a fair score to me.
It also definitely made me want to watch the sequel, so I'd say we watch that as soon as we can. Also you've been waiting loong enough for the first one already ^^.
Also I'd like to advertise the new movie poll in the simulwatch club. I figured we could do one more movie with as many club members as possible before the year ends. The list is extensive as always so you'll hopefully find something that you want to watch :)
I agree, this was surprisingly easy to enjoy. Denzel's character being calm and mentally strong probably helped a lot, as you said. With another whiny, stupid kid it would have been annoying. Also it was more recent and A-1 Pictures made it look pretty good. Not that Last Order looked bad, but this was definitely up a notch.
I also tried to look up my score for Advent Children, but I didn't rate it, because I had already watched it a while before I joined MAL and probably couldn't even remember everything back then xD
I'll side with you and give this a 7 too, but a low one (I'm harsh on OVAs and movies, lol).
So what are we gonna tackle next? I think we planned on watching the appleseed stuff?
The 1988 OVA and the 2004 Movie seem to cover the same story (at least they are listed as 'alternative version' on MAL). So do you want to settle on one of them or try to watch both (which could be a bit boring if we know what'll happen the second time round)?
I would probably prefer to skip on the 1988 OVA and start with the 2004 Movie and it's sequel. But if you can tell me that there are enough differences between the OVA and the Movie (think FMA/Brotherhood) than I'd be open watching both. And if for some reason you want to skip on the 2004 Movie and just watch the OVA then we'd have to figure something out ^^.
Okay, so I remembered basically nothing about Advent Children and I only played the game a looong time ago so I can just judge this on it's own. And while I found it to lack explanation because it overpaced itself I still found it decently enjoyable. Tifa was annoying though. I can't really say much more and can't rate it higher than a lowish 6, but that's still a decent rating for this on it's own.
After this the Hacking occured again so I posponed the Denzel episode to tomorrow.
Sounds good. When would you like to start? I'm ready anytime, but we can wait until December actually starts next week ^^. I'd suggest the two final fantasy OVAs for the first day if that works for you? Possibly Appleseed after that. I also really want to finally get those franchises from my PTW to my completed list :P
So, I know 'late' doesn't even cover it, but I finally got around to watching Taiyou no Mokushiroku: A Spirit of the Sun. I'm very sorry about the 1 month delay xD
I have to say pretty much the only flaw of all Kaiji Kawaguchi adaptions seems to be that they are all incomplete because his manga are all epicly long (17+9 volumes in this particular case).
The realisticness and details you pointed out is one reason I loved all his works. Also the kind of strong main character that doesn't hesitate and always has some kind of plan. Though this one was slightly different from Zipang and Silent Service, because he missed the subtle deviousness and the moral questionability of his plans.
Still, the moment they mentioned that Japan could split I knew that it would come to that and the two regions will be governed independently. Kawaguchi wouldn't focus only on more or less personal drama.
I agree that the animation wasn't superb, but that doesn't play as big a role for me in most cases. It would have been awesome to see the earthquake animated by ufotable, but I'll still give it a low 8.
I'd love to see more of this :(
Whoa, I totally forgot about Spirit of the Sun. Let's procrastinate until the weekend, okay? I got addicted to another series yesterday so I forgot all about Spirit of the Sun :/
Oh yeah, I forgot about the music. All I could think the whole time was 'Stop trying so goddamn hart, it's so obvious!' xD
Anyway, looking forward to tomorrow!
Meh. I'm not a fan of this one. I literally fell asleep towards the end of part 1, which was pretty boring most of the time. The second part was mroe exciting, but I still couldn't really get into it. Too many overdramatic scenes (when Kai got shocked by Kagura we saw Kagura making an evil laugh for 5 seconds while holding the shocker into the camera *facepalm*) and too many female-target-audience vibes also. Generally a high density og clichés, another very open ending and the aspects of the synopsis and the title were hardly touched (the whole Switch thing).
It wasn't all bad and I bet the manga is worth checking out (maybe) but this can't get any higher than a 5 for me. 50% sounds about right.
I hope you enjoyed it a bit more ^^. In any case, I'm a lot more enthusiastic about tomorrows' 'Spirit of the Sun' :P.
We could watch Switch tomorrow on Monday and then the two episodes of Spirit in the Sun on Tuesday (maybe Tuesday/Wednesday depending on how captivating the first part is)?
Also I agree on the underlying resentments, which weren't very well hidden in Silent Service. Zipang has them too, but in a more subtle way I'd say.
This was pretty much as I expected after having seen Zipang before. I love the realistic and adult character designs of Kawaguchi Kaiji and the stories I have seen so far always fit the bill too.
What I really liked about the story was the bold and mysterious approach of Kaieda (reminded me a lot of Zipang), the political backgrounds (same) and the rivalry/chase thing with Fukushima (also Zipang-ish). It was a bit too heavy on 'action' and technical details for my personal enjoyment though. It could be that later on it focuses more (but not only) on character interactions, dialogue, intrigues and psychological aspects like Zipang, the manga has 32 volumes after all. The Zipang adaption was also left unfinished (it has 43 volumes) but at least we got a full 2-cour series to enjoy. This small OVA left me wanting for more, but it didn't satisfy me by itself, unlike Zipang which was long enough to make more of an impression.
It's a shame both mangas aren't licensed though, I would throw my money at them. I guess I'm just really a fan of the premise of 1 highly intelligent guy somehow planning to change the course of history, and not with any superpowers or such (though the Yamato is a high-class submarine, it's no Death Note or Geass xD). And Kawaguchi's stories (at least this and Zipang) do this very well (Zipang a bit better because it is more recent). Plus the art/character designs <3.
Anyway, I hope I wasn't comparing too much to Zipang, but once you've seen it you'll see how obvious it is. And I don't really mean storywise, (I spoilered nothing) because that is quite different, but many, many elements are very similar. Zipang got my highest possible 8 (too unfinished/open-ended to get more) and Silent Service was barely more than an introduction to a massive series, plus the technical details did distract me a bit so I'm settling for a solid 7 of 70% here.
Looking forward to your thoughts!
Oh, and would you be interested in watching some more OVAs in the next couple of days?
on my harddrive and it's from the same creator and has been compared to Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 so I'd definitely be interested in checking it out. Another one I've recently stumbled upon would be this one: http://myanimelist.net/anime/3574/Switch
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