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Jan 18, 2020
I..... have never been so angry while watching something from a series I love before. Caution, this review is COMPLETELY biassed and fueled by so much anger and hate that Angra Mainyu should be telling me to calm down right about now. Look, I'm a reasonable man. I understand that this was shown in theater. People were expecting this to be a fanservice festival, but I knew it wasn't going to be that. Not only was this going to be shown in theaters but this is part of the Phantasm series. And I loved Carnival Phantasm, I did. I enjoy wacky humor. I enjoy senseless
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comedy. But what I cannot tolerate, what sends me into a murderous frenzy is being lied to. Look at the key art. Look at the previews. Look at the webpage. Seriously, look here:
http://anime.prisma-illya.jp/movie/prismaphantasm/img/pre/visual_01.jpg
Who do you see? You see Illya, Kuro, Miyu, their friends, Gil, Ruby, Saphire, Shiro, Rin, Luvia. Who do you not see? Shinji and Kotomine. GUESS WHAT 90% OF THE GODDAMN THING IS? SHINJI AND KOTOMINE! And you know what's worse? They're not even funny. Like... at all. Maybe I was just too enraged to appreciate the humor. But then I watched it again. Didn't help. I was still raging. What's worse then making a bad joke? Repaeating said bad joke hour more times. Yeah, they do that. They basically have one joke for Kotomine and they keep repeating it. Shinji doesn't fair much better. The final arc was relatively amusing. It's also the only one where Illya actively participates.
Why? What happened? Why did they think this was a good idea? The director AND the writer are the same ones from the TV seires. So how the hell could they think this is what the fans want? This boggles the mind. You should read the Amazon.jp reviews. 33% gave a 1 star. Yeah, Japan did not like this either.
And it's not like they didn't have material. There's tons of extra chapters from the manga that could have been adapted. But nope... Kotomine and Shinji... that's what Prisma Illya fans wanted. We need Avenger for this mess.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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May 23, 2018
This is a review for all 6 movies. Some spoiler are included because they show just how much of a mess these movies were. And it's nothing the freaking posters didn't spoil anyway.
As a big fan of Digimon Adventure (one of the first anime I ever watched) I was looking forward to a continuation. I know 02 had a lot of flaws. I didn't really like the ending to it and was looking forward to maybe a retcon. I did not get my wish. What I got was a continuation that pretty much spat in the face of almost every Digimon Adventure fan. They did
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not get a single thing right in these "movies". I use quotation makrs because they are not really movies. It's a 2 cour series bungled into 6 movies. That alone created problems to the story. So let's get into it, shall we?
Story: The 2nd biggest offender of these movies. The story is weak. Very weak. And at times is just doesn't make sense. Digimon can now go berserk and gain a giant boost of power. And I mean GIANT. It's like the levels don't even matter anymore. It's really a very simple story and you would think that being that simple it would be hard to get it wrong. But they do. They don't explain what they should be explaining when it happens. You have to wait a long time and sometimes you still don't get an explanation. The story immediately removes the cast of 02 from the movies and focuses on the original cast. Not really a problem if the 02 casts would have actually mattered for anything, but they literally don't. They're not even shown. The movies also tried to get you to care for a new characters: Mei and Meikomon. While Meikomon is cute, and has a slight development, Mei is worthless and brings the movies down. She's like a self-insert character written for the fanfic of a 12-year old girl who has a crush on Taichi. The pacing of these movies is absolutely terrible, in part because it's really a TV series and in part because it's plagues by filler. And I mean the bad kind of filler that's not even remotely interesting or important. Characters will stop the story to wallow in self-pity and angst for 30 minutes then go back to doing something plot related for 10 then spent 20 minutes doing slice-of-life BS. This happens in every movie. And by the end of the last movie, guess what? Nothing really mattered, nothing was really solved and they're just going to keep milking this. Oh, and the original Degidestined were retconned into not being the first digidestined. I guess that flashback in Adventure was just Homeostasis (the spirit who was possessing Hikari) lying. Oh, and there's this evil version of Gennai who's basically a stalker who likes to lick people. And he's evil and wants to do something. Something evil. And there's these 2 adults who were part of the original digidestined, and one of them goes nuts because her partner died and she wants to reset the digital work so that her partner come back to life. It works, but obviously the digimon no longer has his memory. Whoos. All the partner digimon also lose their memory which means one movie of BS with them trying to become friends again. But they get their memories back anyone two movies later so that was pointless. And why did they reset the digiworld anyway since the virus wasn't PART of the digital work so it would not have been affected anyway. And it wasn't. Whoops.
Art: Pretty good designs for the older cast. And that's where the compliments end. This show has terrible animation. That is when it botheres to HAVE animation. Many MANY scenes, including action scenes are slideshows of static pictures. The most glaring is a dance sequence in the 2nd or 3rd movie with literally no movement. I know TOEI have a reputation for being cheap, but this was a new low. Hey, rememeber how every digimon had it's own style for the evolution to Perfect and Mega levels? That's gone. Everyone uses the same uninspired and poorly animataed transformation for every level and every transformation. Who needs orginality anyway? I will give them credit for the fights that have Omegamon, Alphamon and Jesmon. Those were great.... but didn't ammount to anything. The final boss does have a nice desing but it's completely wastes since said boss was hardly animated.
Sound: Not much to say. They use the same theme songs but re-recorded. They don't sound as good as the originals. The voices are OK as well. Sound effects as well. The BGM is not memorable but it does its job.
Character: Way to ruin our favorites, TOEI. I know they grew up and have more issues to deal with, but come on. They turned Taichi from a fearless leader (his crest is COURAGE for pitty's sale) to a angsty mess who gets too scared to fight because people might get hurt.... WHILE PEOPLE ARE LITEARALLY GETTING HURT. Joe was also completely ruined. He already had a big epithamy in the TV show, but now he'd rather stay home and study then fight alongside his friends. Dude, I know you have exams, but you won't make it to them IF THE WORLD EXPLODES. They dragged this out for an entire movie. Also, Sora is jumping between Taichi and Matt because she can't decide who she really likes. Spoiler, it's Matt. Everyone already knew this. TK, who now dresses like the kind of hipster who thinks Starbucks is the best place in Earth, does the stupidest thing in the show by basically allowing his infected partner to infect every other partner. Mimi is now apparantly selfish because she takes too much initiative and drags people into her ideas. People that did not object to a single thing she said but now feel offended that she did not ask for their opinion. THEN SAY SOMETHING WHEN SHE PROPOSED IT! And then Mimi still comes to the conclusion that it was her fault. What? Hikari is sad for all 6 movies but I do not know why. Matt and Koushiro were pretty much the only ones acting like themselves. The digimon no longer have any personality beyond a single charatcer trait. Agumon eats a lot, Gabumon is shy, Patamon is cute, etc... And let's not forget the worse chcratcer of the movies: Mei. What a worthless sack of meat. She didn't do a damn thing for the whole thing and yet she's still written like we're supposed to feel sorry for her. At least Meikomon turned out to be the source of the virus (for some reason).
Enjoyment: What enjoyment? The only reason I finished them was because the 3rd movie was actually good and gave me hope. And not just good, but DAMN good. What happened? Did the good writers escape the prison for a movie? Fooled me once, shame on you. Fooled me twice, shame on me. Fooled me thrise, I'm a moron. This was a slog to get though. I wanted to skip half the scenes because they were just saying the same thing over and over again, but I was afraid I'd miss something. There was nothing to miss. This was pain. Pure pain. Not even the asspull of a new Omegamon form could make me smile.
Overall: This was a cashgrab. Not idea how much money they made but they didn't spend much anyway. If you really need your nostalgia tickled, I guess you could watch these movie. But you will most likely be sad by the end. Sad that this could have been a good story. But it wasn't.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jul 26, 2012
Well now, here's something that I was expecting to be a giant pile of horse crap. I mean, come ON, a show about AKB48 saving the world through song? That's so freaking dumb. And then I remembered Macross already did that... Wait... Kawamori Shouji is directing it? THE HELL? The director of Macross Zero, Aquarion, and Macross Frontier (among others) is directing a AKB48 anime? Color me intrigued. Series is composed by Okada Mari, who has some very good titles under her belt (Hanasaku Iroha, Gosick, Wondering Son). All in all, the production team seems solid.
So yeah, that's how I started watching this show, in
...
spite of all the ridicule I got from my friends. Am I sorry I watched it? Hell no, it turned out to be one of my favorites this past season. Please keep in mind that this review will contain spoilers.
Overview:
In hindsight, there have been far worse plots then "let's save the world through song". I'm looking at you, Queen's Blade. But, seems that the story is not exactly that. In the future space travel is possible. But in a strange twist, entertainment is banned on many planets. While they do not go in depth into what "entertainment" means in this world, from what I can tell, singing, dancing and concerts are against the law. I haven't been able to find out too much about this, but apparently, in 1948, Japan passed the Entertainment Business Control Law which was similar, but much less intrusive, then what is presented in this show. All in all, it's not completely implausible. We've already seen shows where books are banned. At first we aren't given a reason as to why this is happening, but we'll get into that later. AKB0048 is a rogue idol group that sweeps in and hold illegal concerts on planets where entertainment is banned, while fighting off the DES (anti-entertainment army). DES actually uses live ammo, so the idols could very well get killed. Still, they fight back with non-lethal weapons. During one such concert of Lancaastar, four young girls, Nagisa, Yuuka, Chieri and Orine, watch the concert and decide to join the group when they are older. And so begins their adventures from passing the audition, to actually getting there, to becoming part of their beloved idol group.
Plot:
The plot moves fairly fast. It takes two episodes for the girls to actually reach AKB0048 and another three for them to get to their first event. During that time, they train in both entertaining and fighting. Kawamori "The Troll" Shouji gives us an episode 3 right out of Macross, to the point where I was wondering if I downloaded the wrong show. Needless to say, all's well that ends well, after some high speed battles, songs and angst. Yup, that's our Kawamori. Also, there's a fan service episode at the beach... with plot in it. Don't see many of those.
Characters:
Here's where it gets interesting. The characters are a joy to watch. Nagisa is determined, but detests conflict. Yuuka is outgoing, and enjoys being in the center of attention. Orine is shy and very soft-spoken. Chieri is cold, distant and extremely competent. Of course, she gets much more mellow once we learn her reason for being so cold. She also tends to be painfully blunt when trying to help, which makes her seem mean and only out for herself. On the way to AKB0048, they meet three more girls: Sonata, Suzuko and Makoto. Sonata is the youngest of the group, full of energy and well... adorable. Suzuko is quiet and very knowledgeable Makoto is shy, loud, and has low self-esteem. Not sure how she got there... to be honest. Once on Akihabastar (yes, horrible pun, I know) we meet the final two understudies: Kanata and Mimori. Kanata is Sonata's big sister and Mimori is Kanata's best friend. These two have been understudies for two years. That's a LOT. Of these characters, most get some decent development, while some are neglected for now. They act surprisingly realistic for this type of show, and the dynamics between them are quite good. They are, in a way, paired up to each other (Nagisa & Chieri, Yuuka & Orine, Suzuko & Sonata & Makoto, Kanata & Mimori). Still, some of the best character development comes from the current successors of Takamina and Yuuko, part of the first to learn the selection process. They will probably develop the characters even more in the second season, coming 2013.
Art:
The art is hit and miss. No, not hit OR miss. The normal art for the characters, the backgrounds and the rest is fine. I am very fond of the character designs. But, during the concerts, the switch to CG for some of the dance. It looks jarring, and really, I don't know why they keep doing this. Still, it's not unwatchable, even though the CG in the first couple of episodes is pretty bad. The action scenes are great. Well, he directed Macross, for Pete’s sake, they'd better be.
Voice acting:
OK, this one's special. The main character are voiced by actual members of AKB48. Now, the girls of AKB48 are not voice actors, and that's painfully obvious in the first episodes. I got used to their voices fairly quick though, and they do a good job of making you feel the right emotions. The current successors are voiced by very experienced staff and do a great job. Not much to say about this, really.
Music:
AKB48 songs, what did you expect? Still, they are very good, and the singing battles are fantastic. I especially loved Beginner and Ooge Diamond. The emotions transmitted during those songs were absolutely fantastic (despair and team work, love and hope). There are a ton of songs, and they are all quite decent, but those two are fantastic. Oh, and the OP/ED are featured in the last episode, with the ED actually being a plot point.
Final thoughts:
This was entertaining as all hell. I couldn't wait till the next episode, and now I'm going to have to wait till 2013 for more. This show got a lot of hate, much of it before it even aired, just for being about AKB48. Many still bash it, even though they most likely haven't seen it. If you enjoyed Macross Frontier, you will enjoy this. Just watch it, and make a decision for yourself. I hope this review got you at least a little bit interested.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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