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Jun 24, 2022
If I were 14 years old, I would have probably liked this anime. I would have thought that it was very profound and interesting. But I'm older. I'm mature enough to understand that it's not.
Platinum End is the third work from the Ohba-Obata creative team, the same that gave us Death Note sixteen years ago. Yes, it has been sixteen years since Death Note has ended and has become the favourite manga and anime for people who have never read or seen other manga or anime. They also made Bakuman, but no one seem to know. Anyway, Platinum End has been considered the spiritual
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follower of Death Note, a definition that makes me shiver. I would actually say that Platinum End is the opposite of Death Note.
Platinum End starts with a guy named Mirai (which means "future", funny, isn't it?) that tries to kill himself, but is saved by an angel named Nasse. This angel gives him angel wings and two angelic arrows, one that is red and makes you fall in love with him and the other one that is white and kills whoever is hit by it. Mirai is part of a competition between him and other 12 people who, in 999 days, must decide who will be the new God.
The point of all the series, just like Death Note and many other work of fiction, is to show that humans are disgusting and they would do anything for power and so on. But at least Death Note was able to make some interesting point about justice and was actually compelling to read and watch (at least, until the end of the first part). Platinum End becomes stupid after the first episode. Because we see the entrance on the battlefield of Metropoliman, one of the most stupid, uninteresting, cliché comic book villain I have ever seen. It's one of those parodies of rich people that is so idiotic that makes me think something like that one of the authors met a rich person, hated it and wanted to make him or her the bad guy of a work of fiction to get some revenge.
If you watch PE on Crunchyroll, it says that it is for "mature viewing", but I think that anyone over the age of 21 would laugh at the moral discussions that happens in this anime. People seriously discussing things like "I would like to become God so that people who commit suicide will be praised", or the fact that a person says "If I become God, I wouldn't do anything" and a character has an epiphany over that are two of my favourite moments from this exhibition of filth. There are so many discussions and dialogues that are so abysmal I could make a compilation, name it "these lines were written by a human being" and put it on youtube for your entertainment. But it would be too long, I would have to put up all the series. Maybe without the ending, because it's so bad that it wouldn't make you laugh.
Even from an aesthetic point of view, Platinum End fails terribly. The art style is mediocre, but what actually strikes me is the terrible direction. For the first part there are some moments in which I thought I was watching a Jojo parody, when the color palette violently shifts like how it happens in the first season of the Jojo anime. After that, the direction becomes much more average, for our boredom's joy. The anime doesn't have a coherent tone and the pace is incredibly slow: it could have last 18 episodes, since the two major battles that happen in the series both last 3 episodes and are incredibly slow. Also, how can it be considered funny watching people shooting arrow at each other while flying at high speed? There is no possibility for stealth, no other strategies aside from making someone else intervene. The music, at least, is worth some praise, some pieces where really good.
Also, do I really have to talk about an episode in which we nearly see a graphic scene of sex between two 14-years old girls? What is this, an hentai?
Platinum End would like to be yet another morality play on power, life, death and divinity, but it not only fails at trying to give any kind of insight on these themes, it also fails at being even remotely interesting. At least, the other inspiration for this work, Mirai Nikki, was fun to watch. This is boring too. Do yourself a favour and skip this thing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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May 21, 2022
I love vampires, when they are represented the right way: as the incarnation of sins, of excesses, of vices. In Vampire in the Garden, in a way, they still are: they have fun, they do what they want, they kill and eat people and don't give a damn. So why can't I actually like this thing?
The story is about these two girls, Fine, who is a vampire queen, and Momo, who is the daughter of a human general, that take a like in each other. However, vampires and humans are at war, and because of this the world as we know it is reaching its
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end. So, Momo and Fine want to find a place, called Eden, where vampires and humans can live together peacefully.
The plot sounds good and the background is interesting. What frustrates me is that the series never reaches its full potential.
When I reached the fourth episode, I thought like "ok, next episode it's the end of part 1, then we'll wait some months for part 2". Instead, episode 5 just ends the thing and it's really anti-climatic. I think that there was still a lot to say, about this world, about these characters. The fact that music is forbidden because vampires have a very good hearing and that, with time, paintings and statues too started being seen as "vampire culture" and as such, they are forbidden too, sounded a bit strange, but it was good. Momo wants to live a "real" life, and what kind of life would be interesting, for her, without pleasures like art and entertainment? This is not "living", it's just "surviving". However, this concept is only superficially explored.
It's a real shame, because Wit Studio and Production IG gave us something that had a very good, if not that original, art style and incredible animations. Some scenes were something you could see more often in a movie, than in a tv series. So much effort for something that never actually click. What a disappointment. Also, I was somehow surprised for the lack of gory violence, despite it being a series about vampires: I don't mean that every work of this kind must have beheadings and disembowelling, but a bomb explodes in the face of a girl and she's still in one piece, without any visible scar. I mean, come on.
Nonetheless, it's just five episodes, so if you like vampires you may find it worth your time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 17, 2021
I'm italian and I'm a lifelong fan of Lupin. It was broadcasted in early afternoon, right after lunch, when I was a kid, and I used to watch it after I came home from school. Like many italian kids of my generation, I grew up with Dragon Ball, the Simpsons and Lupin III.
So when Amazon Prime put this on, I was glad I could finally see it. And I had great fun, sure, but I have also some issue.
The italian adventure of Lupin III and his friends starts with a new entry in the team, a girl named Rebecca that marries (sort of) the
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king of thieves and wants to become one herself. But it won't be so easy, and they will also end up in a series of conspiracies involving MI6, italian history and all sorts of treasures to plunder.
The arts are gorgeous.
A thing that never failed to amaze me was the incredible attention to details that the artists of the series had for every single panel. Not only that, but also the colors and the animations were incredible. It was also beautiful to see a lot of hand-drawn animation and not the overaboundance of CGI that we commonly see nowadays. I have nothing against the use of CGI, mind you, it's just that I prefer traditional animations. I find them more "authentic", if you get me.
Despite having a plot, the season is mostly made of standalone episodes, with many focusing on single characters of the team. However, I have to say that even these are mostly Lupin-centric, with Goemon, Jigen and Fujiko having not a lot time to shine. Despite this, some episodes are really well made, like the one about the haunted castle. Zenigata is still the best character, having even an episode that is pure bromance.
The main villain, whose identity I will not write here, is however one the main flaws of the series. Because he is, well, an historical character who is well known for having done pretty good things in his life, and here he becomes some kind of a super-fascist. Something that made me feel uneasy.
The other thing that I really disliked is the way they used Italy. Aside from showing Rome, Milan and some other monument, most of the series doesn't really use Italy well. Why Lupin never tried, for example, to steal something from the world famous Uffizi Museum in Florence? Why cities like Turin or Naples (aside from a copycat Napoli Football Club appearing) are never mentioned, no less the place of a heist? San Marino is used much better, with the architecture of the city and its monuments being a main point for the plot of the entire series. There are even two episodes that are set in France and Japan, probably because they had no more ideas about how to set episodes in the Beautiful Country.
But aside from that, I can't say I didn't have fun. Aside from an episode or two (especially the one with the zombies in Venice), most of the series was incredibly satisfying to watch. So, it's definitely recommended.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 30, 2021
I've been always very surprised to see the rating for this show. I like Seven Deadly Sins, I've watched the first three (four for Netflix) seasons consecutively in two or three months, and recently I've rewatched this third/fourth season to prepare myself for the fifth and final. And, to be honest, this time I understood much better why the rating were so low.
Now, this season of Seven Deadly Sins is about Meliodas' rebirth and his will to save Elizabeth from a curse they share. However, things gets quickly worse after the appearence of several demons who want to bring Meliodas back to the dark side,
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much to the dismay of his comrades.
What I liked about SDS was the fact that it was a very simple shonen anime in a fantasy setting, but that it also gave a lot of space to its characters. The plot is luckily not too protagonist-centric, as after even the first season, you could see a change in all characters. Even members of the supporting cast such as Griamore or Gilthunder grow and become different character from what they were in the beginning. There are some problems, indeed, with the plot twists, that sometimes are a bit too Deus ex machina-ish, or absurd (such as the one with Merlin in the previous season), but for the most part they didn't bother me.
The problem with the third/fourth season is, to me, that it's not only veeeery slow, but also that, unluckily, it jumps the shark.
While making a plot not too linear is the basic of writing a long story, what happens to Meliodas and the death of certain characters are a bit too much. They all seem way too sudden, and it does not seem to matter that much. A character dies? Oh well, ok, he died. A good guy becomes evil? Well, sh*t happens.
It seems like, despite these things, the plot will remain the same. "Despite that dead of an important character, the ending will still be the same, so don't worry about it!", but then, why should I care?
All in all, the third/fourth season seems to be there just to elongate the plot, and nothing more.
While the soundtrack remains superb, way too many times it seem badly utilized, which leads us to the following problem: the direction.
Many are disappointed by the lame animations that Studio Deen provided, but i feel that, instead, the real problem comes from a direction that wants only to give us the scene as they are presented in the manga, rather than give them some strength and impact. The One Piece anime is slow and criticized for stretching way too much its episode, but sometimes they add very beautiful action scenes, with spectacular animations and a lot of frames. Instead, what can we say about this season of SDS? The fight scenes are static and uninteresting, like if they were there just because they had to put them in.
I can only hope that the final season will be better. But this one has lowered my enthusiasm for an anime I was really loving.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 27, 2021
Record of Ragnarok is bad, but I enjoyed it somehow.
If you have read other reviews from me, you know that I highly value the "enjoyment" from the series I watch. I would go as far as saying that there are works of fiction that I find appaling, some 3-out-of-10 things that I would nonetheless somehow appreciate because, at least, I had fun watching them. Well, Record of Ragnarok falls under this category.
This anime series is about the fact that the Gods of every human pantheon have decided to destroy humanity; however, a valkyrie, Brunhilde, asks for the Ragnarok, a 13 humans vs 13 Gods tournament,
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to decide wether or not humans must be exterminated, and they accept.
And the series it's... just that. It's a tournament. The most basic archetypical plot/story arc in action anime history. A fighting tournament.
Aside from the fact that the plot is ripped off from Mortal Kombat and some other things, and the fact that it doesn't actually care about mythology and myths, despite talking about Gods and heroes... Well, no, there is nothing. There isn't any positive narrative quality here. Record of Ragnarok has a slow pace and many battles look like a JRPG fight, more than a real Baki or Kengan Ashura-like fights. "I hit with this!" "Ok, now I'll hit you with that!" and so on.
A thing that also baffled me is that there wasn't even some interesting use of animations. I expected some jaw-dropping fight scene, with lots of frames and fluid animations, and instead there were just the typical, uninspired war of blows. Which is cool in pro-wrestling matches, not in an anime series. It is also a shame, since I like Graphinica as a studio and the art style was very good: I liked that attention to details and the use of inks.
Returning to the point of the series not caring about mythologies... well. Some characters have powers that they don't have in myths, or don't use powers that instead, they should have. Several times, the plot goes like "Yes, the legends says this, but instead, let me tell you the truth". Even when we speak about gods and heroes whose personalities are very well explained in legends, they change it completely to better fit the story. For some, this will be ok, but not to me: if you decide to make a series about already existing characters, why you should change them? You are basically using their names just to excuse your lack of fantasy and writing ability.
Aside from deities and legendary tales, the characters are also incredibly bland. The characters that appear and fight only for one episode in Kengan Ashura are better characterized than every character appearing in the series. Yes, even of those showing up for all the episodes.
Despite this, and the fact that I gave it a mediocre rating, I would not say it is not to recommend. It is bad, indeed, but it's not god-awful boring. You will end up say that it sucked, but you will say it probably at least smiling about the experience. Because in the end, Record of Ragnarok is slow, badly written and blandly animated, but it's funny and entertaining.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jun 18, 2021
Seven Days War (as Netflix names it in my country) is an average movie with average visuals and average characters. And that, I think you will get it, is a pretty average summary of it.
I liked this movie: it's 87 minutes of fun, a very simple story of rebellion of the youngsters against the adult, a celebration of youth itself and a satire of the japanese society. If the production wanted to give us just this - a regular movie to turn off the brain and have fun for a hour and a half - then, they did it. Bravo. But if they think they
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made a good movie, like Penguin Highway, they're wrong.
Seven Days War is about Mamoru, a shy boy who is in love with Aya, a schoolmate. One day, he finds out that she will leave the small town they live in for Tokyo, because of his father's job. She, however, disagrees, but her father not only doesn't listen to her, but also treats her poorly, thinking that she should just obey him, since adults obey their superiors. So she and Mamoru escapes for her last seven days in town in a dilapidated factory with some friends. Here, however, they found out that a young illegal immigrant is living there.
The biggest problem with the movie is that I don't give a damn about his character. I could understand Mamoru, but all the others are as interesting as a chair, and that's a shame, because I think that they could have given them much more space. If the movie had last 110 minutes, maybe we would have had better characters, that around the end, when an "important moment together" happens, we would have actually cared about. Instead, we have them just doing regular things until the end, and "that" moment seems much less important. The plot, in itself, is interesting, but with this cardboard characters, is it really worth a watch? Even the arts and the animations are not that great, there are TV Animes that are far more interesting.
I don't want to be too harsh on the movie, because in the end I had fun, I was actually entertained, but if I go a little deeper, I found nothing worth of note.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 3, 2021
I have grown up with Dragon Ball. Here in Italy is so famous, that when I was small, even Naruto and One Piece were called "Dragon Ball". Parents did not say "are you watching anime/cartoons?", they said "are you watching Dragon Ball?"
However, growing up I became less and less interested in Dragon Ball. I started finding it boring and superficial, a big spectacle with not that interesting characters and story arcs. Dragon Ball's characters, with few exceptions, were characterized only by their will to fight, and only sometimes by protecting the world or their loved ones. My little brother, however, started reading the Dragon Ball
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Super manga, and so I started doing it too (they were basically free comic books, for me). Despite it wasn't that great, I liked the fact that it was different, it had more development and gave some more space to the characters' personal lives. So I decided, two years and a half after its release, to watch this movie (thank you, Netflix), and I was astonished.
If you are familiar with Dragon Ball Abridged, you can get what I think about Broly: he's cool, but his characterization doesn't make sense. He is not an enemy, he's an obstacle, he's just something (not some"one") that the protagonists must fight in order to fill 69 minutes of film. So I was pretty happy to see him transformed into a much more defined person, someone with feelings and personality, and not just a wild animal that turns his hairs green and fights. But aside from this, it is fun seeing Toryiama finally giving some sense to the Dragon Ball origins and mythos, rewriting its lore in order to make it less chaotic.
The very simple plot starts some time after the end of the DBS anime, with our heroes chilling when Freezer, who has found Broly, a surprisingly powerful sayian warrior on a lonely planet, comes to Earth to take the Dragon Balls and defeat Goku and Vegeta once and for all. The movie is divided in three chapter: the first two are mostly made of exposition, with just some action here and there. But the third part, oh boy. One of the most beautiful fight I have ever seen in more than twenty years of being an anime enthusiast. It's beuatifully drawn, directed, animated, even the sound design and the soundtrack are incredible. I expected something great from director Tatsuya Nagamine, who has directed the final 60 episodes of Dragon Ball Super and is currently working on One Piece, but not such an outstanding clash between some of the most famous heroes and villains of japanese animation. A beautiful mixture of 2D and 3D animations, an exhibition of colors and action that I'm only sad, I haven't watched in a cinema, but just on a tv screen.
It has some flaws, it is a bit slow in the central part, and the ending is not that great, but I don't care. This is the best Dragon Ball film I have ever seen and one of the best thing happened to this franchise since Dragon Ball Abridged (and, if we count that out, the Cell saga). And even if you don't like or don't know Dragon Ball that well, trust me, you have to watch this. It's simply breathtaking.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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May 20, 2021
My Hero Academia is a strange series.
It has a terrible pace, predictable plot twists, an obnoxious protagonist and an even more insufferable rival. But it has its moments, good action scenes and interesting villains.
If you haven't seen the first season of this show, you can go on, because it's barely a prologue to this 25 episode second season, that is divided in three main arcs, one more predictable than the others: a fighting tournament, a fight with a ninja with superpowers and an exam (which is actually another tournament).
To start, MHA is about Izuku Midoriya, a guy that has no superpowers in
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a world where 80% of the population has one. One day, the greatest superhero of all, All Might, gives him his own powers and so he can fulfill his dream of becoming a hero. But he has first to graduate from the Yuuei, the most important superhero academy of the country.
Starting with the fact that a "Superhero academy" is a stupid idea, the point with MHA is that is pointless. The series would be about overcoming your own weaknesses in order to become better, but the protagonist, who has no powers (and this could be used in a "I'll become the strongest powerless human" scenario) obtains powers because they are given to him. He goes from being the weakest to be one of the strongest character with no actual fatigue (and no, a montage of him cleaning a beach won't convince me of having worked hard to achieve the best superpower in the world). It's like Naruto, who is actually from the start one of the strongest character in the manga/anime, but is hold back from, basically, being an idiot. Why I should care about such characters? And don't make me start talking about Bakugo, a character that is both a parody of the "angry warrior" (Wolverine, Gatsu) archetype and the apex of the edgy teenager.
Luckily, the author(s) of MHA created some fairly good villain, with Shibaraki and Stain, who seem to come from an horror film and who have some motivation. But what I liked the most is the commentary on the "coolness" of being a bad guy, on the fact that people feel fascinated from this characters just because they are on the dark side and have a motivation for what they do. It is interesting: finally someone tells you "ok, the Joker may be cool and all, but you must remember that he's some f**king mass murderer".
I also really liked the arcs of the secondary characters, especially Shoto Todoroki, who has a great backstory with which many could relate to. Even Iida's storyline makes more sense than everything related to All Might, Midoriya and Bakugo. I could argue that one of the main problems of MHA is having chosen the wrong protagonist.
The action scenes are cool and the animation very good, much better than the first season. The sound design is very good too, but I find the soundtrack not that great, despite the famous "You say run" track.
My hero academia is undoubtedly funny to watch because of all the fights and the spectacle, but is very shallow and falsely inspirational, with a supporting cast immensely more interesting than its main cast. Its success is to me a mistery. Maybe the "hero mania" of the first 2010s due to the success of the Marvel movies? Maybe. But what does this series adds to the already existing 80 years (at the time of the release, about 75 years) of superhero comic books? Nothing new.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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May 7, 2021
Dragon's Dogma would like to talk in deep about the human nature, good and evil and many other moral themes, but it fails terribly at doing it.
This is how I would summarize this anime in a few words.
I played the game on which it is based years ago, and I enjoyed it, but the problem with the anime is not that it has just the premise in common with the game. The problem is that is very bad, starting from the bad CGI, the wooden animations and the generic character design. I don't expect all 3D animes to be like Dorohedoro or Beastars, but this
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looked really bad.
The plot, in itself, is very simple: a dragon destroys a village and kills the pregnant wife and the adoptive son of the protagonist, Ethan, who swear vengeance against him. The dragon takes his heart away, until he will find him and take it back. For his journey, Ethan will be helped by a Pawn, a being with no will that will always help him no matter what. While traveling, they will meet several people who, somehow, are always victim of one of the seven deadly sins (no pun intended) and that show them the evil of humanity.
But, how can someone fail at making something so simple? Well, that's a great question.
If this was not the first anime, but the first work of fiction you have ever met, you could say that it is at least interesting. But this is made for a mature audience (it's 14+ in my country), even if someone have watched, say, Naruto, they would already seen better. Dragon's Dogma tries to talk about the way human hurt each other because of wrath, greed, gluttony and so on, and asks you how can we continue to enjoy being human if there is such evilness. The problem is that not only it doesn't answer this question, but gives the spectator not much to think about it. 80% of what is shown in the series are terrible things people do to each other: if an alien saw this, they would think that we must be exterminated.
But aside even from this, everything is very childish and rushed, with characters dying like idiots and without any pathos, or doing something evil (and stupid) only to give some meaning to the episode. And don't let me talk about its terrible ending.
It's nearly astonishing that it tries so hard to be deep and meaningful, that it fails not only in this, but in every other aspect.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Apr 3, 2021
The problem with Plunderer is its fanservice. Or better, the way it uses fanservice.
I have nothing against it when it's taken lightly, but here it goes way beyond the simple "let's show boobs and asses for our male audience". Here there are scenes of harassment and groping that are treated like it's a normal thing to do. I mean, come on. That's gross.
Now that we have taken this out of the way, let's talk about the anime. Which is a pretty average work of fiction, with some interesting ideas and some pretty bad moments.
Plunderer is a fantasy anime set in the world of Alcia, where
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everything is decided by a count carved in your skin. The higher it is, the stronger you are, and when it goes down to 0, you fall into the abyss. What is the abyss? No one knows. The counts are different from person to person: some counts the kilometers they walk, some the people they satisfy, and so on.
The protagonist, Hina, is a girl whose mother was taken into the abyss. Before this could happen, she asked her daughter to find "The Ace", who would have somehow helped her.
Plunderer has many ideas (the count, for example, and also the mistery surrounding Alcia and its history) that are pretty good. Many times, along the series, I told myself "wow, I wasn't expecting that". There are a lot of plot twists and arcs that are very well conceived.
However, this is also from where most of the problems of the series come from. To reach the second arc of the series, for example, a certain female character does something that makes you ask "Ok, so why she hasn't done that before? Why hasn't she used that power to save that character, or to beat that enemy?"
Many characters have interesting backstories, but their characterization is very bland and formulaic, with only two characters that I can actually say I liked a lot. And that are also the reason I wait the second season.
Also, it has a bizarre pace.
You need to wait 8 episodes before the series actually starts, and after that, you also get an episode of, well, fanservice.
Yes, fanservice is all over the place, and it even becomes a part of the plot at a certain point. Kill La Kill taught us a lot.
On a technical level, there isn't much to say. Art and animation are pretty average, with the final fight of the series being however well directed, and the soundtrack has some good tunes that I found quite original.
In the end, Plunderer is not that bad as many of the reviews make it look like, but is certainly not that good either. If you need some fantasy anime to watch, between Fairy Tail and Seven Deadly Sins, or maybe something very simple and funny to pass some time, it may be for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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