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Jul 16, 2023
Not to be confused with Ghost in the Shell 2 Innocence, Ghost in the Shell 2.0 is an attempt to remaster/modernize the original Ghost in the Shell movie, therefore I won't focus on the overall quality of the movie just on the changes that 2.0 may add or subtract from the original which is one of the greatest cinematic achievements in anime.
Take these observations from someone who loves the original and watched both versions at the same time alternating between them every 5 to 10 minutes to compare them both.
This version does not change absolutely anything in terms of dialogue and scenes. Nothing was
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added or removed that it wasn't shown in the original. They both have the exact same length.
The most obvious change, and as others point out, the biggest detriment is the CGI introduced in this version. The original also had CGI scenes but it was much more subtle, in this version the change from animation to CGI is very noticeable. I don't see much of an issue to change just the original CG scenes with more modern ones, but they also changed animated scenes such as the iconic dive at the beginning and the vision of an angel near the end, and that is borderline sacrilege in my opinion. Having said that, don't dismiss this version yet...
A positive change, though a very small one, is that in the old version since it was animated by hand and photography, not digitally like modern anime, you can faintly see a small shaking in the image and this new version improves that.
Another small change is they added a filter that balances down the image to a more darker tone from the brighter blue and green tone of the original in an attempt to make it feel more cinematic. I personally don't see the necessity other that it helps to balance out their added orange/brown CGI scenes with the rest of the movie.
Now the BIGGEST PLUS and possibly game-changer in this version is the audio, done by none other than Skywalker Sound of Lucasfilm. Everything sounds substantially better from music, to sound effects, to the dialogue which was re-recorded by the original voice actors word for word in both English and Japanese.
The improved audio makes this version very worth it despite the other negatives already mentioned.
In summary:
The very bad - Changing iconic animated scenes to CGI
The kind of bad - Changing the previous orange/blue CGI scenes to more modern orange/brown CGI.
The neutral - The darker filter.
The kind of good - Fixing the image shaking
The very VERY good - The improved audio.
Don't dismiss this version. You can't go wrong with either, whether you yourself want to experience Ghost in the Shell for the first time, or introduce someone else to it. The improved audio makes it very worth checking out even if you are a fan of the original who considers it perfect as it is.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jul 12, 2023
Not really a story but more of a character exposé. The character, Yozo Oba, is young, rich, charismatic, talented, good-looking, sensitive, and innocent, much too perfect to see yourself in, but kind of an "I wish I was like that" character. To his perfection gets added a dose of psychological trauma which will be the source of conflict that spins his life out of control despite how easy good things happen to him.
From trauma, to depression, to despair, to addictions, to paranoia, to ruin, a progression that feels very real that touches your deep fibers even if the character originally felt too perfect to be
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real. It is that perfection that makes a point about mental illness: That it could happen to anyone. Nobody is as great as Yozo, but everyone has their strengths and chance at happiness that will ultimately be robbed of when going down this path.
The manga is well illustrated and reads very well. It could be a 10/10, or not for you, depending what you were looking to get out of it. I give it an 8 because I feel like I've seen better takes on this topic, but not in manga though (yet).
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jul 2, 2023
To say that Aria is a slice-of-life about gondolas doesn't do it justice. What Aria really is, is a working-class fable of leaving home at 15 to learn a trade and subsequently join the grind, but veiled in a wonderful fantasy set in the distant future in a majestic replica of the city of Venice in terraformed Mars.
Through the eyes of the protagonist, the burdens of arriving at an unknown place, meeting new people, dealing with inexperience, dullness, loneliness, and the pressures of competition and responsibility are always seen in a very positive and uplifting way.
Reading Aria is very relaxing and heartwarming. The gondolas are
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just a macguffin, meaning it's not really about them. Aria is about how life can be pure bliss and beautiful.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Dec 16, 2021
Violet Evergarden the series is very good and enjoyable, I gave it an 8/10. Some of its best elements such as the amazing music score, its characters, beautiful illustrations and visual designs are still present in this movie. The problem is that this movie adds very little to what, in my view, the series was about, and even undermines the investment made in the series.
This movie, which is long and doesn't really feel like a proper movie, is more like a 6 episode arc that recycles themes from some of its best episodes to deliver a very predictable, drawn-out, and unnecessary fanservice conclusion.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jul 2, 2019
*This is a review of the censored version*
Description:
Four voluptuous, lonely, and immature 23-24 year old women, who happen to work in the education system, have a crush on four 17-18 year old male students who look older and more mature than them.
Each episode has two 6 min scenarios where random coincidences and improbable mishaps pit the teachers and the students together in situations of accidental nudity and unintentional sexual contact. The sexual scenes are graphic but they get covered by strategically placed censorship messages.
Ecchi comedy is the main focus, but they also included a romance angle in an attempt to dignify the vulgarity.
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My opinion:
It fails at everything it tries to be: Comedy, Romance, and Erotica. There isn't anything worthwhile from any angle.
I'll admit I thought the first scenario in the restroom was funny. At first, it’s amusing how something so stupid and grotesque was made into a relatively mainstream anime. That is where I should have quit, because it gets old really fast, like by the fourth scenario, and there was still 20 more left to go.
I thought that as the season progressed, and introduced each new teacher with a different personality, it would bring some freshness and variety to it, which is why I kept watching it, but the scenarios kept feeling the same with nothing special or different, even getting more and more non-creative and unimaginative.
The romance is quickly hacked because the ecchi takes up most of the 6 minute scenario and it’s put together with often nonsensical dialogue. It takes the characters getting to third base, not once, but multiple times, for them to finally realize each other's feelings. Three of the students expressed negative views about their teacher's personality at some point.
I wouldn't even recommend this as something to get off to, if that's what you wanted. At times, the censorship gets so big that you have no clue what exactly happened, but it's clearly all poorly-animated generic hentai anyway. There is no interesting build-up, or a good sense of anticipation to the erotic scenes, nor anything creative in the way that they happen.
They did everything they could to kill off the taboo of dating a teacher. They made the teachers immature (one of them even acts like a loli). The students look older and more mature than the teachers, not to mention that they're just weeks away from graduation. The mom encourages her son to have sex with the teacher. They made them childhood friends, which makes that relationship supersede their student-teacher relationship. So why did they make a show that taps into the dating a teacher fetish and then backpedal from it as much as they can? I don’t get it. They're trying to say that, on paper, they are technically teacher and student, but in fairness, they practically aren't. Then what the hell is the point!?
In conclusion:
It's not funny. It's not romantic. It's not erotic. Gets old and repetitive. Lacks more imagination and thought put into it. It’s really not worthwhile.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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May 25, 2019
It's an intriguing roller coaster ride, but not much else. Intrigue is what keeps you watching it.
The Promised Neverland is a battle of wits, a genre where Death Note is king. The battle of wits is between a group of children, who believed they were living a happy existence, against the adults and the system, who they've come to realize are not what they seem and are a threat to their well-being.
The true nature of the world that they live in is a mystery that very slowly unfolds as they poke holes in it. The intrigue of learning what exactly is this world, and
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what will happen next, as their strategies to defeat it succeed and fail with the impending threat upon them, is what drives this show and will keep you interested.
The characters are only enough to let you know their motivation. The best thing about them is their facial expressions that transmit dramatically well the feeling of dread, horror, despair, and malice to sell the experience. That horror experience is what characterizes the show at its best.
It glues you, however, I feel that once you've watched it, and you know what happens, there is no reason to go back and revisit any of it. There are no parts where you might have missed something and get something new out of it, or moments worth re-living. At episode 8, I felt that you could get anybody up to speed in less than 5 minutes and they wouldn't be missing anything. I also don't see what more they could do after the events of this season without the show turning into something different.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Apr 10, 2018
As a complete package I must say it's quite flawed. Great concepts with poor execution in certain aspects, but Megazone 23 is still a definite must-see for anyone into the sci-fi genre.
The OVA is in three parts and each one is more different from the other than you'll expect. On all three of them the animation is top-notch but different aesthetically.
The design and animation of the technology the characters interact with is brilliant. Feels like they had someone with engineering expertise design them. It's still kinda funny how in the 80's they couldn't imagine computer displays to be anything but monochromatic with vector-like graphics,
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I must say.
The music is also fantastic with some great 80's J-Pop and hair metal that gives it a really cool personality of the time (if you're into that sort of thing).
The story, characters, and the quality of the voice acting is where I think Megazone 23 falls short. The concept and overall theme are what's good, it was a first of it's kind that inspired so many other works for future generations (The Matrix for example). The storytelling is what failed grab me. I thought it got confusing at times and the characters didn't quite stood up.
Although everyone seems to praise Part I the most, I think my favorite had to be Part III which is fantastic by itself. It has the best animation and art design by far. Part I's art design was cool in a more cartoony sort of way, then in Part II they tried to give it a more mature approach which I thought was weird and looked like something out of an early 90's punky beat em up like Double Dragon or Final Fight, but in Part III they got the perfect balance. The story in Part III is also better told and better paced, and manages to clear things up from the overall lore and a few plot-holes left in the previous parts. I think the character design was so much better in Part III as well, and I dare suspect that Final Fantasy VII might have had some inspiration from it. I liked Eiji as a protagonist a lot more than Shogo.
Part III is where I think Megazone 23 comes together more polished and it's what halted me from rating it lower. I don't understand why people talk about it as if it was something extra or unnecessary.
Megazone 23 is not the kind of work that stands tall on it's own, but rather one that inspires other great works that follow its steps, for that reason I think it's a must-see for everyone looking to enrich their scope of the art-form and sci-fi genre.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jun 19, 2017
I wasn't familiar with the Blame! franchise when I watched this. I thought that this movie did a good job at introducing you to its world, the driving forces within it, and the protagonist, but there isn't much of a story being told here.
In the world of Blame!, humans once had robots and advanced AI to serve and protect them. One day, for some unknown reason, the machines turned against humanity and set out to exterminate them all. For thousands of years, the machines have been endlessly building upon the city while they also hunt down all remaining humans. These remaining humans live in tribes
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scattered throughout a city that doesn’t seem to have an end in sight in any direction, which includes above and below, because of how long the machines have been building nonstop.
A mysterious lone wanderer by the name of Killy travels the city in search of a human that will possess what is called a Net Terminal Gene, which is believed to be the only way to get the machines back in human control.
Without spoiling anything, the plot of the movie ends back in square one with more questions than answers. I imagine that the purpose was just to introduce the world of Blame!. Perhaps it was to promote the manga or lay the groundwork for a future series, in which case I am definitely in for.
It’s a very interesting concept of a world full of mysteries that can spawn an endless amount of stories within it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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May 22, 2017
Cliché, but very entertaining…
If someone had described to me what this anime was like, I probably would have never watched it, but I'm very glad that I actually did.
Gurren Lagann is full of shounen clichés and there is not much of a story to it, which at times doesn’t make much sense. I call these types of shows “escalation animes”, where the main drive seems to be to constantly grow in power and character to defeat the, also ever increasing in strength, forces of evil.
The characters start at the lowest of the low, living under constant oppression beneath the ground. They find a
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tiny mecha about the size of a washing machine and a tiny drill which functions as an ignition key. By the power of determination, friendship, and believing in themselves, they overcome every obstacle thrown at them. They go from underground dwellers to the Earth's surface, where they must fight increasingly bigger and more powerful enemies with even bigger mecha, all the way up to the limits of the imagination of the show's creators.
Where this show excels above the rest is in that it is actually very entertaining. There is no fat and it has an excellent pacing. It manages to use all of its cliché and simplicity to its advantage to deliver a very exciting experience from start to finish without trying to be something it’s not.
The show is all about showing you, to an exaggerated degree, what believing in yourself and never giving up actually means. Where it lacks in originality, or creativity, it makes up with a lot of heart. It will pump you up. You will buy it.... You will buy it all… Including the characters, who despite their character development consists of just growing in confidence and determination, along with cliché romances and camaraderie, I became very fond of them all.
The presentation is very good as well. Despite it being 10 years old, it looks as good as anything there is today. The artworks and sound are very well done. I know that for some it is a sacrilege to say this, but I recommend the English dub over subtitles because it is also very well made.
Overall, this show was very entertaining from start to finish. It left me very pumped up, with a feeling that I as well can grow a pair and overcome anything in my way. Most likely it won’t be the greatest show you've ever watched, but I would recommend anyone to see it and I think very few will regret it if they do.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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