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Sep 1, 2023
My hope for an anime is that it will keep me entertained. Charlotte did that. There is enough tension and conflict for it to keep you hooked. Still, I can't say it's good. And before I go into that, let me warn that this will be spoiler territory.
The story feels badly structured and it somewhat crumbles in the end. We have a random character who shows up, the protagonist's older brother. Due to various plot-related reasons, no one remembered him. And I should mention I am not talking about the audience but rather the characters. No character knew who he was, and we as the
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audience probably also forgot -- while he was still on-screen. We had gotten a couple hints but when he finally appears it is very underwhelming. You can't really get attached to him. And, worse yet, so much of the later story's development is dependent on this character.
Some plot threads and what seemed to have been Chekov guns go nowhere. There is a whole episode where a blind singer implies that the protagonist may go blind himself once he "makes a difficult choice" or something like that. That moment feels like it's setting up for some future hardship of the protagonist's part but it never materializes. On the one hand, the lost older brother does lose his eyesight... but these two concepts were never well married. And that's a single example of this sort of issue, of foreshadowing that amounts to very little.
Also, in the very last episode the protagonist turns into a killing machine. And then... that... suddenly gets resolved? And... everyone is happy? Strange.
I will say, however, that the ride was not bad. It keeps you guessing for most of it and there are some nice character moments. I especially liked the friendship between the protagonist and the glasses dude. It will just not leave you all the way satisfied, so to speak. I would still recommend it though, especially for someone more seasoned with anime, or someone who can overlook some anime tropes - maybe through Stockholm syndrome, as we are eventually prone to develop. I, for one, hate to admit that I have grown to enjoy those high-pitched anime girl voices.
Yeah, I may have to take this one to the grave.
Basically, the anime could not pull off what it was setting up to do. But it was still worth it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 17, 2023
Not worth watching. There is something that really bothers me about reincarnation stories and which this show unfortunately exemplifies. This type of anime gives off a strange after taste, thriving on three off-putting elements. It is a strange mix of ideas / attitudes: wish fulfillment, arrogance and exploitation. Why is that? The appeal of the show, and of this type of show in general, is in thinking that you can throw all your worries away and live a happy life through the miracle of rebirth. No more concerns about aging, obligations or purpose! You get a do over in life and can think of all
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this thoroughly. After all, you have your new mother taking care of you! And what's more? You get to be a genius just for the sake of having been an adult. Effort is, of course, for losers. If you are a "cool", jaded guy, as these protagonists are often presented, you can find happiness in the fact that only a little bit of your knowledge will be enough to awe everyone around you. As far as the arrogance, I find the attitude of these reborn characters very strange. There is often a sense that they are detached, cool, intelligent heroes. And what makes them so? Again, it is the basic knowledge they had as an adult. They may have some extra work ethic, which, again, will be enough to awe everyone around them. Plus, it will help them achieve their plans, however convoluted. Who would expect a child to do all that, isn't that right?
The most disturbing part, in my opinion, is the angle of a character using their newfound childhood / youth as a means of tricking people about who they really are. The reborn character is the ultimate catfish. Through the miracle of rebirth they get to be around all the young girls they were lusting after. Thank goodness it's all good now! They are they same age! How great! And what about the mother or father who sincerely think the child is their own when it is, in fact, a random dude? To really put these things into perspective, imagine a young couple getting some middle-aged guy off the street and deciding to put him in baby clothes and adopting him. It's weird! The dude is really happy, though, I bet, with having his expenses paid and getting to be babied.
I don't want this review to be all written in a sneer. My problem with these rebirth stories is that they touch on a real human issue and brush it aside in favor or fantasy. People often feel that they were left behind in life, afraid of aging, concerned with regrets, etc. Most of us have felt this way. In fact, people can have these apprehension even while still young -- though such concerns can worse if you go through life without properly reflecting on them. Most of us have felt, at some point, that we were a so-called loser. But is the answer to close your eyes to the world and ignore the discomfort of living? Would the answer really be that of conceptualizing oneself as this "distant, cool" guy / girl that does not need to engage with the world? Even when the protagonists of this story are conventionally successful, as the character is here -- he is a doctor --, these stories still thrive on appealing to the lens of the protagonist being this coolly disconnected person who will now have the chance of becoming someone else, someone great. There is something so defeatist in this idea -- that the only way to change anything, or to enjoy life, is to die and be reborn. Yes, some things are awful and cannot be changed. But dealing with them is also a part of life. Sometimes the most you can do is grieve for what has been lost. And that's okay. That is part of living. To live is to struggle. We all struggle.
Maybe I am getting a little bit too philosophical with an anime review. It is a review for a show that I dropped very early (it's alright, you can judge me). Still, the concept of these stories points to a sad mindset. It would be much more interesting to properly confront uncomfortable feelings instead of denying them or escaping them. Why must rebirth be so appealing to a character? What is it about a character that he or she can accept becoming a child / teenager all over again without any concern about his or her own situation? Why must a character be okay in using a fake appearance to feel fulfilled? In essence, these characters are wretches whose only salvation is becoming someone they are not. And, even for shows like Mushoku Tensei, that supposedly tackle the issue, there is hardly any depth to these tales. The characters feel okay taking advantage of their new appearances / circumstances while telling themselves sob stories in an act of self-flagellation. As soon as they are done with their cycle of self-pity, they shift their attention to the power systems or mind games of their new world. That is not growth! It's okay to feel sorry for yourself, but you have to change. Instead of a true reflection ever occurring, these moments serve only to provide the character with some twisted reason to excuse their deceitfulness.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jul 14, 2017
This is a very good film. What it does best is to set an atmosphere and a tone at the very beginning, which are never lost throughout the movie. This tone, mood, atmosphere - or whatever word one may use to define the overall feeling - is a melancholic one that is present in every aspect of the movie, even in moments that are supposedly joyful.
The movie starts with the main character nostalgically recounting his first love as it grew with the progression of his school life, but what burdens him is not being close to her anymore, as the two of them came
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to live a great distance from each other when they grew a little older. This sentiment of a love destined to be unsuccessful is what the movie explores.
As for the other aspects of the movie, they are quite remarkable as well. The voice acting is unconventional, and not very anime-like. The characters speak in a more controlled (yet not monotonic) tone of voice as opposed to what is commonly seen in other anime, where characters express themselves in an exaggerated manner. (I believe the characters may have been voiced by non-professionals, but I am not entirely sure.) This fact renders more believable characterization and dialogue. The dialogue is authentic and, with a few exceptions, the viewer will not hear familiar/cliché phrases other works of drama so frequently use. The narration follows the same style of the dialogue and for the most part serves the purpose of delivering the movie's theme. The editing gives importance to the place the characters are in and the inanimate things that affect the story when it cuts to show the beautiful art, whether it is in form of landscapes or simple objects.
The movie fails when it comes to character design, since the character's faces were not as richly detailed as, say, the landscapes and because of that did not convey emotion as efficiently as other aspects of the movie did. The movie was well paced, but the last part (the movie is divided into three) did not have the same development the two previous ones did, though it still felt conclusive due to one final montage seen along with the final song, its lyrics illustrating the sad point the movie makes about love.
5 centimeters per second is an overall good movie which differences itself from other dramas in the way it does things unconventionally. Every part of the movie works together to form a solid work with only a few minor problems here and there. Although it exceeds in many ways (especially with the tone it takes) it is not a re-watchable anime and, at least for me, two viewings felt like enough.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Jul 3, 2016
[This review contains a few minor spoilers]
The OVA has a fairly straightforward message: that Earth and its beauty is irreplaceable, even by the most advanced of technologies. In the dark, gray world the characters live in, the only faint resemblance to earth among all the steel is a color -- green. The characters keep going down the levels of their own world to live closer to a fake green - the "ocean" -, yet all they ever do is lose themselves even more amid all the machinery. In the end, when one of the characters finally gets to see something natural he realizes just how
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little he knows about what the world used to be. His very own definition of natural is changed, the last word of the OVA echoing that thought.
Theme-wise it is an interesting OVA, but a good theme alone does not make a great anime. Taking care of our planet and home being irreplaceable are things that have been talked about for decades and using a grim tone to approach the subject seems self-contradictory. Instead of celebrating the life of the celestial body we inhabit, the OVA decides to persist on the idea of human stupidity and irresponsibility. It paints humans as undeserving of the perfect Earth, turning the relationship between them and the environment something almost divine-like in its depiction. The case can be also made that showing human failure and sorrow makes the point more memorable, so how much someone likes or dislikes the OVAs take on the issue it presents will be up to personal preference.
All that being said, whether I agree or not with what the anime presented does not make the way it presented it any less good. Pale Cocoon is very dull and claustrophobic, but that was its purpose all along. The animation does a good job of creating those feelings when the music does just as good of a job undermining the entire work. On the flip side, the same thing which makes it good also makes it bad when we are presented with CG that often times feels to be in all the wrong places (for example, when the screen pans over CG wires laid over a CG desk). Yet, once again, despite the shortcomings of the animation, the music is the only truly awful aspect of it, with a song towards the end of Pale Cocoon serving as the lowest point of a mediocre score that makes itself far too noticeable.
Pale Cocoon is a good watch for the people who don't mind meaning over enjoyment, but unfortunately I'm not one of those people. Although it does feel like almost everything in it serves a purpose, it is one of the least enjoyable things I've watched in a long time, and therefore not worthy of a rewatch, regardless of how well it may explore a theme or how many hidden meanings it may have.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jul 3, 2016
A mildly entertaining watch, but nothing more than that. Boku no Hero Academia is a type of series that isn’t anything beyond just one more fighting anime and one that follows common aspects of the genre as if they were rules. There is an ambitious protagonist with a dream, his mentor and a strange world where people have peculiar abilities/powers. Even though more series fit that description, what makes them different is what they add to the formula and not how well they follow it. In Boku no Hero Academia, there are few of those extra features and the one different aspect it has -
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the setting - is made unimportant as the series progresses.
In the world of Boku no Hero Academia, 80% of all people have some special kind of ability. It became so common, in fact, that the 20% remaining are now the unusual ones and unfortunately the protagonist is among them. What sets this setting apart from others is how the protagonist has no prospect of growth. The power he wants to become a hero (like so many people in this world now are) is not something he can train on his own to obtain. He was simply not born with it, and there is, at first, nothing he can do about it. This aspect alone goes against most of the shounen of the same kind: while the message is usually that one only needs to work hard to achieve their goals, the frustration of someone with an innate difference is not so common of a theme. In a strange way everything seems to be a big deceit when the protagonist acquires a special power anyway, meaning that what was apparently established in the first episodes is not what the anime meant to explore at all. In the end it seems that the show reinforces the idea that the only way to success is to be like everyone else.
For the time being, though, the protagonist finda a way to achieve his dream. Because he has a starting point -- a power -- he can go to the same school the hero he admires went to. Since the protagonist obtained his power a short while before the entrance exams and taking into account the training he had before them, it all seemed to be leading to this point. Getting into this “academy” comes off as a necessity for the story to introduce shounen conventions and not for the growth of the protagonist. Even though the academy is an important point in the story (it is in the title itself, after all), the way the protagonist gets there shows that the will of the story shapes the will of the characters and not the other way around.
However, if we leave the characters to the side for now, this part of the series is not all that bad. If you like battle shounens, then you will (probably) like the battle shounen aspects of Boku no Hero Academia. There is the typical test characters need to pass and the training they have to go through after they pass that test. The test is interesting because it is the first time we get to see how the protagonist uses his power and likewise the training shows how the protagonist will handle its use once he comprehends its limitations. The fights that follow are often creative when it comes to the protagonist’s tactics, although all the other characters seem to only rely on the strength of their powers to win. The fights are one of the things the Boku no Hero Academia did well and they are what accounts for most of the anime’s enjoyment factor. The downside to them is that because of characters that only follow stereotypes or strange relationships between those characters (for example, the protagonist admiring a guy that ceaselessly bullies him) the fights are much less intense because there is no real, personal conflicts when they do happen. When characterization and setting fail, everything is left to the action and the story.
The problem with the story is when it is rendered meaningless, not only because of bad characterization, but mainly because the show demonstrates inconsistencies from the very beginning, as was the case with the story’s setting. Although this is only one side of the anime, inconsistencies negatively affect any show. If the viewer cannot count on the anime to be well-structured, there is no room to analyze anything beyond maybe an action sequence looking nice. It is not clear what Boku no Hero Academia is trying to do and any guess is futile since the dots that should be connected keep moving around. The outcome of any situation becomes irrelevant and the enjoyment is left to the most superficial parts of the show to carry, such as action sequences. But in the end, if you like this type of show and are simply looking for enjoyment, not minding if it does not go too much beyond that, then Boku no Hero Academia is a good one to watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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