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Apr 21, 2023
[First anime film I've watched in a theater, this film will be extra special to me because of that]
What is this phenomenon I'm experiencing?
The works of Makato Shinkai are widely praised by audiences and critics alike, but here on Letterboxd, you'll find a hefty amount of people that are either indifferent or cynically critical. Being that Letterboxd is a website where it's popular reviews are driven by humongous like numbers and seeing your review in the top 3 on a film's page, it's easy why a review that favors on the opposing side of critics and audiences would also be popular. I guess that's what
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happens when you thrive in an echo chamber.
Anywho, I've been a firm Shinkai supporter judging from the 3 films of his I saw before this. His bread and butter have been love stories set across a supernatural/fantasy adventure that gives way to amazing weather shots, creative cinematography, and unique mixing of traditional animation and CGI animation; they've been a heavy emotional journey and that definitely feels epic, I have to prep myself whenever I see one of his films. And Susume is another win.
I said earlier that his bread and butter is love stories but that's not always the literal case. In a film like Children Who Chase Lost Voices, it's more a relationship of a slow-building bond between teammates, and people who need to complete a task together, and Suzume starts off like that too but eventually gives way into love.
A very unique story here, our titular character stumbles across a door that seems to lead into an alternate dimension, and she's granted the ability to see this red evil "worm" that exits these doors, these worms case national disasters in whatever place they happen to spawn from, and Suzume ends up accidentally unlocking "the key" to one of these doors. Now teamed up with a "closer" whose job is to shut these door and prevent these disasters from happening, they go on a journey to stop more doors that appear to be opening all over Japan, all while poor Suzume tries to make sense of the madness.
The movie takes a non-traditional road trip route as well, as Suzume simply tries to get back home after the first door experience, more conflicts pop up that force her to travel far away from home. The film is also surprisingly funny, for the first two-thirds the movie had me laughing quite hard in certain situations; whether it be the film throwing out a reference to Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart, or seeing a tweet comparing the walking chair to that famous robot dog you memes of on YouTube, or a running gag about the chair being sat on...oh yeah did I forget to mention the closer guy's soul ends up being put in the body of a chair Suzume's mother built when she was young?
But the third act is when the film noticeably changed for me. After something happens to our closer mate, Suzume goes on another journey to help him, and the film's structure turns around. The humor is dropped for the majority of the third act, the editing and scene transitions become much quicker and jerky, and I started to feel the movie's runtime; either that or I was just terrible at judging the runtime in this film. This third act isn't bad but the changes definitely piled which leads to a feeling of this act not being as strong as the first two.
Also after Shinkai went full Shinkai weather porn with Weathering With You, it seems like he's dialing back on specific weather shots and instead showing off the broad landscapes and sky's of the various locations Suzume and the closer feel. He's going less Planet Earth and more "Ridley Scott film shot by Roger Deakins". Really can't emphasize the visuals enough, some shorts are borderline David Lean-esque with eye-catching uses of dimension and perspective when it comes to meshing the backgrounds with the foregrounds as well as the mixing of animations.
So while this recent Shinkai film may have the weakest third act I've seen of his work so far, the emotional payoff is still well earned and it's an emotionally fulfilling ride that you'll need to take a bit of a breather before re-watching again, just like with the rest of his work, check it out now.
Side note:
-The English title of the film being named after the main character is kind of lame though, if it was called Suzume's Locking-Up....would that be any worse?
-Suzume does just as much running as the lead girl in Children Who Chase Lost Voices!
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 21, 2023
Finally got Hosada's filmography complete.
Aside from the synopsis I read and the main poster, I was actually thrown for a loop for how the story progressed, I was expecting the whole film to be some kind of Spirited Away affair with more sword fighting. But then we hit the "growing up/training montage" and I was like "Ooooooh...we're going this route!", then our lead boy ends up finding his way back into the human world and starts rebuilding his life there as well. That's when I really dug this film and the emotions really sunk in.
Sidenotes:
- I love how Kumatetsu and Kyuta's dynamic is a lot
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like Lilo & Stitch, two hotheads with troubled baggage who end up bouncing off each in more ways than they thought
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Feb 3, 2023
If you look at my profile or have seen my other reviews you'll know I don't exactly follow the big shonen animes that get released, but that isn't to say I never check them out, <b>Chainsaw Man</b> was the balance of weird and intriguing for me without going over the top like <i><b>Jojo</b></bi>, and one season 1 watch later, I am hooked on this show.
A mix of splatter action and comedy, in a nutshell, Chainsaw Men tells the story of Denji, who is recruited into a devil-hunting service (as this series takes place in a world where there are devil creatures that can be based
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on any kind of object), he joins a rag-tag team who go on missions for one significant reason or another, combinations of sad backstories, bigger worldly threats, and a very horny lead whose always eager to touch boobs.
The biggest positive I can give this show is that there isn't too much story and multiple storylines poured out into one episode, I feel like other bloated Shonen stories try to pile in so much that it becomes overwhelming and just mind-numbing, for this series you got one plotline that's stretched out to two episodes max at least. It makes the show easy to follow and never feels like I need to take a break just to rest my brain from all the chaos happening.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Jan 8, 2023
Those who see my profile know that slice-of-life is my favorite genre, and since TvTropes told me <b>Laid Back Camp</b> classifies as an Iyashikei, I was like "Oh boy this another genre I can easily obsess over!"
As someone who is introverted and hates camping, someone who'd rather stay indoors, it goes to show you how amazing this series in depicting these locations and camping in general as something beautiful, warming, and the ultimate experience to have with friends, especially with all the food porn that's half of the anime as well.
We follow Rin, a young girl who enjoys solo camping and is quite an expert
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at it, things change when she ends up crossing paths with Nadeshiko, a Pinkie Pie-Esque girl with boundless energy, optimism, and an insatiable appetite. From this little experience, their lives change as Nadeshiko becomes interested in camping and ends up joining the newly formed camping club at her high school which includes two other girls. Rin herself is very slowly peeled out of her antisocial behavior as she thinks "Hmm, maybe camping with friends is even more fun than camping alone", but thankfully it's not easy peasy. Rin and Nadeshiko are perfect foils for each other, intense extrovert vs intense introvert in a nutshell
Every episode for the most part can be described in two plot elements, Rin or one of the camp club girls finds a new spot they'd like to camp out, they get their supplies ready and travel, and they enjoy a hot meal before closing out the day. In-between are character interactions that range from focusing on Rin, Nadeshiko, and the camp girls, sometimes both in one episode and sometimes they go on a big group camping trip. It varies on an episode-by-episode basis so it's not the same grouping of characters going through a conveyor built of camps and food.
To restate in the beginning, the animation is beautiful and does a terrific job of making you think "Huh, maybe camping will actually be fun", and if you're an American, "Man I wish I lived in Japan so I could camp there". The series is also littered with little camping trivia, from camping equipment to setting up your tent, all told by the "narrator" of the series who has a good mix of informal and surprisingly funny line reads, particularly when he mentions the "blanket society".
Overall I'm so glad I got into this show when there was already a season 2 freshly released, I could watch the camping adventures of these girls all day. The show works as a great therapeutic material for any stressful moment you're facing; make some hot coco, wrap yourself up in a blanket, and enjoy the tales of these camping girls.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Dec 19, 2022
<i><b>Pancreas...</b></i> joins the newly formed trilogy of films, the others being A Silent Voice and When Marnie Was There, three "sadly wonderful" films that made me tear up and leave me with this deep feeling of sadness but also a little light of warm triumph and hopefulness deep inside. A feeling that is utterly unique to me and seems only the great reigns of Anime can trigger it.
The story is about a boy (whose name isn't revealed for the bulk of the film) and a girl named Sakura, they are very much on the opposite spectrum scale of one being a hardcore introvert and a
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hardcore extrovert respectively. While glancing at her diary she left behind at the hospital, he finds she's suffering from a severe pancreas disease that will kill her in a year or so. He's the only one who knows about this disease as Sakura hasn't told anybody else for the sake of worry and not wanting to place a hefty burden on others, or at least she may think she'll place a burden on them. What follows is the slow building of a uniquely weird "friendship" as Sakura picks him as her partner to enjoy the rest of her life while she still can. The boy slowly comes out of his shell, deep layers of struggles are revealed, lessons are explored and taught in terms of sickness, openness, exploring the layers and boundaries between a friendship and a relationship, and again to reiterate, knowing each other's deepest thoughts and feelings about this whole situation playing out. The title of the film refers to a foreign belief Sakura found out about, how if one of your organs is suffering from a disease, you should eat meat from that particular organ to heal it, and it's something she's quite bubbly about.
The bulk of the film is focused on these hangout sessions between the two leads, including 2 lengthy scenes involving them playing drunk truth or dare at a hotel and the two spending time at her house where we see how three-dimensional these characters are as well as just seeing how this whole situation about her immanent death affects the both of them. Sakura has a gleeful spot of gallows humor with her situation, but we see it's more of a defense mechanism so she can cope with this illness as well as not wanting to worry any of her friends of her family. And the boy's introvertedness is influenced by quite a few things, from him putting thoughts in others people's heads as to what they think of him, to him finding the world of a book more appealing than dealing with any real people and so on.
All these social conflict elements are beautifully explored and so layered, it gave me the same feeling I had when I watched <i><b>A Silent Voice</b></i>, the drama and conflict feel so real and relatable, I understand why characters are the way they are and react to one another the way they do.
Another thing I've noticed with Anime is that they mastered the execution of the "aftermath", whenever something major happens ranging of from a sudden war bombing to the death of a character, Anime stories do a great job exploring the recovery period, seeing how our characters take in the situation and try to move on from it. It mirrors a very real-world aspect, learning to accept and move on from tragedy so we can become stronger while also keeping those good memories of what happened before the sadness closer to our hearts. I'm not gonna spoil what happens but when a certain something happened it utterly crushed me. But at the same time, as I said at the very beginning of this review, there's this slow creeping effect of warmth that comes in, sort of like venting when you've gotten everything off your chest and had a good cry, you've finally calmed down and now you can focus on how to move forward, this is another film that does it flawlessly and it's another element I can state as to why I love Anime so much, especially in the drama/slice-of-life realm.
Overall another fantastic piece of drama with that special candy-coated touch that anime always serves the best of.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Dec 19, 2022
Is your bratty son being a pain and not adopting well to being the older sibling well? Then order our magic family tree! Plant it in your backyard and be transported to the past, present, and future like A Christmas Carol so they'll truly learn what it means to be a good older sibling.
Part of me feels likes I should mark "older brother whacks babysitter on the head with train" with a spoiler 😆
ZombieTrex put it perfectly in his review, I was surprised how episodic this kind of felt, the whole film follows this formula, Kon (the older brother) acts like a brat/mean towards his
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sister or parents, he ventures out into their house garden where he meets a version of a family member in a different timeline, and they're there to basically teach Kon a lesson on whatever relevant situation just happened, mostly it boils down to his feeling of losing all the attention and love as it now has gone to his new little sister, Mirai.
I would be lying if i said I didn't feel like the story was slightly pushing it in terms of how bratty and mean he can be, I mean I audibly went "Oh ffffffuck" when he hit Mirai on the head with one his toys bullet trains, and the way the story progresses semi-episodically, Kon's character arc doesn't feel as strongly "firm", like you feel like he's learned all the lessons from the previous incidents, but he kind of keeps making the same mistake which leads to another future/past encounter with one of his family members.
And with an older Mirai being on the poster for the film, she sadly isn't in it that much, the scenes she is in are great, we see how kind of innocent, bubbly, yet stern kind of person she is, especially when she tells Kon "Stop putting cookies on my face already". While the other family members he meets are great, including a human version of his fucking dog even, Mirai should've got more use.
All that being said though I still think the film is very good and powerful, I love how it's an isolated location film while it goes into these dives into the fantasy realm brought on by this tree in their backyard of all things, and a good tale bout learning to be a better sibling.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Nov 25, 2022
Anime is a deep diverse pool; you got your high-octane Shonen action animes, your slice-of-life smooth vibe animes, then you got this kind of category; animes that come from bizarro world. Nonsensical stories that take place in a uniquely weird yet special world that exists like no other in any other anime, and feature characters with the oddest designs, backstories, powers etc.
You got stuff like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo , FLCL, and the one, in particular, I'm talking about...Super Milk Chan.
Airing on Adult Swim back in 2003 but I never caught it I was only 4 years old. Super Milk Chan follows the story
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of a foul-mouthed 5-year-old girl, her robot server companion, and her pet caterpillar thing, as they go on various missions assigned to them by the president of this strange science fiction world, all while she tries to avoid paying the rent at the hands of her turnip looking, flamboyant landlord. When they're not doing that, they're watching various weird TV shows or any random activity, oh and I didn't even mention the ant family that lives underground under the house of our lead character.
That is a very simplified version of the overall story of this show because even the episode titles appear to be complete nonsense until you watch the titular episode and realize about halfway through what it's actually about.
Do you know how Fairly Oddparents had unique running jokes for one episode? Well, this series has running jokes throughout the whole series, so much so that there are even repeated sequences of dialogue and character introductions that go along with how the story is fleshed out.
While it looks like goofy nonsense at face value the series, the series does have a hidden edge to it, primarily in the dialogue. Whether it's Milk bursting out - calling people "dumbass" in a fit of annoyance - or a reoccurring robot dog that helps on leads on their journeys who has the foulest mouth out of anyone as he gets into frequent pissing contests with Milk's robot helper named Tetsuko.
Now this series does have something unique about it, it has 2 English dubs; the first one is a straightforward translation, and in that dub there are these live-action segments intercut in the commercial breaks, usually, they take the form of some off the cuff rant as we see footage of Japanese people on the streets doing whatever, I flat out skipped these bits cause they were just not connecting with me at all, I just wanted to get back to the animation! Then there is an "Americanized dub", which features more cursing and pop culture references dropped by the characters and replaces the live-action Japanese segments with these skits featuring the cast and crew of ADV films who did the dubbing on this series.
So if you're a fan of Widget Series (as called so by TVtropes), then by all means give this a shot.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Nov 5, 2022
Satoshi Kon's one and only tv show is a unique mystery series that I can describe as a mix between David Lynch and Robert Altman.
Lynch in the sense that there's a mystery that's very mind screwish and you constantly questioning what's real and what's not, and Altman in the aspect of nearly each episode following a different set of characters and how they are affected by the phenomena known as "Lil' Slugger".
Much like with Kon's debut film, Perfect Blue, the storytelling does a flawless job in constantly tricking you on how you think the story is going to progress. Every episode has a twist relating
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to a character's information and their past that would make N. Night Shyamalan blush, and Lil' Slugger himself is the biggest question mark of all. Is he real or is he manifestation of the mind? Whose mind? Are these victims insane? What's the deal of him attacking people that caught in a corner of crisis and emotional distress? What's with the sudden episodes about a suicide cult and a meta episode about a studio trying to make an anime?
All those questions are challenged and evolve as the story progresses as we receive little bits of information to the variety of perplexing situations that the story conjures up; and once again I need to praise Kon for managing to tell these complex stories in a short and sweet runtime, 13 episodes compared to the average 20 or so in any other anime. that's one of the biggest lessons Hollywood needs to take, you can make great stories that don't require a 2-hour/2 and 1/2 hour runtime.
Overall P.A. is a perfect show with a perfect and compelling mystery that digs through several deep and abstract layers of the social realm and the conscious realm, one of the best stories to have been conjured up in the history of anything.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Sep 20, 2022
In terms of slice-of-life anime, Lucky Star was one of the first ones to get popular on the internet, premiering back in 2007 two years after YouTube was established certainly helped. I remember viral videos and image macros (back when the word "meme" wasn't used at all). Shoutout to anybody who remembers an "Ear Rape Coffee" video being made on it from RandomDCE.
If you were to show a person their first slice of life show, you couldn't get a more direct example than this, it's like if you showed somebody a Friday the 13th film as their first slasher. Three gal pals in middle school
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going about their days, through the days and through the holidays, and that's it; no conflict or overarching developments whatsoever.
The best way to describe the "story progression" in the episodes is it progresses in segments, some can last as long as a quarter or half the episode, or be as short as literally 10 seconds. It can be a short scene of a character doing something mundane or going through a comedic unfortunate event, and BOOM it's onto the next one. A large part of these segments are actually things we can relate to in terms of daily life, so it's not just "anime only hi-jinks" you see in this. I mean hell the first 8 minutes of the first episode are the characters talking about how they eat various kinds of food, if this ain't "post-Seinfeld media" I don't know what is.
Speaking of comedy, I see a lot of complaints about the humor in the film, now humor is subjective so I can't really critique others, but I was frequently laughing throughout episodes. Just the chemistry with this group of friends is superb and the way their different personalities collide with their school life, as I said, is so relatable; "it's funny cause it's true" ya see? On top of all the references that Konata (the show's Okatku character) drops throughout the series (and the occasional American media reference that had me really dead).
Overall if you're looking for the most straightforward slice-of-life show that's all about little moments in the days and just chilling with friends as the seasons change, you can't find a more perfect example than this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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