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Mar 21, 2024
The original „The vision of Escaflowne“ TV-show from 1996 is one of the greatest anime of all time. It had spectacular world building, interesting and realistic characters and an unmatched OST making the emotional scenes that much more impactful and the action scenes that much more exciting. At the end it perfectly wrapped everything up in a tight package with no need for more. 4 years later someone decided to make a movie about it. So how do you follow such a masterpiece with a movie? Well the only conclusion I can draw out of this case study is…. you don’t.
The Escaflowne movie
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basically is an attempt of a retelling of the original “The vision of Escaflowne” show with the same characters (not all of course), but in a different setting and everything is basically a bit different now. It is ridiculous to believe a movie that spans 90 min can achieve what a show did in 26 episodes, however the movie tries to attempt that. For example look at the romance between the 2 main characters. In the tv-show a slow build up that is relatable with setbacks until at the end everything comes together to make it that much more fulfilling, while in the movie they talk to each other for like 2 times (once in a very aggressive manner, almost leading to the death of one of them) and suddenly Hitomi wants to stay at Vans side forever? It would be just pathetic if it wasn't so insulting to the TV-show.
Then there is no world building and no politics in the movie, which already takes away a large part what makes the original great and besides being a weak attempt of a romance the movie boils down to a generic action flick. While in the original the villains had motivation that was somewhat understandable, here they are just bad because the script told them to. And when the movie tackles some interesting ideas, like seeing your previous allies being forced to work for the villains to survive, with the moral implication how to deal with it, this situation gets instantly resolved and forgotten about in an instant. Basically the movie doesn’t want to try anything new, like killing off main characters and shine the spotlight on someone else, its just the most boring re-imagination, stripping off all that was great about “The vision of Escaflowne” without adding anything of value.
As I eluded before, the whole movie was too fast paced and couldn’t even make the action scenes interesting. There were no stakes or threats or any worth while connection between villains and main characters. The end felt rushed and not well thought through.
The only thing good about the movie is its visuals and audio. The animation was top notch, and the artstyle nice, although since all character look a little different from the original it felt a bit weird and not correct. The whole astetics of the movie had this feudal japan vibe to it which I found also not really fitting for Escaflowne. The OST was also nice. The best songs were still taken from the original but it had some nice additions. It shows however that all the money you spend on making your movie look and sound nice is lost if you cant make the story engaging and your characters interesting.
So overall the Escaflowne movie is rubbish. It’s like they wanted to include so many things; romance, character relationships and pasts, action and so on in a 90 min movie, rushing through everything half-heartedly not achieving anything of value. Just dont watch it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Mar 6, 2024
If you read through the synapsis of Re:Zero there is one crucial information missing to set your expectations accordingly, that is: Re:Zero is a harem anime. It is the main genre and the only reason people like it, I guess. I really can’t come up with another explanation. Basically you got a pathetic main character (MC) who is surrounded by a bunch of cute female characters, all interested in him, for some reason, unbeknownst to the audience. You got a cute waifu for every taste, with almost all the hair colors and chest sizes imaginable (I say almost, but who knows what they will do
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in following seasons).
Overall the anime is primarily centered around our MC, with probably more than 90% of all scenes including him and he has by far the most dialog. He however is the most obnoxious, unlikeable, dimwitted and annoying character I have seen in a long time. So what makes him so unlikeable? First of all, he is our “fish out of water” character in this isekai, so he is surrounded by a new environment, but instead of learning as much as he can he constantly makes annoying game references (as if every isekai is a videogame). But despite his advanced knowledge on isekai tropes it takes him like 4 deaths to realize he is in a death loop trope. So he is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He is also very inconsistently written, since later on he still loses his mind because he saw some dead people, even though that stuff has been happening since episode one. Besides being stupid he is also physically weak, useless without any talents and has some aggression problems as well, being instantly confrontational when one of his waifus just talks to another man and when one of his waifus is nowhere to be found he physically attacks strangers to get information (even though he could have just asked normally). And it takes him an entire character arc to apologize when he was 100% clearly in the wrong. I think this whole death loop trope works better with a level headed character who thinks before he acts, but what do I know...
The anime also doesn’t have any greater narrative. Especially the MCs motivation only revolves around pleasing his newly found waifus and bad mouthing anybody who utters a word of criticism towards them. There are at least some nice action set pieces later on in the anime and the overall world building, while being a bit slow is at least somewhat interesting. However I have to add that there is a certain goofiness that makes me not really take this world all too seriously.
So in general I would say this show is a poor excuse of an isekai anime and rather dabbles in the harem genre with the focus mainly being set on the MC and his relationship to his multitude of newly found waifus. Since all the characters are 0-dimensional and uninteresting this show has nothing more to offer than to be fap material with some occasional action scenes sprinkled in. At least they kept the fanservices to a minimum.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Feb 21, 2024
I think what describes "In this corner of the world" best is: being in the eye of the storm. It is somewhat calm and relaxing, has many slice of life moments and the main protagonist Suzu tries to be happy and joyful despite her situation, but there is the anticipation of the worst, yet to come. There are many undertones in this movies and things unspoken, things that are only slightly hinted at, things that later forgotten, because it would be too cruel to be reminded of them, to be reminded what has been lost and what could have been. The movie reaches deep into
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the dark abyss containing the horrors of war, at least if you catch up to its drift, while still having heart felt moments giving a tiny glimpse of hope and joy. I think it’s the best anti-war movie I have watched in a long time.
As I eluded before, we follow Suzu a young girl from Hiroshima (speaking of anticipation) who is being married off to a family of a nearby town and has to get used to her new surroundings. She seems to always has her head in the clouds and keeps her thoughts to herself. She is not good at what she is expected to do, that is do the household, but she likes to draw. She always seems joyful and happy, or at least she tries to be. I really like Suzu, you can tell that she doesn’t tell you everything she thinks and wants and the more suffering she has to endure the more you can peek behind the facades , she just feels so genuine and real, while at the same time unique and interesting.
All the other characters, while maybe not being as deeply developed as Suzu, still feel refreshing and real. Most of them are not stereotypes as you often see in war dramas. They feel like real people with their own struggles, motivations, regrets and growth, while at the same time also not being totally open to read.
Another point I think it sets it apart from other war movies is its unpredictability. While in other war dramas you usually know what you will get, how the story progression will likely be and so forth, however in “In this corner of the world” many things happen so suddenly without foreshadowing. It is reminiscent of the abruptness of war.
The art style and sound track, as well as voice acting are phenomenal in my opinion, both in the Japanese and English dub. The art style is simplistic and somewhat childish and it gives the movie a unique charm, while having many artistically beautiful and interesting moments, such as depicting plane gun shots as blobs of paint from a brush, as seen through Suzus eyes as an artist.
Overall this movie is full of heart-warming scenes that may make you giggle, but also depressing scenes that make you feel empty inside. It’s a roller-coaster of emotions and you have to hold on tight, otherwise you will be thrown off and realise that all has been for none. As the character in this story must realize, that all their suffering has been for none, even if Japan would have won. Such is the nature of war. Because only a fool would think that losing your loved ones could be justified with anything.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Jan 6, 2019
“Sangatsu no lion” is an anime with a focus all over the place. It isn’t really a good “drama” anime neither is it a good “seinen” anime, its shogi aspects is also sometimes rather forgotten and taken aside to have lots of slice of life comedy moments. Especially at the beginning there is probably 20% drama and 80% comedy. So if you came to see a mature take on a sports anime with drama and a lot of maturity, in the fashion of something like “Ping pong the animation”, “sangatsu no lion” isn’t really the show you were looking for. However it does create
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a very light hearted atmosphere and was easy to watch even for someone who didn’t really like the comedy all too much. And it gets progressively better.
The story focuses around a young high school student who became a professional shogi player. He lives alone in his apartment and has, at the start a very mysterious backstory, which is presented to be very tragic and we should feel sorry for him. The story starts of very one sided, with everything happening out of the perspective of the protagonist and many other character come around as rather one-dimensional because we know too little about them. This was fixed later on by adding backstories to side character as well to make them more interesting. There is also a clear distinction between characters, that are always in comedy scenes and character who mostly are involved in the drama part of the show. This approach is better than to just simply include every character in silly comedy to a point where you can’t take anything they do serious anymore (like in FMA brotherhood), but it still raises the question… why include both?
I don’t really think that drama and comedy work well together. One of the 2 has to suffer in order for the other one to succeed. This could really be seen in this anime.
The drama aspect of the show seemed to be just there to make the protagonist interesting, for me however it didn’t work and I found him rather bland with a backstory similar to so many other. That’s the main reason I really welcomed the later included focus on side character and their relationship to the protagonist.
The shogi aspect is merely a tool and not too deeply focused. It took them 8 episodes to introduce the basic rules of the game to the audience, but then again, if the show thinks you just learned about the game it is understandable that it doesn’t go into any deeper analysis into professional shogi games. That’s probably why it was missing completely in this anime. For me this was a bit disappointing to see. The anime also didnt really manage to build up much of a tension with their shogi games (espeically at the start), but it gets better the more episodes you watch.
The slice of life aspect seemed to be the most focused one, at least at the start. What they basically wanted to achieve was to take this introverted main character who only focuses on shogi and has a sad past and put him in a goofy environment with 3 sister who mainly function as comedic relieve. The reason for all of this is also very random, which sets it very much apart from everything else that happens in the show. I found none of these comedic relieve characters to be in any way relatable or interesting and the comedy felt very typical and unfunny (with a weird fetish around cats, which also didn’t do it for me). It tries to be self aware with characters constantly referencing how this and that looks like an anime or a manga, but this was just used to create cheap laughs and nothing more.
However the whole start is very light hearted and because you still have quite a bit of shogi story aspects is wasn’t too much of a chore to go through to reach the more interesting part of the story.
The sound design wasn’t really well done. The voice acting was ordinary, but the soundtrack was really not existent beyond forgettable background songs. There was one fine piano track at some point but it was very quickly forgotten.
The art style is very weird. The characters have huge mouths and often large eyes to make them look cute (a bit different from typical anime character eyes) , but they sometimes look like cgi characters. You will get used to the art style and not notice it too much but at first it kinda annoyed me. Backgrounds were nicely drawn and I found it nice that they depicted the real design of the shogi hall building in Tokyo.
For all the bad things I had to say about this anime I still have to add that I enjoyed watching it. Its story is engaging and grips you into it. It’s somewhat relatable and in many ways down to earth (at least compared to other anime). It could have been a lot better but for what it is worth it can introduce a lot of people in the fascinating world of shogi.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 13, 2015
(Disclaimer: If you havent seen this show yet I would recommend reading the synopses of it before reading this review. Also, this review covers both season 1 and 2, since they are not really separated)
Fate/Stay night UBW is an anime of many genres. It tries to sell itself as an action anime, but it only consists of very few actions scenes. It tries to present a deeper story with lots of ancient heroes and history, but doesn’t tell you anything about them in greater detail. Last but not least this anime also got a harem and a highschool aspect which seem to be the main
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focus of the show.
So all in all would I call FSN UBW a fail? Yeah, pretty much. Soundtrack was nice and on very rare occasions the fights very animated decently, but other than that the anime is pretty bad. At first it may be a good comedy because of how bad It is, but after more than 20 episodes of it, you just had enough. But let’s not stay with all the belittling slogans and start going through the anime piece by piece, shall we?
Lets start with the story and the characters:
You start off the story with the main character Shirou, who is a highschool boy without parents living in a dojo. With him in this dojo is one of his female teachers who eats with him from time to time, out of reasons the show doesn’t provide us with (maybe she was the gf of his adoptive father who passed away before the story begins.. who knows). Also with him is a female student, the same age who cooks and cleans for him. Now I would have thought this is his girlfriend, but apparently that’s not the case. It looks more like he is just using her, because she means so little to him that he completely forgets about her later on in the series. But that’s not the only part of the story where our protagonist and self-proclaimed "hero" comes around more like a douchebag than a decent human being. He has obvious aggression problems, denial problems, the inability to learn from his mistakes and likes to but other people rather into danger than save them. A short list of some of his “heroic accomplishments”: 1.not cooperating with a kidnapper who threatens to kill the hostage 2.When he and another character hide from an enemy that easily outmatches them and would kill them he shouts insults at this enemy, giving away his and his friends location, putting them both in danger (why?... because he thinks the enemy is a meany head). While such actions can easily lead to casualties, fear not, since this anime does not want to be taken seriously. That’s why it comes up with ridiculous deus ex machina to save the hero, over and over again. If you watched this shows predecessor Fate/Zero before and expected the same: character with a slight idea of how a plan would look like, you will be mistaken since this anime has only one thing: plot convenience (or asspulls).
And if Shirous example doesn’t convince you that the character of this anime are not really what this anime tries to present them as, meet Rin our self-proclaimed “intelligent” magician who fights along side the protagonist, for some reason. I don’t know but teaming up with the most incompetent of all the participants isn’t really a smart idea. Even her heroic spirit Archer knows that, and everyone who has seen the anime already knows what that means. But that’s not the only thing really stupid done by this so called “intelligent” magician, in fact there was not a single thing smart about anything she did. She rather spends her time in school doing ordinary high school stuff instead of preparing for this life-threatening heroic battle, which she signed up for. Also in this heroic battle the choice of hero is crucial, it would be rather important to know who you are picking, but she decided to pick a random stone.
The definition of instanity may be “doing the same thing, over and over again and expecting a different outcome”, but that wont lead her to change her attack plans in a battle. Rin also shows first signs of Alzheimers decease, since she constantly forgets her servant at home and is pissed off about him later (as if it was his fault). The Alzheimer would also explain her inability of coming up with a decent plan and her going to school for no reason.
So as your 2 main characters you got a guy with some deep psychological issues and a female one who I already diagnosed as a Alzheimers patient.
You would think those 2 incompetent character wouldn’t be a match for any enemy. Don’t worry, with the power of asspull shounen progression and plot convenience they are able to accomplish anything, except make this show any compelling or interesting.
The second season of the anime consists of many moral speech of various characters, but instead of being either inspiring or thought-provoking they only scream the “moral collectivism is bad”, without going any deeper into the subject. It just really seemed like the author didn’t really understand the whole subject and just tries to compensate.
Artstyle:
While I do like the detailed backgroundshots, the character designs are pretty lazy. They wanted to stick to the original Visual Noval designs which have nothing much to it. The animation in this show mostly consists out of limited animated standing (or sitting) and talking scenes with flapping mouths. Every one or two episodes you got a few seconds of decently animated fighting scene which mostly hold up 5 seconds at a time before they go back to their “standing and talking” form. Which make the “fights” feel like they are half the episode long even though they are beating each other only for a few seconds.
Soundtrack:
The show has a nice epic battle score and in some cases mixed with electronic and it even has a nice j-pop opening, which even I (as a person who dislikes j-pop) can enjoy. The voice acting was decent I would say, nothing really worth praising but not something I would say is a fail.
Overall
So overall I would say that this show is by far inferior to the prequel Fate/Zero the studio made before. Especially the fact that they used the “Unlimited Bladeworks route” which is by far worse than the route used in the other anime version of Fate/Stay night, with a lot more contradictions and a lot more idiotic moral speeches.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jul 29, 2015
HxH is one of the many overrated shounen anime out there and I can summarize my review with one sentence: „If you became kinda interested in HxH, because you have heard it’s so much more than just a shounen, don’t believe it, because it is exactly that, just another shounen." Now I’m not a fan of shounen, and if you read this review you will find out why, so this anime is not made for me, but just for more diversity in views I will analyze this anime a bit closer.
HxH is one of those anime where you can literally see the quality dropping, with
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the earlier episodes being made nicely and at the end it has one of the longest pacings I have ever seen. Since the artstlye isn’t in any form detailed and costly they can’t tell me they ran out of money. I assume they just wanted to milk the cashcow to the end and stretched it out as much as possible.
Like I said before the start of the show was quite nice. It had a few things which didn’t really make any sense, especially the riddles, but it had a nice build up and a good pacing. It seemed to me as if the start also really wanted to surprise the viewers with something unexpected, regardless of how illogical it was. It also didn’t do much good in terms of atmosphere, in some cases it even destroys the atmosphere it built up just for surprise reasons. The main characters are also unexplained overpowered, sure there are a few stronger but that alone doesn’t justify a little kid being physically stronger than a well-trained grown up man, just because he “grew up in the woods”, which is btw contradicted later on. But besides a few negative things to say, the start (first 17-20 episodes maybe) was ok. It had a goal and set motivation from the character side, the main story kinda made sense (more than the rest of the show) and they had some kind of, what the fans claim as “tactics in fighting”.
In the second arc the terror already begins. Motivations from the character were completely forgotten and not even mentioned in order to have a little conflict for the goal of this arc. The reason for the first arc and what they have achieved was completely pointless and even contradictory as explained in the later arcs. The following arcs shine with, not knowing what to call somethings. For the show an assassin is someone who is physically strong and can endure much pain instead of being stealthy and deadly, the so called “mafia” is a bunch of unorganized idiots who apparently have a lot of power (they at least have a lot of money) which is contradictory in every way and let me question the whole world building of this anime and we still don't know what a Hunter is and does. The writers have no idea of how money works, which wouldn’t be a problem if they hadn’t dedicated a whole arc just for money getting purposes, which later on is also completely useless. Not to forget the story is full of convenience, which goes beyond the acceptable amount. Some of the arcs are complete filler since they either are pointless or have nothing to do with the final goal (the motivation of the main protagonist). There is even one arc were the main protagonist is inside a video game and literally the first thing he hears there is that being here is completely pointless, but he doesn’t care and goes on anyway, which makes the whole arc pointless and questions the existence of the build up to it.
This show becomes less endurable from arc to arc, with the mafia arc being an exception but still not good. It’s like comparing a pile of shit with a pile of shit which has a cherry on top of it. Seeing the later arcs lets you remember the earlier ones as if they were in any way good, that’s how horrible this show gets.
HunterxHunter also likes to copy or inlcude everything that was or is popular it seems. That goes from character design (Robocop) even to whole story arcs (the video card game arc which included cardgames like magic the gathering).
A thing that really bothers me as well is the fact that this show has no scale what so ever. The abilities and the strength of every character are so completely random and out of order. It even shifts during the whole anime, making character who should be strong considering their rank utterly weak and character who should be weak unnecessary strong. Its like as if one writer wrote the hierarchy of all the characters and their relationship and then another decided, because how much he liked their appearance how strong they are.
All of the above was pretty much the first half of the show. The show was like I said very bad but had at least some arcs which were watchable and had a decent pacing. From episode 80 onwards the chimera arc takes place. This is basically the main difference between the original version of the HunterxHunter anime and the 2011 version.
The chimera arc is the worst thing I have seen in a long time in terms of writing. You can’t take anything they say and do seriously, since the character design is so freaking retarded. They say they are ants but then a penguin and a pink panda in a suit is sitting there with them. The writers wanted to make this arc dark and mature but only present it in such a childish way.
In this arc HxH really shows how little time they spend with thinking through the whole thing. Where villains came from and what their motivation is was never a thing HunterXHunter spends any time in but in this case it makes absolutely no sense that some ant-people who just came into existence are able to be as strong as one of the strongest person in the whole anime. So again.. no scale existend. And with no time spend with motivation and personification the writers now believe they can put drama in the show when the villains die. Are you freaking kidding me? Yeah the ants just killed hundreds if not thousands of people and now I should feel sorry for them? The drama in this whole anime is the worst sort of melodrama, forced and reliable so much on double standarts.
In the last arc the tactics really shine, in terms of sucking. In the last 50 episodes there is only a handful of fights anyways, so there is not much to talk about, but the tactics there is so utterly idiotic. There is so much bullshit that happened during this arc, there was not 1 episode where I wasn’t facepalming.
But all of the above would have been minor points if it wasn’t for how boring this whole arc was. The reason I criticize their “tactics” is only because they spend so much time with talking and every fan thinks the tactics are so great. 90% of the time they talk about irrelevant stuff and when it comes to real tactics they are utterly bullshit, convenient or deus ex machina.
Characters of this show are not in any terms special. Have you seen either Naruto, One Piece, Bleach you know the personality of the main character. Add a bunch of extra typical side characters and you got them all. It’s just the typical teenager character who is strong enough to change the world stuff. In HunterXHunter they at least didnt go full overpowered with the main character, but considering the age of the protagonist and the enemies he is fighting later on I would say its pretty unrealistic (also there are some moments later on were our MC goes into deus ex machina overpowered mode for some reason). He is a very wish-fulfilling character and not that much of a role model (so instead of giving him realistic trades he is super positive all the time and strong etc.). I think there is nothing really wrong with this wish-fulfilling kind of anime, but they just feel very childish. So saying this is more than a shounen is really wrong.
Music is also pretty bad. All the good songs were copies of famous classical songs, such as Lacrimosa from Mozart’s Requiem, the rest is rather forgettable boring background music. Artstyle is simple and character design in the WHOLE show is the worst I have ever seen, but that’s ofc only my opinion. I found it to be nice to see no cgi, if I remember correctly.
So overall: This show is not more than a shounen and I might add the worst written shonen I have ever seen, but I am not into that genre so I only saw a few of them. If you are a person who likes more mature stuff and think there is something behind this anime, otherwise it wouldn’t be so popular, don’t fall for the trap and stay away from it. At the end you will just regret it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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May 22, 2015
If you have seen „Mawaru Penguindrum“ or Ikuhara Kunihikos latest work: “Yuri Kuma”, you are well aware of the artistic presentations this director puts into his shows. “Revolutionary Girl Utena” is one of his earliest works and it has very similar styles of execution to it and it is by far more enjoyable to watch than his later works.
What makes Utena(for short) more enjoyable is that he didn’t rely on sexservice to get the attention to his shows, so you can enjoy Utenas artsistic style fully without any interference like in Penguindrum or in Yuri Kuma. But when you look beyond that the show
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reveals all the issues it has with its story.
Story wise it’s very simple. You got a bunch of characters, who, a few, even got depth to them, which makes them well written and likebale, who do the same stuff over and over again. It may sound boring, but it was actually pretty nice for the first 25 episodes, but without any progress in the story departure it’s quite hard to get a viewer to 39 episodes. And this show really can’t do it.
Like I said: All you need to know about the story for the first 37 episodes was presented in the first few, after that it’s the same thing over and over again, just with different characters. The execution, from artstyle,
soundtrack, the way the dialog between characters is hold, the location and what they say is very artistic and unique which makes it enjoyable, even if it is the same thing all over again. Also, like I said before, you are getting presented with lots of new characters all the time. But after around 25 epiosdes or so, you just sit next to the screen and hope that something is changing. It’s funny how the show can present nearly every “enemy” character so likeable and great on depth so that this character becomes more interesting than the main protagonist.
Also: This anime is full of symbolism like Ikuhara Kunihikos other works are as well. If you enjoy trying to interpret stuff on your own and form wild theories about the happening in a story, you will probably enjoy this one. I rather tend to not do such things the first time I watch an anime, I rather focus on the story and try to explain everything that is seen in terms of the story itself. But after you finished it Utena becomes a very nice material for self-interpretation.
The characters of the show are very nice. You start off with the main protagonist (the girl on the cover) being a strong female character, which I can imagine being a good role model for female viewers. She is really a relatable source at the start since she got in all this mysterious story aspects, like the audience, and like the audience she has to find herself around all the mystery. They did a nice job at the start leading the audience into the story. But sadly at some point, where you just want to find out more about the world and all its characters, the main character is left behind, being either uninterested in what’s going on, or doesn’t know stuff the audience already knows, so comes around either naïve or plain uninformed. In the later episodes she can’t really be any relatable character to the audience and falls short to all the other characters, which the show has many good once.
Soundtrack is very nice. They got many nice tracks with classical instruments and even pulled of songs where they sang in Japanese which I could endure (I dislike j-pop a lot). Artstyle has some nice backgroundshots, it may look a bit old, but this got a charm to it. Animation is quite normal for an anime. A lot of limited animation standing scenes and a few better (compared to the standing scenes) animated action scenes.
Overall I would say that Revolutionary Girl Utena is a show you should at least look a bit into it. You should have seen the way it is presented, even if you can’t endure the whole thing. Compared to Ikuhara Kunihikos other works “Mawaru Penguindrum” and “Yuri Kuma” who both have similar execution, this one is the only one I finished and that for a reason. Compared to the other this may not shined with a great story line, but it has a great set of characters (which the other 2 don’t) and has no fanservice included. It is a nice character story which becomes a bit boring till the end because its story, while introducing new character sadly only revolved around one thing, and that never changes and never progresses. That may not make it a close to perfect anime, but its enjoyable neither the less and overall ok.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Apr 28, 2015
„When Marnie was there“is the latest movie from studio Ghibli. I think this movie deserves more attention, which is part of the reason I wrote this review about it. The movie is a lovely character story which is watchable just for its stunning visuals (it’s from Ghibli after all).
The story revolves around a young girl called Anna, who moves away from town to the more relaxing countryside, because she got it recommended from her doctor after having anxiety attacks. The movie is basically showing Annas experiences in this new environment, the things she does and especially the people she meets. She becomes friend with
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a girl her age there which she spends a lot of time with. Since the main protagonist, Anna has a personality that is very isolating to her surrounding and she seem to have even psychological issues and blackouts the whole setting is open for a lot of speculations. It’s a mystery anime with an interesting main protagonist and I spend the whole movie coming up with ideas what is the real and what is not, and what is the reason behind all this. It was a very nice experience and if you like psychological anime I can only recommend it to you. And even if not, this movie can still be enjoyed as a nice calm very beautifully designed movie.
From the characters, I have already mentioned everything that is important. You have a main female lead with personality issues, which are made very realistically and I found her character to be quite interesting. All the other characters really aren’t focused besides Marnie, the mysterious girl she meets, which I won’t go into any detail since that would be spoiler.
Artstlye and soundtrack where admirable, as usual for Ghibli. It should be self-explanatory that Ghibli is the studio which creates the best looking anime, in terms of quality. The soundtrack was fitting and created the right atmosphere. There was also a very nice song by Pricilla Ahn called “fine on the outside” played at the end of the movie. Which was very touching and which is probably the only track of the movie you will remember. The voiceacing was great for the main character as well.
Overall I can only say that this movie is worth watching. It’s a unique film, especially for Ghibli and in my opinion one of the best Ghibli movies at all. It looks beautiful which alone is a reason to watch it and has an interesting calm character story which can be quit psychological some times.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 23, 2014
“The tale of the princess kaguya” is an anime that really needs more attention, though I have to say that it’s not a movie for everybody, especially not for the average anime fan. It’s a movie drama that presents what a noble woman (girl) has to go through in the mediaeval times of japan in order to be socially accepted and be called beautiful. It goes even a bit father and touches the controversy of the mediaeval believe that woman only need to be beautiful and to get a noble husband to be happy. But don’t expect a deep psychological approach on this aspect, since
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it only barely goings into this topic. However, what you do see is the story of a little girl that tries to refuses these norms and that tries to be her old self which doesn’t succeed and she becomes more and more that, what she didn’t want to be. In the progress of getting more and more depressive the further it gets, showing the previous mentioned controversy of the common believe of happiness in those days.
Story
The story is about a girl that magically comes into life and grows up on the countryside of japan with her father being a bamboos cutter, who then later realized he wants her daughter to grow up in the capital learning “the ways of a noble princess”. This decision was made way too late leading to the girls unhappiness, since she had already seen the opposite world of joy and laughter on the countryside, which obviously is the one little kids will like more, but she still tries to, since she wants to make her father happy, who desperately believes her happiness lies in becomming a “noble princess”. Now getting taught how to act as a noble woman and how to dress, she more and more wants to get back to her old home. The story is maybe similar presented as the masterpiece “Memorie of a Geisha” with only the main protagonist NOT wanting to become a beauty.
The story itself starts off very slowly, especially with her being a baby. The childhood feels uninteresting at first but is later appreciated because of the built up to her emotions and the part with her being in the capital was made in a fitting pacing to keep you interested.
Character
The main protagonist, the little girl who slowly grows up over the duration of the movie is by far the most interesting character of the film (kinda understandable since she is the focus). You see her laughing, crying, getting angry, getting depressed and even as an emotionless doll. You see her developing from a country kid to a well taught adult who sees no happiness in how the world wants her to be. Her father and her mother are the 2 second most important character, on the one hand, the mother giving her confidence and supporting what she wants and on the other hand the father who wants her to become a princess not seeing what really makes her happy. In my opinion was the father-figure too little portrayed, but at least they had a few conflicts between her and her father in the movie.
Sound / Artstyle
The sound and artstyle are probably the reasons why this movie gets so emotional. What especially impressed me that the, already unique arstyle changes with the tone of the show, making emotional outbreaks even more gripping. It has a very nice soundtrack attached to it with a main theme played on the koto (so in the style of the mediaeval japan), which was very fitting to the drama parts. The sound changes as well perfectly with the tone of the movie. The animation is very fluid and shows great effort (it’s a movie after all) ,the arstyle is hold simple, like in previous Ghibli works such as “My neighbors the yamadas”.
Conclusion
If you want to see great battles with tones of action and a story of friendship, you should NOT watch this movie. This is a drama movie with the intention to show you a sad story about a girl and her conflicts with society in the mediaeval japan. It got a very interesting way of storytelling and a perfectly fitting arstyle and soundtrack to get you emotionally connected to what is happening. And if you enjoy those kind of thing, then I highly recommend watching this movie.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Nov 1, 2014
Legend of the galactic heroes (LotgH short) is a space opera with a big galactic war as its main theme, where 2 nations are facing each other, The republic side, a democratic nation and the imperial side, which is more of a monarchy. It focuses around the story of 2 young strategists who grew up in opposite nations, each being apparently a prodigy and each fighting for their nation to win.
The problem I have with this anime is that; on the one hand it seemed to focus on making its war story as realistic as possible, like a documentary in a way which makes it
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less exciting to watch and on the other hand, it is not an accurate representation of a war, which is the reason I couldn’t really take it any seriously.
I dropped this anime after watching 70 episodes since it takes forever to finish (ok for some people 110 episodes might not be so much) and I couldn’t endure this show any longer. I thought a break would help… Well it made me even less interested in going into it again.
-Story and characters
So what do I mean when I say they focused on making this war story as realistic as possible? Well the show spends a lot of time introducing new side characters, who are either military officials or politicians. A warstory can basically be presented through the eyes of the soldiers on the battle field, through the eyes of the civilians going through food shortages and suffering at home or through the military officials and politicians making the decisions. LotgH surely is the latter. The show doesn’t really establish any emotional connection with any of these characters. They are mostly standing around and talking about this war or something that is connected to it, kind of like a war documentary.
Let’s start by looking at the imperial side: Every character there seems like a typical military officer, an empty shell just there to take and give orders. Even one of the two main characters, Reinhard doesn’t really stick out of the crowd too much, except that his outfit is a bit fancier. The show later tries to make him more relatable with him having inner monologues, which was a nice effort but sadly a bit too late. They have a few characters who feel like they have some sort of plan and will get interesting at some point but that also happens too slowly.
Then we have the republic side. Here we have 2 character who somewhat stick out of the majority, Yung Wenli, the idealistic young strategist and Julian the kid who follows him around. Now my personal problem with Wenli, which also affects Julian is his never ending speeches about democracy. I heard that people like this show because they think it is “gray” in its depiction. So it isn’t “good vs evil” like many other shows but rather 2 sides which both have their reasons. But Wenli is a contradiction to that. You have an obvious attempt of the author to favor the republic side in a moral manner since the show never brings up arguments for the imperial side. It only tells you how awesome democracy is. This is basically the personality of Wenli, he loves democracy and hates to kill people, which doesn’t prevent him from becoming a commander in war ordering the death of millions. But according to him the death of all the people is always the wars fault, not his, not anyone else of the commanders, but always war. The lack of self-awareness this guy has is astonishing. There are even cases where he orders to destroy millions of ships, possibly carrying billions of people with a recently captured super canon, because their commander didn’t want to retread. Firing a warning shot or only destroying a quarter of their fleet didn’t even occur to him, he just killed them all, without really thinking about all the option he got. Yeah… it’s all wars fault.
I think Wenli as a character is pretty shallow as well, yeah he gives his speeches but there isn’t really anything more to his character. He seems to lack any relatable emotion as well. He is in his constant Wenli phase, which is a combination of mild happiness, mild concern and mild sadness.
The show covers a lot of side details and backstories of characters, but for a reason unknown to me they never mentioned how and where the 2 main characters, Wenli from the republic and Reinhard from the imperials, became such good strategist. That was another reason why I couldn’t relate to them, because I didn't know them. Reinhard had a little bit of a backstory, but that only revolved around his relationship with his sister and I don’t really see his motivation he gets from that throughout the show.
Now let’s talk about why I think the war in this anime wasn’t really well done. First of all the battle are very dry. The battle scenes focused rather on showing you the back and forth of the command of each side, giving orders and then you see some ships shooting at other ships, some ships explode and one side wins. The show constantly praises the main character for being such good strategist, but the audience can’t really experience that by its own. We don’t really have an idea how the battle is set up, what the numbers and the position of the ships are and all the other factors that play key role in the outcome of a battle. It would have been nice if they presented it more like a real documentary, or a game of chess. You get to know the set up and maybe get time to think for yourself how you would win a battle and then see how the geniuses of history made it. Of course are the writers of the show no genius strategic, I don’t expect them to be, but if you have some sort of interest in actual battles you can include some tactics here and there that reminds one of history. But little is seen in this anime. You don’t SEE any kind of great tactics in this ainime, you just see some people shouting some commands, ships explode and then you are told how great of a strategist this one guy is. That’s why the characters don’t feel like geniuses to me. They never show that they are smart in solving a problem. Well there are a few cases where you see some strategy. One case, which I want to analyze a little bit more is the time when Wenli puts half his fleet in an asteroid field to trick his enemies to think its the whole fleet, while outflanking them at the same time. Now I got a few problems with this tactic, first off, why do the sensors of the imperial side only track the number of objects, not the shape or any other important information to distinguish astroids from ships? In space without any pollution that hinders visibility that information can basically be gotten by looking though a binocular. So the writers completely ignored that possibilty and didnt really give a reason why the imperial side should think the astroids are ships as well, so its already pretty stupid from the start. This is a common example of using a thing that maybe works on earth in the past (where battles are fought in fog and so), but which would completely fail in the future in space, which the show is full of. You could say that they used some sort of invisibility (which was never said in the anime) but then again, how can he track down their numbers?
And what would putting your fleet inside an asteroid fleet accomplish?
1. Your ships getting randomly hit by asteroids (unless you can control them ALL, which the show didn’t manage to explain how)
2. By asteroids getting blown up next to you and shattered they would also disable your vision or crucial points of your ship may be hit by asteroid parts.
I think this tactic gives more disadvantages than advantages. Anyways, they used the asteroids to quickly hide behind them when they are being fired at by LASER guns, it’s not like these shots travel with light speed or something. The amount of face palms that scene gave me is indescribable. So this should illustrate that in the few cases the show actually shows some tactitcs, they are quite mind-boggeling and not in a good way.
I think that the writers are way more inspired by medieval war, with horse formations and these sorts of things than recent wars, which in my opinion would give a better idea of how war would be fought in space in the future. They also use battle axes and crossbows some times and carry their orders out with good old white paper. It just shows that the script is not well thought through.
And to be honest I think the battles are not really creative as well. In real war you have lots of different tools and weapons that can give you tactical advantages. Artillery, tanks, airplanes, ships, submarines, mines, spies and a whole lot of other things. In LotgH they basically ALL use the same ships, since it is never said that either side has better ships, which all use the same kind of laser to shoot at each other. There are a few rare anomalies but the show is 110 episodes long, so those don’t justify the laziness. They could have used different ship types, which would have made the battles more interesting, some kind of blockades of supply lines or so many other things. They used a black hole once In their battles which I found to be a nice idea but that’s basically it. There was even one scene where they could have used this giant defense canon I previously mentioned, but instead retreaded from it, because they thought that the enemies can’t use it in their attacks anyways (one of the many great plans of Wenli). They maybe can’t use the canon but they surely can use the planet as a defense line themselves and as a station to operate from and to get reinforcement themselves. This, for example is one of many moments when I questioned the capability of the strategists in this show.
I also find this anime to be highly unrealistic. In the already mentioned occupation of this defense canon, apparently not a single one of the republic side dies, which they made a big deal about, well I would too if something so improbable would happen. Such a thing is so far attached from reality that I highly doubt the writers ever opened a history book and rather got their inspiration from TV shows about historic events. I mean even when Nazi Germany marched through Belgium to get to France, a couple of German soldiers died, that’s just normal in a war. Another unrealistic thing about LotgH is that it seems without the main characters either side would be pretty much screwed. War is not decided by one smart guy who is just better than everyone else, it’s a combined effort where many very smart people put their minds together. This idea that one guy is such a good strategist and everyone else is just a pleb that stands no chance is such a typical anime trope. And people kinda make this anime out to be more than just a typical anime.
Visuals-
The show looks great. It got nice detailed drawings of futuristic ships which were surely great for their time. Ofc they could have made better, but it’s a 110 episode long ova afterall. You will get used to the characterdesign, which looks nice as well. Animation isn’t that great. The show most of the time consist of limited animated standing scenes with flappingmouths.
Soundtrack-
LotgH mainly uses calm orchestra music with many long notes. I didn’t like the soundtrack that much. I found the battle music to be out of place which made the battles less exiting. They could have used more fitting classical music for the battles. It may be overused but something like “Ride of the Valkyries” from Richard Wagner would fit into these scenes.
Overall
I gave this anime such a low score since I couldn’t finish it.(and for the record: I was watching with twice the normal speed after episode 20, so I tried my best) A show which can’t keep my interests, even though I try to watch through it fails the most and deserves the lowest score possible. There are surely some nice aspects around the show, and maybe you will find some of those so interesting that you will like this anime, but for me they weren’t enough to endure this one. Overall I can just repeat myself: This show was boring for focusing so hard on the characters and their relations in this war but failing to make this war engaging or the characters relatable and interesting. That’s the main problem and when you think about it, it shreds apart everything this show is about.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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