Shikioriori

As I was sitting down and scrolling through kissanime new anime additions something caught my eye, like a a really pretty bowl of noodles in a fish shop. That would obviously be this movie. Obviously.

Throughout watching the first part of the movie there was a lot of thoughts swirling in my mind. Why is there only narration? Why does this sink look better then the entire movie? Why aren't there more noodles? To many questions were going through my mind. One minute the dude is eating noodles and looking at this pretty girl next second were at his grandma's death bed and I'm like ... tf is going on, but it was fine, cause next thing I knew there were noodles on the screen again so it was all good.

Next we have the worst part of the movie. The Not Noodles but Fashion Show part of the movie. If there could be a more predictable story then this I wouldn't believe you. Now having things be predictable is fine to an extent. As long as the pacing is good, it's enjoyable, and there noodles for all to share. News flash it didn't have any of it. Twas just a bunch of forced and random drama that really didn't even need to happen and would of been better without it. If only she wore a noodle dress would she have not lost her shady boyfriend. At least I think that's what he was, i don't know they never really explained what he was.

The third one actually not that bad to an extent, it was actually really interesting and if done right, was the only part of the movie, and had more noodles this movie would of been an easy 8 or higher. Honestly just watch the third part and the first part.

PS: My enjoyment is a 9 cause I watched this on rabb.it with friends so it was more bearable that way.

Netflix refuses to stop with their nu-animu. This time we have the privilege of experiencing the walk of our lifetime, offered by the Chinese because why should anime be Japan exclusive.

This movie is split in 3 section that all are about walking,

1) The first one is really poetic. Walk and talk because why would person just want to simply enjoy scenery and relax. No, being treated like some plebeian tourist is much more rewarding. I personally recommend turning off the sound to avoid this thing from ruining the visuals as well. This in case you, for some weird reason, still decide to watch this anime

2) ... The second one is a fashion show walk the catwalk which was pretty philosophical because apparently old people can also walk, but future generations walk faster. This is pretty interesting as I didn't know anyone would ever in the history of never make a story about such nonsense.

3) The third one is some sorta 5 centimeters per second alternative which is the best of the 3, but still feels way more pointless than any of the above because the original 5cmps anime (and especially the manga) still exist + it isn't filled with some Chinese words no one cares about.

There are also characters in this anime, but I am not sure why anyone would care about them or what they do. In all honesty, I would have found this thing more interesting if the characters had been invisible because at leas then, I could have called it deep for visually representing their personalities.

The art is kind of interesting, but what art isn't in this day and age really. As a conclusion: only watch this if you have 2 monitors and are rewatching Hunter x Hunter 2011 at the same time from another. Or at least that's what I did and it was still a waste of time.

Move along, I’m Chinese, this show is targeted at me and I’m telling you, it’s shite, other Chinese people think so too. End of review.

Okay.

This review took a yearlong because I struggled to finish the film when it first came out, here I am a year later, finished it, felt compelled to write a review because it was bad bad.

First of all, the Netflix version and the Bilibili version is not the same, not only the voice actors are different, the music is different. The Netflix Chinese dub was absolutely awful, the writing was extremely inarticulate, almost seems like it was written and read by ... a 7-year-old. Even the English dub sounded way better, heck the Brazilian Portuguese was good too and I don’t even understand it. Netflix didn’t even bother dubbing the second story in Cantonese or the dialects in the third story.

Second, after switching to the ‘original’ version, it’s still shit! What the fuck!! Like the voice acting is slightly better, but it’s still terrible! The second story was set in Guangzhou, so the characters spoke Cantonese, but it wasn’t done very well not because the Cantonese was inaccurate, but the voice actors just read lines with no emotions put in. The dialogues across the whole film sounds like as if I wrote it (and I have Chinese writing skills of a 5-year-old).

I have very fond connections and memories with the three cities in the film and was excited to see a film around them. The name of the film could also be translated as "four types of youth”, the three types are the ones in the film and the final type is supposed to be your story, you’re meant to self-insert your youth to make up for the fourth type. Poetic sounding right? Except, the other three types of youth story are a bit lame, even my pathetic youth have better dialogues. The first story may as well be “noodle noodle, noodle noodle noodle noodle, noodle.” Second story is shallow and unlikable. Third story is rich pretentious dude reminisce missed youth except he didn’t miss it because he’s rich.

This type of short story telling really challenges the writer to be concise and deliver an impactful story in significantly less time. In a traditional film you may get an hour or two to build up characters and plot whereas here there’s only 20 minutes to tell one story. If I was the writer, I would really contemplate the purpose and message that you want to deliver to the audience. Quite frankly, I failed to see a good meaning (I didn’t say deep because not everything needs a deep meaning, but it needs at least a good meaning) in the three stories. The first two was just boring and the characters serve no purpose, the third one is slightly better but then I got frustrated because the guy indirectly got the girl lying on the hospital bed, then at the end he got rich because his old house got knock down and the girl came back, what kind of pretentious Mary Sue is that, it would have been more emotional if she never came back, it could have delivered a ‘sometimes we pass by things that were important to us’ kind of message. For once, a sad ending might have made it a better story. After the credits, it forcefully put the characters in the three stories together, what was the point of that??

However, there is one good thing about the film and that is the still background scenes, it’s got that Shinkai look to it, that’s it, nothing more because the character designs were bad.

TLDR: bad story, bad characters, don’t bother watching. It might actually be worse than Uchiage, is that even possible.

Beautiful animation, though not quite on the same levels as they have produced in other films. The problem comes with the stories, firstly because of the short run time and the choice of making 3 short films rather than 1 long or 2 semi-short. This makes it so that there never really is that much time to delve deeper into the characters in each one, so they feel kind of distant and not as relatable as they could be.
There is also an issue with how the films build up their climax and end game, because there is no build up. They introduce the characters, ... drop a bomb and then leave the empty characters to try to clean up the mess. Not an ideal scenario if you want to make touching stories.
The last story was by far the best, but even then the progression was as clear as a guess 1 sec into the future, especially if you have seen Makoto's films before this.
Take Your name., which the marketing was based upon, as an example:
* Remove 90% of the film by condensing the beginning of the film to 5 min, take 10 from the middle and squash it together and then take the last 10 min and cut it into 5 min.
* Cut it together so it sort of makes sense.
* Wholá, a finished short film! Yeah, "great".

There are three parts, and all three fail to teach anything about Chinese culture at all. All three parts are generic to watch, though it does get better as it goes on. I particularly like that the first part is dedicated to past, the second to present and the third to the future. It is a nice touch. Though the story-telling was not executed very well.

Story: 5/10
1) 'A Sunny Breakfast'
You may as well just skip this part. There is nothing to it at all. The entire thing is a guy narrating about noodles. I honestly thought it would end up being a really long noodle ... advert. The pacing was awful, one moment he is a child who loves noodles and then he is a teenager who loves noodles. The only character traits of this guy is that he likes noodles and he likes a random girl he sees for about 5 seconds everyday.

No way is he interesting enough to be called a protagonist. He just talks about how the world is changing and how noodles are getting less and less care put into them. Nothing is actually developed on so there is no way I can be emotionally attached even in the slightest. Some people also die as a quick attempt to get some emotion as if it expects us to care about a random person we do not know. It fails to teach the audience anything about China's culture, and this is the most Chinese-related part of the whole film. At least this part is actually related to China though in some sense.

2) 'A Small Fashion Show'
This part was a lot better, more of an interesting story with more interesting characters with actual personalities, albeit not very good ones. I didn't hate it but it also wasn't something amazing. It also sends out a very bad message to people. It is about this model who is trying to come to terms with the fact that she is getting old, and proceeds to overexert herself through exercise and bulimia in order to try and stay pretty. What a great message to send to the audience. She completely contradicts herself throughout. Who thought this would be a good plot?

There is very forced drama between her and her sister for reasons I do not understand. When it was happening I really could not figure out why or what was happening. This entire part has absolutely zilch to do with China, and could have taken place literally anywhere in the world. Felt more like an American-based plot in fact.

3) 'Love in Shanghai'
I actually really enjoyed this part, definitely the strongest of them all, and has raised my score a lot. If this had been the only part, then I would give this show an 7/10. Nothing felt forced, and though it was a predictable plot, I still really liked it as it was done right. This guy is in love with this girl, to which they get separated due to his stubborness. Basically it is the plot of Byousoku 5 Centimeter, but arguably better. Though the ending of it made the entire plot kind of pointless, it is still worth watching and the best part of the entire movie.

Again, doesn't really have that much to do with Chinese culture, apart from the fact that is has a very Chinese structured family when it comes to school etc. However, like the second part, this could be placed anywhere in the world and still work the same.

Art: 6/10
Very nice. The background art was very pretty and I cannot fault it too much. The detailing on the backgrounds and the dreaded noodles were very very amazing and aesthetic. Actual character designs were pretty awful and bland, the best of them all would be the second part. The animation itself was choppy and poorly done.

Sound: 6/10
Not a lot to say about this. The music was pretty nice, the seiyuus performed their role nicely. There was no OP but the ED song was also quite good. Nothing was really outstanding enough to make this any higher.

Character: 4/10
There is nothing great about the characters. The first part had the most unrelatable and monotone protagonist I could ever dream of. Second part had a girl that is extremely unlikable and predictable. Third part had characters that looked as if they were literally stolen from Makoto Shinkai's works, but they were a lot more likable than the others. I liked the personalities, despite them being very unoriginal.

Overall: 4/10
I would not recommend this to people, and I will not be watching it again. I think possibly I may have missed the point of this entire movie but to me, it was pretty bad. Especially 'A Sunny Breakfast', skip that part. If it wasn't for that, then I could have scored a little higher. At least the other parts are actually interesting to watch. Me and my sister were basically falling asleep with that first part.

My initial reaction to the end of the movie was merely awe. I could not believe I had just sat though an hour and a half of nothing. I was attracted to the idea that this was an anime created by the creators of your name, a movie that is visually stunning and has an amazing story. When I saw the romance tag to this movie, I had a similar expectation. That expectation was entirely wrong. This is not a romance, it is 3 separate stories that mesh in inconsequential ways at the end of the film. The combination of the three stories as a ... single movie feels like a crime as the only similar trait between them is all of the characters are finding their 'meaning' in life and reflecting on their journeys. This is realign just in line with some of the other Netflix originals, throwing money at a shit idea and dressing it up to look nice.

Character:
As individual stories most of the characters felt very generic and dry. The only meaningful story in my eyes was the story of the two sisters a model and a fashion designer. Their "complex" relationship, if you could call it that, was the only redeeming plot point to this entire move.

Art and sound:
The art and sound design are what is to be expected from the studio responsible for a cinematic masterpiece like your name. I find that the only redeeming factor to this lack luster film is that at least I sat though an hour and a half of pretty nothingness.

Overall, I find this movie as a hard no as for someone who has the same reasons to watch as I did. Aside from my own ideals prior to beginning the film, I find that the entire film as a whole is a hobbled tougher amalgamation of half baked stories that the studio just had laying around and decided to pump 3 short films and tie them together for a quick buck.

I've read reviews of this movie written by Chinese people who said this spoke to them very deeply. I respect it, because this is coming from a very specific place, but I don't relate to it for the same reason. I just don't share the context. Artistically, this is another hyper-detailed anime that mistakes fidelity for quality. It's completely at odds with my aesthetic preferences.

The first of the three shorts exist solely so they could get funding to make animated food gifs. But I found the short so unappealing that I'll probably never look at those gifs (which recycle regularly) the same again. The second ... was fine, but not challenging at all. It seemed like they threw it together naratively, because there was no point to the pink-haired girl whatsoever by the end, even though she was nominally an antagonist. The shot of the main girl fainting on the runway was really good, though.

I liked the third short the best, but it was also somewhat simple. Once they had chosen the hook of using the tape recorder (which I was a sucker for because I like relationships expressed through old tech, let's be real), that whole story probably fell directly into place. The symbolism of him moving on to a CD player, which is basically read-only, as opposed to the tape recorder's read-write nature that facilitated his relationship with the girl, was kino af.

Bland, boring and probably just a shameless attempt to get some easy money after "Kimi no na wa"s insane success.

The only part of the movie/shots that isn't absolute garbage is the animation, which would make sense since a lot of the people who worked on animating Kimi no na wa worked on this too.

The stories are horrid, uninspired and bland. The writing's not that bad, but it's obnoxious and pretentious, which i guess isn't something that can be avoided, since the plots basically are basically ramen, fashion and childhood romance nostalgia. As you can imagine, the first two are absolute garbage, while the third one ... was watchable at least (although it still had no story to it).

Just save yourself from the dissappointment and time waste, you're literally better of watching ANY other show there is. Unless you're a fan of pretentious, slow paced shows with no story to them, then by all means give it a shot.

Note
I usually only write reviews for anime or manga that I enjoy, so that I can hopefully convince someone to watch or read it and share my enjoyment for it. But when I looked at the reviews and watched Flavours of Youth, I felt the landscape of reviews misrepresented this movie too much.

Stories - 2/10
The stories were not interesting. You can try to reach for an abstract meaning or personal interpretation of each story, but it was as if they were thought up in a second and based around a singular line. "Guy nostolgically eats noodles" "Clothing industry lady gets hurt" "Idk love romance sadness ... or something" and then they went to work.

Art - 9/10
Undoubtedly the best part of this anime. It looks amazing, I like the character designs a lot, and it has fluent animation. No complaints here.

Sound - 7/10
Not remarkable but nice. Good.

Characters - 1/10
I challenge fans of this movie to name one trait of any of these characters. The best I can do is the first guy likes noodles and the last guy likes architecture. Anything else is reaching, speculation and interpretation like modern art. All we knew about the second woman was that she liked her sister and they lived together, and then they have a random dramatic fight over sowing or something. It was pointless drama created for nothing, as if it were based on a 7-year-olds' sibling rivalry hissy-fit.

Enjoyment - 3/10
2/10 for the art. I'm a fan of good animation, but it can't save a bad story. It was nigh unbearable to sit through this anime, it felt like it lasted for an eternity - like hell, or death.

Overall - 1/10
I'm not a Makoto Shinkai fan, so when I learnt his incredibly great studio Comic Wave Films was animating something from a different director I was ecstatic. However, I ended up liking it even less due to zero thought on characters, story and direction. Unfortunate and a waste of beautiful animation to say the least.

I so want to give this a 1 / 10. What is this, another certified CoMix Story™ with a new twist? Gosh I detest this production. But I have to give it a 3 / 10 because while the stories are terrible, the art is above average so it technically balances out.

Another cookie-cutter tale of the intersection of personal backgrounds, bygone times, and change this is. Good thing CoMix only made, um, like six of these?

Now, if we disregard the fact that this story literally rips off CoMix’s own stuff (which we should actually disregard since originality does not necessarily equate brilliance), the story is ... quite bland. It feels like a slog because it's just boring. As for the specifics in the story and other stuff I won't go through them. They are covered by other reviews so just look through those ones I guess. But I just have to comment that some parts of the story are so crap that I closed my device right away and had to restrain myself from unleashing terror upon this world.

The only good thing about this is that its many depictions of food, food, and more food are really good: they are detailed and drawn accurately (at least a step up from chow mein everyday), and really drive home the fact of how suited CoMix is to making travel ads.

I encourage you to avoid this. Yeah. Thanks for your attention by the way. Glad I could at least attempt to entertain - no, inform you.

Written under the pretense that life is boring, Flavors of Youth showcase’s the mundanity of ordinary people in all of their glorious banality. Injections of “shock and awe” are inserted to obfuscate the viewer’s attention away from the overt vapidity that is present on screen, but it is to no avail, as the blandness is too pungent for one to completely ignore. Furthermore, the presence of a theme or overarching message seems to be absent, leaving the viewer confused as to what they are watching an insipid movie with little-to-nothing to offer.


Sunny Breakfast: 1/10

“Translucent.”

This was one of the numerous words that “Narration Boy” used to ... describe the essence of his entire existence (i.e. noodles); yet, it also serves as an accurate description of his unremarkable life. Rather than concocting a recipe to cook his own noodles, “Narration Boy” laments how empty his life is without his daily dose of San Xian noodles, creating a dissociation with himself and society — although, to be fair, he doesn’t seem to have any friends, nor does he attempt to initiate a conversation with the girl he is secretly stalking on a daily basis, but that’s neither here nor there. The point, if there even is one, is this: that “Narration Boy” expects life to cater to his refined noodle consumption needs; otherwise, he will loaf around in a depressed mood complaining about the capitalization of the noodle industry in Japan.


A Little Fashion Show: 2/10

Documentaries about the ruthlessness of the fashion world, and the lengths that the models are willing to push themselves to for the prestige of walking in front of a distinguished crowd of critics, have become streamlined to the public for several years now. To put it comically: it’s an ugly business about beautiful people. “A Little Fashion Show,” however, extracts much of the wickedness out of it, rendering a softened version that is hardly more interesting than the first film. Once again, the characters offer very little in terms of substance, and the motif of finding oneself through your family/love one’s is presented in a prosaic manner.


Shanghai Love: 3/10

It felt like this story was told from the wrong perspective, as it would have been far more intriguing hearing the girl’s first hand accounts. The implied child abuse could have lent itself to an emotional struggle for the girl to overcome before entering into a relationship with the boy in the story. Also, the failure in gaining acceptance to her desired school could have led to depressive episodes, in which she struggles with her own self-identity. But enough talking about what isn’t, let’s talk about what is.

In lieu of cell phones, our main characters “message” each other through the use of cassette tapes (people know what these are, right?). It is presented in a fairly charming way (albeit a bit corny), but the reasons as to why these characters express interest for one another is ill-explored. And as the main character grows up, and becomes immersed in the rigors of his “desired” career path, he discovers a tape from his past, and guess what: the girl randomly shows up at the end and they live happily ever after. Disney ending, much?


Overall: 2/10

Given the upward trend of the anthology film ratings, if the studio decided to make seven more shorts, they possibly could have produced something quite masterful. But, as it stands, it was a dismal performance with a poverty in memorable moments. Nothing watched here today will persist in the memory banks of my brain, and recommending to others should be avoided, as they will probably no longer wish to talk to you. One has to wonder why Netflix authorized this weird amalgamation for widespread consumption, but, then again, “Neo Yokio” exists, so……..yeah.