Sound & Fury

I believe this is the first time I've heard of an anime visual album. I went into this Netflix original relatively blind, and it turned out to be pretty decent for what it is. If you've seen Ninja Batman, then Sound & Fury here will look and feel nearly identical since the two share work from the same studio and some main staff members.

First things first, I thought the music was pretty great. It's mostly blues and synth-rock throughout. If you're into those or similar rock subgenres, then you'll likely find more enjoyment in this. There's not much to say storywise. "A mysterious driver heads ... deep into a post-apocalyptic hellscape toward a ferocious showdown with two monstrous opponents." That single sentence from the synopsis about sums everything up. These are extremely straightforward music videos, so don't expect much in the narrative department. As bare bones as they are, I'm sure most can give it a pass considering the music and visuals are the driving focal point here.

The use of CGI is highly prevalent. It wasn't too bad. Some parts looked quite good, while others looked janky and lackluster. It holds up for the most part. The visuals went well with the songs, and the changing art styles kept things interesting. I'd say the 2nd, 3rd, and 6th parts were the best. "Remember to Breathe," "Sing Along" and "Best Clockmaker on Mars" respectively. They were the more visually striking and dynamic scenes in my eyes. As for the worst, I didn't care for the 4th part with its synchronized dancing and overall goofiness. The sudden contrast in tone didn't work for me. The live-action bits were pretty standard fare with nothing particularly worth mentioning.

While these 10 parts were mostly well done, they all lacked the substance and meaningful expression for an actual connection. There's not much to these pieces beyond some notable art and cool, fast-paced action scenes. That being said, viewers will likely be content if they go into this for the musical and visual ride alone. Overall, Sound & Fury is not among the best or experimental anime music videos I've seen, but it nonetheless has enough flair of its own to warrant a solid watch.

Sound & Fury (2019)

The video itself being a music video with some crazy animation.
It seems to be about some gas smoking guy and a rich guy with a gun who murder a Samurai Blacksmith family which happens during the end of the world.
This dystopian world is so random.

The music during it is a Rock style. It is AWESOME music and a pleasure to listen too.

The animation is mostly CGI but is amazingly well done. It has times especially around 8-14 minutes in which it just goes super crazy. Be aware after the credits there is still a good few minutes of ... animation left closing the story up.

This is well worth a watch if you enjoy rock music. Also if you want to see various different types of animation/CGI styles shown to you over the video. The story is all over the place but I don't think it was meant to make sense anyway.

8/10

Lets get to the best part about this film first and foremost. The 3D Animation and art style is gritty and awe inspiring in some parts. However and can lose focus at some points turning more into a psychedelic trip and losing the tone it recently had set. For 3D animation in Anime usually has a connotation of being a bad thing that doesn't mix but in recent time has gotten better and this film displays some positive light on why some 3D animation could be good. But its still not flawless. Next is the music which is hands down the best part about ... this film and the only reason you would watch it all the way through. But having this be the highlight of your film is odd to say the least. Because if right off the bat, if you don't like the music then there really isn't anymore of a reason to try to continue "watching". Where it really falls apart is the story. There is and there isn't one. I think I can speak for everyone that was trying to follow along subtle hints and stuff in the beginning. But once your main character is driving towards the huge tyrant vehicles one with a money grubbing gun freak and the other a pompous guy who is all about smoking poison. Once you hit the freeze frame at around the 10 minute mark and the movie goes into a weird psychedelic dance scene. All brain cells go out of the window and your just in it for the music and the set peaces. So overall enjoyment was fine for what it was. However I just feel like they could've gotten a more emotional pull from people had they focused a little bit more on story telling. I really enjoy things that don't outright explain everything that is going on but just set the world and drop subtle things here and there. Then really rely on the viewer to try to put things together almost like becoming a conspiracy theorist with visual storytelling. The fact that this Film did not do that. I felt was a very big oversight.

Presumptively, the namesake of this anime is the line from Macbeth, in which he suggests that life is "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Which makes for a fairly apt description of this OVA, or rather, OVA with the incidental bit of live action, although it's really just a compilation of a total of 9 music videos, and while most music videos like to include a bit of ambient noise or dialogue, usually to try and stop people from ripping them off Youtube, there is none at all here, so the only thing they have to work with ... are the visuals. Which were at least good, apart from one of them which had some rather poor CGI, it was all of a high quality, the production value's all there, but only sometimes did it feel like they were really putting their all into it. One of the characters who appears multiple times is a hitman, who's got one of those credit card payment machines which goes off every time he kills someone, and more importantly, both the usage of the angles and his physical movements each time he shoots someone are something which are certainly stylish, and in the 3 minutes in which he's going around killing people, it's fun to watch, one of two parts that I thought were legitimately good, the other being a POV from a cyborg who is denied entry to a bomb shelter, (or, as they called it, an LGBTQ safe space), and then has his last moments with a cat as everything is destroyed around him. Despite its short length, this particular one has some impressive visual design, they could've just made some generic high-rise apartment buildings and nobody would've really noticed, but they made some legitimately cool looking sci-fi architecture. Comparatively, the undeniable absolute worst of the bunch was the one where some samurai just dances with a bunch of topless geishas, with the incidental eyesore Instagram filter laid on. Maybe it was wrong of me to not expect to see a dance number in a compilation of music videos, but considering this particular piece maintained the previously established setting of future samurai with motorbikes and rocket launchers, you would think they'd have done something with it, it feels very last minute and out of place, and it's not the only one of its kind, not to mention, the worst thing I can say about it is it's uncreative, there must be thousands of music videos out there which just involve dancing and nothing but dancing, they made an effort to depart from that, but they must have ran out of time, because it's not the only one of its kind, as there's also the opener which is just 3 minutes of watching a car drive at a leisurely speed towards nowhere in particular.

Feels a bit weird for me to write and not talk about the story, but it probably also felt weird for the people behind this to make a piece of audio-visual entertainment in which they were entirely barred from using the audio part in order to tell their story. Sound & Fury is far from bad, despite a few pieces that fell short, I did overall enjoy it, but their good ideas were spread very thin. All things considered, if you want a piece of animation with no dialogue, minimal story, and some quality music, you'd be better off watching Tom & Jerry.

Hi everyone, Notthony Melontano, the internet’s worst weeaboo bitch, and it’s time for a review of the Sturgill Simpson, fully animated visual album, Sound & Fury. This is the collaborative project from numerous directors and studios, but the biggest name to be found with regards to the project as a whole not only directs several segments, but also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Sturgill Simpson himself, Junpei Mizusaki, who’s previous work on Batman Ninja led to a thoroughly enjoyable, albeit nonsensical experience.

The biggest stand-out feature for Junpei’s directorial style during that film was his unique art style, opting to give harsher outlines to ... each character’s design in order to emphasize the fact that it’s being animated even as a fully CGI character model, as opposed to the sleeker look that’s become popularized by much bigger and far more competent studios than virtually anything to come from Japan. This completely unique art style meant that when going into tracks like Sing Along, A Good Look, and Fastest Horse in Town, even without the knowledge that he was working on this project, it became apparent that this was his work. And considering how rare it is to find directors with their own completely unique style in the world of anime today, I can only consider that a good thing.

Visually, this film is not afraid to experiment, not afraid to show different art styles, and not afraid to embrace the freedom that the directors have been given with regards to animating each song. This leads to several memorable segments of the film, as the mere juxtaposition of Make Art Not Friends to A Good Look means that the segment feels very experimental and unique before it even starts.

Unfortunately for the film this experimentation isn’t always a good thing. The uneven distribution of who gets what tracks lead to the film feeling like a 15-minute Mizusaki short film mixed with a completely different amv compilation thrown in to stretch out the running time. Those first few songs set up an epic fight between a samurai girl and two warlords, which is unceremoniously abandoned by the 4th track of the album. The only song prior to that point that wasn’t directed, or at least inspired by Mizusaki is the opening, completely CG segment of the film which, even then only really establishes the world the film takes place in and nothing else. This combined with the PS3 cutscene aesthetic led this to easily be the worst part of the film, and a really horrible place to start things off.

Then Mizusaki comes in and tells his simple, but compelling story until we reach the best animated segment, Make Art Not Friends, where this storyline is pretty much immediately abandoned before being immediately retrieved in Best Clockmaker on Mars which is essentially a series of still shots explaining the samurai girl’s backstory. This is the last we get of the main narrative until after the end credits, which does finally give the conclusion of the only real cohesive narrative throughout the film, so make sure you watch the credits to the end, which should be fairly easy considering how Fastest Horse in Town is a quintessential banger.

Now, while I do like amv compilations, this led to the last half of the film being far less engaging than the introduction. Up to that point a lot of the enjoyment that the film gave to the viewer came down to trying to figure out how all of these different segments fit together with one another, which is mostly abandoned towards the second half because they already showed you how the film ends.

That’s not to say that the remaining tracks are bad as All Said and Done tells a fairly decent anti-slavery story. It’s a pity that I’M COMPLETELY PRO SLAVERY AND ANYBODY WHO SAYS OTHERWISE IS A COWARD WHO’S TOO SCARED TO STAND UP FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVE IN AND DEFEND THE COUNTRY THAT THEY ALL LOVE!!!

Following this we have Last Man Standing which is an animated segment, framed in the first person. This is certainly a new way to present this art style in a portion of the film that, for the most part is a great stand-alone piece. The only problem is that it’s animating what is easily the worst track on the entire album. And while I don’t exactly think it’s a good song, I would never go so far as to claim that I hate, or even dislike it. Last Man Standing is perfectly fine. But when compared to the rest of the songs, it’s very underwhelming, and short. I honestly forgot this was even a segment until I had to write it down for the script, despite thinking that it’s a really cool section. It’s just too short of an underwhelming song to leave any real emotional impact.

Finally, Mercury in Retrograde, what is by far the most unique part of the film, while also being the most visually bring to look at. The segment has this unique blend of 2D and 3D animation that would lead to a great way to present credits at the start of some mid-2000s superhero movie, but as a completely unique piece, it gets really old, really quickly.

All of this culminates in a very disjointed experience and while a lot of this could obviously come as a result of the different directors and studios involved in this project, I think that the biggest reason for this tone comes down to the album that these visuals are based off of. Songs will usually start without the preceding track having a proper conclusion. Does this make the album bad: no, far from it. But I would certainly be remiss not to point it out.

That being said, the songs are the one aspect of the film that I haven’t really discussed and that’s because I am far from a music critic and I don’t want to embarrass myself. The only thing I can really say about the music is that I loved every song on the album aside from Last Man Standing, where I do have to agree with Actually Fantano that the production is trash for all the reasons he cited. However, unlike him, I like what the song was trying to achieve, meaning that while I don’t exactly think it’s a good song, I would never go so far as to claim that I hate, or even dislike it. It’s perfectly fine. Everything else though is pretty great, meaning that while I’ve done nothing but criticise the album for this entire review I still feel like it deserves a strong 6 to a light 7.

This Review is actually the script to this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etPW8kgu0hg

Check that out and subscribe to the channel if you want to see more reviews like it.

Pretty good, it's basically a funky music video compilation with a cool samurai lady and CGI that really ain't that bad.
6.5/10 def worth a watch especially with how short it is.

There isn't much to discuss honestly I would rather have these over some other things that were produced and were a total waste of money and time imo.

Give Sturgill a try he's got good music apparently.

Art:
Decent CGI, good aesthetic for the live shots some of videos were very detailed.
Story:
There aint much there's a story that stretches between a few songs and a few more clips, the shelter one was nice.

Probably the best music movie there is. Not many have tried this method of narrative so it's hard to compare, but it just works.

Don't expect in-depth characters or story line, this movie is made for vibing. It does have a story and characters, but without any dialogue it is up to the viewer to make interpretations and that is the most wonderful part. Reflect on this movie and self-analyze your thoughts.
Additionally, music is great. Of course that's subjective, but it's half of the experience and if you don't like Sturgill Simpson's unique blend of rock, country and techno, I'd suggest not watching it.

TL;DR it's not ... your average movie nor really an anime and I recommend seeing this different form of narrative to break away from your cliche cookie cutter anime patterns (seriously, don't you get sick of it?)

There was literally no review to this so i decided to do one by myself. It's the very first one that i'm writing here so i'll assume it's gonna be poor. Anyway, let's start:

Story: As it's the music video, the story doesn't play such a big role here. Let's just say it's about samurai looking for revenge (pretty cliche) and about useless violence in the world. That's it. Nothing special, but still it's a music video so it doesn't matter that much. 5/10

Art: Even tho almost every single episode is made of different art, there is CGI almost in every one of them leaving us ... with like 2 episodes with pure 2d animation. What can I say? It's made by Netflix, c'mon. 4/10

Sound: It's not the type of music that i like, but i'd have to say it's not bad either. Google says it's blues rock, psychedelic rock, boogie rock, and synth-rock. 6/10

Characters: It's the same case as with story here. It doesn't matter since it's a music video. 5/10

Enjoyment: Well this one really depends on your liking towards rock music and it's subgenres. Also you have to have high tolerance for CGI graphics.
In my case it's 5/10

Overall: Whether you should watch it or not depends pretty much on your music taste. I started to get bored in the middle of the show. I'd recommend it only to those of you who are rock fans. 5/10