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So, I went to watch the new Jujutsu Kaisen film and yeah, it was more Jujutsu Kaisen. I think that the show this film is a spin-off from is a great example of shounen anime, and this movie was more of the same, albeit in a spin-off film sort of way.

While Jujutsu Kaisen wasn’t the complete muck that usually surrounds spin-off films to popular franchises, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to end up giving it any undue praise either. Everything good about the film I’ve already gone over in my review for the original show, so in order to try and not come across ... as somebody with nothing new to say, I did have several issues with the film that led to me scoring it as a light 7/10 instead of the strong 8/10 that I rated the show. The rest of this review is going to be me nit-picking on a movie that I actually liked. If that doesn't sound like fun to you then stop reading this review now.

The first major issue that I have with this movie is that it adapts a spin-off manga of the same name, seemingly written by the same person who wrote the original series. This is something that sounds like it should be good when said aloud, as that way you know that the film isn’t going to be just a glorified case of a filler episode with some mildly above-par animation like these films usually end up being. However, the end product is that the first half of the film is really poorly paced, as arcs that feel like they would have made to great introductory episodes to a serial adaptation of Jujutsu Kaisen 0, are instead forcibly shoved into this film, and there really isn’t any way that they can go about adapting this story without creating this issue. If you don’t adapt the initial arcs, then the emotional impact that the climactic battle relies on doesn’t have the weight that it needs, but by adapting it this way, it becomes really obvious that this introductory section shouldn’t have been adapted to a film, even if the climax definitely does suit the feature length runtime.

My second issue, and this really is just me being an arsehole by pointing this out, is that the animation isn’t that much better than the show. To be fair, the show is still really well animated so that’s a very high standard for it to meet while still feeling underwhelming to me, but when 1 film doesn’t surpass the quality of animation that an entire 24-episode series is able to create, then I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed. Just to clarify… the animation is great. The animation of the series is great, and this film is just as good as that. Personally, I just wanted more, and this film just never really provided that.

My final issue is how they treat the characters from the show. This film genuinely does enhance the portrayal of characters that really aren’t that important in the show. The senpai are each given plenty more actual screen time outside of the post-episode comedic shorts, and the new ship that this film creates is something that I really want to see more of in the future. That being said, sometimes the movie does go a bit too far. Like in the middle of the epic climactic fight, the film cuts to some of the fan-favourite characters from the show, for like 2 minutes, for no reason other than to just be like ‘these guys were here too’ and then cut back to the final showdown. I like when films like these shamelessly pander to their audiences, it’s part of why I enjoyed One Piece Stampede so much, but there is a time and place for this kind of thing, and this 2-minute scene was very poorly placed in the film. Furthermore, as an anime-only soyboi beta-male cuck, the film reveals a massive amount of detail about one of the villains that the show itself never got around to. As far as I’m aware, there hasn’t been a Jujutsu Kaisen season 2 announced, but the amount of detail revealed, genuinely felt like the film was spoiling a show that hadn’t even come out yet.

But hey. That’s just me. Like I said, these are my only major gripes with the film, but I did feel the need to address that I don’t think that this film is as good as the excellent show. However, if you do get a chance to see it in the cinema, then you really should make the most out of it, as a lot of the strengths that I already went over in my initial Jujutsu Kaisen Video, are just as present in the prequel film.

This Review is actually the script to this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSyf8NDvz_c

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As somebody that’s been an anime fan since my early tween years, I feel like I’ve become rather bitter with age. Concepts that once excited me from shows I will now often find myself drawing comparisons to better executions of these ideas to the point where I find myself very often being a contrarian for what seems like no reason. Case in point, I tried watching Demon Slayer when the first episode aired, before any hype for the show had been built at all and was rather unimpressed by what the anime community now assures me is the second coming of anime Christ, birthed from ... the womb of Haruhi Suzumiya after she was impregnated by the entire Osamu Tezuka. I personally find that while I will occasionally go back to shows that I had previously dropped due to the hype, I’m often disappointed by franchises that the hordes of weebs ultimately forget the moment that the next season begins, leading me to more often than not dig my head into the sand and double down on any potentially spicy takes, even for the popular shows that I do actually like.

Jujutsu Kaisen is not one of those shows. The moment I watched episode 1, back when it aired, I could tell that I was going to watch a really fun piece of shounen and put the series aside so that I could marathon it all in one sitting on a rainy day once all of the episodes had aired, and as somebody that recently finished marathoning the show, thank God I did, because Jujutsu Kaisen is one of the most consistently fun action anime that I’ve had the pleasure of watching, thanks in large part due to the insanely high quality animation that is surprisingly consistent throughout the show.

Action is one of the most popular genres when it comes to works getting adapted to animated medium’s, which is unfortunate because it’s also the one that requires the most amount of work to get right. If you want to watch cute anime girl’s doing nothing then you don’t really have to actually animate much. Just use a popular manga with some attractive character designs as the storyboard for your show, provide the characters with the appropriate lip flaps, and there you go, a perfectly serviceable “animated” show. Now, obviously this low bar for entry doesn’t mean that you can’t have insanely attractive shows where supposedly “nothing happens”, just look at most of what Kyoto Animation has made as an example, but action, unlike scenes where characters just talk shite, has a high focus on movement. A lot of fights in TV anime, even the best TV anime, sacrifice the movement in a fight or two, in order to provide really high levels of animation to the parts of the show that really deserve it. Jujutsu Kaisen, on the other hand, decided fuck it let’s make every fight look amazing because apparently Mappa realised that all the Yaoi money from Yuri on Ice and Attack on Titan wasn’t going to spend itself so they might as well put it to use here. Consistency is key when it comes to Jujutsu Kaisen’s aesthetic appeal, and this is really what impressed me the most from a visual perspective in this show.

Now, that being said, pretty visuals mean nothing if you don’t like the story that they’re being used to tell – TRUST ME, but fortunately for Jujutsu Kaisen, this also wasn’t a place where I had an issue. While the story itself wasn’t exactly anything special or new, for instance, if you replaced the word jujutsu sorcery with something generic like jutsu, or nen, or chi, or even something as blunt as magic than the synopsis suddenly starts to sound a lot more generic, this narrative was used an excuse for the show to thrust as many, insanely likable characters on the screen as possible. Every single character in this show is as likeable as they need to be, and that’s because they’re all full of personality, helped in no small part by the fact that Jujutsu Kaisen seemed to learn from My Hero Academia’s mistake of introducing way too many characters way too quickly, and rightly limited the class of the Jujutsu school to around 3 per year. This means that a closer look at characters with a cool character design will lead to viewers finding an equally cool character underneath that fits well into the show’s overall personality. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the series of shorts after each episode which helped give the side characters with little screen time in the show itself a moment to express their personality to the viewer, to the point where even a throwaway witch character that doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things still has a bunch of random knowledge revealed to the viewer by the end of the series 24 episode run time. Things like this are unnecessary and underappreciated, but add an immense amount of joy to the act of simply watching the characters on screen interact with each other in the main show.

Having characters with this much personality led to one of my personal favourite fights I’ve seen from a Shonen in recent years, where Yuji and Todo ended up fighting Hanami. This fight has one clear purpose within the narrative, and that’s to establish a friendship with Yuji and Todo. Yuji’s generically shounen, happy go lucky nature and Todo’s brutish, simple personality are a match that are clearly meant to either be used for a friendship or a rivalry, best demonstrated in how prior to the two taking on the special grade cursed spirit, they were fighting each other. While talking in this fight, the show was able to establish one simple fact, that Todo views Yuji as a friend, and wants to help mentor him so that he can get stronger. So obviously, when the two are fighting Hanami, that is what they do. And then the show does that.

As simple as that explanation sounds, having this major shift in how the characters interact with each other take place while the two are engaged in a serious battle, helped provide weight to a new character dynamic that was established instantly, instead of developed over the course of an arc or two, as these events often are. Hearing the pair referring to each other by ‘My Besto Friendo’ provided genuine hype to the fight, but more than that, the fight provided genuine weight to their friendship. This fight is a perfect showcase of how action can be used to develop a story, instead of a story being used to provide action, and I for one, view this as a great sign for things to come.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that the show is perfect, and while my main criticism for the show is something that I personally only consider as a nit-pick for this season, it is not a good sign for things to come, and it is something that I am genuinely worried about with regards to any potential future instalments in this franchise. And that’s the fact that the villains never die. Every time they’re about to be defeated once and for all, the show provides a bullshit asspull as to why they were able to get away, which is fine for establishing them as villains, who maybe weren’t revealing everything that they had up their sleave, but by the end of the last episode it really got on my nerves. There’s a different between a character that can’t die and one that won’t die. A character that can’t die, no matter how much the heroes throw at them is a genuine threat to be wary of. A character that won’t die, because the writer doesn’t want to kill them off yet is annoying because it halts any potential progress in the show’s story, in a cheap and annoying way, especially if the hero had already beaten them in the fight.

Whether this is just a nit-pick or a sign of things to come is something that I’ll have to wait and see about as a beta male anime-only viewer, but as somebody that rarely has an opinion that coincides with popular consensus in the anime community let me just say believe the hype.

This Review is actually the script to this video:

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My one shame as an Irish person is that I don’t drink. My mindset towards alcohol was that if watching shitty ching chong cartoons made for autistic Japanese babies was enough to develop a crippling addiction that ruined the relationships I had with those I cared about the most, then maybe throwing alcohol or any drug into my body might be the worst idea ever. That being said, I am still Irish. I have obviously gone on nights out to pubs, and The Night is Short: Walk on Girl is a film that best encapsulated to me the atmosphere one might have on these sessions.

The ... film is split up into three parts, and the opening segment is what I have dubbed “the inside segment.” – it perfectly captures what it’s like inside of a pub on one of these nights out. It’s loud and abrasive, full of charm and rowdy drunks. Yet despite all of these audio-visual aspects of the night out, the fact that it’s so hot and sweaty is what I associate with these experiences the most, and this is something that the film manages to efficiently communicate through it’s vibrant colour pallet that effectively communicates something that you physically feel through a purely audio-visual medium.

The second part is what I have dubbed “the outdoor segment.” It’s what happens when the sweaty loud atmosphere becomes too much for me to handle, so I take a step outside for a few minutes. All of a sudden, the vibrant, communal atmosphere of the pub is replaced with a quiet moment alone. This is something that is farther reinforced through the sense of touch, as all the sweat that you had unknowingly accumulated is exposed to the night air…it just freezes your balls off. This atmosphere is once again displayed throughout the bookfair and musical segments of the film, as the crowd that had gathered in awe of the unnamed protagonist have dispersed, leaving her to a quiet moment alone, before succinctly searching for something new to entertain herself.

Yet even once she’s found something new to keep herself amused, the film still manages to capture that cool, solitary atmosphere of having just stepped out of the pub. The brief moment alone establishes a whole new colour pallet via the night sky, that the film continues to use throughout the remainder of the segment, meaning that even the crowd at the musical, in a purely aesthetic sense, is reminiscent of that quiet moment alone. It’s like when that sudden cold wave that came from the quiet night hit’s you – because it’s juxtaposed against the rowdy atmosphere from the start of the night, it leaves a major impact, but as you get used to your new surroundings, you start to notice how you’re still in the same setting you were in before. You’re now capable of hearing the crowd still inside the pub, but it feels like an eternity ago that you were actually with them.

The final part of the film is what I have dubbed “the sicko mode segment”. It’s the aftermath of these nights out. Throughout the course of the night, the main group was split up into smaller and smaller groups, each one who engaged in their own stories. Now that all the pubs have closed, everyone is forced to either take to the streets or sleep under their sheets, all the while the atmosphere of the night sky swallows each individual up. This segment of the film seeks to address this event, hence the protagonist constantly visiting all the sick people surrounding her. The night is slowly turning to morning, a typical occurrence at these times, and with it the night owls are forced to return to their own isolated nests.

This Review is actually the script to this video:

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How much of your enjoyment from watching anime comes from knowing that you’re watching an “anime”? The debate about what actually even is an anime is quite honestly, rather overdone. If the defining trope of anime is the art style than shows like Avatar count as anime and shows like Panty and Stocking don’t, yet according to MAL, you’ll find that many people, myself included, will find the opposite to be true, because they value a show’s nationality more than its artistic direction. For me personally, this is because I find that the art style of any given show will change from person to person ... and whether the difference is as obnoxious as an atomic bomb, or as subtle as a Where’s Wally, it’s present nonetheless. I don’t really care about what is an anime in comparison to other forms of animation because at the end of the day if it’s good I’ll like it and if it isn’t I won’t. The most defining thing about anime to me, in contrast with “cartoons” is the Japanese national identity and the ways in which it is imbued into the show, whether or not that is on a macro or micro scale.

I bring all of this up because I recently was looking for some generic anime to mindlessly consume and upon browsing the anime section of Netflix, I found The Daily Life of the Immortal King. This show is a pretty standard power fantasy anime, following the One-Punch Man set up of the protagonist is really overpowered but nobody knows except us *wink wink*. Combine that with a magical high school setting and you’re looking at one of the most generic anime ever made. Except it is not an anime. Just like most of what you own, it’s made in China.

This knowledge hit me like covid hit the world, with the distinct language being used by the voice actors making me realise…I’m actually watching a Chinese cartoon.

As far as cartoons go though…this is a pretty good show. If you’re really craving some generic power fantasy than the fact that I was able to pretty quickly marathon both seasons despite normally dropping shows like this by episode 5 should tell you that this series actually has some heart to it. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that this show is actually funny with a genuinely strange sense of humour. Like how when they present just how overpowered the protagonist is through this overpowered baby scene in episode 1. While this is obviously just set-up for having the super-special awesome main character be overpowered, the fact that the show was willing to go so over the top with this explanation was genuinely endearing.

This charm is present throughout the majority of the show. One of the later episodes of season 2 is an obvious piece of filler where the cast interact with the animators of the show. They learn how anime is made. They talk to the animators. The narrative stakes of the episode revolve around how understaffed the team is so the characters have to help draw their own show or the world will end. This is a genuinely unique way of breaking the 4th wall that, dare I say it, actually made me like the show more.

At the end of the day The Daily Life of the Immortal King is hardly anything special, but it never tries to be. It tries to be a fun show, and provides a unique experience with its wacky sense of humour to help elevate the show to be something worthy of your attention for a rainy day when you don’t care too much about finding a masterpiece, and just want to have some fun.

This Review is actually the script to this video:

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Mamoru Hosoda is a director that up until around 5 years ago, I would have easily put down as one of my favourite directors. After gaining prominence in the anime industry from spin-off films to franchises like Digimon and One Piece, Hosoda quickly established himself as one of the best filmmakers for family-oriented feature length anime with modern classics like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, and one of my personal favourite films of all time, Wolf Children. By the time he reached Boy and the Beast, however, his partnership with scriptwriter Satoko Okudera came to an end, and with it, in my ... humble opinion, the high standards of his work. Don’t get me wrong, The Boy and the Beast is a good movie…but it isn’t great. Then his 2018 film Mirai of the Future I outright thought was terrible, although I do seem to be in the minority on this point. Regardless, I was nervously excited to see Belle and find out whether it would be the easily enjoyable and endlessly rewatchable Shinkai film from the late 2000s or the underwhelming and poorly paced films of recent years.

…

It was both.

Belle is a film where I left the theatre and confidently told my girlfriend that I would give it a 6/10. She agreed. I then elaborated and said that not once was the film as mediocre as a 6/10, but the score instead came as a result of the film constantly flip-flopping between a 10/10 and 1/10 quality for the entire 2 hour run time. She agreed. Belle has some of the best humour in any of Shinkai’s films, yet these scenes were few and far between. It has some of Shinkai’s most enjoyable character interactions in the supporting cast but the main characters were consistently bland by comparison. The film is a genuinely creative and original retelling of the beauty and the beast story, which is an aspect of the film that ultimately limited what the film could do, instead of enhance the potential themes that this retelling allows.

The biggest problem with Belle is ultimately a poorly paced script. While the ideas that Shinkai had for the film were all great in their own right, very rarely did they mesh together particularly well, leading to too much time spent on a generic and formulaic narrative that we’ve already seen before, and no time devoted to Shinkai’s greatest strength as a director, in the way that he portrays character interactions.

That isn’t to say that his directing was poor at all. Aside from how beautiful the film is, with a perfect fusion of 2D and 3D art styles, each scene from the mundane, inconsistent script was adapted to screen flawlessly. This film is a clear example of how a great director can elevate a mediocre script, even if that script was written by the director.

Also, the ending, which I’m going to try not to spoil, but if you do plan on watching the film, I still recommend that you skip this next paragraph.


What was the deal with the whole conclusion to the mystery about the Beast? We found out who the beast was and we had this big emotional moment. But how was his very grim and genuinely traumatising problem actually solved. He’s still in the same situation as before but now he’s cool with it because of a hug. The whole reveal kind of falls back into what I was saying about good ideas executed poorly in the script. This reveal was good, but as my girlfriend pointed out, surely it would have made more sense for the beast to have been the dad, who used the beast as a method of dealing with grief, and recontextualising the message of beauty and the beast to involve familial instead of romantic love…I totally just ruined the ending for anybody who ignored that warning.

There are still plenty of great things about Belle that I feel like I can’t not bring up. Like how it has one of the best portrayals of online culture to come from anime. While the actual visuals used to portray this culture are clearly just a slightly updated repurposing of his portrayal of Oz in Summer Wars, that by no means make it a worse film. While it does have the unfortunate side effect of forcing anybody remotely familiar with Shinkai’s earlier filmography to draw even more comparisons to his better films, the art style used for Oz was great, and seeing it brought back in Belle was a treat for the eyes that you really should see on the big screen if given the chance.

As a whole, if you want to watch a modern, animated musical adaption of Beauty and the Beast – then watch Beauty and the Beast.

This Review is actually the script to this video:

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I went into this film with the expectations of it being a kid’s film with way too much effort put into it. Instead it was a teenage melodrama with way too much effort put into it. Until the climax when it turned into a kid’s film with way too much effort put into it.

This film is surprisingly charming for anybody who’s willing to give it a chance. From Muge’s delusional view of the world when it comes to her love interest, Hinode, to the underplayed yet effectively complicated family dynamics that both characters have (there is a genuinely great step-parent character arc), everything in ... this film feels like it’s in service to developing the charming main characters and their adorable relationship with one another.

It’s like the people creating it wanted to prove that they could make a better film than Ghibli, so they chose their worst movie and somehow managed to make it actually great. They even got the voice actress for Arriety (and seemingly nothing else) to come in and give a genuinely engaging performance. I don’t know much about voice acting, but that only means that when I notice it in a positive or negative light that must mean that the actor or actress voicing the part is either doing something very right or very wrong. Fortunately for this film, Mirai Shidai is the former.

Honestly my only real issue with the film, is that I didn’t like the latter half quite as much as the first, since I found that it worked because it was such a simple story that only used it’s supernatural elements when needed and, without spoiling too much, that didn’t happen in the second half. That’s not to say that it was bad by any means. When you consider that the whole emotional crux of the cat transformations throughout the film was to demonstrate that it’s not good to wear a mask and pretend that you’re ok when you’re not, and that you shouldn’t run away from your problems, having the whole climax focusing on this element makes narrative sense. It just wasn’t what I was hoping for. It would be like if you were in the mood for pizza and somebody gave you a cake. It’s still great, just not what I was looking for in the moment.

This film is great, the characters are charming, the concept is new and exciting, and, it’s on Netflix so you have no excuse not to watch it, unless you’re one of those sick, disgusting lepers that doesn’t like cats, in which case, maybe you should swallow a bullet or two, because even the end credits of this movie made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

8/10

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I guess you could say that this movie bugs people.

The Kyochuu Rettou OVA was one of my favourite anime of 2019 video, and honestly, I think the movie does nothing but improve on its strengths. I mean…it’s still a piece of shit, and if you’ve seen this movie… and have eyes, you shouldn’t need me to tell you why.

Kyouchuu Rettou is a film that would have looked ugly in 2005, and, believe it or not, this film got released in 2020. It goes so much farther than simply being a bad movie to the point of hilarity, and while the OVA had some hilariously forced ... angst, this film multiplies that edge to the point of outright comedy. If you reached the point in the film when the bullies were about to shut up this paralysed chick by shoving his dick in her mouth to keep her quiet and didn’t immediately burst into laughter, then I would make sure you can’t voice such an outrageous opinion by shoving my dick in your mouth.

This film has a basically pointless scene where all the characters get naked and shower together so that one girl can sexually assault this other girl since lesbians are cool and so that this girl can straight up fuck this dude, yet 20 minutes later they censor the scene where this guy falls to his death, after his face has been horrifically transformed by a parasite. Inconsistencies lie everywhere in this film to the point where the only consistent thing about Kyouchuu Rettou is that no matter what, the choice they make does nothing but make the film worse, which in my eyes makes it better. This is one of the last films I’m reviewing this month and as an outsider looking in you probably think that I just watched thirty movies for these daily reviews, which is wrong. I tried watching almost 50 movies, I just stopped after about 10 minutes because most films were boring and there’s a reason you never heard of them. Boring is the one emotion that anyone watching this movie will never experience and I feel 100% confident in that statement. This is easily the most enjoyable film out of all the anime I watched over the last three months, and regardless of whether or not it’s good you should watch it. The only genuine problem I have is that the OVA is just the first half an hour of this film, so just skip that and come straight here. You will have a fun time. Hell, invite friends over and slag this piece of shit, it will be worth it.

7/10

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Remember all of the criticism I had for the first Hero Academia movie. Heroes Rising has none of those issues. All of the class is on an island to be temporary heroes which is established within the first ten minutes, so there isn’t pointless time wasted explaining why everyone is here. This allows the film enough time to breath, and actually gives me 5 seconds to half-care about these new characters enough to give a shit about what happens to them.

This difference in an opening section cannot be understated. Just like the first film, the last hour is basically one extended action piece, granted with ... a fairly concrete split in the middle that only takes up about 5 minutes of running time, yet what preceded this spectacle completely changed my viewing experience. By the time the first film started I was tired and pissed off that they wasted time for no reason, so I was more than happy to nit-pick the shit out of them climbing stairs for an hour. Here, I’m invested and want to see the dramatic payoff, so I’m more than willing to overlook all the issues that the film has for the sake of an enjoyable time. This is why you shouldn’t waste a viewer’s time.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still issues within this film. The villain is very transparently a clone of the series’ main bad guy. His superpower is that he uses drugs to have the same power as All for One. He does enough to get the job done, just don’t expect to remember him 5 minutes after watching the film.

Also, there was some bullshit that happens in the final fight. I’m not going to spoil what it is, but if you’ve seen the film the shit Deku pulls with Bakugo was gay as all hell and really felt like they thought that a similar moment from the franchise was hype so let’s do it again here. The result led to me feeling like they used a cheap trick to generate hype, which isn’t nearly as good as the genuine product.

While these issues do exist, don’t let them discourage you from watching a genuinely fun shounen action film.

7/10

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Mari Okada finally realised that she should stop directing films as underwhelming as Maquia, so she went back to writing under Tatsuyuki Nagai to again to bring an emotional anime film. If these names don’t sound familiar then perhaps some of their past work together should ring a few bells, with series like Toradora and Anohana, as well as one of the most criminally overlooked films of the past decade The Anthem of the Heart. Anybody who has seen these works should easily be able to tell, without even watching that there’s going to be a lot of melodrama and while it can occasionally go ... too far (beer poured on head), for the most part Her Blue Sky handles the potentially cringe-inducing tone very well. The main character, Aoi, and her much older sister, Akane, are casually mentioned to be orphans, with Akane functioning far more as a young mom than an older sister. This is established within the first five minutes of the film, and is treated as just how they live their lives. The actual focus of the film is that the ghost of one of Akane’s friends from High School comes back to haunt the place where their band used to play together, except he’s not really a ghost because the real him is still alive, playing music for this guy and its never fully explained.

Also a random girl from Aoi’s high school is great fun. She hears rumours that Aoi fucks college kids and wants to join her as they suck and fuck the night away. Then when she realises that isn’t the case at all, she helps them with their music thingy. Oh, yeah, this film is about a band also. I probably should have mentioned that earlier.

The grown up version of the ghost is a fucking cunt, and is so different from the ghost that when they were originally revealed to be the same person I genuinely thought there was some kind of twist or something, but nope, his dreams ended in failure so the energetic, optimistic fun kid, turned into this piece of shit. Maturing is the key theme of the movie. As you get older your forced to make decisions and change into somebody different, and whether that change is large or small its presence remains all the same. Whether it’s the sacrifices Akane made for the sake of her sister, or the reality that hit Shinnosuke like a tonne of bricks that change is present, whether you like it or not.

Honestly, my only major criticism for the film, aside from the occasionally over the top melodrama, is that the narrative climax that the film had been building towards is abandoned last second to make way for a far more gratifying emotional climax, which is fine, except the film never goes back to say how that original climax panned out, aside from like two still frames in the credits. While these still frames did provide some closure, it meant that the ending felt slightly unsatisfying. Emphasis on the slightly. The lack of satisfaction was almost non-existent but I thought it should be brought up anyway. Don’t avoid the film because you don’t think it has a good ending – it does.

In fact, there could even be an argument made that the film’s shift in priorities towards the climax mirrors the characters shift in priorities as they grow up and mature. It’s a fitting ending to a really good film.

8/10

This Review is actually the script to this video:

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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

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