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Sep 1, 2021
If you have ever seen a shounen anime and dedicated some time to thinking about what makes these shows tick, Demon Slayer will offer absolutely nothing new for you. There is not a single creative idea in it. You might be thinking: "I don't care about creative - I just want something that's slick and well executed". The problem with that, is that you could still do way better than this.
Given the (alleged) physical superiority of the demons, I was hoping we would see the main characters playing it smart and using some underhanded tactics to defeat their enemies, but no. In Demon Slayer,
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if a problem can not be solved by hitting it you need to hit it harder. Everything will be settled through brute force and through getting stronger, which really just blurs the line between the two sides in this particular conflict. It doesn't feel like you are watching humans that have to work around their physical limitations to fight these threatening monsters - which, I thought, was the entire appeal of this. It is super heroes versus super villains.
A huge chunk of the show's audio track consists of the characters' inner monologue that will make absolutely sure that the audience really, really knows what is going on. There are no interesting methods of conveying thoughts or emotions through anything visual, other than someone occasionally shedding some tears. They didn't even try in this regard. Demon Slayer is "tell, don't show" brought to such an extreme, that I can't think of a single show right now that was worse in this regard.
If all you care about is decent animation quality and dumb action, you might get something out of this. For anything beyond that, I'd look elsewhere.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Aug 23, 2021
What the movie gets right in terms of visuals and artistry, is counterbalanced by it's failures in storytelling. We, as the audience, don't know what the central players in the story want. We don't really get to understand what the end goal of SEELE or Gendo Ikari is and how the different ways one would initiate Human Instrumentality and/or 3rd Impact would really differ from one another. The audience doesn't know what is at stake or which side to root for (if any) and thus it is very difficult to feel invested in what is going on on a literal level.
The movie manages to maintain
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some momentum thanks to it's stellar characters and it's interesting visuals. It does leave you with plenty of stuff to think about in the end, so if you want a movie that forces you to exercise your brain matter, End of Evangelion delivers. If you want a conventional and satisfying ending to the story, kicked off by the TV-series, this isn't it.
I have a love-hate relationship with End of Evangelion. On one hand, I feel like the movie is needlessly convoluted and full of itself. On the other, I admire the ideas behind it and the sheer balls that it must have taken to make a movie so intentionally unfulfilling.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 22, 2021
No spoilers or detailed story analysis here. Just my personal thoughts, written down, after re-watching the show after 15 years.
The show is a celebration of neat sci-fi ideas, great setting, memorable characters and some crazy fun fight sequences. It's also visual story telling brought to near perfection. A single scene of silence or a change in facial expression in NGE can conjure more emotion out of me than any amount of tug-at-your-heart-strings monologue in an average anime show.
But there's a "but" to all of it. Towards the finish line, the story stumbles and becomes so cold and jaded that it starts to feel very hard-to-connect-with.
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And, to an extent, that was probably the intetion, but it did make the final stretch a little bit of a chore to watch on a binge. The first time I saw the show, all those years ago, I thought it was convoluted and pretentions. I no longer feel that way - I think there is quite a bit of heart to it all - but it's difficult to argue that the final stretch of the story isn't a little undetailed and messy. And I'm not talking about the notorious last two episodes - there are plenty of problems outside of those as well. However, I think there are still more than enough redeeming qualities to make up for the show's problems, so my score doesn't really reflect the show at it's weakest.
NGE is a masterpiece, but also definitely not a show for everybody. I am glad, that on re-watching it, I was able to find the same kind of enjoyment from it that many people said the show was capable of offering. Just don't go in expecting absolute perfection.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Feb 21, 2019
You can have a simple and fun martial arts action story with tons of nudity and violence with a high school backdrop. Or you can have a darker adult-oriented narrative, where the characters are dealing with great supernatural threats in a constantly deepening plot filled with twists and turns. You can't have it both ways. This is Tenjou Tenge's biggest downfall. It's an impossible mixture of things that just don’t blend.
A lot of the characters that the story fools you into becoming invested in are eventually tossed to the sidelines or reduced to mere spectators until the very end where the series hastily tries to
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give their stories some sort of meaningful conclusion. In Tenjou Tenge's fumbling attempts to expand its scope beyond the simple high school setting, some of these characters end up serving almost no purpose at all - making the reader constantly wonder why the creator originally even made such an effort to introduce them to us.
A series that tries to have an over-arcing plot that extends throughout the entirety of its storyline should have all the central plot elements in place by the half-way point. Not so with Tenjou Tenge. New characters are constantly being introduced to hammer home one or two new ideas that the creator just happened to fancy at the time. And you know it's always a bad sign when the story has to do flashback sequences to make it seem like there's any sort of continuity or logic behind the actions of the characters.
Now, the manga ain't completely without its merits. The art style is very pleasing, bordering on amazing. The series' humor can also sometimes be hilariously self-aware and witty. The fight scenes include some great fist pumping moments (one of the best ones for me was Mitsuomi's brief encounter with Inue Shindayu). Some of the character drama is easy to get into and I want to give the series some bonus points for Mitsuomi's and Maya's tough breakup acting as the central conflict during the earlier parts of the story. Many anime/manga stories deal with characters establishing and maintaining love affairs - not that many stop to deal with the aftermath of a failed one. The tongue-in-cheek attitude of Tenjou Tenge can also be a lot of fun and for me it was this over-all silliness that provided the main spark that made me want to keep on going, even while I felt like the entire plot was crumbling into pieces around me.
I would call Tenjou Tenge "a mixed bag". Its weird style does make it somewhat unique and mildly entertaining, but it would be hard to argue that this weird combination of ideas actually works. The series tries to evolve into something greater than its humble origins and it sadly fails while doing so.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Sep 13, 2014
First things first: I have never read Hellsing manga in it's entirety. I've heard that Hellsing Ultimate remains rather faithful to the source material, but other than that, I can't really comment on the issue. Therefore, I'm gonna review this as a standalone piece of entertainment, rather than reviewing it as an adaption of the manga. I have watched the original anime numerous times and it was the series that really got me into anime, so it goes without saying that the Hellsing franchise is very dear to me.
The production values of Hellsing Ultimate are great. The animation is fluent and the style is pleasant
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to look at. There are some lazy shots here and there: a character's hair might be frozen in place or a movement animation might be just a short loop that's repeated over and over, but that is to be expected. The show in it's entirety is just a slight step away from movie quality. The voice acting and the soundtrack were great as well. The only thing really worth complaining about are the cartoonish comedy scenes, which really don't blend in with the dark tone of the rest of the material.
I've always found the setting of Hellsing really appealing. Hellsing is an organization that's protecting humanity from monsters while employing monsters. They're fighting fire with fire essentially. It's not really an original idea, but during the early 2000's, when I first got in touch with the original anime, it wasn't exactly beaten to death either. Taking place during the modern era also works in the show's favor. I especially like Hellsing's rivalry with their colleagues at Vatican. The catholics in the series are pompous pricks and they despise the methods of their protestant counterparts. There was so much more that could have been done with this rivalry and I'm really sad that the series didn't venture deeper into it. This leads me to the main problem I had with Hellsing Ultimate...
The story is awful. Absolutely atrocious! An army of nazi vampires that has been in hiding for the past 60 years decides to attack England. I could probably stop right there, but there's just so much more to it than that. I think that the goal of Kohta Hirano (the creator of the manga) was probably to be as over the top as possible, but this ”thing” he has come up with crosses the line of utter ridiculousness by a mile. Every single twist feels like it's there just because the writer thought that the story needed one. They feel very sudden and they don't amount to much. It's almost as if Kohta was getting bored of telling this story and was trying desperately to spice things up with something. All in all: the series really rips itself apart when it comes to it's storyline. It's terrible.
The character/monster design is, without a doubt, one of the strongest points of the series. Alucard, Integra, Walter and Anderson are all pretty much iconic anime characters. I wouldn't go as far as calling them archetype defining, but they are all certainly very memorable. Even the fodder characters – the ones that exist only for their single fight scene – are rather well done. They do not only look cool either. The abilities and the personalities of most of the characters are well defined and interesting. The same can't be said for their motivations though. The reasons these guys have for their actions range from far-fetched to downright stupid. There's nothing inherently wrong with insane characters taking insane actions, but – in a good story – there should always be a crumb of logic behind that insanity. Hellsing Ultimate completely fails in making the audience see that logic. Some of the sobby backstories that were given to these guys towards the end of the series felt really forced too.
The action, while admittedly very cool, is rather predictable. The end of the story is basically just a big barrage of action scenes and while I didn't foresee every ”pairing” that eventually happened, I was never actually surprised by the outcome of any of these fights. The fights are very much guilty of the basic anime syndrome of ”the hero falls down but we all know he is going to get up again”. We all know it's gonna happen! Please get on with it! The fights are very entertaining, but there are no surprises here.
Hellsing Ultimate is certainly a fun watch. There are no boring moments. If you don't let yourself become stuck with it's absurdities, it's a blast. I just feel like there could've been a more tasteful way to use this setting and the characters.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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