- Supporter
- Last Online57 minutes ago
- GenderMale
- JoinedJul 28, 2016
20th Anniversary MALoween Mansion (Trapped Soul) Fantasy Anime League Olympic Sports A Bookworm's Haven Fantasy Anime League Fantasy Anime League Fantasy Anime League
RSS Feeds
|
Feb 14, 2019
What exactly is a good anime? Is it perhaps something with high entertainment value, something that is truly fun to watch, something that you truly enjoy? Or is it something that conveys some sort of important philosophical message? Or maybe, is it a 71 minute long OVA that brings absolutely no entertainment value, makes no sense whatsoever, and conveys no message but that the director hates you?
"This is clearly a deep reflection of the director's mental state and view of the world! It's a deep, psychological experience!" Yeah no, it's not. It's an incoherent waste of time with no characters, no plot, and next to
...
no dialogue. It's just some girl with 0 personality filling up glass containers with water and carrying an oversized egg around. There's nothing deep about it. Nothing happens for 40 minutes, and then nothing else happens for another 20 minutes, and then the director effectively tells you to just fill in the plot yourself. Just interpret it however you want to! Tenshi no Tamago is pointless, boring, and offers nothing of value.
I like to give credit where it's due, however. The art is very high in quality for something from '85. The music is really good, but unfortunately, it just doesn't play enough. Most of the time, there's just silence and nothing else.
Now, I know this is a cliche line that, at this point, holds no meaning, but Tenshi no Tamago's only purpose is to cure insomnia. Tenshi no Tamago is supposed to be thought-provoking, yet the only thoughts it provoked in me were "Why did I ever decide to watch this?" and "Maybe I should go make myself some coffee so that I can finish this in one sitting."
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
Jan 30, 2019
Major spoiler for the ending below.
What happens when a tearjerker fails at being sad? Well, the end result is something like KimiSui.
Let's start with the more minor offense: the characters. There are only 2 characters here: the personification of Depression and the personification of the Popular Girl trope. The only relevant side character is Popular Girl's best friend. Her only purpose is to have extremely unrealistic reactions to anything that happens and to hate the main character. The other side character, Seemingly Perfect Class Rep That's Actually Not Very Nice (very novel and ingenious character), serves no purpose. No purpose whatsoever. Nothing would be lost
...
if he was not present in the movie. Why is he here? The characters overall are uninteresting. It's really difficult for a tearjerker to work when the characters just do not seem like real life human beings whatsoever. The interaction between Depression and Popular Girl seem extremely uncomfortable and weird.
Let's just deconstruct the brilliant writing present here. The personification of Depression meets the personification of the Popular Girl trope because of a coincidence. After their random encounter, Popular Girl decides to confide all of her life problems (relating to a terminal illness) in Depression. They then proceed to spend about 45 minutes having conversations that I, the person reading this, or even some random middle schooler could write. I could have made a drinking game out of this movie. "Take a shot every time the most predictable line possible in a given situation is said", but if I did that, I'd get alcohol poisoning. The plot itself is just a stack of every imaginable cliche.
Now, for the crazy part of the plot that makes KimiSui stand out from every other movie with the exact same premise: the "major twist". You thought she'd die because of her disease? Well, nope, she died because some random dude stabbed her. Other than making KimiSui unique, what purpose does this twist serve? It doesn't work as shock value, as the viewer is informed that she died via a 30-second news broadcast. Then, it just gets brushed off and no one mentions it ever again. This whole movie almost felt like a work of satire criticizing the whole genre of the school setting drama romance tearjerker, since it's difficult to believe that someone could write this plot and expect it to be taken seriously.
Music: My favorite part of the movie. I've loved sumika ever since they did Wotaku's OP, and the OST was pretty good.
Art: Okay? This looks like something that would be considered top quality for a movie in about 2014, but for something released in 2018 I was expecting something more. It's not bad at all though; it's actually quite pleasing.
Overall: there's really no point in watching this. Unless, of course, you like to watch characters that in no way resemble humans act out a sequence of cliches.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
Jan 28, 2019
This review has some spoilers for Monogatari and SNAFU since this show draws heavily from those franchises.
Every fan of this show seems to think that the only feasible reason someone could dislike this show is that the science used to explain what's happening is illogical nonsense. Spoiler alert: that's not why people hate this show.
Let's start with the worst part of the show by far: characters. Sakuta is a combination of the worst parts of Hachiman and Araragi, which is quite ironic since this is the most blatant ripoff of the Monogatari franchise to ever be conceived. Sakuta is an average antisocial high schooler who
...
also happens to be an omnipotent deity that can solve any plausible problem plaguing any member of the cast by simply existing. Basically, he's just every terrible LN trope combined into one character, masked by the Hachiman brand of relatability. The viewer is supposed to look at this empty, two-dimensional cardboard cutout and think, "Hey! That could be me! Man, this is such a great and relatable show." Sakuta is the Kirito of school romcoms.
The rest of the characters don't happen to be much better. Unlike the two-dimensional Sakuta, every single girl in this show is one-dimensional. All of the characters who have an arc exist solely for the purpose of their arc. Once their arc is gone, they proceed to fade in and out of existence. Mai becomes waifu bait with no purpose or motivations; that short haired girl talks to Sakuta like twice just so that the viewer doesn't think she's dead or something; and Futaba goes back to explaining her absurd scientific theories. The only character that actually exists outside of her arc is the incest bait sister, but that's only because her arc is last in the season and the viewer needs to know she exists before then.
The plot itself is mostly fine. It's just a copy paste of the Monogatari ~3 episode arc per girl. Except, instead of Araragi actually doing something interesting or cool, our god Sakuta descends and solves the arc's problem by using his poorly written light novel main character powers. In Monogatari, Araragi nearly never directly solves a character's problems. Instead, he assists the characters to overcome their problems themselves, recognize their own faults, etc. "People have to save themselves. One person saving another is impossible." But no, Hajime Kamoshida can't even plagiarize correctly. Sakuta fixes every problem himself and then the girls magically feel better once their problems are gone. Remember when that stacked up against Hachiman and was a focus of that show's plot? Once again, just as with the characters, good writing of any kind is sacrificed in favor of pandering to the average viewer.
EDIT: After some consideration, I've decided that it's reasonably fair to say that Bunny Girl plagiarizes Monogatari. Kaede's usage of third-person pronouns (referring to herself by her own name) is used in the exact same way with the exact same purpose as it is used with Sengoku (kinda hard to articulate this without spoilers). There are full, straight up conversations that are exactly the same between the series, and that happen in the exact same context. The prime example of this is the 6th episode of both this show and Bakemonogatari. Scroll to about 8:40 in Bake, and then to about 2:10 in this show of the 6th episode. If that's not plagiarism, I don't know what is. Furthermore, as I saw another reviewer point out, the whole bunny girl thing that serves literally no purpose in the show whatsoever can be viewed as a copy of the animal motifs that are ever-present in Monogatari. On the other hand, you can even take the very characters and link a lot of them between the two shows:
Sakuta = Araragi: the classic generic LN protagonist whose main purpose is to help/save every character he meets. Obviously, Araragi is a complex, well-written, and overall good character, while Sakuta is none of those, but I digress.
Mai = Senjougahara: tsundere main girl that mostly acts dere towards the MC (this may seem like a bit of a stretch, but bear with me).
Futaba = Hanekawa: one of the MC's best friends, wear glasses and is smart.
Nodoka = Kanbaru: main girl's sister/has a sister-like relationship with her. Both of their arcs focus on their conflict with their big sister character.
Kaede = Sengoku: little sister/little sister type character to the MC. Both are victims of bullying, which their arcs focus on (Nadeko's first arc). The events of Nadeko Medusa and Hitagi End are also similar to Kaede's arc (aforementioned third-person pronoun usage being an indication of a spoiler that I will not be saying).
Koga is... also surprisingly similar to Nadeko. Once again, you've got the whole bullying thing playing a part in the arc and they both focus excessively on their appearance/behavior in order to be popular/fit in.
You can argue that a lot of these are common tropes, and they indeed are. But when there are conversations that are nearly word for word the same, and when you can draw a parallel between every single relevant character in one show to another, I see it as fair game to call this plagiarism. I mean, nearly every part of Bunny Girl can be found in Monogatari. END EDIT
Now, everyone's favorite part to criticize: the asinine metaphysics. Simply put, they just don't make sense. This show's scientific explanations are like watching Ben Shapiro debate someone. You just get spammed with a metric ton of information that doesn't really flow logically whatsoever, but hey, it sounds smart, so it must make sense. Basically, every single "scientific" explanation goes like this:
Kirito: "I am experiencing a supernatural phenomenon"
Futaba: "*relatively popular scientific concept that might be somewhat related to the supernatural phenomenon*"
Kirito: "Huh?"
Futaba: "*wall of text*"
Kirito: "Oh ok"
Art and music: Standard throw-up-in-your-mouth CGI crowds. Wonderful. Sound is good, though (mainly the voice acting)
Final verdict:
Just go watch Monogatari instead.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
|