- Last OnlineNov 12, 2023 7:48 PM
- JoinedDec 28, 2017
RSS Feeds
|
![]()
Mar 19, 2022
Story - The main story itself is not half bad for a fantasy themed anime. Some things are a bit unclear that I don't think I missed yet go unexplained. The whole thing feels like a small part of a the novels it was adapted from. That said, you can follow along with what's happening for the most part so it could be worse. It's no Lord of the Rings but the story was absolutely fine for it's genre.
Art - The art for me is really great, I'm a sucker for the genre and this classic style. However, Deedlit and Pirotess' ears really shot out
...
a bit too far. I guess they really wanted you to know they were elves. Just a small quirk of what otherwise is a pretty beautiful style, but may come off as "boringly realistic" to people who don't like that stuff. I however, loved it.
Sound - So this is a real mixed bag. The quality ranges from poor to good. The sound effects are mostly actually quite good and never feel too stock. The music is also extremely hit or miss, and it's less about the writing of the music and more about the quality and whatever weird synth they used to make said music that sounds extremely fake for what's supposed to be a beautiful orchestral score. I think if it had a bigger budget this could have been ironed out. As it stands it's only ever distractedly bad a couple times and I'll forgive it.
Character - I wish characters got fleshed out more, but the couple that did were pretty good. Parn is a decent MC if not a bit plain. Ashram was really cool as well as King Kashue. I wish they had more time to expand on the campaign characters as they feel largely glossed over and probably the anime was made for people who already knew the characters from the novel series. It doesn't make the story hard to follow but it just leaves me wanting in the character development department.
Enjoyment - I actually quite liked this a lot. Some episodes are far better than others, sometimes the animation and budget really plummets and it gets unevenly cheap looking. However, I could see myself watching it again in the future. Easily one of the better series I've seen lately. It left me a bit frustrated that it didn't have more episodes to expand on things or a bigger budget to really make the good ideas look better in execution. They did well with what they had I think.
Overall - If you like that type of old school Swords and Sorcery through the lens of Japanese people you can hardly do better than Record of Lodoss War. It fulfills it's niche and if you don't fall into this western fantasy sort of fandom you may find it to be a dull or average watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
 0
Love it
 0
Funny
 0
Confusing
 0
Well-written
 0
Creative
 0Show all
![]()
Mar 2, 2022
Story - The story doesn't get very deep which is kind of a strength and weakness at the same time. I think it should have went more into the moral and psychological questions of robots being people, or not being people, etc. Or, it should have never bothered and went all in with action and being a lot of fun. Instead we kind of miss out on having either thing in enough quantity to really matter? The movie seems to have some moments of having cool ideas but the tone changes a lot and the story is just so surface level but simultaneously wants to
...
be deep. That's just what I got from it.
Art - Oh boy it's rough to look at this era and not wonder how on Earth this was the style at the time. I don't like hate it, but rewind 10 years or fast forward 10 years and everything just looked way better. I grew up with this era and you know sometimes it works and it's alright, like Armitage herself looks pretty alright thanks to her bangs and the visor hiding her eyes, but most of the series shows her eyes and... It's really just not my thing. That said, not all the art is bad and clearly I just clash with that style. Really not my thing, sorry. Of it's era it's not the worst offender and actually Ross and most the other characters mostly looked really good. I think they tried to stylize Armitage to look unique and stand out and it didn't quite hit the mark in a positive way.
Sound - Man this might hurt the most. The music is apparently by Hiroyuki Namba who did music for space Dandy (which you should go watch by the way it's pretty great). I think that the music on it's own without context is kind of neat, a little experimental, very of it's time. However, it isn't well utilized in the anime itself. It's used in a jarring way that isn't conducive and may even be distracting toward a scene where silence or something else would have been better than the little beep boops of synths. If you pay attention too, you can hear the Space Ghost shooting his laser sound effect used a few times and that gave me a good chuckle.
Character - Really uneven and frustratingly close to being pretty good. The spotlight of course is Armitage and Ross Syllabus. Minor spoiler, Armitage is a robot who wants to be accepted in a city that has grown suspicious of robots because of attacks by them. She hates their dehumanization and how they are treated, she wishes she didn't feel emotions because they hurt her, etc. These are all very cool ideas and they are just handled so poorly by the writing. Instead of anyone trying to help her or convince her she's wrong, Ross stands there and just says her name. I wish her character just felt more believable and a lot of her problems she supposed to come to learn to deal with just feel like they're gone for convenience. Ross is so close to being a very interesting guy, I love that he blames a robot for the death of his wife, he hates robots and doesn't treat them like people, etc. He's very thoughtful and quiet and that's all well and good, but he's way too quiet and emotive to be effective as someone we can agree or feel the emotions of the story through. I don't know it just all felt so nebulous by the end and with a pretty strong start that was disappointing to me.
Enjoyment - This was shorter than a lot of other OVAs I watched in on sitting, that is I 1 part of 4 per day. I found myself just pausing the video to go do whatever because it was really just un-engaging throughout. Like it wasn't bad but I won't be watching this of my own leisure any time soon. That's not to say it's never good of course, it has some decent action very rarely, and sometimes a character does emote well and I can feel something from it. Overall though, no not very enjoyable sorry.
Overall - I came away from it pretty underwhelmed. It's not really bad and it's also not like really good. It has some small shining moments but for all the time they had to develop story and characters it still feels underdeveloped. It wasn't greatly offensive and I've experienced far worse time wasters, but yeah this didn't grip me all that much. So yeah, just kind of okay.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 27, 2022
Story - I feel as though this was a Queen Bee story that happened to have Golgo in it, and you could make the argument for most Golgo media being that way but really he's just not in most of the movie. I didn't have super high expectations and honestly the story can be very good sometimes, and then switch to laughably bad. That said, it's just very uneven but overall serviceable. I would give it a higher score here but some aspects were just glaringly bad in my opinion. There's things to like here but, as said before, too uneven.
Art - This is a
...
90's production and though they tried hard to emulate the style of the manga and the other OVA from 1983, it shows it's budget and it's corner cutting at times. That said, the style itself is actually absolutely fine and more of a realistic one that I kind of like. It liked to repeat the same frame 3 times or overlay multiple images with transparency to give some movement where there isn't really any. In this case it feels less like a stylistic choice and more of a budgetary or time concern. In either case, it actually quite negatively affects what could have been great action sequences.
Sound - Serviceable and not much worth talking about. The intro and ending credits theme are catchy but I can't really recall the music outside of that. The mix seemed okay and I could hear voices and sound effects pretty clearly. It lacks the "oomph" of the 1983 music like the sequence with Duke on the motorcycle. All in all, inoffensive.
Character - Duke is Duke and there's not much else to say. He seems relatively unchanged from what you'd expect. I could dissect Queen Bee but putting it simply she's a mixed bag, and she gets the most development. The worst parts of her character are her overtly sexual desires even at a really inopportune time, but her mother was killed in front of her and it's implied a politician also raped her so in a messed up way it makes sense. There's some legit good drama around her, but also bad stuff too, which is a shame. The main bad guy that Togo goes up against seems to be a PTSD victim with some kind of bipolar disorder of being tortured over atrocities committed but then being excited to go back and do more at times. He's not anywhere as weird or interesting as Hard Snake or Silver and Gold from the other movie, in fact he hardly ever feels like a real threat to Duke. I'll say quickly I actually liked that the candidate who made his daughter and wife "go away" felt such real guilt that he sort of tried to make it right and that made his character more interesting as it would have been easy to just make him a scummy guy like everyone else. Overall, some good highs but some real lows in the character department.
Enjoyment - Honestly, despite it's flaws, it was alright. It had some good moments of noir, Duke himself still very much felt Duke in nature (though he hesitates at some points i feel like he wouldn't). Without spoiling the final scene we get during the credits is pretty satisfying and really accents the bitter sweetness of the Golgo 13 stories. I don't think I'd watch it again real soon but I'd say it was worth once through for sure. Nowhere near as good as the 83 movie however.
Overall - I really wanted to like it a lot more than I did. I think it did some things quite well, but when you compare it to it's predecessor of 15 years prior you see really what a Golgo 13 movie could (and should) be. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes the 83 movie, just don't expect the same quality. Again, it was worth a once through and I didn't feel like I wasted my time.
Edit - I rewatched it with commentary track and I found new aspects of the movie I hadn't really considered and maybe I was a bit too harsh coming off of the great 1983 film. After listening to the producer and the writer talk about it, I've decided to bump it up to a 7. Still nothing spectacular but if you like Golgo 13 this is a good flick.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 27, 2022
Story - Very simple in both a good and bad way, but I think a bit more fleshing out was in order. The run time is only 47-ish minutes counting credits so that's not much time to tell the story of an entire other world. What is there, isn't bad, but it's all very much been done a lot even in the time it was made most of it was nothing new. Easily the worst part of the movie.
Art - I don't hate the style used here. It's very cutesy, gives me slight Ranma vibes from the main character. Neither is it like really great
...
though either. It's just passable and that's fine.
Sound - The voice acting is fine, the music is catchy rarely but mostly pretty standard and not much stands out, the sound effects used were of it's time and that is to say very stock. It was never distractedly bad but neither did it elevate it or alleviate the other flaws of the movie.
Character - The main character gets almost no time, in fact pretty much no one does. The closest thing to any really development is the backstory of Mona and her Yappie tribe. I'll say also that even though the characters weren't fleshed out enough none of them were overly annoying either. They were all decent enough but it would have been better if we really got to actually know any of them at all.
Enjoyment - My previous lines probably make it sound like I hated it. Honestly, it was worth one watch through. I think I'm biased in that I'm a sucker for this era and style. Those feelings aside, there's nothing really bad or off putting about it that I can see other than a moreover blandness.
Overall - As much as it doesn't do right, it also doesn't do incredibly wrong, and I stand at scoring it a 6 because as stated before it was not overly long and it kept to a simple story that begged for more but simultaneously didn't waste my time. It's something that would make for a fun tabletop or a sequel that goes into more of this world that we see almost nothing of. I say it's honestly worth going through once if you like this genre or this era of anime.
Edit - I have found out there is a manga but it's very short at 5 volumes. Skimming through that quickly there does seem to be *slightly* more fleshed out story but it it still seems to be your average light foray into isekai with ecchi themes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 21, 2022
I really wanted to like this a lot more than I did. I am not familiar with the source it's based off of, but my guess is that the source material has more time put into the characters. In my opinion the biggest thing stopping me from really enjoying it more is the somewhat strange pacing and open ended ending.
I could go into particular things I liked or didn't like but in the end I think it needed more than 83 minutes to build the characters. It does successfully create a very somber mood and I like the juxtaposition between most scenes being not only
...
full of light but almost blindingly so. This is at odds with Darkside's total blackness, and I dig that. It has a whole lot going for it in style and mood, I only wish the characters had time to be fleshed out and gave us more reason to care about them.
I also just didn't feel all that satisfied with the ending.I certainty expected there to be a final confrontation of some kind with Persona Century's leader and his blonde lackey. What I got instead was somewhat of an art film ending where I guess the fight continues on? I also don't really understand the role he plays or the side that Darkside is on, but maybe that's the point? I was also too dumb to figure out what Kitari represented and what the ending alluded to and again default to my assumption that it's something I'd understand better had I read the manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Sep 5, 2021
Story - To me it feels like one of those very anime-like stories I don't care for where it's less about the actual telling of events or actual things happening and more about having a scene where someone cries and feeling emotions. I just don't really jive with that kind of media so for me it just didn't do much. I didn't feel very attached to any of the characters, not that they were unlikable or bad but most of them are so one note or bland that I just didn't feel an attachment to them as people. A little more humanity all around would
...
have helped elevate it a lot I think.
Art - The one thing this anime does quite well is show off a beautiful and consistent style. It makes me wish everything else was as good but it never felt like it cheapened out or had to cut things for budget. From beginning to end it looked very beautiful and was a lot to behold. the one saving grace keeping this anime from getting a much lower score.
Sound - I simply cannot recall much of the music at all. There was no theme that stood out for the show, or the characters, or anything I can really recall. The opening and credits have already left my mind as well. The sound effects were all serviceable, I noticed one or two stock sounds but not many. The voice actors seemed to be quite competent and good, notable a favorite of mine Chief Priest is voiced by Yao, Kazuki who has too many credits to list. Overall though, nothing all that special and about what you'd expect.
Character - I said so before but basically none of the characters are terrible but neither are any of them very interesting or relatable to me. That said, none of them are consistently annoying enough to bother me so it could be worse. I just wish they all had a little more development so when anything happened to them I cared in the slightest.
Enjoyment - I've seen far worse and it was a short anime so I can't complain a lot. A few episodes in I kind of realized how it would probably end and was waiting for it to be over. It could have been a lot more painful though.
Overall - In my opinion it has so much wasted potential. Had it built the story up more, the characters had more conflict or humanity, the music given some more attention, it could been easily a 9 or even 10. Not necessarily bad but I won't be watching it again any time soon nor will I be recommending it. All I can really say by the end of Kyousou Giga is "I watched it. It was pretty alright."
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Jun 16, 2020
Story - I'm honestly not a huge fan of the actual story. I can look passed potholes but some things seem sloppy or only halfway thought out (example, the gold toothed doctor). I don't hate the story but the fact the last fight because Edward punching shit in your typical Shounen fashion kind of really devalues the more interesting Team dynamic between Alphonse and Edward that they had in the beginning of the series. It's far from terrible and I kind of wish it gave more of an idea of what every character did after the events (it doesn't tell you what Olivier Armstrong or
...
Izumi Curtis is doing at the end) because the show felt like such an ensemble but instead it only focused on Edward and Alphonse and I find that to be a weakness.
Art - Gets an 8 because while I like the style and the visuals are great, it still suffers from the fact it spans 64 episodes and therefore there is a lot of people laying still in the frame with only mouth movement and the camera pans slightly. Otherwise, I like the style and some sequences look stellar. Very solid.
Sound - Some of the music is great, some of the music is very forgettable and serviceable at best. It was never distractedly bad and some tracks really elevated the scenes. The sound effects were fine, no complaints. The english dub is way quieter than the Japanese dub for some reason so switching between them was kind of a pain but this is a minor problem. Overall the sound was alright. I wanted to give a 7 for the sound but it gets an 8 because of those few tracks that really pushed a scene from being typical into fascinating.
Characters - The best part of this anime. I have heard arguments that the 2003 anime has better character development and that may be true. But the reason this show kept me at all was due to some of the really strong characters that I liked. So many very strong female leads which surprised me like Hawkeye, Olivier, Ross, etc. It wasn't perfect but it was by far the biggest reason I kept going with this show and the story is very much secondary to the characters and I'm fine with that.
Enjoyment - I only gave it a 7 because Story is such a huge deal for me. I know this show could have an even better story if the manga hadn't been written as it went and was planned a bit better in advance. I can't say I want to watch it all again anytime soon, I just wasn't that enamored with it and I think it's highly overrated for being ranked so highly... I just don't see why. It was alright though.
Overall - A solid 7. Definitely above your average anime, still don't understand the overwhelmingly positive reviews. It's elevated above most Shounen so maybe that's enough. I still prefer the HxH manga to something like this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Jun 4, 2020
Watched all 39 episodes with my boyfriend as we ate dinner. Neither of us cared for it. I was especially frustrated by all the loose plot. I feel like it was trying to evoke emotion but having almost no substance. Sure, I could dig deep and try to find every single instance of how events or objects are metaphors, but the overarching story doesn't come to any kind of meaningful conclusion and leaves so much stuff unanswered that it baffles me how well received this anime is.
As my scores indicate, it had a strong art style and I dig the music a lot. There's much
...
to be said for that, it kept the experience from being a total letdown. Otherwise, from characters to story... it leaves so much to be desired. I don't want to get into spoilers but things get introduced and then dropped, never explained, or go nowhere.
As for the characters, absolutely everyone is horny on main all the time and we almost never see them do anything but talk about who they like or finding someone. It makes characters incredibly shallow and unbelievable when you give them nothing to do except pine over others. Like you can have a character like that, but it can't be every single character. There are perhaps two characters, but when the cast is an ensemble of almost a dozen it's a real problem when no one is personable in the slightest. There was not a single character I really cared about and I actually sort of wished Nanami would die at some point.
One of the biggest wastes of time I ever endeavored in. It's not without merit but this anime is way, way overrated.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Dec 28, 2017
I recently saw this movie in theatre at a Fathom event that promotes new releases of Blu Rays and such. It was the most fun I have ever had in theatre, and I feel blessed to have seen this 40 year old film on a big screen.
The story is wonderful. I don't want to spoil it but it's such a romantic journey and it has plenty of fun for everyone. It's just finely crafted.
The art and animation is fantastic for it's time, and holds up today. It's Miyazaki so you know what to expect.
I gave the sound a 7 because really it kind of did
...
leave something to be desired. The sound was a little cheap with the effects. Make no mistake though, the music was quite good. The music was not quite as good as later stuff by Hisashi that would come later, but still some good music I listen to on occasion.
Characters I only gave a 9 because Monkey Punch (the author of the manga) said that Lupin was quite out of character. I see where he's coming from with that remark, but at the same time this is canonically later on in Lupin's career. This is when he acts more mature I would think, and it works wonders for his character.
Overall this movie is one of the best anime movies I have ever seen. I'd recommend it to absolutely anyone who likes animation because some scenes, especially the car chase, are simply captivating. A wonderfully delightful film.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
|
