- Last Online1 hour ago
- GenderMale
- BirthdaySep 24, 1994
- LocationFinland
- JoinedFeb 9, 2013
RSS Feeds
|
![]()
Apr 14, 2024
Horny version of Tokyo Ghoul and not in a good way. The show is flat out trashy so if you enjoy stuff like that you might get a kick out of this show but it wasn't for me.
The story is about vampires that are mixed into human society and the authorities and third parties revolving around dealing with them. They act completely indistinguishable to humans until they witness blood and in which case they turn into these bloodlusty monsters. And I mean lust in the literal sense. They obviously get violent but they also get aroused by blood. This leads the series to have a
...
lot of sexual assault in it.
And on that note I have to mention the main character Tsukasa who is probably my main complaint about the show besides the undertones. She gets into these awful situations constantly (violence and rape) but somehow is always okay with all of it. The show never mentions her having any mental issues but I cannot fathom a normal human being reacting to the things she has experiences the way she does.
A lot of the times the show just feels like a rape fantasy by the author. Ironically apparently it was fairly popular among the female audience, shipping the two main characters frequently. Different strokes and all that I guess. I just feel that all the horrible deeds were the main focus of the writing which really made the characters feel like they were AI or something. Just constant reactions that make no sense.
Outside of the main duo, there were some okay characters but another big issue was that the designs are way too samey. A big portion of the cast are police officers or spies among them and they wear the same uniforms and because they mostly lack any detailed designs, the cast became a mess to follow, especially later when they kept adding more characters. I was struggling to tell who the talk was about occasionally.
On a more positive note about characters, the show has a pretty crazy line up of many talented voice actors which surprised me considering the trashy material they were working with. Now despite having all this talent, their sound department didn't always deliver. When the characters started getting loud, there was audible clipping in the recordings and this happened several times and not just in one episode. Not sure how they missed all of this in the production.
The world building itself is alright. I did find myself somewhat interest about the history of the vampires, their behavior and conflict with humans and adapting to a social life. But sadly with the show's runtime of only 12 episodes, we could barely just scratch the surface and with all the negative stuff in mind I am not interested in reading the manga so this is it for me.
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
![]()
Mar 9, 2024
First of all DO NOT watch SSSS.Dynazenon until you have watched SSSS.Gridman!
I originally wached Gridman when it aired weekly and thought it was a good show, but nothing spectacular. Fast forward a few years later and we have Dynazenon, the new entry in the same universe. It sadly came out when I was still experiencing a massive anime burnout and wasn't watching anything but now finally all this time later, I got around to watching it and I'm very glad for that.
Without going into spoilers, Dynazenon's story is very similar to Gridman's; bad guys make Kaijus cause chaos, good guys are there to solve the
...
problems with the titular guardians. But believe me when I say, that's just scratching the surface and the series has a lot more depth than that.
I love how the show just feels off and what I mean by that is that everything that's happening is so nonchalant from the world's inhabitants' POV even though things like Kaiju attacks are not only destroying the surroundings but also claiming a lot of lives. Characters are also quick to accept everything that's happening, even things that are completely new and seemingly impossible to them. One could say these things are bad writing but I would disagree. They made the show feel eerie in a great way among other things.
Much like Gridman, the series is chock full of references to other entries of the franchise (including the tokusatsu TV show) and small, minor details that most people (including myself) would easily miss but a lot of them really add to the lore and or are otherwise important. Now like I said I'm not all that perceptive sadly but luckily for me, there are a lot of people around in discussion threads for the episodes that post really eye-opening theories and discoveries that made every episode feel more meaningful.
One of my main criticisms for the show however is that while I do appreciate all the callbacks/parallels etc. to Gridman, sometimes the show feels a bit too much the same. And the worst part of this is the monster of the week feel that is there for most of the runtime but luckily they still put a lot of other interesting things in every episode so the battles are not even the main focus often.
Now for the main thing that elevated Dynazenon to me compared to Gridman are the characters. I didn't hate Gridman's characters by any means but compared to the main group here, it's pretty much night and day when it comes to personalities and even character development. Since the series is less focused on explaining how the world works and the Kaiju spectacles, they had a chance to put way more time into the characters which in my opinion worked really well in the show's favor.
Another thing that I enjoyed in both shows is the direction. We have a lot of amazing camera angles and shots that add to the great feel of the show. Sometimes it even made for some good symbolism if you paid enough attention. The direction for the music also worked well. We have a wide array from anywhere between great silent scenes to hype action pieces.
There's not much big negative things I can say about the show. I won't rate it higher so far because there's still some questions I have left and I have yet to watch Gridman Universe but after completing this I have high hopes moving forward.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Mar 1, 2024
I left SD Gundam stuff as the final entries in my Gundam completionist journey because I always had low expectations of them. For the most part I think they have been passable up until now (minus Gundam Force. That one should not even exist). And now I finally got to Brave Battle Warriors, an SD Gundam retelling of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I'm not sure why barely anyone has watched this as I was pleasantly surprised by it.
Now, my knowledge of the source material isn't good. I've never actually read or played through any kinds of other various adaptations of it so take
...
what I say here with a grain of salt. However, even while talking to a friend who knows the source material and it became apparent they definitely changed many things around (it IS a retelling after all), I still very much enjoyed my time with the series.
My biggest gripe is probably the pacing though. The series is 51 episodes long but the episodes themselves are only around 10 minutes each. This made some episodes feel completely stale while others were entirely tense, important plot points. And because the source material is also a huge story, them trying to do it with effectively a 2-cour runtime meant that things had to progress fast. As far as I know they didn't cover the full thing, rather ended the series on a good point of the story. But even then, sadly because of the overall fast pacing, many things had to take a backseat, most notably characterization.
On that note, despite the characters not getting enough development in my eyes, I still liked the main cast at the very least. The main trio of Liu Bei, Zhang Fei and Guan Yu all get a pass in my book. Notable other examples were Cao Cao and Lu Bu, who was my personal favorite character of the series.
Aesthetically, I'm also pretty pleased. Coming from the hideous looking early 2000s fully CGI Gundam Force I had my expectations at a zero but this series already looks infinitely better. First of all it's not full CGI per se. Most of the mechas are CGI yes, but occasionally we see them hand drawn as well, not to mention basically everything else is always 2d too. The CGI doesn't look bad either and the transitions from 2d to 3d never felt jarring to me, rather good even.
Overall, I think this series is heavily overlooked. Is it a great adaptation of the source material? Probably not. Is it a good alternative for Gundam fans? Yes! If you can somehow find this to watch, I'd at least recommend checking it out, you might be surprised.
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 22, 2024
Angel's Egg is a cult classic film from the mid 80s that is truly a case in its own league. What I mean by this is that the film is so avant garde, that even the director of the film doesn't really understand what the story and or the meaning of the movie is about.
So the story is very simple. We follow this unknown girl who wakes up in a post-apocalyptic like world and she possesses and egg that she is very protective of. She sets off on a journey and meets this unknown boy who starts to tag along with her. That's about all
...
the objective stuff about the plot I can say because as crazy as it sounds, EVERYTHING else is left for the viewer to interpret themselves.
Everything from the fever dream like world, its events and even its inhabitants are all unexplained. However, based off from the little dialogue the movie offers around the mid point, the story can somewhat be interpreted as an alternate world setting of the flood narrative from the book of genesis. Oh and if it wasn't obvious by now, the film is chock full of religious metaphors and parallels.
Now as an atheist, my knowledge of the scriptures is only vague at best, which probably hampers my ability to try and decipher the meaning behind the film myself. There are countless theories about every thing of the movie but again, we will never have confirmation on any of those. In a way it reminds me of the directional style of my favorite movie director David Lynch who is also notoriously famous for never explaining any of his works.
Explanations aside, the film is gorgeous in its darkness. At the very least it is a visual spectacle and all the brilliant shots make everything feel so alive, yet dead at the same time. It's really fascinating. Futher emphasizing this is the score. Its fairly minimalistic but at times we even have these very tense orchestral arrangements setting the bleak mood and occasionally there is simply no sound at all which to me was a great directorial choice.
This is one of the rare exceptions where I don't think I can score this movie as is. I would either have to do way more research about the themes and or watch it more than once to truly grasp my feelings about it. I would definitely recommend it though, solely for the artsy feel of it, which it captures really well. MAL obviously requires me to rate it for this review so you can ignore the number.
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 21, 2024
Well, it wasn't easy but I got through all 52 episodes of SD Gundam Force. At least since the show was so bad and the plot was simple, I could just turn off my brain and watch it on the side while multi-tasking something else simultaneously.
The story revolves around a kid named Shute and his adventures with the heroes of the Gundam Force. They go around saving various different worlds and meeting all kinds of different people, albeit mostly Mechas. It's as barebones and bland of a happy kids adventure plot as you might imagine it to be. I can't see anyone older than 12
...
enjoying the show a lot.
The boring story aside, the visuals are by far the biggest offender of the series. Now I don't know how people felt about the look of the show back in 2004 but man, that early 2000s CGI that was mostly used back then to fill in small parts within 2d animation should NOT have been used to make a full show. It hasn't aged well at all, the show straight up looks terrible.
And just when you thought things can't get worse, we have the audio department. Now the OST itself is pretty passable, didn't have issues with that. But I'm referring to the English dub here in particular. Most of the VAs did a bad job voicing their characters which is surprising because we had some bigger names like Yuri Lowenthal in there. One good exception though was Kibaoumaru, whose voice was great.
And speaking of Kibaoumaru, besides him I didn't really like any of the characters much. Bakunetsumaru at least was amusing with his courageous idiot trope but on the flipside another main character like Zero was just a one-dimensional knight who simps every girl he meets. The main characters being mostly meh aside on their own, their dynamic together at least was alright.
The comedy of the show was flat. I found myself occasionally chuckling at some of the jokes but those moments were very few and far between. If anything most of my small enjoyment of the show came from the references to Gundam entries that came before this.
And on that note, I really can't recommend this show to anyone unless you are a Gundam franchise completionist like I am.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Feb 13, 2024
This 4 episode OVA series covers an original chibi, fantasy story of Gundam. For anyone that has seen Universal Century entries up until Char's Counterattack, you will see a lot of familiar faces and mobile suits.
The story itself is a very basic fantasy one; group of heroes go on a quest to defeat the big evil. It is also very kid friendly so don't expect any usual darker Gundam themes from this one. As a side note, it's probably the only other Gundam entry besides G Gundam where they actually use what is basically magic powers.
Art and animation are actually surprisingly good. Yeah it looks
...
dated but still not awful and the animation itself is very fluid. Although there's a lot of rapid flashing lights in many scenes so those prone to seizures beware. And on the sound department it's nothing crazy but sets the mood fine for the setting. I do like that they have all the original VAs reprising their respective parallel roles.
Honestly if this wasn't a Gundam entry with parallels to the other shows I would never recommend it. It's quite bland with no real substance. But if you are a completionist of the franchise like I am, I would say you could spend 2 hours in much worse ways still.
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 8, 2024
Perfect Blue is basically the original "Oshi no Ko". The movie follows the life of Mima as she attemps to transition from a stagnating singing career as an idol to an acting career. Things however don't go as smoothly as she hoped and she catches wind of a particularly detailed fan site of hers and we learn that the entertainment industry and everything revolving around it definitely have their share of bad apples.
The movie itself is a psychological thriller at its core. It's very dark throughout its entire runtime with barely any glimpses of anything cheerful. I enjoyed this direction as it spawned this sense
...
of uneasiness in me as I watched the film and also made it feel way more realistic and believable from a narrative point of view.
The darkness of the film is emphasized more by its graphic content; Sexual abuse and violent gore are both present so the film might not be for the faint of heart but I appreciated them not censoring anything to capture the mood better.
Without going into spoilers, I personally thought the plot twist at the end was well executed and it gave me a real, physical eye opening moment. The ending itself happens fairly rapidly, maybe a bit too fast for my liking. The film more or less is fully dedicated to the build up of Mima's slow descent into depravity.
Overall I'm pleased with the film. It's been on my radar for quite a long time now so getting it via the swap was a good motivator for me to finally watch it. I very much love psychological shows and while Perfect Blue may not have been so Perfect in my eyes, I think it's definitely worth watching for fans of realistic darkness.
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
![]()
Jan 20, 2024
One Outs is all about one man, Tokuchi Toua. Without him the whole show and premise wouldn't even exist. He specializes in pitching in baseball and specifically in a little betting version of the game titled one outs. Basically, he can take more or less anyone on in a 1v1. That is until one day he gets his one and only loss against a professional player and instead of getting his hand broken as the agreed price, he agrees to help the Lycaons baseball team achieve the championship.
However, the owner of the team isn't so happy in getting a shady gambler who demands an absurd
...
salary join his team so he suggests his own terms in the special contract between them. So we have a corrupt manager who would rather see his own team lose if it means Tokuchi doesn't win all so that he can get Tokuchi to be his personal dog.
And now the show truly begins. The game of wits of Tokuchi vs the owner and all the opposing teams, sometimes sneakily teamed up together even to try and bring him down. We see the Lycaons battle several teams in the two cour runtime of the show, with all of them spaced out for several episodes.
The pacing feels fine per se but my main issue is not the believability of the gambler tactics but rather the explanations of them. Now I didn't know baseball rules properly prior to watching this show properly which might contribute to this but I found myself getting lost in explanations that sometimes lasted longer than action on the pitch itself.
My other main issue with the show are the characters. As I said at the start, One Outs is a man one show quite literally. But the theme is full baseball team games. And hardly anyone but Tokuchi ever gets any resemblance of a spotlight, nor proper character development. Even the other members of the Lycaons are just pawns for Tokuchi to manipulate all on his own which I felt was very much wasted potential to add more layers to the plot.
My aforementioned gripes aside, I still found myself interested and more importantly, entertained by the sneaky antics of Tokuchi. Granted, the formula did start to feel pretty repetitive towards the end of the show; Tokuchi is in a pinch, the owner is happily celebrating beating him and then Tokuchi comes up with some kind of a crazy way to win again. At least the solutions for the most part were still clever enough for me to get over the repetitiveness but I definitely felt it at times.
Overall, I think One Outs is a good baseball show that falls a bit short on the psychological side.
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
![]()
Jan 9, 2024
Kuuchuu Buranko, also known as "Trapeze" or "Welcome to Irabu's Office", quite ironically doesn't have much to do with the circus act of trapeze as the name and the first episode would initially suggest. In this series, we follow the work of Dr. Irabu, a mysterious psychologist with a rapidly changing personality and a huge injection fetish.
The whole series is an episodic one and takes place inside the Christmas week or so. Because it's episodic and it's the same week every episode, the series also is a little achronological. Sometimes during the episodes we see other weird things happening in the background and then later
...
on we realize those scenes will be cases of their own in future episodes, which I thought was very cool and it let the keen viewers pick up on all kinds of small details littered throughout. It gave me a big *The Tatami Galaxy* vibe which is another series I greatly enjoyed in the past.
Normally I prefer plot driven content over episodic series but Kuuchuu Buranko managed to strike a very nice balance of an overarching plot with mostly entertaining single episode stories. It did feel a bit repetitive at times but I think the runtime also helped a lot with this issue. 11 episodes felt perfect for something like this and it didn't overstay its welcome.
The theme of having different patients with varying psychological illnesses every episode was nice. I'm not going to say every resolution was great but for the most part, I thought the conclusions to the story arcs of the patients were done in a satisfying way. We even had some genuinely decent heartfelt moments mixed in which surprised me.
The series is quoted as very trippy but I think it's very easy for anyone to get into. I had some mixed feelings initially with them mixing the standard 2d anime artstyle with live action humans but I got used to it very fast and I think it elevated the comedy of the series.
And speaking of the comedy, it's good! I'm someone that sadly doesn't like anime style comedy much and I much prefer actual TV series for my comedy doses but something about the absurdity and whackiness of this show had me chuckling on every episode.
Most importantly, I think the series is just fun. It's whacky, absurd, funny, serious and unique all at the same time. I would have binged the whole thing in one day if real life didn't prevent that. Kuuchuu Buranko to me is a great way to spend a day if you are feeling down and want something different from the usual formula.
"No one is perfect!" -Dr. Irabu
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
What did you think of this review?
Nice
0
Love it
0
Funny
0
Confusing
0
Well-written
0
Creative
0Show all
![]()
Dec 13, 2023
I'm sure everyone has at least heard of the anime even if they haven't seen it, myself included. I also knew that the series was by the same guy that made Cowboy Bebop which definitely piqued my interest more. So how does Champloo hold up compared to its legendary predecessor? And the short answer is.. In a mixed way?
To summarize the story, Champloo is about two ronin called Jin and Mugen and the girl they meet randomly called Fuu's journey through Edo period Japan and their encounters with various people and factions they meet during it while the ultimate goal is to find the so
...
called Sunflower Samurai who is somehow connected to Fuu.
Good parts first; I'm a sucker for samurai stuff so the theme was already good in my eyes and the series delivers well in some well choreographed and mostly visually pleasing fights sprinkled throughout the episodes. I have pretty mixed feelings about the comedy of the series but I will say that it was always placed appropriately, never taking away from serious scenes which some shows fail in.
And I also have to mention the music which is another thing the serious is pretty famous for. There's not much I can say that already hasn't been said but I will add to the voices in saying that the music for the series is really good and certainly enhanced it to a new level.
Now for the bad and subjective stuff. As I said visually the show looks really good, even to this day when it really shines, but sometimes it doesn't as we get these weird quality dips in art and animation here and there, most notably during the more episodic episodes and it's a bit jarring sometimes.
And speaking of the episodic stuff, this is just my opinion but it's also one of my biggest gripes as it was with Bebop too. While I don't think the main plot in Champloo is as fleshed out as Bebop's, it was still miles ahead of all the random episodic content we got which sadly comprised of most of the series' runtime. This could be very controversial but I feel like the series would have benefitted heavily from a 1 cour, rather than a 2 cour runtime.
The episodic content sometimes is poorly placed too. We can go from a very awesome multi-part episode which a sad ending to suddenly walking through a mushroom forest and getting high in a goofy manner which kinda takes you out of the mood, especially when binging like I did.
Regarding the main plot without spoilers, to me it felt like the mystery behind the Sunflower Samurai dragged on for too long before anything noteworthy was established which probably left an even worse taste in my mouth regarding the episodic content that didn't do too much for the main plot.
And finally, I'm sure no one will argue but there is some pretty heavy plot armor thrown around. Not gonna go into specifics again but some things from certain fights felt pretty hard to believe to me.
To wrap things up, I wanna say I'm not too surprised Samurai Champloo is considered a classic and that it has aged well but a part of me definitely thinks a bit otherwise. It's not a bad show by any means, decent even, but I felt like it was mostly just a Bebop remake with many similar episodes and themes recycled in a different setting. So as brutal as it sounds, for people that haven't seen either show, I would just recommend them to check out Bebop instead.
I still enjoyed my time with the series overall, regardless of it dragging at parts.
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
|
