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Jun 24, 2025
I don’t like Gundam and I liked this show. I think it takes all the parts that’s good about it (Newtypes, Char, the setting) focuses on those parts well enough, and patches up what’s usually weak about it (the fights) into something serviceable. This is not a career defining work by any means but it’s still well made. Each episode’s entertaining enough – along the way the thread is lost a bit but it’s still easy viewing to watch each episode individually. Nothing of much substance is said but there’s an occasional few lines that stand out. The explanation of the Mav system is interesting,
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for example, and the final episode has a few good observations, like the need to suffer for freedom, which you can take or leave. Animation’s good as well, nothing standout but there’s a consistent quality. Characters designs are a bit unsuitable, especially in scenes where they’re holding guns, but they're clean and readable.
The mech designs are a bit messy. I heard the word “busy” being used to describe them and that’s pretty accurate. It’s hard to tell what you’re looking at whenever they’re moving. The 3D’s unspectacular but it’s not as bad as like, Gridman/Dynazenon. Their movements are not so sluggish and have a good degree of weight, but it is still noticeable as 3D (if that makes sense).
Plot’s a bit stupid. The transition between the Clan battle section and the civil war section could’ve been done better – they could’ve carried over some of the characters from the first part over to the second to make it less jarring. Once the second part starts it’s kind of hard to care about what’s happening because there’s pretty big leaps in time inbetween each episode and they feel also a bit episodic rather than building on the previous one. This isn’t what’s really stupid, it’s the fact that these girls are committing war crimes over some guy who thinks his Gundam is talking to him, and instead of committing this guy to a mental institution, they both want to go to the beach with him. And in the end Machu contracts his schizophrenia and says that her Gundam is talking to her too nooo Machu noooo take your meds Machu take your meds!!!!!
You might be looking at the staff credits and thinking this is the next Utena/FLCL/Eva - and it’s not, but it’s a good show, and it’s entertaining, and it has a bit of depth to it as well. I enjoyed my time with it and - unless you try really hard to not enjoy yourself - you’ll enjoy it too.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 17, 2025
The first fifty, fifty-five minutes of the film are the best I’ve seen from the four films I’ve seen of Shinkai’s (out of Suzume, Your name, Garden of Words and this) and this is owing to the fun kind of energy brought by the main trio of a runaway kid, his kind of irresponsible but generous employer, and his high-energy crazy niece. This runaway meets a confident girl with the ability to dispel rain and her playboy nine-year-old brother, and together they try to make as much money as they can before the film passes the fifty-five minute mark.
Because after that point, the film has
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to get dark and serious, and this is according to the Japanese successful animated film formula, invented by someone, obviously, but I’m not sure who. It might be that FURRY Mamoru Hosada, who employs a similar sort of structure with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. If you’ve seen that film, a lot of what goes on is going to seem very familiar – main character has a rough start, then gets (in this case meets a girl with) a fantasy power, where the power is used and then is used too much, which has Consequences. Shinkai’s innovation to this formula is to add a gun.
All the scenes with the gun are completely dumb. You know he’s not going to kill anyone with it, so why even bother pretending. It’s a dumb part of the film, and this is a film with a lot of stupidity. The shoehorned-in musical montage at the start is so incredibly badly integrated into the film that I can’t believe that it made the final cut. The long, drawn-out running scene on the traintracks isn’t much better. The Mcdonalds sponsorship scene is so on-the-nose that it makes the melodrama of the gun scenes seem subtle.
Once the story starts to careen head-first into this melodrama it’s not as likeable. It’s not as true in the same way as the first half is. The visuals are still there though, and they are impressive, though the character designs sort of let everything else down. None of them look bad exactly, they get across who they are well, but they look like they could be in any other anime. They don’t really have a distinct style, unlike the background and lighting effects which are definitely Shinkai’s. Some of the digital effects are tacky (like the lens focus one when Suga and Natsumi are talking at the bar) but their general effect creates an original kind of photo-realism that is impressive and always nice to look at.
Pretty, fun to look at, fun for the first half, melodramatic for the rest of it – could be copypasted into a review for Your name. Tenki no Ko is better for longer but it falls apart worse. They both kind of have this world-beating, melodramatic energy that is appealing up to a certain point. Tenki no Ko doesn’t really have an excuse to be like this though, which is what makes it a bit of a weird film. This is not a typical Shinkai film but it’s been made to fit into the same kind of formula, so as a result there’s this complete disconnect between the energy and the events, especially in the film’s back half. There’s nothing really here to evoke much feeling despite a lot of feeling being shown, and that disconnect distances you from caring.
Regardless of how good or bad they are though, Shinkai’s films always give the feeling that a lot has happened in them. A lot happens in this film, and a lot of it is bad, and some of it is good, and I think it’s worth seeing.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Apr 19, 2025
Any action show more or less follows a blueprint, or anyway, there’ll be an action set-piece to set up that takes time away from meaningful dialogue. Despite this, some anime make it work, and they make it work better than SSSS.Gridman. The easy example is Eva: it manages to link together the action with the rest of the show. Shinji gets punched by his classmate. who has issues with Shinji, and these issues are resolved when the Angel shows up. With Gridman though the show splits itself between slice-of-life and action. Any issues brought up are resolved in each section, resulting in less time given
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to develop character. The action scenes are more at fault, but they have bigger faults to worry over.
The action scenes are animated in 3D. The 3D models move in imitation of people in costume like in tokusatsu entertainment, which you would know if you were sixty years old and Japanese and watched Ultraman. I know because I googled it. Once you know, you accept it, but if you don’t, it looks bad. Every frame or so of 2D animation intercut between 3D made me wish it went all 2D. If this were true though the fights still wouldn’t be good.
Fights follow a strict formula: Kaiju appears; Gridman gets beat up; Gridman gets a power-up; Gridman kills the kaiju; day is saved. The different kaiju distinguish themselves with different looks and different moves, and Yuta defeats them with Gridman with different moves each time, by himself and sometimes with others – usually in one hit, which gives too little satisfaction. Fights are cut too short; couple this with the sluggish way the 3D models move and they become unexciting to watch.
But the fights do prop up the scenes of everyday life. These parts are great. When characters speak they speak very naturally and convey who they are in a lowkey way. In the same lowkey way their faces are drawn to reflect this. Scenes keep a good walking pace and shots don’t overstay their welcome. Sometimes there are very long pauses
and then we’re back into the action.
The big reveal midway through reveals a big revelation that makes you think wow this is big. It changes little apart from marking more plot. The slice-of-life parts take a back seat to a story that doesn’t engage. Points of interest still appear but the character drama does not try hard enough to be convincing. Looking at the last episode as an example: Utsumi criticises himself about not caring about the damage kaiju do – damage that was being reset, so who cares. Anti’s problems aren’t real, so who cares. Akane is escaping from reality, but you don’t know why, so who cares.
But you will care about how Gridman pictures everyday life. The way it does it should be seen. The atmosphere these scenes create is perfect. If Trigger managed to distil this atmosphere across the whole runtime this would be the best anime ever made. As it stands, this is a good show that carries a lot of baggage, but this baggage is tolerable and should be tolerated to see what’s really good about it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Apr 19, 2025
Sekina Aoi writes better than he’s given credit for but that doesn’t amount to much good. He knows what makes a story work and knows how to avoid pitfalls, and knows some people and the way they speak but he uses bad patterns and bad tropes way too much to be forgiven for it. Student Council’s Discretion is smart and Gamers is smart too but it’s too often too dumb for anyone to care about what’s good.
Gamers is trying to be a comedy and the comedy is sometimes funny. It starts with gaming addict Amano about to join the gaming club with the school idol
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gamer girl Tendou. He refuses last second and I guess this is funny. It’s funny again when it’s Tendou, not Amano, who develops a one-sided crush, and it’s funny seeing her gush over Amano for one scene. It stops being funny once it’s every scene. In various similar ways and moments, the comedy starts and stops being funny. The animators try way too hard to make up for it. There are some funny things that click with the animation and they happen just enough to keep you watching but it’s otherwise tiring and this is tiring on top of the tiring misunderstandings.
Gamers takes misunderstandings as far as they’ve ever been taken. Someone’s boyfriend puts a hand on one girl’s shoulder, and the girlfriend concludes that he’s cheating, and then this is multiplied by twenty for twelve episodes across five different people. It starts well but at the seventh episode I dropped the show, I was so tired of it. The show stretches the misunderstandings so long past the point of belief that there’s no choice but to get sick of it, but I stuck through due to the animation.
The characters drawn are drawn a bit strange but are still drawn well. The lines used and the colours used remind me of Trigger if Trigger were about to go bankrupt. I don’t like how the OP has a random fight in it for no reason, but that’s the only negative thing that’s animated. It has no right to be so good considering that what it’s animating is a story that doesn’t have a plot.
There is no plot but there are some very good moments that happen where someone character realizes their feelings about someone else, or how that someone else feels about them, which are very well realized in animation, but there’s also the thick wad of smelly bullshit you have to sit through, where Amano throws out a innocuous compliment and there’s a big close-up of the girl’s eyes and her eyes go wide and her blush extends so far out her face that it disproves the Flat Earth theory.
The writer should be sent to jail for indulging so much in stuff like this, he has to know it’s bad but I guess he thinks it’s okay since he’s doing it on purpose. CTE levels of thinking if true, and frustrating too. He writes better than most light novel authors and shows an awareness of the real world that they don’t have, and this awareness could lead to something good. It doesn’t, but it could, which is more than I can say for Oregairu or even the stuff by Nisioisin. But Nisioisin has worked out a truth for himself that he knows; even if it doesn’t show in his work you still feel his work is based on that truth. Sekina Aoi, if he has a belief, doesn’t base his work on it, so what you’re left with is this kind of mist which hangs around and blows away if you think about it too long. There are a couple moments that precipitate and crystalize into stuff you can take with you, and some characters act in a way that is true and they say things that seem true and it’s stuff you can sometimes relate to, but Aoi contrives a lot and fakes a lot too which kills a lot of the believability. Still, Gamers doesn’t do badly as a romcom, something which is usually done very badly, so if you like the genre and know what it’s like and you like games too, you will like the first few episodes and then see if the rest is worth sitting through.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 14, 2025
So the film comes from Oshii’s idea of wanting to be a priest, and his rejection to do that. Camera shots are framed in a way to suggest something peering down. It gives the film tension when it’s quiet, and also creates a detachment. You are put as an observer and not a participant.
The film is still good in these limits, but I don’t understand why Oshii didn’t try to move on. He’s continued to make emotionally detached films like this one throughout his career. You can argue in Sky Crawlers he tries to make you care, but even there it’s more like he’s rationalizing
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why he can’t. The people in that film are literally replaceable - the end starts towards optimism, but there’s none displayed in the film itself. In trying to be a priest, maybe Oshii was looking for a way to find compassion, and thought instead that making films was the way to go. Whether or not he succeeded is hard to say with the films themselves.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jan 29, 2025
The later entries of Monogatari are full of rapid cuts and zoom-ins, characters drawn in different art styles that reference something, characters in the background moving around – tricks done for the purpose of breaking up the long conversations to be easily digestible. As this method is repeated you see the issue being that there is no relation between what’s happening and what’s being described. So your mind filters it out, and focuses on what’s being described. Rather than working together, the writing and visuals are now put at odds and this is bad because it’s wasteful. Bakemonogatari is better than the rest of the series
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because it’s not like this.
An example: Hitagi speaking to Araragi in Mayoi Snail: one of the best sequences in the show, with seamless transitions between each scene, and with each scene – and each action in the scene – corresponding to what is being described. Even on mute, you can tell what’s happening by seeing Hitagi and Araragi cycle around. Something similar is in the first conversation between Araragi and Kanbaru, or in the cram school with Araragi and Oshino. This makes you understand what’s happening better, which makes for more fun, because you’re better able to understand the characters, their situations, and sympathize with them more, and give more attention and respect, and this is enjoyment you get regardless.
Bakemonogatari jeopardizes this enjoyment is in its writing. The second story after Hitagi’s, Mayoi Snail, has a lot of aimless dialogue that wastes time. This aimlessness raises its head again in the final volume with a protracted gag involving anonymous names chiming into a radio show to tell jokes relating to their names. Some conversations don’t get to the point or last too long. The dialogue is otherwise great. The stories work well until the climax, where they then crumble, because Nisioisin has to contrive a feeling to suit the scene, rather than doing it other way around. When it gets real though, it’s good.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Oct 15, 2024
The first sixty or so chapters are a monument to boredom. One slice of white bread and another slice of white bread compete to see which one of them is the more perfectly flawless gift to humanity. Kazuya has a twin, but he doesn’t do anything. Characters like Harada seem to pop into existence whenever the plot demands it. Who knows if a plot exists. The love triangle progresses with excruciating slowness. There’s a load of two-dimensional, one-off thuggish villains thrown in for the sake of having something happen. There isn’t a whole lot of baseball. And then Kazuya dies.
And then the story really starts
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after all that set-up, with most of it being in excess to the rest of it. A new rival shows up to reinstate the love triangle, and Minami and Tatsuya’s relationship resets. They have no chemistry together. Minami is dull.
Tatsuya’s been forced to play the role of his dead twin brother. His honesty in expressing his unwillingness to conform, and him sacrificing who he is for the sake of others is selfless and even heroic. The situation lends a lot of depth and richness to the straightforward story.
Watching Tatsuya’s transformation is the main reason to keep reading. Characters still pop into existence without any foreshadowing. None of the matches are particularly memorable. Akio and his sister are stereotypes. The conflict they make is artificial. There’s also a villain, and his development is trite and predictable. Other developments happen, and have a similar quality, where they’re ham-fisted, and contrived. But the manga manages to make it work.
It works because Tatsuya is someone worth rooting for: for who he is, who he wants to be, and what he wants to achieve. The ending closes this out perfectly. Tatsuya defies the expectations of everyone, even the reader. It’s something you have to see.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Oct 15, 2024
The way the plot in Spring Passes twists and twists again past the point you expect it to stop ensures its impact. The visual metaphor at the end is an inspired use of the subject matter.
The Current State of Affairs similarly accomplishes a lot in a short space, but lacks subtlety.
In The Runaway God Mitsuru goes into detail about the memories of his youth and about Shinji Nagashima, a manga author that Mitsuru’s brother and Mitsuru worshipped as God. Gives an insight into Mitsuru’s career and is interesting in itself.
Love Confession represents the best of Mitsuru’s older short stories. It’s sweet.
There are some others like ‘Angel’s
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Hammer’ that you could argue are worth reading as well, but Spring Passes covers the same ground and is generally just better.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Jun 12, 2024
Some lunatics decide it’s a good idea to go to war. One batch of lunatics is led by a man named Four Vagina. Four Vagina thinks it’s a good idea to employ a teenager to pilot a tank that can fly in the hopes that his flying tank skills are better than the other side who fly tanks. This goes very well until the story hits a brick wall by trying to juggle too many characters at once, and by introducing a series of increasingly unconvincing romantic subplots between the aforementioned teenage lunatic and the stand-ins for Tomino’s mistresses. Eventually, things devolve into a kind of
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trainwreck where everyone starts acting so out of character that you begin to wonder what their original characters were even supposed to be. There’s a scene where a robot impregnates another robot with a metal spike, so I guess it’s a masterpiece.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Mar 11, 2024
Guy meets girl, marries girl, is happy for a time, encounters hardship, is met with tragedy, wishes that he never met girl, encounters further tragedy, renounces his wish, which reverses the tragedy, and they all live happily ever after. Not a one-for-one copy of It’s a Wonderful Life, but the same beats are hit. The way Maeda does it is out of whack, because the tragedy that occurs happens in the story’s real world, and so when it is reversed, it reverses what caused the wish. This is why people feel like the ending is cheap and hollow. It doesn’t build on what’s happened before.
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Instead, it overwrites it with a new reality, that’s happier, and less meaningful.
Tomoya is arguably the most interesting person in Clannad’s story, giving the story a harder edge with his delinquency and his troubles with his father, so to see him here as this kind of goofy kid in the middle stages of the story and a punching bag in the latter half is disappointing, the story loses that dimension which gave it a bit of depth. Nagisa’s the same, she’s sweet and kind and kind and sweet and that’s all she really is. Same with Ushio, but with Ushio, Maeda is able to achieve a union between the way Tomoya feels towards her and the way the viewer feels. Her introduction is the starting point of a good stretch of episodes where the show is good.
Outside of that stretch, the rest is dubious. The girl and the robot has got to rank as the single most superfluous narrative of all time. Each time the story transitions to its world, it kills off any and all momentum the main narrative has generated up until that point. They walk and talk and none of it matters. It is the source of the fantasy elements in the story, but the viewer never sees its influence. It exists to give off a pretentious magical, ethereal air, an aesthetic of something profound, for something as hollow as the bones inside the wings of a bird.
And as usual for Maeda, things take too long to get going anywhere. There is an exorbitant amount of time spent with Tomoya at his new job, the first episode takes its entire runtime to reintroduce characters who aren’t even important, and the two story arcs preceding the main story are entirely irrelevant. All this superfluous detail dilutes the quality and impact of what’s actually good.
The theory I have for why people don’t like the ending is that it devalues suffering. I think the point that Maeda is trying to make is that pain and suffering has meaning because a choice is made to believe it has meaning, and that belief is what leads to a change in the real world. So through the belief in something unreal, something real happens. This is what the ending tries to capture, though obviously, the miracles that happen in real life are not as miraculous as Jun Maeda’s success.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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