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Jun 23, 2024
Log Horizon (Anime) add
Mixed Feelings
It starts off as a really pleasant romp and has some neat themes regarding freedom and community. However, it throws all of its goodwill out the window when it starts going off about *how* the Adventurers should organize themselves and come to accept that this is real life for them going forward. That is, it just becomes full-on propaganda about how states run by capitalists are efficient and benevolent for several episodes and the rest of the series lives in the fallout of that. There's one point where they literally bemoan that people don't need much money to live comfortably and offer the need to ...
Jan 12, 2024
I don't think I've seen quite all of them, but this is easily Miyazaki's ugliest movie, despite the welcome return of hand-drawn animation. Especially at the beginning, there were WEIRDLY detailed objects like bags and corridors that looked like they were rotoscoped for no reason. The water's fluidity and the curtain to the birthing chamber looked like early 2000s CGI, which isn't a dig on the incredible craftsmanship. I'm just saying it clashed very, very badly with the overall animation design. Just because it is hard to accomplish, that does not mean it is better.

Also, the plot was just kind of all over the place. ...
Sep 15, 2023
Mixed Feelings
Spoiler
Ultimately, I suppose it's not surprising and somewhat appropriate that the last episodes of the Ash Ketchum Pokémon series are a string of inconsequential monster-of-the-week adventures. However, (even though I was always going to watch them eventually) I decided to prioritize them because I read a summary that said the show would be about Ash reflecting on what it means to be a Pokémon Master after all this time... and the fact that that never really happened (and was just a reference to a thread in the final episode) just kind of makes me want to live in the world where a miniseries finale to ...
Apr 17, 2023
Idk, I thought "Your Name" was OK. I also thought it was OK the second time I saw it. These are not timeless tropes. They're stale for me right now.

And idk, I'm sure Shinkai doesn't compare himself to Miyazaki, but his commercial success invites the comparison, and... No. Shinkai's semi-annuals about het couples with a quirky scenario aren't that substantial. And they don't look as good. That fucking penis worm twirling up in the sky had nothing to do with anything and the CGI did nothing for me artistically.

I liked the throwback songs during the road trip. Pity they Felt The Need to include modern ...
Dec 14, 2022
Extremely predictable and just not funny, despite bringing back a joke villain to tell more jokes. Rather than try to leverage Foxy and the Davy Back Fight concept into something interesting, this special gets rid of that almost immediately in favor of another one of One Piece's "split the party" plots that goes absolutely nowhere. The best joke in this is that the villain is fucking Zhuge Liang but a dumbass.

I got bored, so I listened to the second half dubbed into English, which mostly made me think...why was this dubbed into English under capitalism? What was the plan to profit off of this? Are ...
Oct 30, 2022
I clocked this as For Me so fast and it delivered far more than I could have imagined. This show is beautiful and trailblazes a vibrant visual language in which to explore its themes. As it transitions from pure comedy to a coming of age, we see every single character authentically mature so subtley that the requisite flashbacks to the first few episodes hit like a truck. There's never anything wrong with any of them. They each struggle with connection and understanding what people—including themselves—want. They each see each other as just a pretty face and systematically de-objectify each other. When they blossom, so do ...
Oct 29, 2022
Mixed Feelings
Spoiler
I just finished the second season of this show. I do not like it. It is just extremely easy to watch because it's so stupid and, when the characters are allowed to be characters, they are fairly endearing.

The best character is Fire Emblem, who is a Black trans icon of mythic proportions and trapped in this mediocre show. The best parts of the second movie are the sequences that explore their history visually; those are incredible. I also really like Dragon Kid, who is 1000% a baby transboy.

Neither of them got a lot of spotlight in Season 2, but one of the conceits of ...
Sep 28, 2022
Absolutely a filler episode stretched to film length, but quite enjoyable. The padding felt so natural that I couldn't tell you exactly what was in the original.

Also quite funny as a piece of fan service. They do flashbacks to famous moments from the early parts of the series. Char even gets one line, lmao.

It fits Gundam thematically very well. At its heart, it's an anti-war movie that depicts a family struggling to live in an inhospitable environment caused by that conflict. There is a bit too much children crying for my taste, but it felt good.

Beautiful score.
Sep 24, 2022
"Reminisces" is a stretch. We do get to see Yuu as an adult, but they didn't do anything interesting to her character design. They just drew her with adult proportions instead of as an anime mascot. They didn't even show Shingo or the other characters. I feel like the fact that she's an adult in a few shots is a pointless tease, really.

It looks like one of those early 2000s anime where they were experimenting with digital coloring and there isn't much going on visual-wise or story-wise. The OPs and EDs of the original show had a lot more panache than this.

I don't dislike it. ...
Aug 4, 2022
This one was remarkably well-plotted for a shonen anime tie-in movie. Lots of moving pieces. Every new character was there for a reason beyond simply being the bad guy of the week, and the preexisting cast outside of the Straw Hats were well-integrated. And who doesn't like a heist movie?

That said, its message is at once something I deeply agree with and something I despair over it needing to be said at all. In our global economic system, money equals power and ownership of other people. Employment is indistinguishable from slavery, only instead of whips they psychologically torment us with the threat of homelessness. There ...


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