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scoutception · 3 years ago

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Once again ranking the 5 animes I’ve most recently watched

My mood for watching anime had stayed surprisingly strong for a while, so I went through quite a few more series at my own pace, and after leaving this on the backburner for a while, it’s time for the fourth of these increasingly difficult to name series of ranking posts, the last of which can be read here. As usual, this is all just based off my own thoughts and biases, and this was certainly an interesting spread, but otherwise, nothing else to do but jump right in. 5. Charlotte

Number of episodes: 13. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation, Crunchyroll, Hulu. Charlotte is the second collaboration between Key, the acclaimed visual novel developer, and the studio P.A. Works to make an original anime project rather than an adaptation of one of their existing VNs, with the first being Angel Beats, and the third and most recent being The Day I Became a God. Yu Otosaka is a teen who has a special ability, one that allows him to possess other people for five seconds at a time. Unfortunately for everyone around him, Yu does not hesitate to abuse this ability, using it to cheat on tests in order to get into a prestigious school, mess with anyone who ends up irritating him, and manipulate his way into a relationship with the school’s idol. His reckless usage of this power catches up to him, however, after being confronted by Nao Tomori, a girl with the ability to become invisible to one person at a time, who exposes his cheating ways and forces Yu and his little sister, Ayumi, to transfer to Hoshinoumi Academy, a school for those with special abilities. Furthermore, the usefulness of his ability sees Yu forced to join the student council, led by Nao, in order to hunt down those who abuse their powers like he did and force them to cease. It’s hard not to compare Charlotte to Angel Beats, especially with their very prominent focus on the supernatural, and unfortunately, Charlotte is very much the inferior product. While Angel Beats had its share of problems, especially due to its intended number of episodes being cut in half, its positives, like its unique premise, memorable and enjoyable cast, and great animation definitely win out in the end, and it’s grown on me a lot since I first watched it, to the point that I’d consider it one of my current top 10 favorite anime. By contrast, Charlotte’s premise is much more typical, and the cast, though not bad, and containing a few likeable characters like the eternally positive Ayumi, and Yusa Kurobane, the ditzy yet sweet idol who unconsciously channels her much more aggressive deceased sister, Mina, overall doesn’t make much of an impact, with Yu being the only one with any noticeable character development. The pacing is also somehow worse than in Angel Beats, with several early episodes being monster of the week type deals that get old fast and add nearly nothing to the plot, and later episodes tending to jump between plot points to a jarring degree, whereas Angel Beats managed a fairly smooth plot even in its disadvantaged state. The animation isn’t as good in comparison, but the dub, at the very least, is decent, with Ray Chase as Yu, Lauren Landa as Nao, and Kira Buckland as Ayumi all turning in solid performances. Overall, I wouldn’t call Charlotte outright bad, and it does have a few decent episodes to it once the monster of the week format is dropped, but it’s really not anything special. This is a pretty easy pass to me, and I’d recommend Angel Beats, or the other Key anime later in this list, over it any day. 4. Samurai Champloo

Number of episodes: 26. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation, Hulu. Now we’re moving onto the good stuff, with this series created by Shinichiro Watanabe, the director of Cowboy Beebop, and produced by Manglobe. In an extremely anachronistic Edo era Japan, a brawl in a teahouse that quickly gets out of control brings together three people: Mugen, a violent vagabond from Ryukyu, Jin, a calm and stoic ronin, and Fuu, a determined waitress girl. After helping save Mugen and Jin from being executed by the lord of the region, Fuu makes them accompany her on a journey to seek out a samurai who “smells of sunflowers” who’s said to reside in Nagasaki as payment. Unfortunately for the trio, their unassuming journey ropes them into numerous conflicts, from random situations they simply happen to get involved with, to mysterious assassins, to elements of their pasts coming to haunt them. Most episodes of Samurai Champloo are very self contained, with each of the protagonists often having their own plots that they follow, and the tone is generally quite lighthearted. However, there are also several multi part episodes, which tend to herald development for the main characters, and tend to have much darker tones, and are among the most memorable parts of the series. You never know just what each episode might bring, which makes for a quite entertaining journey. The setting, despite its anachronism, is put to good use, and the show doesn’t shy away from showcasing the darker parts of the era, with subjects such as corrupt officials and intolerance of foreigners coming up quite frequently. The main trio are all likeable in their own ways, which is especially good when they’re the only consistent characters, with a few side characters having two or three episodes at best. The animation is extremely fluid, and makes for some very entertaining fight scenes, and the predominantly hip hop soundtrack certainly makes an impression, as does its fantastic ED, Shiki No Uta. The dub is also quite good, with talented voices like Steve Blum as Mugen, Kirk Thornton as Jin, and Kari Wahlgren as Fuu all capturing their characters perfectly. Overall, Samurai Champloo is a very unique and stylish series, and I don’t really have much bad to say about it. However, something about it just didn’t really resonate with me. I did enjoy watching it, it just didn’t click with me as much as with some, which is the main reason it’s this low on the rankings. Bias aside though, there’s not much like it out there, and it’s worth a try just for that. 3. Mobile Suit Gundam

Number of episodes: 43 (only 42 in all American releases. The cut episode isn’t important at all). Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation, Crunchyroll. Here be one of the most famous and important mecha anime ever, produced by Sunrise, which created the “real robot” genre, that is, portraying the mecha not as the vehicles of superheroes, but as weapons piloted by ordinary people. If you’ve heard about mecha anime at all, you’ve almost certainly heard about Gundam at some point, which makes it all the more ironic that this series had horrible ratings when it first aired to the point that it was cut down from the intended 52 episodes to 43, and only survived to syndication thanks to merchandise sales. This is also by far the oldest anime I’ve ever watched, dating back to 1979. The year is 0079 of the Universal Century, a time where humanity, governed by the Earth Federation, has begun to migrate into space, constructing several space colonies to house its ever growing population. However, one of the colonies, Side 3, has declared itself the Principality of Zeon, led by Degwin Zabi and his children, and has launched a war of independence against the Federation, a war so destructive that the first month of fighting resulted in the death of half of humanity, with Zeon holding the advantage thanks to its highly advanced mobile suits, giant humanoid vehicles that easily outclass anything the Federation possesses. Nine months into the fighting, Zeon launches a surprise attack on Side 7, a Federation held colony, and in the confusion, Amuro Ray, a tech savvy teenager, ends up in the cockpit of the Gundam, a mobile suit developed by the Federation that, as both sides learn, is more than capable of decimating Zeon’s forces despite Amuro’s inexperience. Escaping from Side 7 on a new assault carrier called the White Base, crewed by several young soldiers and civilians of Side 7 due to the deaths of most of its intended staff, and pursued by Char Aznable, an infamous Zeon ace pilot, Amuro finds himself and the Gundam as the best hope the Federation has of defeating Zeon. One of the main distinguishing traits of Gundam as a franchise is its depiction of war, of how it affects those caught up in it, and of how very few conflicts can just be boiled down to black and white. The main cast are scared and frustrated teenagers just fighting to survive at the start, and are each forced to mature and adapt, and the Zeon forces, though very much in the wrong, are far from just faceless monsters, especially those lower in the hierarchy. Many characters, from main characters and their allies, to important antagonists, sympathetic or not, end up dying over the course of the series, and most of said deaths have an effect on other characters, including other antagonists. It’s not the most refined, but it does overall work well, and helps make for a memorable, and classic, cast of characters, from the young but firm Bright Noa, who acts as the captain of the White Base, to Kai Shiden, a goodhearted and skilled pilot who nonetheless has a noticeable mean streak. This extends to the villains as well, from the genuinely likeable and sympathetic Ramba Ral, to the underhanded, yet dangerously clever M’Quve, to the varied Zabi family, and of course, the legendarily bastardly Char, who steals the show whenever he’s around, and went on to become one of the most famous characters in anime. That said, it’s definitely rough around the edges in a lot of ways, especially early on. The series starts off fine enough, but once the White Base makes it to Earth, the pace gets pretty plodding, with nothing really happening besides the regular skirmishes with Char and Ral, and there’s not really any character development to be seen for a while too, meaning the cast’s more abrasive qualities are most of what they display. The action scenes tend to flow pretty awkwardly too, and the occasional filler episodes don’t help either. The animation is infamously awkward and rushed, and the Japanese voice acting isn’t too special either, especially because the actual sound quality can be pretty bad at times. Still, once the series reaches the second half, it definitely picks up. Many previously neglected characters, like Mirai, the White Base’s helmswoman, start getting much more focus, plenty of character development starts going around, the plot actually starts going places, including managing a pretty solid ending despite the number of episodes getting reduced, and the action gets much more entertaining and creative, especially once the focus moves back to space. The animation stays fairly awkward all the way through, but does improve as well, as does the voice acting, with Toshio Furukawa as Kai, Banjo Ginga as Gihren Zabi, and Shuichi Ikeda as Char giving pretty solid performances, to name a few. Overall, Mobile Suit Gundam does show its age, but it’s actually still pretty enjoyable overall. As someone who has barely watched any mecha anime, it’s made me interested in getting more into the franchise, and I would say it’s worth a watch for those curious about it. 2. Kokoro Connect

Number of episodes: 17 (13 in the main series + 4 OVAs). Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Crunchyroll, Hidive (OVAs only available on Hidive).

Here we have an adaptation of a series of light novels, written by Sadanatsu Anda, produced by Silver Link, with the main series adapting the first three novels, and the OVAs adapting the fourth, a pretty frustrating move considering said fourth novel is actually quite significant to the series as a whole. At the private school of Yamaboshi Academy, every student is required to join a club. Rather predictably, however, not every student is able to find a club they can fit in with, with five of these outcasts- the listless pro wrestling fan Taichi Yaegashi, the silly and enthusiastic Iori Nagase, the harsh and blunt Himeko Inaba, the clownish and flirty Yoshifumi Aoki, and the cuteness loving former karate practitioner Yui Kiriyama- banding together to form a club of their own, the Student Cultural Society, or StuCS. Despite their strong and differing personalities, the members of StuCS are all close friends. However, one day, an entity calling itself Heartseed, capable of possessing others, most commonly their club advisor, begins to subject the club to supernatural phenomena, such as causing them to lose their inhibitions, or randomly broadcasting their thoughts to others, seemingly for no purpose besides entertainment. As these scenarios seemingly meant to strain the group’s bonds with each other to their limits unearth secrets, traumas, and unpleasant memories, each member finds themselves forced to reconsider crucial things about themselves and others, and struggle to figure out just what they can do to ensure their friendships survive. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much at all before I watched this series, but I found myself pleasantly surprised by it. Despite the supernatural premise, Kokoro Connect’s main focus is on much more grounded scenarios, and how each character develops from having to face them, and this is something it does quite well. Each of the main characters are likeable in their own rights, and get quite a bit of development across each arc, helped by every arc doing something to shake up their status quo. The first arc, covered in the first five episodes, is a bit too simplistic, but each one afterwards is a substantial improvement, mainly because no arc is just disposable. Issues seemingly “fixed” earlier on may prove much more multifaceted than thought at first and continue to leave marks on each character, yet it never outright backpedals on any of their development, which is what makes it work. The focus isn’t distributed the best, as not everyone gets equal focus in each arc, with Yui and Yoshifumi being sidelined the most often, but they all get their own time within the series. The animation is fine, and the voice acting is actually quite good. It also has a surprisingly large amount of OPs and EDs despite its short length, with 3 OPs and 4 EDs, with the EDs notably being themed after each of the arcs, which is very neat. I will admit, this is one of those things that I can’t fully explain my attachment to. I like it enough that I’m even going to start reading through the original light novels fairly soon, which is a rare thing for me, but as I explained before, this is absolutely a biased list. Still, Kokoro Connect is a genuinely solid series that I would say is worth a try, as long as you make sure to watch the 4 OVAs. 1. Kanon

Number of episodes: 24. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation. Kanon was originally a visual novel released in 1999 by Key, and is one of the most important VNs ever released, marking the point where it was thoroughly proven that major VNs could prioritize plot, and sadness, over, well, lewdness. Unfortunately, unlike most of Key’s works, it’s still yet to be officially released in English, and though there is a fan translation of it, I could not get my hands on the game until recently, so prior to that, I decided to watch the 2006 anime adaptation by Kyoto Animation as an alternative, which is actually the second anime made of Kanon, with the first being made in 2002 by Toei. It’s not good, with issues ranging from really unappealing animation to only having 13 episodes and a pretty barren OVA, meaning a lot of things, including important plot points, get cut out, with the only real thing of value coming out of it being the very good OP and ED, Florescence and Flower, respectively. The 2006 anime, to say the least, is a substantial improvement. "Do you know the name of this song? It's Canon. Pachelbel's Canon. The same melody repeats itself, and gradually grows richer as the chords harmonize beautifully together. Wouldn’t it be great if we could live lives that didn’t seem to change, but we could also make gradual changes, just like the song?" As a kid, Yuichi Aizawa would spend his breaks from school visiting the town that his cousin and aunt, Nayuki and Akiko Minase, lived in, only to suddenly stop after one particular winter break. After seven years, however, Yuichi is forced to return to the town after his parents’ work forces them to temporarily move overseas, with Akiko being the only one willing to take him in. While attempting to readjust to the town he hasn’t seen since he was ten years old, however, Yuichi realizes that he has almost no memories of the times he spent in the town, something hammered in when he has an encounter with Ayu Tsukimiya, a short and childish girl with a winged backpack whom Yuichi had befriended during his last stay at the town, who spends her days scouring the town’s shopping center for a lost item important to her, despite oddly not remembering just what it actually is. As the days go on, Yuichi meets several other residents of the town, among them Makoto Sawatari, a mischievous, immature girl who claims to have lost her memories of everything except her name and an apparent grudge against Yuichi, who comes to stay at the Minase’s house until she recovers them, Mai Kawasumi, a stoic apparent delinquent who patrols the school at night, claiming to hunt demons, and Shiori, a mysterious, yet cheerful girl who’s off from school due to illness, yet waits in its courtyard everyday, apparently waiting for someone important to her. As he gradually deepens his friendships, however, it becomes clear that those in the town, and the situations they’re in, are even stranger than they first appeared to be, and that the links some of them seem to hold to his past may help him find out just why he can remember so little of the time he spent there before. As I plan to eventually write a full review on the VN, I’ll save the exhaustive amounts of detail for that, but as for how this adaptation fares, there’s still quite a bit to say. The VN worked so well for a lot of reasons: its somber, wintry atmosphere, its likeable and well written cast of characters, visuals that, for the time, were quite impressive, a beautiful soundtrack, and routes that overall are genuinely effective and emotional, and the anime preserves it all very well, down to using the soundtrack of the VN, OP and ED included, along with tracks from the various Kanon remix albums, such as Recollection or Re-Feel, the piano arrange album. Doing this alone is very impressive for a VN adaptation, which tend to fare like the 2002 anime did, but it went further and even improved on the source material in several ways. Instead of simply picking one route and focusing the whole story on that, it merges all the routes together, something the 2002 anime and most other adaptations do as well, and it does it quite well. The first 6 episodes focus on scenes from the early, common route, which helps gradually establish the characters at a relaxed pace, and from then on, the episodes focus on one route at a time. Each character gets just enough time that it does genuinely work, and even with the story requiring Yuichi to just immediately move along into another arc after each, they actually manage to have each one leave their own impact on Yuichi and other characters, and when the last arc, which melds both Ayu and Nayuki’s routes together and adds some original elements in, rolls around, it’s actually, climactic, in its own way. Even when there are parts from the VN that have to be cut out, the anime is pragmatic with it and uses that to help streamline the pacing as well. That’s not to say the improvements only lie in the story itself. There’s also some tweaks to the characters, such as making Makoto much more consistently mischievous, which actually makes her development more effective, or making Kitagawa, a pretty pointless character originally, much more prominent, giving him a reliability and dynamic with Yuichi that makes him surprisingly likeable. The animation is actually pretty striking, as while the very divisive artstyle of the VN is preserved, from the bright, almost dreamlike sunsets, to the gloomy nights, the atmosphere is helped a lot by it, as well as plenty of sequences both emotional and lighthearted, like Makoto’s prank war with Yuichi. As far as voice acting is concerned, both the subs and dub are good in their own ways, with Yuichi in particular being a joy to listen to no matter which language you pick, being voiced by Tomokazu Sugita in Japanese and Chris Patton in English, and have certain advantages each; for instance, while Japanese Nayuki certainly fits her sleepy, spacey personality a lot better, dub Shiori actually fits her calm and wistful personality and atmosphere better. The dub voices also manage to be deep enough to actually convincingly pull off sounding high school age without being jarring, while the sub voices can be a bit too high pitched. Generally, you’ll be fine no matter which language you pick. Despite being perpetually overshadowed by Clannad, the 2006 Kanon anime is genuinely one of the best VN anime adaptations out there. It not only preserves all the important elements of the source material, with the delivery and sincerity that still make the VN work today shining through, but manages to improve upon it from there. Obviously, there’s still things of value you lose compared to the source material, but on an overall, it’s well done enough I’d even say it’s the best option when it comes to experiencing Kanon. Even as a standalone experience, it’s a very enjoyable experience, and it’s definitely in my top 10 anime right now. And with that, this post draws to a close. With the exception of Charlotte, I would absolutely recommend each anime here. I’m thinking of doing something special with my next post of this nature, which may or may not show up relatively soon, by my standards, but I’ll figure that out soon enough. Till next time. -Scout

#anime #gundam #mobile suit gundam #samurai champloo #kanon #kokoro connect #charlotte #key #long post

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therokoko · 4 years ago

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“A bad attitude on set is deadly” - Interview with Alex Rider Director and Producer Andreas Prochaska

Andreas Prochaska on adapting the books, casting Otto Farrant and the challenges of releasing the series in times of Corona

Based on a podcast interview with Austrian news outlet Der Standard titled “Schlechte Laune am Set ist tödlich”. I’ve translated the important bits.

1. How he came in contact with Alex Rider:

Well, that was relatively simple. I have an agent in England, and he sent me the script for the first episode as well as an outlook, a kind of series bible about how things were going to proceed, and I read this and thought: “This works for me. That’s something completely different.”

I mean, especially … you mentioned “Das Boot” earlier, which was the production I worked on before, and which was burdensome in every way, I mean not only because of the time it took but also because of the topic, because we killed, I think, 26 characters in “Das Boot”, not counting extras, and of course that has an effect on you. And then I also filmed “Spuren des Bösen” [Traces of Evil, a German 8 part crime series made between 2010 and 2019, A/N), in which a mother jumps out of a window with her baby, and I was looking for something with a lighter tonality, and something which I hadn’t done before in this particular form, and “Alex Rider” was perfect for that.

I also didn’t know the book series at all. I read it completely unbiased and thought: “This is actually a cool, daring concept – so to speak somewhat exaggeratedly Coming-of-Age meets Jason Bourne....

[This job] was a result of “Das Boot” insofar as someone working for the distributor, Sonar, knew someone at Eleventh Hour – and it’s not just over here that people talk, and when someone says “listen, this guy has done a decent job, take a look” or something, that helps, and in this case it’s probable that the people became aware of me through these contacts.

2. How they approached adapting the books:

Well, it already started with the fact that our series is a mixture of the first book of the book series, namely “Stormbreaker”, and “Point Blanc” – I don’t remember right now whether that’s the second or a later book.

In Stormbreaker, the drama of the protagonist is established with the uncle who dies and the realization that this uncle wasn’t who he appeared to be. Stormbreaker had been made into a feature film which was produced by Harvey Weinstein and for which Anthony Horowitz had written the script, and that was pretty much a lead balloon. And because of that it was relatively clear that everything bad that had happened with that feature film needed to be avoided, namely that everything was totally over the top.

And my job was to [adapt] this material, which actually … I started reading the novel afterwards, and I stopped after 20 pages because I realized that that wasn’t helping me because they are actually books for 12 year olds, or at least Point Blanc is – when I read it I thought: “This is an English, better-quality version of the ‘Knickerbocker Gang’ [a German children’s book series about a group of child detectives, A/N] or something like that”. And the task was to just adapt this material for an older audience and to just draw the characters in a different way emotionally, to draw them in a more realistic way. When you look at the entire season it does occasionally reach into almost absurd spheres, but it was important for me to pave the way for the audience by starting out realistically with a protagonist that could just be the boy next door.

3. How he went about filming a spy series:

Well, the most important thing for me in every story are the characters and to get as close to them as possible. I developed a sympathy for this unwilling hero quite quickly. And, as I said, I tried to make the surroundings as British as possible given my Austrian view of things, and to draw a character that you believe and for whom failure is always a possibility, because I find it incredibly boring when you have these superheroes and you already know that they are never in any real danger.

And this was very important to me also in working with Otto Farrant, who plays Alex, to guide him and direct him in such a way that you get the feeling that it’s possible for things to not turn out well, so that you go on this journey with him emotionally, and as to the rest it is … I don’t approach things mathematically. It’s not as if I feel: “Ok, in minute 10 this particular thing must happen, and in minute 20 this thing must happen.” For me, every story is a journey, and you try to make these journeys as good as possible following your instincts.

Like, for instance, the opening scene. In the script the villain was sitting on a roof manipulating some things on his laptop. And then the thing that happens with the man happens – I don’t want to spoil anything, because it’s actually a pretty nice surprise – and this was only 2 thin pages, and I thought: “Actually, to start this series off in an epic fashion, I’d rather like to introduce another character here, too, to charge this scene as much as possible so that you’re just drawn into this world.” And equally in episode two, that’s so to speak the episode of the test, where he has to pass the test designed to show whether he’s suited for this mission, and the script called for a hut in the woods and a road in which things happen, and I thought: “Ok, if we are dealing with a secret service, the military is not that far off.” And so I told the location scout to look for abandoned military bases, and we ended up on a former nuclear weapons base somewhere in the South of England, which made the producer sweat quite a bit because this was a relatively complex location compared to what had been in the script. But those are the things where I, as a director, can try to create visual appeal for a global audience. The series has been sold to a hundred countries, which comes with certain expectations, and of course you don’t want to disappoint these expectations.

4. On the circumstances of the release and viewer reactions:

It came out in England in the beginning of June, which is sad, of course, because we had planned to have a premiere celebration at some festival, which wasn’t possible because of the current situation. And so this release on Amazon almost felt a little stepmotherly. So I just refreshed the link on Amazon.uk again and again to see how the people reacted to it, and there were actually many very positive reviews in a relatively short time. I think we are at 4.6 out of 5 stars at the moment, whatever that means, …

There are of course, again, total haters who only give one star and say: “What a bunch of crap.” But the majority of people seem to really like it. So hopefully, or it seems we have managed, at least in England, to … that the fans who read it as children watch it, so to speak, in retrospective joy and that they remember the times in which they read it, and still [feel like the series] adds something new.

5. On the casting process:

There was … even before I came on board, they made an England-wide, i.e. Britain-wide casting call. And in England, there are quite a lot of youth theatre projects, which were also contacted. And we received, I think, more than 3000 e-castings, which were screened beforehand. I still saw about 200 e-castings, and then this number was reduced bit by bit. In the end there were 3 people left in the room, one boy was from Game of Thrones, another one was very young – barely over 16, which would have been difficult -, and then, to be honest, there was only Otto. On the one hand, that was surprising because you think that there are loads of great actors in England, that it would be difficult to find the right hero, but in the end it was just very clear. It was an interesting casting situation: there was Anthony Horowitz, then there were the two executive producers from Eleventh Hour, then there was Wayne Garvey from Sony International Co-Productions, and also a casting agent from Sony America, and they all sat behind me like an assembly, and I just took the camera and worked with the actors and just tried to ignore the audience – I also felt like I was being cast again as well in my work with the actors, but … it was, yeah, it was very interesting and exciting.

I virtually grilled him for hours, tried again and again to draw the different scenes in different temperatures and with different emotions out of him, just to see what his range is and how much I would be able to work with him later on in terms of fine-tuning. Because carrying 8 episodes is an extreme challenge for a young actor, and it doesn’t help me if the boy is just dashing and then he carries only half an episode and then breaks apart. That is why it was so important to really test him thoroughly, also in combination with Brenock, who plays his best friend - we tried different combinations – and with Ronke, who plays his confidante in the household, just to try and find the right chemistry. And that was a very exciting and very satisfying process. What was really great was, when he had those three, there wasn’t any discussion anymore at all, we all agreed – I mean it would have been equally possible for Anthony to favour someone else or for Sony to like somebody else better, but it was really incredibly harmonious and unanimous.

6: On what made Otto Farrant stand out:

Well, it was his perseverance. I mean, really, we had one scene which we really tried in 10 or 15 variations, and every time I felt that he understood where I wanted to go. To direct often means to change the temperature of a scene using only short adjectives, and for that you need someone who understands you and who can also implement that. And I just saw that he doesn’t give up that he really has stamina, and that was essentially – apart from the fact that he really comes across as incredibly natural and likeable – the deciding factor for me in the end.

7: On the responsibility of making Alex Rider and the first weeks on set:

Well, I mean the … Alex Rider is, I mean to English fans, a promise like James Bond, on a different level. And you need someone who – and of course you need that with every film and with every series – you need an actor who touches the people emotionally, to whom they can connect. That is, of course, something you can’t … beforehand … I mean, of course you can, as we did, try everything out during the casting process, but you only know whether it really works out after a week of shooting.

And I really – especially in the first 3-4 weeks, in which I was still searching, too – I mean with every production you start on the first day of shooting and you want to throw away all the material you shot on the first day right away and start over on the next day – but he was searching, I was searching, and in a way I became – it sounds a little exaggerated right now – I became a little bit of a surrogate father during that time, because I noticed that he needed a certain type of attention and a certain security that only I as the director could give him. That is, he could come to me with every problem and with every decision concerning the character, and that worked out really well …

8. On the challenge of “carrying” a series as a lead:

As for the “carrying”: on the one hand he has to, so to speak, function technically, i.e. he must be able to, so to speak, deliver every scene, i.e. to know the dialog, to have the right energy, and do that over the course of months - now, luckily, Otto is 21; I don’t think that would have worked with a 16 year old. And that meant that while we were shooting Otto had to read the other four scripts, which were still being written while we were shooting, and he had to comment on them and to learn them by heart, and the transition was seamless. I had to interrupt my shooting schedule for two weeks because we had a location that was only available at a specific time, and so I left the set and flew to Austria to start the cutting process, and on the next day the other director came in and just kept working with him. That means Otto had to adapt to the other director, and that’s a challenge for every actor, but especially for a young actor. ...

I [as a director] could only keep it together up to a certain point in time, until my episodes where done shooting. [...] And of course, when the lead actor is in a bad mood when he comes to the set in the morning, that is at least as bad as when I come to the set in a bad mood. That emanates in all directions. So the strength of character of someone, who also knows … I mean, he doesn’t know yet about the power he may have in the second or third season, when he maybe becomes executive producer or I don’t know … but [it’s important] that you, as a human being, just treat everyone with respect in such an environment.

Source: Der Standard AT

#alex rider #alexrider #andreas prochaska #otto farrant #alex rider tv #ottofarrant

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goldenkid · 5 years ago

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doctor who rant time

literally the ONLY redeeming thing abt chibnall’s doctor who is that 13 is hot and that’s just me being gay but like. where’s her personality. like mr chibnall can we PLEASE see a personality that isn’t awkwardly forced speeches or not very funny one liners or cobbled together traits from previous doctors like a less likeable 10/11 with none of the...you know...heart/soul and personality.

and then there’s the companions. ryan is cool, dude got lucky with at least 3/4 of a personality and a sweet arc w graham in s11; speaking of graham what did he contribute in s12 except for comic relief and like 1 (one) nightmare about his dead wife (remember her??). and yaz........yaz. cardboard cutout half hearted queerbait who nobody bothered to give a personality or like...ANYTHING to do. at all. for 2 seasons. she just stands there and says a line that could’ve been ryan or graham’s once in a while. oh she was depressed? nice tidbit to throw in 1.5 seasons into her being a companion and then never elaborate on. love the character arc she had....oh wait. oh yaz yeah she’s so--uh....policewoman? brave i guess? she has cool hair that counts for something i guess

and ofc i don’t dare go near the mess of the plot. sure, there were a couple decent episodes, one or two solid plots and side characters who weren’t blander than cardboard cereal, but everything else is some of the most badly paced, forgettable, token-activism-with-weird-centrist??-messages, boring pile of plot points that go nowhere and suggestions at character development that make you want to yell at the screen to make these characters do something!! put them through something!! make them learn or at least get sad for more than half an episode!! can we get some meaningful interaction in here pls?? and no mr chibnall that doesn’t mean one long speech with the moral of the episode awkwardly shoved in and then everyone going about their business. like moffat plots made no fuckin sense half the time but at least they were fun!! at least the characters were dynamic and the situations were interesting!! like moffat may not have done good overarching plots or simple concepts/down to earth characters but he could like...write an entertaining story.

and then i literally can’t go into shit like the timeless child...nazi master...weird message of kerblam...13 being like ‘no guns!!1’ and also kinda indifferent to suffering...like what were you GOING FOR HERE? do you think doctor who fans watch the show for the lore?? of course not we watch it for the stupid shit and space and emotions. and also if it’s not too much to ask, for the gay characters who don’t die.

and basically at the end of it, s11 and 12 were just straight up not much fun to watch. i’m more invested in doctor who than the average person and i was always several weeks behind with s12 because i didn’t care to catch up. i’ll watch the new season but for the first time ever i’m not actively looking forward to it coming out. i’m not expecting it to get much better. or at least not enough to make me invested in these characters that i’ve tried REALLY HARD to love. i spent all of s11 overlooking flaws and persuading myself the episodes were good, but the doctor being a hot lady can only tide you over so far. i didn’t really like s12. it’s mediocre tv. good actors can’t make bad writing into fun tv. or they can, but not for two entire seasons.

idk. i had high hopes for chibnall, for a female doctor, for 3 companions for new doctor who but i’m probably the most disappointed i’ve ever been. i’d rather rewatch season 6 than this, and i still don’t know what the fuck was going on that season. but at least it was fun to watch!! unlike this, which is boring. it all comes down to doctor who not only being bad, which is excusable, but being dull as well. and that just sucks

#doctor who #anti chibnall #i guess lol #i love doctor who so much and being consistently disappointed by it hurts so much #and god i had such high hopes for jodie whittaker's doctor #also i think all the actors are great not bashing them #just...yeah i really really really tried to like it #and i'm a bit let down #'''a bit'''#hmm #i'm tired #i'm gonna go to bed now #goodnight

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recentanimenews · 4 years ago

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Random Reads 2/18/21

Are You in the House Alone? by Richard Peck Are You in the House Alone? came out in 1976 and though I totally could’ve read it when I was a teen—and thus still a member of its target audience—I never did.

Gail Osburne is a sixteen-year-old high school junior and native New Yorker who’s not at home in the quaint Connecticut village her family relocated to several years back. I knew that the plot involved Gail receiving menacing anonymous notes and phone calls, and I was expecting these events to get started quickly and the suspense to remain high throughout. But that doesn’t happen.

Instead, the story is told retroactively, so we know Gail survives. Also, obvious culprit is obvious. (I hope the reveal wasn’t intended to be a surprise, but perhaps readers were less savvy about such things in 1976.) Initially, much more of the focus is on Gail’s relationships with her parents, boyfriend, and best friend, and in particular how the latter two are in the slow process of dissolution. Eventually she receives some threatening notes and creepy phone calls, gets scared, is let down by people in positions of authority, and comes face-to-face with said obvious culprit. That happens halfway through this slim novel. The rest of the book is about Gail’s recovery from her ordeal.

I thought Are You in the House Alone? was going to be fun, suspenseful fluff, but it turned out to be fairly serious and occasionally (intentionally) infuriating. I really appreciated how Peck was able to weave in a couple of threads that seemed very random at first and make them integral to the denouement, too. Ultimately, I didn’t love the book, but I kind of… respect it, if that makes sense. It didn’t go the cheap route.

The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez Mack Megaton is a hulking robot who was created to destroy. He developed self-determination, however, and went against his programming. Now, he��s a probationary citizen of Empire City, where mutagens and pollution have created a very diverse population. While some “biologicals” are still “norms,” others have been physically transformed (like rat-like Detective Alfredo Sanchez) and others have been changed in not-so-visible ways (like Mack’s friend, Jung, a talking gorilla with refined literary taste). Mack works as a cab driver and is trying to keep a low profile, but when his neighbors are abducted, he can’t help but try to rescue them. This gets him into all sorts of trouble, of course.

Despite its name, The Automatic Detective isn’t really much of a mystery. I suppose it’s more… sci-fi noir. Mack meets various thugs, beats some of them up, gets beat up himself, etc. Slowly, he makes progress on uncovering a huge conspiracy. At times, I felt like Martinez was a little too enamored of the gimmick he created, and places in the middle dragged a bit as a result, but the ending is pretty satisfying and overall the book was enjoyable enough, even though it’s quite far from the sort of thing I usually read.

As a final note: I really liked that Martinez limited himself when it came time to invent universe-specific profanity. Instead of the text being liberally sprinkled with words like “frell” or “frak,” the phrase “Oh, flurb” appears but once (during a moment where the meaning is 100% apparent) and made me laugh out loud.

I don’t know if I’m necessarily eager to read more by Martinez, but I’m glad I read this one.

The Inimitable Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse When I read My Man Jeeves back in 2010, I was somewhat disappointed because so much of it was repetitive. While there are some common elements that recur within the eleven stories that comprise The Inimitable Jeeves, it is still so very much superior that I’d now say… forget about that first book. Start here. Go back and read My Man Jeeves for completist purposes, if that’s your inclination, but start here for the best introduction to these characters and Wodehouse’s uniquely charming and amusing writing.

First published in 1923, The Inimitable Jeeves contains a linked set of stories that typically involve affable Bertie Wooster being imposed upon by either his eternally lovesick friend Bingo Little (who is “always waylaying one and decanting his anguished soul”) or his mischief-making younger cousins, Claude and Eustace. One plot thread involves convincing Bingo’s uncle (who provides him with an allowance) to agree to Bingo marrying a waitress. Jeeves comes up with the idea to ply the uncle with romance novels featuring class differences to soften his heart, and it ends up that Bertie is compelled to go visit the old fellow and claim to be the author. In addition to containing the most elegant description of sweat I’ve ever seen—“The good old persp was bedewing my forehead by this time in a pretty lavish manner.”—this situation is referenced a few times in subsequent stories until Bingo succeeds in getting married to a different waitress who really is the author of those romance novels.

So, even though you’ve got episodic happenings, it’s rather a satisfactory conclusion. Bertie is endearing, Jeeves is competent, the writing is excellent, and it made me laugh. (I especially liked when a character was described as resembling “a sheep with a secret sorrow.”) I’m so glad that I didn’t give up on the series after the first book; now I feel as though I finally see what the fuss is all about. I’d also like to give credit to the fabulous narration by Jonathan Cecil. I’m not sure if it’s deliberate, but I hear echoes of Fry and Laurie in his performance, and I heartily approve. I will certainly seek out more unabridged versions read by him.

The Murders of Richard III by Elizabeth Peters This is the second in the Jacqueline Kirby series of mysteries. I haven’t read the first, and wouldn’t normally begin with the second, but the book promised an English country mansion plus “fanatic devotees of King Richard III” so my usual routine flew right out the window.

Even before university lecturer Thomas Carter likened himself unto Watson, I’d noticed the similarities between how this tale is told and the Sherlock Holmes stories. We are never permitted inside Jacqueline’s head. Instead, we see her how Thomas, hopeful of one day securing her romantic affections, views her. It’s fairly interesting, actually, because Thomas’ opinion of her fluctuates, sometimes peevishly. “You drive me crazy with your arrogance and your sarcasm and your know-it-all airs,” he says at one point. And though he soon after claims “I’m no male chauvinist; I don’t mind you showing off,” the fact is that earlier he was grumbling inwardly about her feigning “girlish ignorance” to reel in mansplainers and then walloping the “unwitting victim” with a cartload of knowledge. It’s true that Jacqueline isn’t especially likeable sometimes, but for remorselessly trouncing the sexist louts she encounters throughout the book, I must commend her!

The mystery itself is somewhat bland, unfortunately. The leader of a Ricardian society has received a letter purportedly written by Elizabeth of York, which would exonerate Richard of the deaths of her brothers, the “princes in the tower.” He calls a meeting of the society, with each attendee costumed as one of the historical personages involved, and summons the press, planning to unveil his find with much fanfare. But someone begins playing practical jokes on the Ricardians reminiscent of the fates of the people they are pretending to be. The book isn’t a long one, and soon the pranks start coming right on the heels of one another. Because of the swift pace—and some shallow characterization—the solution is rather anti-climactic.

Still, while I’m not sure I’ll seek out any more Jacqueline Kirby mysteries, this was overall a decent read.

A Perfect Match by Jill McGown The series of books featuring Detective Inspector Lloyd (whose first name is a secret for now) and Detective Sergeant Judy Hill begins with a short yet enjoyable mystery in which a wealthy young widow is found dead in a small English town on property she’d just inherited from her recently deceased husband. Unlike some mysteries of which I am fond, there’s no preamble where readers get to know the victim or the circumstances of their life. Instead, immediately there’s a policeman discovering the body and then Lloyd turns up to question the victim’s next of kin. This same lack of character development hampers the romantic tension between Lloyd and Hill, leaving me with no idea what motivated Hill to finally decide to act on her feelings for him, betraying her marriage vows in the process.

The mystery itself is interesting enough, however, involving long-married Helen and Donald Mitchell who have ties to both the victim, Julia—her late husband was Donald’s older brother and Helen thinks they were having an affair—and chief suspect, Chris, originally a friend of Donald’s who has fallen in love with Helen. I can’t claim to have mustered anything more than a mild curiosity as to what the outcome would be, but neither did I guess the specifics, so that was good. I liked the interrogation scenes, too.

McGown’s writing had some fun moments. I loved the super-evocative imagery of Lloyd telling Hill that her new perm makes her look like Kevin Keegan. I also really appreciated a recurring bit where each chapter ends with the point of view of wildlife. When Chris is eventually brought in by the police, his arrest is depicted from a bird’s perspective, for example. There are also ducks, a moth, a fly, a cat… I don’t know if this device recurs in later books in the series, but I look forward to finding out.

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight This is the second mystery/thriller I’ve read in which a single mom who is a lawyer with a cold and unfeeling mother of her own attempts to work out the mystery of what happened to a family member (the other being Girl in the Dark by Marion Pauw). Is that some kind of trend these days?

Kate Baron has a demanding job at a swanky firm, but she’s trying her best to be a good mom to her fifteen-year-old bookworm daughter, Amelia. She’s shocked to get a call from Grace Hall, the prestigious private school Amelia attends, saying that her daughter has been accused of cheating, and by the time she makes her way to the school, Amelia has evidently jumped to her death from the school roof. The police are only too happy to classify her death as a suicide, but when Kate gets a text that says “Amelia didn’t jump,” she starts trying to put together the pieces of what happened.

Reconstructing Amelia has quite a few problems. Despite her better judgment (and a promise to her best friend), Amelia joins a clique of bitchy girls at school who end up publicly humiliating her and trying to get her expelled when she falls in love with someone deemed off-limits. It’s hard to muster sympathy for what she ends up going through when one remembers the cruel prank she was willing to pull on someone else as part of the initiation process (largely kept off-camera to keep us from disliking her too much, I guess). We’re repeatedly told about the great relationship Amelia and her mom share, but never shown it. The subplot about Amelia’s dad is the literary equivalent of wilted lettuce. And the fact that the new detective who gets assigned to the case allows Kate to question suspects is absolutely ludicrous.

And yet, I couldn’t hate the book, largely because of Amelia’s friend, Sylvia. For much of the book she comes across as shallow and self-absorbed, but when Amelia really needs her, she’s there. She gives Amelia this tour of “great moments at Grace Hall” to cheer up her impressive pal, right before breaking down about her own legitimate pain. I never would’ve thought at the outset that I would have such immense sympathy for Sylvia, but I do. I find myself hoping that she’ll be okay.

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane It sure is nice going into a book unspoiled, particularly one as twisty as Shutter Island. I was quite happy with the book as it began, with U.S. Marshals Teddy Daniels and Chuck Aule taking the ferry to Shutter Island to track down a patient missing from Ashcliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. It’s late summer 1954, and these guys are manly but accessible, and surprisingly funny. Consider this relatiely early exchange that cracked me up:

Pretentious Doctor: *makes remarks on the lives of violence the marshals must lead* Chuck: Wasn’t raised to run, Doc. Pretentious Doctor: Ah, yes. Raised. And who did raise you? Teddy: Bears.

For a while, all seems straightforward. Then Teddy confides to Chuck that he’s actually come there looking for a patient named Andrew Laediss, who was responsible for setting the fire that killed Teddy’s wife two years before. Gradually, one starts to doubt everything (and there was a point where all of the uncertainty got to be a little much for me) but the ultimate conclusion is a very satisfactory one.

Why Did You Lie? by Yrsa Sigurdardottir Set in Iceland, Why Did You Lie? starts out with three different storylines taking place a few days apart. The first involves a photographer on a helicopter journey to take pictures of a lighthouse on a rock in the middle of the ocean, the second is about a policewoman whose journalist husband has recently attempted suicide, and the third is about a family who returns from a house swap with an American couple to find some of their stuff missing and weird footage on the security camera. Of course, as the book progresses, these storylines converge, and it’s pretty neat when the police activity the helicopter flew over in chapter one turns out to be almost the culmination of the policewoman’s plot thread.

For some reason, I can’t help wondering how Ruth Rendell might’ve written this book. I think Rendell would’ve done a lot more with characterization, for one thing. There’s certainly some here, especially for the anxious husband who struggles to make his wife admit something really has gone wrong with their houseguests, but the primary concern seems to be getting on with the suspenseful action. Quickly, each plot features some kind of creepy lurker and then ominous notes (variations on the “why did you lie?” theme) figure in to all three, as well. Nina, the policewoman, digs around and talks to people and works out that everything connects to a supposed suicide from thirty years ago.

The result is certainly an entertaining book, but not one I could really love. One major issue I had is being able to predict something very significant. The number of characters who could’ve been angry enough about the 30-year-old lies in question to terrorize people in the present is very small. And once the existence of a certain person is oh-so-casually mentioned two-thirds through the book, I thought, “Oh, well, it’s them, then.” And then a little later, I figured out which of the characters it must be and I was right. This made for an anticlimactic ending that was clearly meant to be a shocking one. Also, I would’ve liked to have cared more that one character ends the novel poised to move on with life but, in reality, still in jeopardy.

I still would read more by this author, though.

By: Michelle Smith

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

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swapauanon · 5 years ago

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Why is Lusamine usually so poorly written?

Now, this isn’t hating on the character, I LOVE the concept behind a good person both literally and figuratively becoming a horrific monster due to an obsession, only coming to their senses after causing irrevocable damage to their relationships with their loved ones, but no continuity really does it right.

I personally subscribe to the theory that, without the neurotoxins, Lusamine is a decent enough person, even if she is a substandard parent. Why? Because that seems to be the idea Game Freak was trying to convey. I also subscribe to the “Neurotoxins=drug addiction metaphor” theory.

But the problem is that, of the four takes on Lusamine, none of them really do a good job of balancing Lusamine’s villainy, humanity, and tragedy. For example:

Sun and Moon: Lusamine is a horribly abusive and controlling mother, who’s obsessed with the Ultra Beasts, but does a complete 180 in personality after Nihilego is defeated without ever acknowledging her misdeeds. Type:Null’s backstory heavily implies that she at first wanted to destroy the Ultra Beasts for taking her husband away until she fell in love with Nihilego after getting a faceful of neurotoxins. She is also obsessed with beauty. However, none of her redeeming qualities are shown, and she’s hastily ushered out of the plot after coming to her senses without ever showing remorse for her crimes.

Ultra: Lusamine is now a well-intentioned extremist who DESPISES the Ultra Beasts, especially Necrozma. But now her emulation of the Ultra Beasts in her clothing, and her decision to make her children and Guzma dress up like Ultra Beasts makes no sense. Additionally, that freaky cryogenic prison is still kept in the story and basically brushed over, despite the fact that she is no longer obsessed with beauty. She also tragically decides not to reconnect with her ex-husband after realizing that he’s lost his memory and has been living happily without her, feeling that he deserves better, before getting reduced to a damsel in distress in Episode RR.

Pokémon Special/Pokémon Adventure: Lusamine’s villainy is played up, but it is explicitly stated that she’s only acting the way she is because of Nihilego’s neurotoxins. However, she has no agency in her fall to villainy, as everything from her husband’s disappearance to her brainwashing at Nihilego’s tentacles was masterminded by Faba, effectively reducing her to Faba’s brainwashed pawn and someone for our protagonists to rescue.

Now, that’s not to say that I dislike the idea of Faba manipulating Lusamine or taking advantage of her deteriorating mental state to further his own goals. In fact, I’d argue that it makes both characters more interesting when it’s done well. But none of the above continuities do that.

But, there is a continuity which does tell Lusamine’s story competently.

Pokémon Anime: Lusamine is the workaholic, single mother of Lillie and Gladion, left to raise her two children after her husband’s mysterious disappearance. Rather than obsessing over what she lost, she mourned and moved on. She’s still remarkably childish, to the point that her prepubescent daughter is more mature than she is, but you can’t deny that she loves her children. She’s also disregarded Lillie’s feelings enough times to make Lillie feel the need to vocally defend her decisions even when nobody has voiced disapproval of them. She’s also become so neglectful that her daughter’s basically been raised by the family butler for the past five years, and never questioned why her daughter who loved Pokémon suddenly developed a crushing fear of them out of the blue. She also works to atone for her neglect the second it’s spelled out for her by Gladion, with her mentally and verbally kicking herself for letting the situation escalate to the point that Lillie’s memory is in danger of being erased. After that point, she works to become more active in her children’s lives, but still has flaws. For example, when Faba summons Nihilego to get revenge for losing his job (something he wouldn’t be able to do if Lusamine had properly dealt with the situation after Lillie was first traumatized), she fangirls for a few seconds before realizing that the Ultra Beast is about to murder her daughter. After this, she sacrifices herself to save her kids, kicking off the “rescue” arc. Also, after she becomes the Motherbeast and starts attacking the heroes who are trying to rescue her, she’s still partially in control, even if her mental state has deteriorated to that of a preschooler trying to protect their favorite toy (in this case, Nihilego), with Nihilego not taking full control until Lillie talks some sense into her by calling her out for being such a terrible mother while begging her to clean up her act and ditch the glass jellyfish. From that point on in the anime, Lusamine becomes a far more active supporting character, showing up in person for Lillie’s big accomplishments (such as a school play), and generally being a far more likeable and sympathetic person.

So what makes the anime!Lusamine the best Lusamine?

Every step of her character arc is HER CHOICE!

It was Lusamine’s decision to leave her children for long periods of time that lead to Lillie developing a fear of Pokémon.

It was Lusamine’s decision to not question her daughter’s trauma that led to her having to sacrifice herself to protect her kids from Nihilego.

The class couldn’t save Lusamine at first because she let Nihilego possess her, and it was her decision to stop playing around that allowed them to defeat the Motherbeast.

Lusamine CHOSE to be a better mother after realizing just how badly she screwed up in neglecting her responsibilities to her kids.

Her morality isn’t a freaking light switch in the anime! Nothing happens that turns her into a terrible person against her will which is magically undone by a Legendary Pokémon from another dimension. The evil can’t be blasted out of her until she cooperates. From her fall from grace to her redemption, she always has some degree of agency.

#lusamine #character analysis #pokémon anime #pokémon sun and moon #pokémon ultra sun and ultra moon #pokémon special #pokémon adventures #long post

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adobe-outdesign · 5 years ago

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The Big Grand DCTL Review/Critique

In my previous liveblog I said that I’d do an overall review/rating kind of thing to summarize my thoughts on the book, so here you go.

No Spoilers: So I’ll preface by saying the book isn’t bad. It has it’s... moments, but it’s pretty enjoyable overall. The FNAF books, for example, were fun to read but they were also a hot fucking mess. This is not a hot fucking mess - it has its flaws but it’s pretty decent over all.

Spoilers below the cut:

The Canon-ness of the Book

I would like to say first off that I really don’t think this book is meant to be 100% canon - not to say it isn’t canon, but I don’t think it’s supposed to lie up with the games perfectly. It was approved of by Kindlybeast, but they didn’t write it - Adrienne Kress did, they just helped to develop it.

To explain better: There are a lot of contradictions in this book with the main lore. Some are more minor and could potentially be waved away, but others are extremely glaring. Here’s a short list of the ones that come to mind:

In the book, the Ink Machine is secret and almost no one knows about it. In the game everyone knows and actively complains about the machine on a daily basis. In the Employee Handbook, there’s even a memo from Joey proudly introducing the Machine to everyone.

The book claims you put ink into the Machine and it changes it in some way (effectively running on ink). In the game, it seems to produce ink itself - Joey’s memo kind of indicates this, as does the blueprints, and Wally’s “who really needs that much ink anyway” makes less sense if they’re putting ink into the machine rather than it making the ink.

Plus on Thomas’ board he has a list of the gallons of ink produced each day, with the highest amount written with exclamation points - if it ran on ink this doesn't make sense, as to get 423 gallons of ink he would’ve had to have put 423 gallons of ink into the thing to begin with.

Sammy is wildly OOC in this, as he’s basically a feral asshole throughout the thing, while in canon his merch description calls him a “decent person” and he generally seems agreeable most of the time, except for when he’s annoyed. The book even claims he doesn’t refer to women by their last names, while Susie’s tape tells us the exact opposite (as according to her he referred to Allison as “Miss Allison Pendle”).

Bertrum is also OOC in this - in canon, he’s extremely egotistical and hates Joey for multiple reasons. In the book, they’re buddies (even hugging each other) and Bertrum seems more humble. He doesn’t even correct Joey on calling him “Bertie”, when he had an entire tape about how much he dislikes being called that in the game.

The timeline for this part is also very wrong - it’s treated as if they just met (which could explain why Bertrum doesn’t dislike him yet)... but Bendyland was in progress for years before the studio went to hell, and he even has his BATDR tape (wherein he’s actively disliking Joey) dated years before this book takes place.

This also makes it kind of impossible for him to be the octopus ride like in canon, because he literally just joined the studio when Joey started killing people (and keep in mind that designing and building a ride like that would have taken at least a year or two).

The ink is, for some reason, somewhat alive, able to move around on it’s own and possess people. This was never indicated in the game, ever.

Buddy wakes up as Boris. In the game, stuff like Grant’s tape indicate the ink creatures wake up and then transform (the files even have an unused transformation tape from Wally, who’s likely our Boris). You can kind of headcanon around this one if you try though.

At the end, Norman and a few background characters die. Joey says he didn’t use the machine on them because they had been infected by the ink for too long and didn’t have souls any more. This means that, according to the book, The Projectionist cannot exist (as Norman wouldn’t have had a soul to use and Joey outright says he couldn’t/didn’t use the machine on them in the first place).

Some of these are pretty minor, but some of them are extremely glaring and even casual gamers would pick up on this stuff.

Basically, we have two options: Either Kindlybeast doesn’t know their own story/characters too well, or they didn’t require this to line up perfectly with the games. Except the first option doesn’t make sense, because they’ve recently published stuff that contradicts what’s said in this book in favor of matching the actual lore from the games, proving they do know their own story.

For ampel, Bertrum’s BATDR tape, which lines up with the game’s lore and corrects the mistakes in DCTL, was released in March - long after this book was in production. The thing about the Ink Machine being secret was also disproved in the recently-released Handbook, which instead says they employees do know about the Machine, just like they do in the game. So Kindlybeast do know these things don’t line up with canon.

I think basically they approached Adrienne and were like “hey, can you write a prequel novel based on our game?” and while they offered her some guidance, she mostly just did her own thing based off of it (she even said it felt like working on fanfiction while writing it) and Kindlybeast liked it and published it. It’s an adaptation of the game and its lore, done by a new person - things tend to change in adaptations. I don’t think they needed or cared if it lined up like puzzle pieces, they just wanted a good story, which they got. It is canon... but it’s also not, if that makes sense.

So for our intents and purposes I’d consider this semi-canon - take what you can as canon (which is most of it, as the most major contradictions also tend to be the shortest scenes) and ignore the stuff that doesn’t line up with canon, unless otherwise stated by Kindlybeast or confirmed in BATDR.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Overall, I’d say this book is about 70% good and 30% bad. When it is good, it is really, really damn good - but when it’s bad it leaves an awful taste in your mouth that’s hard to get rid of.

The Good:

Like... the majority of the book, really

Buddy and Dot are wonderful characters with strong personalities. They’re super likeable, bring some much-needed heart into things, and have great chemistry.

While some of the aforementioned characters are majorly OOC, the ones that are in-character (Joey and Norman are good examples) are amazing - every scene with them is gold and the book really fleshes out their personalities.

Some of the new lore tidbits are great, and help explain some things in the game (like how Lost Ones are created) or are just interesting (like Sammy drinking the ink and the idea of the ink being able to infect people, which sounds like something that could have directly come from the games).

The book goes into way more depth about what being a cartoon/ink creature is like, which is some much-needed exposition and is extremely interesting.

It also has a ton of heart and good intentions. I was worried about it being overly dark, but if anything it has far more sweet moments than depressing ones.

The Bad:

The contradictions I mentioned above. Some of them are easy enough to ignore, but some are incredibly jarring and take you out of the story (and make it impossible to take it as 100% canon without breaking the space-time continuum).

I kind of mentioned it above, but the stuff with the ink being alive and possessing people comes right the fuck out of nowhere, has nothing to do with the game lore, is completely tonally dissonant to BATIM as a whole, and literally has nothing to do with the plot of the book, like, at all. It feels like a few pages from a Venom novel got mixed in with the early draft and no one remembered to remove them before publication.

The racist shit - it’s only like 1% of the book, but when that 1% of the book ruins a really good character it’s a pretty big deal.

A random NPC dies for no reason and this death has more relevance to the plot than Norman, who dies off-screen.

Also consider: They could’ve found Norman first, Buddy runs off to get back to his house, Norman follows and gets killed via neck snap. Fixes both problems at once.

There’s very little tension during the horror moments because we already know Buddy will die but not until the end and that Dot will live.

The Ink Demon acts more like an xenomorph than the Ink Demon in this - his behavior is bizarre and it feels pretty generically horror movie monster-ish compared to how he acts in the game.

The Ugly:

The B-plot with Buddy’s grandfather should have been cut. I know that sounds harsh, but really think about it: what effect did it have on the plot? It only crosses with the A-plot twice, and both times nothing came out of it. It gives Buddy a chance to learn how to draw and he goes through some character development, but I find it hard to believe that couldn’t have been accomplished by expanding the A-plot.

The main problem is that A) this is a BATIM novel so we want to see the studio, not Buddy’s relatives at home, and B) it makes it kind of slow towards the middle, wherein the stuff with the studio barely progresses while we keep cutting back to the B-plot.

I didn’t dislike reading it or anything, but it makes the plot flabby, and slicing it out would’ve given us much more time in the studio and the characters we like rather than trying to juggle two plots at once, effectively streamlining it and making for a more cohesive story.

The ending (like the last 5 chapters) is a hot mess in multiple and varying ways:

Sammy shows up and... gets knocked out by a projector. Which is funny, but it amounts to nothing plot-wise and makes Sammy’s whole appearance kind of pointless

Killing off a bunch of characters, one of which was a main character, off-screen

The weird Venom shit that has nothing to do with the plot of the books or the games and amounts to nothing

Bendy acting fairly OOC, especially with how he goes about killing people

Buddy grabs the idiot ball bard by trying to drown a creature made of ink in ink, then standing right near the spot so he can be grabbed and killed

Not only does the “can’t use them because they had been infected for too long and no longer had souls” thing not only raises the aforementioned plot hole with the Projectionist, but it raises a plot hole in the book itself: When the other are exposed to the ink they die, but when Sammy drinks the stuff he turns into a Lost One. Which one is it?

Keep in mind that that was more bullet points in those 30-some pages than I have for the entire rest of the book

There are only like... two actual horror scenes in the book, and one of those is the climax. While it makes sense that too much couldn’t have happened before the ending, it feels like there could have been more than that.

Not all of the characters from the games appear. I know it’s a tall ask but it’s also easy to see how they could have been integrated, and some of them could have easily taken the roles that were given to NPCs instead.

I feel like this book would be more engaging as a non-fan, as the plot tends to progress like a mystery, with you learning a bit more about what’s happening with every scene in the studio... except as a fan you already know what’s happening, so there’s little to keep you engaged until you get into that nice juicy lore at the end.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s lots of little details that tell us new info and the character interactions are great, but a lot of the scenes are just like “Surprise, Sammy is crazy!” and it’s like thanks, we already knew that. The mystery is supposed to build and move the plot forward, but there’s effectively no mystery.

Overall Rating

I’m worried this review is going to come across as overly negative, as it’s much easier to critique what’s wrong than it is to say “this part was good!” like 200 times. But all of the stuff I was talking about that’s an issue? That’s like... 30% of the book, maybe less. Some of the most problematic scenes you could literally remove and loose nothing plot-wise (which is frustrating but you know). The bulk of the book is very good, the lore stuff when handled correctly is amazing and it even provides some extra answers that we didn’t have before, and the characters are great.

Overall, I’d give the book a solid... 7/10, I think. Not perfect, but pretty damn decent all around. If you’re a fan, I’d highly recommend picking up a copy if you haven't already.

#bendy and the ink machine #batim #batim: dctl #dreams come to life #buddy lewek #dot #sammy lawrence #joey drew #outdesign posts things #batim spoilers #outdesign analyzes things #the good news regarding the canon issues is that buddy has memory issues and is a unreliable narrator #so you can take the bulk of the book as canon and just headcanon around the stuff that doesn't make sense and say buddy got confused

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deltaengineering · 6 years ago

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Spring Anime 2019 Part 1: git gud

I was trying to wait until something really good came along. This ran into a problem. Yes this is a day behind but not because of... that.

Amazing Stranger

What: Otaku dipshit buys a figurine that turns out to be an alien robot girl from an anime.

❌❌ Otaku dipshit nonsense about perving on a figurine-sized robot girl. It’s bad, yo.

❌ Execution is as questionable as the content. I’ll give it a star for using 3DCG and 2D animation where they respectively make sense.

♎ Only ⅓ runtime so it ended before I could get mad.

Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai

What: Overachiever gets conned into tutoring a bunch of girls with specialized talents and general uselessness. The twist is that they don’t look identical.

♎ Basic ass harem setup with little to distinguish itself. And if it’s not a real harem it’s just a lacklaughter comedy.

♎ Characters aren’t terrible but sort of just there. Their talents are also too cartoonish to take seriously but not outlandish enough to be funny.

♎ You guessed it, production is workmanlike/undistinguished as well.

❌ Didn’t I just watch this? In any case, this lacks Quintuplet’s trademark sass so it’s just painfully mediocre.

Fruits Basket

What: Poor but optimistic high school girl gets involved with a harem of supernatural critters.

♎ This seems incredibly derivative and unoriginal. Seems of course, because Fruits Basket is the OG so all the others ripped it off in the first place. Doesn’t change the fact that I’ve sampled and discarded dozens of otome harems exactly like this.

✅ The production is aware that they’re adapting a classic over here, so the production values are high. It looks nice.

✅ It’s directed quite competently as well, especially the comic bits have the right timing.

❌ I don’t like the characters much. Tohru is a little annoying and the boyz are a big nothing. That’s not good for a romantic comedy. Side characters fare much better but hey, side characters in a show like this don’t matter.

♎ I have no attachment to Fruits Basket so this will have to stand on its own. So far it looks watchable, but very middle of the road.

Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu

What: Kiraralike about a class of middle school girls that are all named after their personality. The main character (Bocchi Hitori, natch) is lonely and made of social anxiety.

❌ Dealing with #relatable topics is always sketchy, but Bocchi talking to herself for the majority of the episode just gets really old no matter what.

✅ However, once she starts actually talking to other people it gets better. Slightly above average for a show like this, which means inoffensively cute and very mildly comedic.

♎ This is a Kiraralike where all the characters are named after their personality, so I wouldn’t expect any depth. Not that that’s unusual for the genre.

♎ I’ll probably give this 3 episodes because these shows live and die by the cast, which we haven’t seen much of so far. If Bocchi’s character development sticks and we get a few good support characters, it might be fun.

Joshikausei

What: the sound of one thigh slapping

❌ but

✅✅ though

Kimetsu no Yaiba / DEMON SLAYER

What: Edgy shounen about a dude whose family gets KILL BY DEMONS (no, he isn’t the demons (his sister is the demons)).

✅ Actually better than that sounds, it’s pretty serious with its approach to the whole revenge thing. The edginess is also only apparent on the margins, so tonally it’s more or less fine.

✅ The main guy isn’t terrible and his superpower (a superlative sense of smell) is fairly subdued for the genre. You could tell a story with this.

✅✅ This is ufotable and it looks REALLY good. ufotable shows are always very elaborate, but their aesthetics can be questionable. This, however, keeps the postprocessing to a minimum and uses CG only where appropriate. I’d say it rivals Emiya-san for the best looking thing they’ve ever done.

❌ The OP shows a bunch of supercool superdudes fighting like they're in a shounen anime, just in case you’re wondering.

❌❌ Three words: Weekly Shounen Jump. This is an instant death sentence for the long run, since it will be stretched until nobody cares anymore, then get swiftly killed - with some lipservice to closure, if you’re lucky.

❌❌ In case you’re willing to take your chances, WSJ is still a magazine for babies and imbeciles, so get ready for its “distinctive” writing style. Here it isn’t quite as bad as in Promised Neverland, but you’re still getting 100% wall-to-wall voiceover coverage explaining things that you either don’t need to know or are blindingly obvious.

Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO

What: 90s eroge protagonist starts hopping dimensions to look for his dad or something.

❌❌ Those 90s eroge protagonists sure were hilarious, what with their lechery etc. Rest of the cast fills the genre template nicely as well, which is to say they suck.

❌ Doesn’t look outright terrible so far, but it already shows signs of slight jankiness that would lead me to suspect this is a candidate for a production collapse in the future.

❌ Story? Surely you jest. All that happens in the first episode is vague exposition and naked girls falling from the sky. I hear the game gets real good 100 hours in, btw.

❌ This isn’t just some 90s eroge, it is the 90s eroge. You know, before KEY came along and made them all respectable (ostensibly). In any case, YU-NO is regarded as some stone cold classic of epic feels. I have experience with those, and they usually are only great for as long as you can’t read them.

Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai

What: High school girls hates men because her father happens to be one. Understandable, since he’s also a tiny dirty old man caricature from the 60s. Can love bloom on the ecchifield?

♎ This is mostly inoffensive...

❌ ...except when it isn’t, of course. Which isn’t that often but still too often.

❌ It would also be appreciated if it could be less offensive in those instances because hot damn.

❌ Even if it removed the main source of irritation it would still be nothing much. Something like Hitoribocchi or Benkyou ga Dekinai has at least some potential, this doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere.

❌❌ My man Kenjiro Tsuda is wasting his time on this goblin’s comedy voice.

Mix - Meisei Story

What: Some kids play baseball, very slowly. You’re supposed to care because you presumably cared about Touch (which Mix is a very far removed sequel to).

❌ I did not in fact care about Touch. Nor about baseball, for that matter.

❌ Seriously, the entire selling point for this is “Sequel. To. Touch.” It cares not for your indifference towards Touch and would rather you go away.

❌❌ The languid pace is a killer. I know baseball is a boring sport but Mix doesn’t even attempt to make it interesting. This could work as an iyashikei-type show but in that case it would need different hooks, such as characters whose personality goes beyond “good at THIS aspect of baseball”. Maybe they’ll get to that but with this pace it’ll take a few seasons.

✅ I think the 80s design with a few contemporary animation frills looks quite nice. They’re probably doing their job right over there.

Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma

What: One “Oda Nobunaga” is an otaku and somehow also a teacher. Girls looking for his better known ancestor approach him with marriage plans, and since they’re looking for a Sengoku warlord, they come with era appropriate sensibilities.

❌ Do not care much for anime about 14 year old time travellers falling onto some dork’s dick, sorry. Unless they’re real good. Which this isn’t.

❌ I suppose i should be thankful this isn’t an all-out ecchi show, but unlike the characters, “lmao they can’t fuck” gets old.

❌ Besides the obvious, this fails at pacing, comedy, heartwarming, production, etc. I’m getting tired of spelling it all out again, this season definitely has an overabundance of not-quite-terrible-but-subpar-in-every-way romantic comedies.

Senryuu Shoujo

What: Senryuu is poetry that’s pretty much a haiku, but not hella deep. A quiet weirdo girl and a delinquent type write some of those.

✅ This has low ambitions, but manages to meet them. It’s chill and cute and the characters are likeable.

✅ Half length, which is the correct runtime for something as slight as this.

♎ It’s cheap but not to the degree that it detracts from the experience.

✅ It’s the second coming of Go Go 575 and I’m all about that. Check it out!

ULTRAMAN

What: uLtRaMaN is an ultrasequel to UlTrAmAn in which Ultraman is now Ultradad and has to take care of his Ultrason.

♎ Decent looking by CG TV anime standards, though the amount of action is so low that it raises the question why it isn’t just live action, especially since it’s partially mocapped already. I would have expected more pizzazz, especially with Kenji Kamiyama AND Shinji Aramaki directing.

♎ Old man superhero has some charm, but the show suggests and Wikipedia confirms: He’s about to get his ass kicked and his much more standard progeny takes over. There goes your selling point.

♎ Apart from that, this appears to be a competent but not especially engaging sequel to Ultraman (i.e., it’s most definitely not SSSS.Gridman). I have no special affinity for Ultraman.

#anime #Fruits Basket #Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu #Kono Yo no Hate de Koi wo Utau Shoujo YU-NO #Midara na Ao-chan wa Benkyou ga Dekinai #Senryuu Shoujo #Ultraman #Amazing Stranger #Bokutachi wa Benkyou ga Dekinai #Joshikausei #Kimetsu no Yaiba #Mix - Meisei Story #Nobunaga-sensei no Osanazuma #impressions #spring2019

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jacereviews · 6 years ago

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Review: Sengoku Youko

Manga Consumed in English

Continuing on from Samidare into the catalog of Satoshi Mizukami, next I came along Sengoku Youko. Despite being Mizukami’s longest work and a shounen action manga, it was a name I’d heard little about. However what I did hear about was quite interesting, OPT threads posting ambitious spreads, and some classy-taste friends of mine listing it as their favorite battle shounen ever. So I began my delve into the 2007-2016 series, Sengoku Youko. Let’s Rock.

PLOT: Two people roam the land. We have the fox demon, Youko Tama, and her stepbrother, Yamato Jinka. Together they’re on a quest to reform the evils of the land and bring a better peace to the world. Along their way they meet the young samurai Hyoudo Shinsuke, who’s the first to join their party in their quest for peace. If this doesn’t sound interesting to you, don’t worry. This is just the initial set-up. Sengoku Youko is broken up into some clearly defined parts, each building on the events of the last and, in my honest opinion, increasing in intrigue. The first part has a pretty standard set-up and does drag for the first while, but what it ends up doing and being built from there is quite the mastercraft. Sadly this means it’s the type of piece where I have to hold my tongue on why it’s good because the twists and surprises are best left unspoiled. Once part 2 kicks it, it becomes a tightly woven tale that carries a lot of emotional punch. Despite the simple set up, some quite amazing and surprising things do happen down the road, the manga will shift the status quo quite a bit and time will pass, but all of this is done quite meaningfully and with a lot of skill. There’s also a lot of thematic and emotional weight, as the series goes into humans, demons, fate, and what it means to fight. It’s full of exciting fights backed by powerful ideals and heart-wrenching deaths. It manages to fantastically blend an intense action plot with a lot of character moments and development. As with my last Mizukami series, I will say the plot falls under the characters but that’s by no means a bad thing. Ending wise the series ties up nicely, even if the epilogue lacked in some ways.

7/10, the first part is a 6 with the second part beyond being an 8.

CHARACTERS: Mizukami is one hell of a character writer and this doesn’t change. The initial cast are all quite memorable. Tama herself I find to be the weakest character as while she’s likeable and cute I found her development quite lacking in comparison to everyone else. Her initial ideal of peace stays throughout with little questioning, but she does over time come to discover her motivations for what’s more important to her. Jinka on the other hand is quite strong development-wise. When we meet him he’s a human on a quest to become a demon, after being exiled and living with demons he watched humans kill all the demons he lived with and has developed a hatred for them. Through the events of the series (and especially through his relation with Shinsuke) he comes down off of his hatred horse and begins to develop into the main hero we want him to be. Shinsuke himself is quite the case, starting off as a coward and a wannabe we see an AMAZING amount of development with him. His development is rough, but as all human development is, and by the end he’s even rather inspirational. I can’t say his name, but the other character to go through quite as complex and satisfying a development is one who becomes a lead character in the second part. I imagine any fans of the series will know who I’m talking about and there’ll be little dissent on the development of this boy. There’s also a lot of great side characters. The character of Teru was a particular highlight for being both incredibly funny and endearing despite overall playing a rather minor role in the series. Some other characters such as Raidou and Nau were also quite nice. I never found any of the characters to be unpleasant, with the “worst” being fun but static. As far as villains go there’s a good amount to talk about here. Some of the recurring villains are quite nice, especially Douren who falls into the old trope of “Genuinely Great Guy who’s just on the Other Side.” The character of Mudo falls into the villain turned rival role and has some of the best character development in the series. I also want to give a shout out to Jinun but can’t say why for spoiler sakes. Lastly the series villains, who’s reveal itself is a twist, were rather interesting. They were built up in a mysterious and exciting manner over the early parts of the series, and come to pay off towards the end. Despite being villains they fall into the nice category of not only relatable, but arguably more right than the main characters and have a fantastic backstory even if they’re lacking as individual characters. All in all Mizukami outdid himself by creating a loveable cast that grows well and ends up becoming powerful and memorable characters.

9/10, epitomic of good battle shounen character writing.

VISUALS: I’d honestly say this is a mixed bag. Mizukami’s art isn’t the strongest but he pulled out all of the stops here. While the individual panel to panel can be alright, the action scenes (especially later in the series) are top notch. While it may not be the most anatomic or realistic, the art is really expressive and can flow well. Character faces convey a lot of emotion and the designs are unique and memorable. Most memorable of all are the spreads, which on their own might be 10/10. Whether it be epic attacks conveyed in gripping detail with powerful emotion, back to back spreads conveying a mix of scale and flow, or (most surprisingly) spreads of larger than 4 pages to convey the size and scale of a scene in intriguing ways, Sengoku Youko I feel is one of the best examples of how to utilize and make multi-page spreads in an action series. I can still picture some of them with their intense action and raw emotions. It’s ambitious for the medium with having even a 6-page spread at one point. The average page isn’t as good as these spreads, but the series looks fine on average. I also think some of the demon design is particularly fantastic, a personal favorite of mine is Banshou’ou’s combat form.

8/10, some amazing spreads put in what’s otherwise a pretty decent piece.

FINAL SCORE: 8/10

While not perfect (with a slow first act) Sengoku Youko does some amazing stuff and in my opinion is well worth the read, while not becoming my favorite battle shounen I think it’s a pretty good contender for one of the best ever. I’d recommend it for most manga fans and is a must-read for any battle shounen manga fan.

#sengoku youko #mizukami satoshi #senya #samurai #manga #shounen #blade online

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lysical · 7 years ago

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I was introduced to a lot of the Batfamily via the Morrison run. How screwed up is my perception of them? Comics are an effing minefield of characterization—I know, I’m a Hank Pym fan because I ran into him first in one of his highly rare likeable periods. Any tips/recs? It feels like everywhere I go the characters aren’t the “real” ones, and idk where to find these “real” ones. (This goes for Tim too, although you seem understandably down on him lately & might not want to talk Drake anymore

It does vary by character, actually. There are some fundamental things he does that are a bit out of there, and other things that are just plain offensive, but he’s not the absolute worst to come in on, as damned by faint praise as that is.

Long post ahead

Bruce: Morrison and I fundamentally see the character very differently. He sort of subscribes to some ideas about Bruce as Batman that I just don’t like re: emotions, life, family. He uses a lot of allegories and devices in his work and the depth is there, I just don’t agree with what he was doing and had to say about Batman on a fundamental level. Post-Crisis Bruce is a bit all over the place. A lot of different writers got their hands on him and the dark and gritty post-Jason transformation of the character was intense and permanent. Because of this, coming into Morrison doesn’t really hurt you that much--especially since for a lot of it he’s functionally dead. Maybe check out some runs like Hush (more emphasis on the family), Dark Victory (some young Dick Grayson), Batman: Year One (say what you want about Miller, but it’s a decent book and the atmosphere and art are great for an introduction to the modern character), and then hop over to some of Bruce’s team books. Sometimes characters get distilled well over in their team books compared to their solos (especially since the Bat Department is...weird at times). Maybe check out Superman/Batman, the old team up from the early 2000s. For Bruce it’s just best to cast a wide net and read a variety. JLA: Tower of Babel is a good one to see Batman and the wider superhero community in conflict, which brings in a lot of Batman’s negative aspects in a way that was decently balanced and didn’t villainize him via narrative even as the characters might have felt that way about him (Young Justice certainly did XD), but I havent’ read it in a long time so ymmv.

Dick: One of the few characters that didn’t get that bad a hand by Morrison, or too much of a characterization shift (his character shift had happened during the Chuck Dixon and Devin Grayson period, although the latter more than the former). Unlike new 52 onwards, while he was softened a little to pair effectively with Damian, it wasn’t too much as we saw at times later and how fandom kind of tends to portray them (’Shut the hell up, Damian’ comes to mind). The Dickbats run was a nice change and development for Dick, a natural progression. The things that were sort of tweaked to create conflict with that transition (Dick not wanting Batman, some characterization behind that) were pre-Morrision, during Battle for the Cowl and the setup to Morrison, so while they follow on from that they’re mostly absent from the run. For the modern Robin Dick stories, go for Teen Titans: Year One, Dark Victory, Batman: Year Three, a couple of the other year ones are decent, although some incorporate those characterization shifts, but that’s comics. I’d go back to New Teen Titans (starts in Pre-Crisis, goes into Post, but the book doesn’t have a huge change due to the crisis and it’s just a really good run, deserving of being the benemoth during that time period that it was) to get the best of Dick on a team, then maybe check out Prodigal (follows on from Knightfall, Dick’s first run as Batman), skip Nightwing: Year One (it’s got tiny amounts of Dick and Jason bonding but Dixon ripped everything else about Dick’s early Nightwing period to shreds). From there, depends if you want his solo or his team stuff, he’s a pretty easy character to follow. I like to start chronologically with him because then you see the shifts happen as he falls back under control of the bat-books, and his solo and team stuff have some interesting contrasts (I lean towards his team stuff generally because Dick has always been about that for me, rather than running solo).

Babs: Birds of Prey is her essential stuff, I don’t think Morrison really did that much with her but my memories of it all are a bit vague now. I’d personally take anything when she’s romantically involved with Dick with a grain of salt, that relationship was a bit of a disaster and they both do terrible things to each other (I believe the one responsible for it all is Devin again but it’s been a while since i visited that train wreck) and there’s some victim-blaming that happens that’s not so good. I prefer Oracle having a bit of distance from the Batfam, as she’s just surpassed being someone who is under Batman’s authority and is just crucial to the entire operation of the superhero community in general, so Bird s of Prey.

Jason: Hnng. Here’s where Morrison really just decided to throw away established DC continuity and try his hand at a bunch of crap that fell completely flat. Just toss it and purge, tbh. Winick got Jason back late in the run but it was too late for that. Maybe there are tiny aspects of characterization that aren’t bad (Pride and Prejudice) but Morrison misunderstood Jason on a much more fundamental level. Also the red hair was probably some attempt to make a witty visual pun and add ‘depth’ but there are so many problems with it. Continuity-wise it makes so sense with how pre-crisis and post- worked, particularly for Jason, and additionally Morrison is realllllly wishy-washy with his ‘EVERYTHING IS CANON’ stuff that it rings false, plus in Pre-Crisis he was like...blonde I don’t understand. The implications of Jason being forced to dye his hair are absolutely disgusting for Bruce and go back into that fundamental problem I have with how Morrison sees Bruce. Jason, Post-resurrection suffers a lot of DC writers not knowing what to do and unloading a lot of DC’s baggage and some unconscious, problematic tropes onto him. Read his Post-Crisis origin (Batman 408 on, there’s the origin and some issues after set up by his original Post-Crisis writer Max Collins) and maybe all his Post-Crisis, pre-Death stuff since there’s honestly not a lot and it’s fairly obvious when Starlin starts pushing for his death. For post-resurrection, Under the Red Hood, Lost Days (it goes off the rails at the end, so I only half rec it honestly), Outsiders 44 and 45, Countdown (but only if you’re skipping the plot and just reading the Jason (&Donna &Kyle) bits, it’s one of the most even-handed treatments he actually gets in Post-Crisis but the book is otherwise terrible). Then just go straight to RHatO Rebirth.

Tim: Ignore new 52 and Rebirth entirely. Red Robin is a book a lot of Tim fans really like but I personally think it’s bad in general and also don’t like what the writer does with Tim, but ymmv. Tim’s origin is also pretty weak and his initial mini and series aren’t that great at establishing him as a proper character outside ‘this kid is Robin pls like him we want to get away from the controversy of the last one’ so it’s hard to connect with him there without nostalgia glasses. By Knightfall (1994ish) on, that’s where he’s more of a character himself, and his stuff from about then through to the early 2000s is the best (before Geoff Johns got him in Teen Titans and Didio started doing Things, which basically led us to today to be honest). Personally, I think Tim functions best in a team, there are aspects of what his writers do in his solo where they just...missed the implications and it kind of grates on me. His stand out book imo is Young Justice (the og comic not the cartoon which only shares the name and nothing else tbh).

Steph: Another who actually got treated decently well during the Morrison-era, as opposed to the crap she was dealt earlier during her time as Robin and War Games. Steph’s Batgirl run is something I definitely recommend, and her stuff with Dick and Damian in Morrison’s era is contemporary with that. Her origin is actually really good and compelling, so I’d dig into that (TEC 647, i think, is her first appearance). She kind of just revolves around Tim during his run and their relationship is kind of...there are implications there that are a bit cringe. Her stuff with Cass on the other hand is really enjoyable so I’d recommend those. Her brief Robin run is decent if melancholy considering what we know happens, and I wouldn’t touch War Games with a ten foot pole.

Cass: Shafted from the mid-2000s on, tbh. She got a bit blessed with a solid creative team to start her off in her Batgirl run, it attempts some pretty deep and interesting explorations of her character that while not perfectly executed are still really good comics. I’d just read her No Man’s Land stuff, follow her book and stuff with Steph and pretty much just ditch out when One Year Later hits. Her Black Bat outfit is cool and there is some retroactive backpedalling by DC to justify shafting her but it’s all Morrison era anyway so you might be familiar already.

Damian: Morrison created him and he took a lot of liberties with that backstory which unfortunately have had a lasting impact for Talia, which is frustrating. As Damian’s creator, what you see is what you get. Morrison didn’t want him to be likeable and he also didn’t really want him to be permanent (ties in again to how Morrison sees Bruce and family tbh), other writers gave Damian development later, but despite being around for over a decade now, there is still a lot of push and pull between writers about his characterization and development. It’s unfortunate but there’s a noticeable lack of consistency with Damian and his development that is frustrating to read. Probably read Tomasi’s stuff if you want Damian’s softened, developed arc and avoid other stuff. I’m not the best for Damian because most of his stuff is during the new 52 which I wasn’t around for and am picking through only occasionally.

Hope this helps.

#asks #anon #opinionated opinions: dc comics #batfam #recs: dc comics #ymmv on all of this #and i put it together really quick off the top of my head #but i hope it helps #bruce wayne #dick grayson #barbara gordon #jason todd #tim drake #stephanie brown #cassandra cain #damian wayne #no one who came in later because obvs they weren't around for morrison #if i missed someone....rip

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violent-optimism · 6 years ago

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My Ranking of all the MCU films so far

Hey guys! So now that I have finally caught up and watched every single film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (to date) I will now rank them from worst to best!

Just an FYI: Some of you will probably not agree with some of my choices, and that is perfectly fine. This is just my personal opinion.

Here we go!

#19: The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The Hulk has always been one of my favourite superheroes, and as far as I am concerned this movie completely ruined him. The CGI looked like a video game, the narrative was terrible. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. Just not a good movie at all in my opinion.

#18: Iron Man 2 (2010)

I actually saw this one in the theater, and I kinda wish I hadn’t. However, unlike the previous entry I wouldn’t say it’s a completely awful film. There are a couple decent/funny moments. But for the most part, it’s not great and I don’t think I’d watch it again.

#17: Thor: The Dark World (2013)

I seriously cannot believe I wasted my money TWICE to see this in the theater. I was pretty disappointed by this movie. The villain had no clear motivation. The romance was so awkward and the majority of the humor just didn’t work. The only redeeming qualities are the performances of Hemsworth and Hiddleston.

#16: Iron Man 3 (2013)

Now, I don’t think this movie is actually that bad, but it’s just not quite as good as some of the other high caliber MCU films. I liked that they addressed Tony’s mental health issues and the film has a pretty good ending. This movie won’t exactly waste your time, but there are other films more worthy of it.

#15: Thor (2011)

While not NEARLY as bad as its sequel, the first Thor film is a bit cheesy, clunky and predictable. That being said, it’s a visually impressive movie with some pretty fun and hilarious moments. At this point I feel kind of neutral about it. It ain’t no Ragnarok but it’s not as terrible as the second installment.

#14: Iron Man (2008)

For the very first film in the MCU line-up, this one is pretty good. Right away we know exactly what kind of person Tony Stark is, and the first half of the movie is surprisingly suspenseful and emotionally charged. It has a few humorous and bad-ass sequences. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really stand up in comparison to some of the later MCU films. That being said, it’s still a pretty good time.

#13: Ant-Man (2015)

Now the only reason I put this above Iron Man is because of how much it exceeded my expectations. I really didn’t think it was going to be that good, but it was. Not a perfect film by any means, but I was surprised at how entertaining and funny it was. I suppose my only complaint would be that unless you are really into Ant-Man as a character, it’s not that memorable of a film.

#12: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Don’t get me wrong, I did think this film was very enjoyable for the most part, I just don’t think it was as good as the first one. I think what I liked most was the development of the relationship between Gamora and Nebula. I did think most of the humor was good, but there was so much of it that it ended up feeling more like a comedy rather than a super-hero flick.

#11: Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

There is no denying that Chris Evans was cast perfectly as Captain America/Steve Rogers. He is someone you can really root for, which is what makes this movie so successful. However, the film is very cheesy at parts, and some sequences are slowly paced, but overall it’s a very entertaining movie and a great introduction to one of the MCU’s most important characters.

#10: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Personally, I do think this one is better than the sequel. All of the characters are introduced perfectly, and their interactions are written in such a clever way. I also think this movie has the better soundtrack when compared the sequel, and the humor is not as overblown. I guess my only complaint would be that it kind of feels like the film makers were trying to copy the Avengers with the whole “team doesn’t get along at first but then they do” scenario. It definitely works, but it’s not the most original idea. Overall, very well done.

#9: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

Although the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films (excluding the 3rd one) will always be close to my heart, I have to admit that this movie was really good. I really enjoy Tom Holland’s portrayal of Peter Parker. He has an innocence about him that makes him so likeable, and you really want him to succeed. I also thought the humor in this movie was perfect, and Michael Keaton was not just another boring Marvel villain. Overall, I would definitely see it again.

#8: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

To be honest, I don’t think this movie is QUITE as good as the Tumblr community thinks it is. However, it is pretty darn good. Some of the action and fight choreography is absolutely stunning. I love how it feels like a spy/espionage film while also displaying themes that the MCU is known for. I love the developing relationship between Steve and Natasha, and how this film exposes their true colours. Really well done.

#7: Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Again, I don’t think this movie is as incredible as the Tumblr fans say it is, but overall I did enjoy it quite a bit. A lot of the issues I had with the previous Thor films are not in this one.The Director must have realized that the previous Thor films just weren’t working, and decided to give this one a fun, energetic spin that I think was the perfect choice. Of course, I have to talk about my favourite actress, Cate Blanchett, who KILLS IT in this role (no pun intended). With a brilliant aesthetic and motivation that makes sense, she might just be my favourite MCU villain yet. In my opinion, this is the best Thor film so far.

#6: Black Panther (2018)

Alright, now we’re getting to the really good stuff! This movie took the world by storm, and it’s not hard to understand why. With a cast full of talented and diverse actors, Black Panther is unlike any Marvel movie we’ve ever seen before. I can’t tell you how unbelievably refreshing it is to see a film that is not 90% white people, it’s the other way around! Although the story is a tad predictable if you’ve seen The Lion King, the action is superb, the visuals are beautiful, and the script is very well written. Wakanda forever!

#5: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Without getting too much into spoiler territory, I will say that this film is probably the most ambitious cross-over I have ever seen in all of cinema. The crazy part is that the directors actually managed to tell a clear and concise story despite the fact that they were dealing with something like 30 characters in one film. Emotional, suspenseful, thought-provoking and hilarious, this one hits all the marks that it should in the most surprising ways.

Still not sure what to think about that ending though....

#4: The Avengers (2012)

I don’t know about anyone else, but when I first saw this movie it totally blew my mind! It truly is an epic movie with some of the best writing I’ve ever heard/seen. While I feel that fans obsessed over Loki a little too much, he is a fun villain with a pretty clear motivation. This movie also introduces Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner who I think is by far the best actor to portray the character. I feel like this is the movie that started the trend of MCU films that were actually really good. It’s a really entertaining ride from beginning to end.

#3: The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

I know exactly what some of you are thinking: “Oh my god she thinks Age of Ultron is better than the first one are you freaking kidding me”. Yes, you are correct. I do think that Age of Ultron is better than the first Avengers, and I seem to be very very alone in that opinion for some reason. Basically I think that this film has everything that made the first Avengers film good with a couple things that make it even better:

1) The character interactions are more complex and interesting

2) The stakes are a lot higher and the heroes suffer more

In a nutshell, that is why I think it’s better than the first one. To be perfectly honest I’m not really sure why Tumblr hates this movie so much. I get that nobody really likes the Bruce/Natasha pairing but is that really a valid reason to hate the entire movie? I guess I’ll never know.

#2: Doctor Strange (2016)

Unless you’ve been counting, I doubt you saw this one coming up so high on my list. It wasn’t until I started thinking about my ranking that I thought: “Wow, I LOVE Doctor Strange!” Not only is Benedict Cumberbatch an incredibly talented actor, I always liked this film because it was a marvel film that didn’t feel like a stereotypical “marvel” film (if that makes sense). Aside from having a visual style I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, I think my favourite part about this movie is the progressive character arc that Stephen Strange goes through. By the end of the film he’s not a completely different person, but his priorities have shifted and he wants to help make the world a safer place. Also I can’t talk about this movie without mentioning the SOUNDTRACK, oh my goodness the soundtrack. Here’s the link, listen and be amazed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc0KNrpFka8

#1: Captain America: Civil War (2016)

It took me a little while to figure it out, but I definitely feel that this movie is my favourite in the MCU so far. Sort of a scaled-down version of Infinity War, this movie has a lot of characters, but the story is balanced so well that you barely notice. The comedy is really good, and is countered with scenes of irreversible emotion. Everything ties together so wonderfully, and despite the long run time, the movie is extremely well paced. Although it has one of the more darker endings in a marvel movie, it still manages to end on fairly positive note, which I love. I don’t know what else I can say to praise this movie, so I’ll end it right there.

Wow, that took a while! There you have it folks, my personal ranking of all 19 MCU films so far. If you took the time to read all of this, thank you so much for doing so. Hope you guys enjoyed it!

#MCU #marvel #opinion #my ranking

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zenosanalytic · 7 years ago

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Doom-Broom Looms; Assumes Costumed Groom will Fume in Tomb-Gloom: The Tune-Presumed Consumes

Yes I did it; No I’m not sorry; Shutup it’s a Gr8 Headline; Mild Spoilers below cut:

So I really liked this one, I’d say it’s at least as good as the first Avengers and probably better, making it the best of the Avenger films so far. As per tradition, I will start with what I didn’t like first and, aside from the first two, they’re mostly Quibbles:

The Bads

So:

Labeling the cruelty of an abusive guardian -who murdered his child’s family, surgically altered and experimented on her without her consent, forced her to kill, forced her to fight and sometimes kill her siblings to protect her body and her life from that parent- as love is some Buuuullshit >:( I can easily accept that Thanos would think he loved her, abusers tell themselves all sort of garbage to justify what they do, but that some omnipotent universe-stone would judge that situation and those feelings sincere is, again, Buuuuuullsheeeeiiiit >:( >:( Attaching that execrable nonsense to the killing of Gamora makes it so much worse, and then connecting that to how Thanos “wins” through Quill’s anger, makes it even, even worse.

Their choices on who to “kill” were fucked up and bad. Bucky dealing with a world without Steve is interesting. T’Challa traumatized by the loss of his closest friends and torn between healing/protecting his people and helping bring Thanos to justice and potentially undoing what he did is interesting(not to mention how loved the character is. Though I’m p sure we’ll see a BP Shuri as a result, which I’m very much looking forward to). Scarlet Witch given the chance to grow on her own, instead of being tethered to a guy, is Interesting. Groot dealing with the death of their “parent”/Confidant/translator is Interesting. Having Banner “die” so that only The Hulk is left would have been interesting. Going with what they did was stupid. Killing off Fury and Hill was Stupid. Wiping out, to a duo(!), the Guardians of the Galaxy was Stupid. Killing Drax and Mantis is some Galaxy-Brained Criminal Ignorance! Killing Heimdall I understand BUT(!!!), at the same time, Elba’s a great actor and Ragnarok’s the only film to make even decent use of him, so I’d have liked to see him live through this one and into the next one, at least, before he was killed. And, as others have said, the general race&gender balance of the killings was, charitably, Iffy.

These are some seriously flawed ethical/political choices they made for this film, and they didn’t have to make them. Totally could have handled all of this differently, and better, than they did. So on to the Quibbles!

Having Gamora and Peter’s relationship, which had, so well and realistically to two folks working through trauma and immaturity, been cooking low and slow over the two GoG movies, suddenly be physically and emotionally intimate and vulnerable, and having her saying things like “I love you more than anything” to him, when they live on a tiny ship with zero privacy with four(?) other people, and doing all of that purely for plot-convenience, was dumb and lazy and Lame. Character dev should serve the characters first and plot second; this complaint kinda dovetails with my issues with SW and Vision in the next para.

There really should have been one more movie, and maybe two or three, before this one. The character writing was great and all, but Scarlet Witch and Vision just haven’t had the time to be developed enough as characters for their(rather central) place in the movie to be emotionally meaningful enough. A movie focusing on them, or maybe on Steve’s “unofficial” Avengers, would have really helped add some more depth and impact to Infinity War. The other movies I think would have helped are another Dr. Strange(I didn’t like the first one much at all and he didn’t really come off as all that capable to me in the first one and really seemed to just fall into the role of Sorcerer-Supreme by dint of being the last one standing), and Definitely another Black Panther. There are obvious scheduling reasons for not holding off for a second Black Panther(which are totally Marvisny’s fault, of course; for instance, if they’d just introduced the character earlier, so that CW would have been the 2nd BP movie and BP the 3rd), but Dr. Strange was 2016 and they could have totally gotten another one out, with some significant crew and writing changes, before this to flesh out, build up, and actually render interesting/likeable, the character. Though, I suppose maybe there were equally obvious financial reasons why not to roll the dice on that franchise again(though though, looking it up just now it topped Captain America: The First Avenger on box office, which is Insane).

Dispensing with Nova off-screen. I Mean: WTH. That should, at the least, have been an in-credit sequence(in GoG 2 or T:R). Something as simple as showing Thanos with the Power Gem, then panning out to show a devastated Nova Command or him taunting Nova Prime before killing her, would have been fine(though, the GoG movies gave me the impression the Nova Corps would have been a tough nut for Thanos to crack).

Probably my most niche opinion: they should have, FINALLY, done a movie crossover with the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cast here, especially given the in-credit sequence. Marvel and Disney have been promising Chloe Bennet that AoS was going to be her vehicle into film work since the series started and this is, like, the third or fourth frigging times they’ve either reneged or passed on a chance to boost her up into the big leagues, and frankly it’s annoying. She’s a good actress, The Inhumans should have stayed a movie and been that vehicle(with the characters they made protags the villains S.H.I.E.L.D. was fighting), and, given the stakes and the nature of the conflict, it’d have been easy to ameliorate that mistake by bringing her, the rest of the AoS cast, and Fury in on this one as secondary characters. I mean, it’d have been better if they’d had two or three SHIELD movies spread out over the MCU by now, or always included them in the Avengers films to give also-rans like the show cast and Hawkeye places to shine, but barring that and given Disnal’s fuckup with Inhumans, they should have made a go of it here. Ming-Na Wen also deserves more time on the Big Screen and, while Johannson’s Fine in the films, Wen does her character-type Better u_u u_u u_u

Like I said, Quibbles, they don’t really detract from the movie. The main problems with Infinity War, to me, are it’s screwy plot-ethics.

The Goods

Not really much to say here other than “I liked it and had fun”. The character writing was good, the dialogue was funny, the fight choreography was, given the logistics of multicharacter combat, Fine, the fights were engaging, the camerawork was(mostly) clear, the costume design was great, the side characters(especially the Black Order) all got good beats of their own, the Heroes(except Black Panther and maybe SW, since she was restricted to just moving things and blasting things) all got opportunities to show off their abilities. IW really validated the “Comics=Wrestling” critical lens I was introduced to by @some-triangles, as it felt like a Wrestlemania or Battle Royale more than anything else to me. Related to that there were some really dumb moments, like when Scarlet Witch left the lab to enter the rin-, er, battlefield, but you basically knew that was going to happen the instant they told her to stay in the room because Tropes, and the Forms must be Honored u_u u_u The Russos are genuinely competent movie-makers, who seem to have that all-important skill of recruiting and keeping a talented crew around them, and they made a genuinely competent movie, despite the questionable plotting.

The Judgements

So that’s my opinion on the thing. Infinity War includes some highly fucked up ethical messages for the sake of plot convenience, and confirms the MCU’s refusal to make even basic use of some really top-notch acting talent, which just happens to be mostly non-white people, that they’re (presumably)paying fortunes to have access to; if you feel that sort of ish isn’t something you can sit-through or abide giving your money to, then don’t see the film. But it’s a technically competent film, 90% of the time the writing is wonderful, and overall it’s an engaging and entertaining film so, if you can tolerate that ish in some fashion, maybe you’ll enjoy it like I did.

Oh, and it’s really long(2h40m, and there were, like, 30mins of previews before it. Seriously >:| >:| >:| They played TWO[!!!!!!] flipping Jurassic World trailers, as if anyone wants to see that junk), so I’d rec you not get any drinks if you’re going to go see it(though it’s not a big deal as there are some nice-sized lulls, reasonably spaced, to take breaks in).

#Infinity War(Movie)#Infinity War Spoilers #Movies #Movie Reviews #Rhyming #zA's Outside Viewing

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scoutception · 4 years ago

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Yet again ranking the 5 animes I’ve watched most recently

After losing the will to just sit down and watch it for quite a while, I’ve finally gotten through 5 anime series yet again, and, as is tradition for me by now, I’ve decided to just type out my thoughts and rankings of them, with my first two posts of this nature being here and here. As usual, this is just my personal thoughts, and the only other thing worth noting before I start is that, unlike last time, I do think everything listed here is at least decent on its own. With that, I’ll just get to it. 5. Robotics;Notes

Number of episodes: 22. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation. Robotics;Notes is an adaptation of a visual novel, which I actually just wrote a review on, which can be found here. Long story short, it’s the third entry in the Science Adventure series, the same series Steins;Gate is part of, unknown to most people, with Robotics;Notes technically being the sequel to it. Originally aired in 2012, the same year as the visual novel was released, and made by Production I.G, Robotics;Notes is in an interesting middle ground between the acclaimed and popular Steins;Gate animes and the downright awful and obscure Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child animes, and until 2020 was the only option those who didn’t speak Japanese had to experience it at all. Since I went into so much detail in said visual novel review, I’m mostly going to focus on how the anime holds up both by itself and as an adaptation. Ever since its creation nearly ten years ago, the dream of the Chuo Tanegashima High Robotics Research Club has been to finish Gunbuild-1, a lifesize recreation of Gunvarrel, the titular mecha of an insanely popular anime that’s credited with starting a “robot boom” within Japan, and the club’s current president, Akiho Senomiya, the little sister of the club’s founder, Misaki Senomiya, is extremely determined to see this dream achieved. Unfortunately for her, the club has fallen on hard times, with its funding being cut, its advisor being completely unreliable, and the few other members it has, namely Kaito Yashio, Subaru Hidaka, Junna Daitoku, and Kona Furugoori, aka Frau Koujiro, being quite difficult in their own ways, and often more than Akiho can handle. While Akiho puts her all into finally bringing the club to greatness, the otherwise apathetic Kaito finds himself involved with a mysterious AI called Airi, who exists within the augmented reality app IRUO. Airi’s creator, the deceased Kou Kimijima, turns out to have also created several AR annotations scattered throughout Tanegashima, titled the Kimijima Reports, which warn of a grand conspiracy that will utterly devastate humanity if unopposed. I’m not the most unbiased viewer, since I had played, and enjoyed, the visual novel months before watching this anime, but generally, it’s actually an enjoyable time. Some of Robotics;Notes’ biggest strengths were always its cast of characters and lighter tone, and for the most part, the anime preserves both well, keeping it mostly silly, but endearing early on. The artstyle actually matches up fairly well with the VN’s CGs, and the dub, which I watched just to spice things up, since I already knew the Japanese voice cast was quite good, is overall solid, with Clifford Chapin as Kaito, Lindsay Seidel as Akiho, and Monica Rial as Junna especially sticking out to me. As an adaptation, on the other hand, it falls short in quite a few places, namely when it comes to characterization. While obviously, no adaptation could feasibly fit in every detail from its source material, the Steins;Gate anime managed to preserve almost all of its cast’s characterization, whereas in Robotics;Notes, several characters lose prominent details to their backstories or personal conflicts, or act differently in scenes unrelated to that, making quite a few of them come off different. While instances of the latter case, such as Junna coming off as less shy and hesitant, don’t necessarily worsen anything for the most part, the former definitely does, as it makes the affected characters much less developed and interesting. Nobody suffers from this worse than Kaito himself, who loses most of his backstory, motivations, and arc, to the point of one of his best moments being changed from something intentional to completely accidental, with the end result making him come off as a completely different character, and an inferior one, at that. Additionally, around episode 16, the anime starts diverging pretty significantly from the VN, and not in ways that are improvements, to the point it even leaves a few otherwise preserved scenes in earlier episodes without context. Overall, I can imagine the Robotics;Notes anime still being a decent, if unremarkable watch on its own, and was certainly an interesting and fun way to reexperience the story, and definitely fares better than many visual novel adaptations, but I can’t quite say I’d recommend it. If Robotics;Notes interests you, the visual novel is very much preferred. 4. Nichijou

Number of episodes: 26. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming options: Funimation. Here we have one of the most acclaimed anime comedies out there, an adaptation of Keiichi Arawi’s surreal sketch comedy manga series, produced by Kyoto Animation, a name that’ll be showing up here again later. Nichijou mainly focuses on two different trios of characters. There’s the ordinary high school girls Yuuko Aioi, a rather dim and reckless girl with terrible luck, Mio Naganohara, the most relatively normal one of the cast, whenever she’s not having explosive freak outs that involve beating people up, and Mai Minakami, a stoic girl who enjoys messing with people just for their reactions. On the other hand, there’s the far less ordinary Shinonome Laboratories trio of Professor Shinonome, an 8 year old girl who happens to be capable of building incredibly advanced machines, Nano Shinonome, a robot built by the Professor who desperately desires a normal girl more than anything, and Sakamoto, their pet cat who, thanks to a special scarf also made by the Professor, is capable of talking. The series focuses on their would-be ordinary lives, were it not for the seemingly daily chaos they get involved in, from witnessing the school principal wrestle a wild deer, to being trapped in an elevator for hours, to the school science teacher attempting to capture Nano for study. It also follows the antics of several other side characters, such Koujiro Sasahara, the seemingly upper class student who is actually just the son of a family of farmers, to Misato Tachibana, a very typical tsundere towards Sasahara, whose tsun side manifests as assaulting him with military-grade weapons, to little effect, to the equally quirky teachers of their school. Needless to say, it’s a very silly and chaotic series, and that’s exactly what makes it so memorable. The humor is pretty hit and miss in the first half of the series, but from episode 14 onwards, they thoroughly master it, with every episode having at least a few scenes that got me laughing. Beyond the silliness, though, the series actually has a lot of heart to it. There’s a few moments that change up the status quo, or even develop the characters just a bit, and some scenes are surprisingly sweet, if still played for laughs more often than not. There’s also a lot of continuity, which in later episodes often provide the punchlines to some of the best gags, which definitely encourages watching the whole series. The Japanese voice acting is fittingly crazy for each character, and the animation fits perfectly, as while the character designs are quite simple, there’s many would be mundane moments that have contrasting overly impressive and exaggerated animation that makes them very memorable. All in all, Nichijou is a very enjoyable series once it finds its groove, and about the only reason its not higher on my rankings is just because pure comedies aren’t really one of my favorite genres. Still, if you ever want a good laugh, you can’t go wrong with this. 3. Soul Eater

Number of episodes: 51. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Netflix, Funimation. Soul Eater is yet another adaptation, this time of a manga by Atsushi Ōkubo, produced by Studio Bones, who also did the Fullmetal Alchemist animes, and is quite similar to the original FMA series in that it outpaced the manga and, rather than simply overloading itself with filler, decided to go in an entirely different direction by the end. The Death Weapon Meister Academy is a school founded by Death himself, dedicated to the training of Meisters, who wield Weapons, humans with the ability to shapeshift into weapons, for the purpose of destroying Kishin Eggs, evil beings who have consumed the souls of others, and pose the risk of transforming into extremely dangerous demons. Any Meister who can collect the souls of these corrupted beings, as well as the soul of a Witch, can transform their Weapon into a Death Scythe, the personal arms of Death. Among the students of the DWMA are seven Meisters and Weapons who stand out in particular: the teams of Maka Albarn, a kind hearted and responsible, though temperamental, girl, her Weapon, Soul “Eater” Evans, a laidback and snarky wannabe “cool” guy, Black Star, a prideful and loudmouthed ninja who’s seemingly always out to make a spectacle of himself, regardless of how it hampers him, his Weapon, Tsubaki, a humble and levelheaded woman, Death the Kid, the son of Death and one of the top students in the cool, held back only by a crippling obsession with symmetry, and his Weapons, Liz and Patty Thompson. While these seven gradually come together as a team, a Witch named Medusa begins to put an ambitious and destructive plan into motion, one involving her “child”, Crona, and the strange, insanity inducing black blood that courses through their veins. Soul Eater has a lot going for it. A likeable and crazy cast of characters, even the side ones, like the maniacal Doctor Stein, or the surprisingly goofy and casual Death, or the tragic Crona, or the hilariously egotistical Excalibur, to a lot of fun action scenes, to its great animation and overall unique visual design, including the sun and moon having giant, creepy laughing faces. It has a lighthearted, comedic tone that doesn’t detract from the serious moments, and the main characters get some pretty good development as the series goes on. The dub is also great, with Laura Bailey as Maka, Micah Solusod as Soul, Brittney Karbowski as Black Star, and Todd Haberkorn as Death the Kid especially sticking out to me. In general, I don’t have a lot of significant criticisms, besides how the story is handled once the villainous organization Arachnophobia is introduced, which is also about where it begins to deviate from the manga. Most of the villains part of it never really feel like a threat, and the story becomes much more simple and typical compared to how the manga went, and when the ending arrives, it just kinda, happens, with several notable subplots just kinda left unfinished. It definitely feels like an underwhelming ending, and is a big reason why I place this lower on the list, but Soul Eater is still a pretty entertaining watch that’s worth a try if you want a decently lengthy, but not horribly long shonen. 2. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Number of episodes: 28. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation. Here we have the big one, an extremely memetic and famous series by Kyoto Animation, based on a series of light novels by Nagaru Tanigawa, a series that was finally completed back in November 2020 after its start in 2003. Kyon is a lazy and down to earth high school student who wishes for little more for himself than an uneventful, normal high school life- a hope that’s abruptly shattered when, on a whim, he becomes involved with Haruhi Suzumiya, an eccentric, hyperactive, and thoroughly self centered girl, who claims to have no interest in ordinary humans, and instead wishes to discover things thoroughly unusual, such as aliens, time travelers, or espers, and forces Kyon to form a club, the SOS Brigade, with her to achieve this. Haruhi quickly pulls three other students into the brigade, those being Yuki Nagato, a stoic and quiet bookworm, Mikuru Asahina, a shy and passive girl often subjected to humiliation and abuse by Haruhi, and Itsuki Koizumi, a calm transfer student who acts extremely subservient to Haruhi. While Kyon initially writes off the club as an unreasonable use of his time, his fellow members reveal an unexpected truth to him: the subjects of Haruhi’s fascinations actually do exist. Yuki is an alien, of a sort, created and controlled by an entity known as the Data Overmind, Mikuru is a time traveler from some point in the future, and Itsuki is an esper, and member of an organization of similar people. All three of them have been sent to observe the oblivious Haruhi, who appears to have the unconscious ability to change reality itself according to her desires, and is at threat of remaking the entire world if not placated. With Haruhi apparently having taken a unique interest in Kyon, he finds himself taken along for all sorts of supernatural adventures spawned from Haruhi’s whims. There’s a lot I could go on about regarding Haruhi, but in the interest of not turning this into a full on rant, I’ll keep shortish. It’s more or less an insane mishmash of several different genres, from slice of life, to science fiction, to fantasy, just depending on what each individual story feels like being. The episodes are mostly adapted from the early light novels, mostly the multiple stories from the third and fifth novels, The Boredom and The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya, respectively. It’s not often you’ll have any idea just what to expect from each individual episode, which makes the series very chaotic, but interesting. The characters are likeable and memorable, including the side characters, and the sheer ridiculousness of what goes on makes for many amusing moments. At the same time, the series is surprisingly complex, with many possible interpretations of its characters and the events they go through, furthered by the antics Kyoto Animation pulled when it was originally airing, such as airing the episodes out of chronological order, meaning the plot would often jump from the middle of an arc to something else. The end result is a very unique and enjoyable product, helped by the fantastic dub, with the actors capturing each character perfectly, from Crispin Freeman as the grounded and snarky Kyon, to Wendee Lee as the aggressively energetic Haruhi, to Stephanie Sheh as the gentle, yet secretive Mikuru. That said, there is one pretty disappointing part of it all, and that’s the second season, mostly thanks to the infamous Endless Eight arc, an eight part arc that’s more or less the same things happening over and over, with only the first and last episodes having anything noticeably different. Regardless of its own uniqueness, more than half the season is taken over by this, and something that may have worked if cut down to three or four episodes instead singlehandedly killed off the series’ goodwill. About the only redeeming factor of the second season is the five part adaptation of The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya, which has some of the funniest moments in the whole series. Overall, Haruhi is still a very fun series, and I’m really gonna have to watch its movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of these days. 1. Trigun

Number of episodes: 26. Language options: dub and subs available. Streaming availability: Funimation, Hulu. Finishing off this list is an adaptation of a manga series by Yasuhiro Nightow, produced by Madhouse and another adaptation that overtook its source material. Compared to how Soul Eater handled it, however, Trigun went down much, much better, to the point Nightow himself had nothing but praise for how the anime turned out, and the series is generally considered one of the best animes of the late 90′s. On the harsh desert planet of Gunsmoke lives a wandering gunslinger known as Vash the Stampede, the “Humanoid Typhoon” with a large handgun known to leave tremendous destruction in his wake, who amassed a bounty of $$60,000,000,000 after destroying the city of July, leading to an endless trail of bounty hunters out to collect the price on his head. In the middle of all this, Meryl Stryfe and Milly Thompson, two representatives of an insurance society which is often forced to pay for damages caused by Vash, track him down for the purposes of minimizing the chaos he causes. Upon catching up with him, however, the duo discovers that, contrary to his reputation, Vash is a kindhearted goof, and self proclaimed hunter of love and peace, who absolutely refuses to ever take another person’s life, even at great personal risk to himself. Vash continues his travels carefree, helping out whoever he can, with the occasional assistance of Meryl and Milly, as well as a traveling priest known as Nicholas D. Wolfwood, only to one day have an encounter with a mysterious and cruel man known as Legato Bluesummers. Vash soon learns that Legato has hired a group of assassins known as the Gung-Ho Guns to kill Vash, and leave a trail of bodies wherever they go, seemingly for the sole purpose of tormenting Vash. As Vash hunts down Legato, he is gradually forced to face his past, and consider whether he can truly stay committed to his pacifist ideals. In general, Trigun is just a very, very well made series. It has a likeable and developed cast of characters, with special mention going to Vash, who is a very compelling and sympathetic character, and Wolfwood, who makes a great foil to Vash with very interesting development of his own, with characters outside of the main cast being memorable as well, from Legato himself, to even some of the more minor villains, such as the varied members of the Gung-Ho Guns, or Brilliant Dynamites Neon, who makes an inexplicably strong impression for a one off villain not even important to the overall plot. The space western setting is quite good, and the designs are great, with many villains having distinctive looks that further help them make an impression. The action is great, and the animation is also quite good, and has that 90′s anime charm. The dub, while a bit rough around the edges, is generally solid too. From Lia Sargent as the ditzy but kind Milly, to Dorothy Elias Fahn as the hotheaded Meryl, to Jeff Nimoy as the weary Wolfwood, to Richard Cansino as the calculating and disturbing Legato, with special mention needing to go to Johnny Yong Bosch as Vash. Despite it actually being his first voice acting role ever, he does a great job in portraying the many sides to Vash, and absolutely sells many of the biggest moments in the story. Speaking of which, the series started quite lighthearted and wacky, with the first four episodes actually being filler, but gets gradually darker as it goes on. The earlier episodes are still quite enjoyable on their own, though, and manage to slowly reveal new aspects to Vash in each one, before finally setting his nature in stone in episode 5. What really sells the series and makes it so memorable, however, are the themes it explores, of the practicality of unwavering pacifism, and whether taking a life, whether for heinous crimes committed without remorse, or with the purpose of protecting others, is ever justifiable. While quite a few series have touched dilemmas like this before, what makes Trigun stand out with it is the emphasis placed upon it throughout the whole series, with many episodes touching upon it in some regard. It genuinely fairly looks at the different sides of it all, and the consequences of each, with many emotional moments coming from it as a result. While the manga did ultimately take a very different turn from the anime, the anime actually preserves several of the most important plot moments, and manages to come to a satisfactory conclusion of its own regarding the themes. Ultimately, Trigun makes for a very fun and interesting watch that I highly recommend. And with that, my ranking is complete. With the exception of Robotics;Notes, I can pretty confidently recommend every show on this list. Got some more shows I plan to get through soon, so another ranking like this may be soon in the making. Either way, till next time. -Scout

#anime #trigun #nichijou #haruhi suzumiya #the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya #soul eater #robotics;notes #long post

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the-desolated-quill · 7 years ago

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Justice League - Quill’s Quickies (No Spoilers)

Oh Warner Bros. You’ve really fucked up this time, haven’t you?

I’m sure we’ve all heard about the situation at the box office by now. Apparently Justice League only made $281 million worldwide during its opening weekend, which for any other movie would be great, but not for Justice League. You see the geniuses over at Warner Bros and DC decided to spend $300 million on the movie (that’s including the extensive reshoots directed by Joss Whedon). And if that’s not bad enough, according to some sources, the film’s extensive marketing brings the overall budget to somewhere in the realms of $450 million. The film is going to need to make at least $750 million in order to make any sort of profit. That is beyond stupid and judging by current figures, it looks as though the film is set to bomb big time. Whether the film is good or not is frankly immaterial at this stage. It’s going to flop. That’s practically a guarantee thanks to WB and DC getting too big for their fucking boots and spending a moronic amount of money on a film that was never guaranteed to be a hit. You’d think they’d have learnt their lesson after Batman V Superman. The fact that movies like Deadpool, Logan and even their own Wonder Woman became gigantic hits on relatively lower budgets should have given them just a little clue that maybe pouring the equivalent of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin into Justice League wasn’t a good idea. And now it looks as though the entire DCEU is in jeopardy as a result.

Let’s face it. Even if Justice League was a good movie, it would have struggled to make a profit on such a ridiculously massive budget like that. It was always destined for the cinematic graveyard no matter what Zack Snyder or Joss Whedon did. The fact that it’s crap just means the movie can now die faster.

Oh yeah. Justice League is crap. And when I say crap, I mean crap. (And please bear in mind this is coming from someone who actually enjoyed and defended Batman V Superman). Granted it’s not the worst movie I’ve seen. It’s not even the worst DC movie I’ve seen. That honour still goes to that misogynistic, wafer thin and utterly tone deaf piece of shit known as Suicide Squad, and while Justice League does share a few of the same problems with that movie, at least I didn’t feel unclean after I watched it. So hey. At least it has that going for it, right? But to say I left the cinema feeling disappointed would be an understatement.

So some random alien called Steppenwolf shows up to take over the Earth using these Mother Boxes. Who is Steppenwolf? I don’t know. What are the Mother Boxes? I don’t know. Why does he want to take over the Earth? I don’t know. This is literally all you’re getting I’m afraid. There’s not even any philosophical discussions or symbolic meaning to it like Man Of Steel and Batman V Superman had. When I say this is literally the entire movie, I mean LITERALLY. Some random alien we’ve never heard of shows up to grab some boxes that have never been mentioned before in previous movies and tries to take over the Earth because... he’s evil I guess. It’s so uninspired and so thin on the ground, you could have told me that Zack Snyder scribbled the entire script on the inside of a chocolate wrapper whilst he was on the toilet having a shit, and I would honestly believe you.

I’m sure some of you are objecting to me blaming Zack Snyder for all this, and I’m sure Joss Whedon deserves a lot of blame too, but honestly i’m past caring at this stage. Is Joss Whedon to blame for mucking about with Snyder’s vision, or is Snyder to blame for not better co-ordinating Whedon? I don’t know and I don’t care to know. We could debate for days whether it’s the organgrinder or the monkey who’s at fault, but at the end of the day the result is the same. The movie is crap and I’d rather neither of them were let near this franchise ever again.

This movie doesn’t even have any decent characters to fall back on. I suppose Ezra Miller’s interpretation of the Flash was okay. He provided a few genuine laughs and his Speed Force sequences do look pretty cool, even though they don’t in any way cover new ground because, you know, Quicksilver exists in the X-Men movies and his running scenes looked so much more impressive than this. i also quite liked Ray Fisher’s portrayal of Cyborg, and there are some genuinely touching moments at the beginning of the movie with his character. Beyond that, there’s basically nothing. Aquaman is by far the dullest character in the movie with no personality and is basically just the spare wheel. The film never takes advantage of his unique powers or the underwater setting, and he never gets any real moments where he stands out or comes into his own. You could literally replace him with Robin or Green Lantern or the Martian Manhunter, and it wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference. And as for Wonder Woman... Oh how the mighty have fallen. Remember when her solo movie broke new ground, doing away with a lot of the sexist tropes we normally see in these types of movies and became something truly unique and revolutionary? Well hope you enjoyed that while it lasted because here the sexist tropes are back with a vengeance. Wonder Woman is pretty much interchangeable with Lois Lane and Martha Kent because they all play the same role. The empathetic woman who props up the male heroes. The only thing that sets Wonder Woman apart is that she can fight, but not too well because God forbid she should steal the spotlight from Batman or Superman.

And then of course there’s other sexist elements that I’m sure you’re all aware of by now. The Flash tripping over and comedically landing on Wonder Woman’s tits (LOL, a feminist icon has been reduced to a sexist punchline! How hilarious!) and of course the fact that most of the Amazonians seem to have scrapped their practical armour in favour of leather and/or metal bikinis (and to those people defending this saying that it’s historically accurate, fuck off. Seriously, just fuck off. This is a movie that claims that Amazonian warriors, merpeople, aliens and Gods had a massive war at some point in Earth’s prehistory. I’m pretty sure that’s not historically accurate, but suddenly the studio and filmmakers care about historical accuracy when it comes to how much bare naked flesh the sexy women warriors are showing in fight scenes? Fuck off. Your argument has the same whiff of bullshit as those idiots defending Suicide Squad’s romanticising of the Joker and Harley Quinn’s relationship by saying that it’s intentional because it’s from Harley’s point of view and that, if you turn your head to the side and squint hard enough, a few seconds of one particular scene could be interpreted as abusive. Look, we all like an underdog and i’m sure it must be hard to hear people constantly criticising your favourite franchise, but can we at least have the fucking spine to admit when they screw up? You just sound pathetic!).

But the absolute worst characters are Batman and Superman. Yeah we all knew he was coming back, so it’s not really a spoiler. And do you know what? I really wish Superman stayed dead. Because not only is the way they bring him back from the dead so contrived and so stupid, it also results in Batman’s character arc being regressed in order to justify this massive leap in logic. Remember in BVS when Batman became so paranoid and so controlling that his actions nearly resulted in catastrophe? Well the exact same thing happens here. In fact there are a few moments where he’s almost indistinguishable from Lex Luthor at points with his rhetoric, but the movie just wants you to conveniently ignore that. It’s okay. He’s a good guy, so it’s alright for him to be a hypocritical arsehole. So not only has Batman become a wisecracking fascist with a massive God complex, Superman has also become an insufferable dickhead. The reason why I liked Man Of Steel so much was because it got me to appreciate the character in a way I never had before. Justice League seeks to undo all of that by reminding me of all the reasons why I hated the character in the first place before I watched Man of Steel. He’s a ridiculously overpowered Mary Sue (or is it Gary Stu?) who can do no wrong, can beat up baddies effortlessly to the point where all threat and tension is chucked out of the window, and keeps stealing all the good scenes from other characters. Is the Flash about to prove his worth as a hero by saving a family? No it’s okay. Superman can do that. Is Wonder Woman going to avenge her fellow Amazonians by defeating Steppenwolf once and for all? No it’s okay. Superman can do that. Is Cyborg going to reclaim his humanity by saving the world? No it’s okay. Step aside Cyborg. Superman’s got this. Superman can do anything because he’s powerful and special and the bestest guy eveeeer.

So to all those people who were complaining about how much you hated Man of Steel because it ‘wasn’t your Superman. Boo hoo,’ I hope you’re pleased with yourselves. Sure they may have brought the entire franchise crashing down into a pile of rubble, but at least they ‘fixed’ Superman.

You can tell this movie is trying so hard to be like the Avengers, right down to the bullshit alien invasion story, but they forget what made Avengers Assemble so good. All the characters were well developed and likeable, each of them were given their own arc and they all evolved and bonded over the course of the movie. Justice League just pales in comparison. It gives the illusion that they’ve all bonded and evolved by the end, but they haven’t really. There were never any moments where they felt like real people or where they truly interacted and grew closer to each other over time. We never learn anything significant about them and I certainly don’t feel an overwhelming desire to see them all again in future films like I did after the first Avengers. I’m not necessarily saying each member of the League needed their own movie before a crossover, but there must be a better way of doing it than this.

So there you have it. Justice League. 10 years of production and approximately $450 million spent... and this is the result. A lifeless, shallow excuse for a movie with one dimensional characters, incompetent direction, and the realisation that all this buildup meant precisely jack shit in the end. Can the DCEU continue after this? Not in its current state, no. And if I’m being honest, I’d rather it didn’t.

#justice league #dc extended universe #quill's quickies #no spoilers

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tigerlover16-uk · 7 years ago

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Anime I need to watch (August 2017 update)

Sooo, yeah. Two days late this time. I really want to apologize for this one, it wasn’t entirely my fault this time. While I was in the middle of writing my thoughts down on the shows I’d seen, my computer suddenly decided to refresh the page so I ended up losing everything, and it took me a while to catch up to where I was and finish everything since I had a lot of stuff to talk about. And stuff kept coming up when I tried to write it all again.

So, yeah, my bad for not being more careful with this stuff and all. Either way, here it is at last, read it below.

Okay, so to start things off, the first new show i watched this month was Outlaw Star. It's a pretty popular anime from what I've heard, while it apparently bombed in Japan it's widely beloved in the West and considered a benchmark for early 2000's anime. It's to the point that it's still the most heavily requested show to be re-aired on the reinstated Toonami block by it's regular viewers. No small feat to have that much fan devotion for so long. So, what did i think of it?

... Meh. It's okay.

Really, it's just... okay. It was probably one of the most average anime I've seen in a while. The characters are okay. The overarching story is okay. The humour, well, occasionally i got a chuckle out of it, but only a few episodes really made me laugh hard. There were a lot of episodes I liked, some I really liked, and some I didn't care for. The action was alright. The soundtrack was pretty good. None of the villains weren't really that interesting.

I'd go into greater detail, but I don't really know what to say overall. The show for me was just the definition of okay. Not bad, it was certainly enjoyable and I'm glad I watched it at least once, but I really can't think of any reason why I'd want to ever watch it again. Which, yeah, a little disappointing.

But oh well, that sort of thing happens. Sometimes certain classic works of fiction just don't resonate with some people the way they do with others, and I guess Outlaw Star is one of those cases for me.

After I finished with that show, I decided to catch up on Soul Eater. I mentioned in another update a few months ago that I found Soul Eater a slightly above average show, but not all that great. Well, after re-watching some of it and then finishing the show, I'll admit it's grown on me and I'll admit it's really good for the most part.

It admittedly took me a little while to get into it, since the first few episodes... while not bad, feel like they thrust you into the middle of a story that's been going on for a bit already rather than being the start of a story. I think maybe that's the point, but that sort of thing is usually a bit jarring for me personally. And I maintain that much of the show's first half was simply okay. But once it gets going, it really gets going.

The comedy was good, the action was mostly pretty decent, and the animation was great. The story progressed at a pretty good pace once it found it's groove. While a few of the major characters, namely Soul and Tsubaki, didn't really interest me that much, the main cast were all a likeable bunch (Favourites probably being Crona and Death the Kid), and the supporting characters were all fun and quirky in their own rights.

Though honestly I felt a little disappointed that Spirit and Maka's relationship didn't play more of an important role towards the later parts of the series. I mean, with how much time the show focused in it's first half on their strained relationship and Spirit's failing's as a parent and as a husband, it feels like it was meant to be more crucial to the plot or at least Maka's character arc and that things would progress at least a bit more than they did towards the end. But then as the show went on it felt like that subplot just lost relevance, so I'm kinda left wondering what the whole point of that was.

And while the story was well told, there were some things I found underwhelming. The fight between Lord Death and Asura in the middle of the series felt anti-climactic for what was described as a battle of Gods, for one.

Medusa was a great villain, I didn't think much of her at first but she won me over with what a malicious, scarily competent and savvy scheming monster she was, and her fighting style was honestly pretty unique and something I haven't seen before with an anime villain. But I felt like Crona should have had more of a role helping Maka finish her off. With how very well done Crona's character arc was handled up to that point, it felt like they should have done more in that final confrontation than get beaten to help spur Maka forward. Her unlocking Genie Hunter to finish Medusa off in one hit felt a bit cheap, really.

And the ending was a huge cop out. While I like what they were going for, in practise it just felt lazy and kind of silly, and honestly reminded me of the ending of Digimon Adventure 02 a bit. The fact that the show then ended so suddenly didn't really help much.

That all sounds like it's leaning a bit negative right? Well, yeah, but while I had a few gripes, the overall experience was still really great. The series has a great premise and sense of style, and is really fun to watch. Most of the character development was decently handled, and I can confidently say that it was a really good show, and definitely something I'd be willing to come back to again soon. Next up is Bleach, the only one of the legendary "Big 3" of anime that i have never watched before in any form. Because I really wasn't interested, and eventually I heard it had gone really down hill, so I wasn't willing to go through a repeat of what I went through with Naruto towards the last few arcs of that series.

But, I'm a curious sort, so I decided to look into it anyway. I don't plan to watch the whole series, because that seems like a lot of investment for something I can expect to go off the rails at some point and never even got finished due to a cancellation, but I want to be able to say I'm at least partially informed on all of the Big 3. So, part of my plan right now is to just watch it up to the end of the Soul Society arc. Maybe if I enjoy that enough I'll watch a bit more to see how it is for myself, but for now that's the plan.

I watched the first 20 episodes this month, the second season DVD set wasn't available at an affordable price on Amazon though so I don't know when I'll get around to watching that and season 3. Hopefully relatively soon. But for the moment, I'll just talk about this season.

All things considered, it was... pretty good. Not great, but a bit above average, if kind of mundane in places. Definitely took a few episodes before it started getting good, and I'll admit I'm not all THAT enthusiastic about most of the characters, but they are all at least likeable and I'm curious as to where things are going by the end of the season. So, good enough job there.

The premise was pretty good, and there was some good comedy and action scenes in these episodes, though admittedly not much that's truly spectaculr yet. I imagine that comes next arc when the story really picks up. A lot of the episodes did seem just okay for a while, but when I got invested I found myself really enjoying the show. I don't know what else to say in detail, and I want to get this update out quickly already, so I'll just leave it as saying I enjoyed it, but I'm waiting until I watch the next arc to make any solid opinions on whether I really like the show all that much. Hopefully Soul Society is as good as people say it is.

Next up I decided to look into a series that, honestly I now really wish I'd gotten into a lot sooner. The 2012 anime adaption of the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure series. This is one of those popular and influential franchises where I knew OF it, in the sense that I'd heard the name, knew it was popular and knew what the protagonist of part 3 of the series looked like... but I knew literally nothing else about the series before I went into it.

With a lot of series I tend to have a good idea of what to expect before I start them, but here I was really figuring everything out as I went along, you could say. Admittedly I expected it to be a lot sillier and harder to take seriously from the title, but after watching it... well, while it's definitely pretty crazy in a lot of ways... it's pretty amazing how dramatic it can be at the same time, I'll give it credit for that.

I watched the entire first season that consists of the Phantom Blood arc and the Battle Tendency arc of the series. So I'll be discussing them seperately here now.

I'll be honest, watching the first episode of Phantom Blood, I wasn't all that into it. Not that it was bad, but the pacing was really fast. So much stuff was happening that the whole thing felt rather rushed, and knowing that the arc was apparently only 9 episodes as I was watching it, I thought the rest of the arc would feel the same way. Thankfully though episodes after that felt a lot more even, and while the arc does feel rushed in a lot of areas, it turned out to be a very enjoyable story.

Most of that probably comes down to the 2 main characters. Jonathan Joestar admittedly may not be the most dynamic protagonist ever and in some ways feels like a standard shonen hero, he was still very likeable and sympathetic, so it was very easy to root for him throughout. And Dio was such a well written malicious, self-serving complete scumbag, I thought he was a bit much at first but with just how over the top he got with his evilness that he was fun to watch, and it was always highly satisfying whenever Jonathan gave the creep his commupance. The whole arc revolves around these characters and their conflict with one another, and thankfully it works well to the story's favour because of how well established their relationship is.

All that said, the show does have a number of flaws that really highlight the age of the manga it's adapted from. A lot of stuff in the second half of the show felt rather standard, pretty generic shonen stuff, mostly in the fight scenes which... I really wasn't all that big on them, being honest. And while Zeppeli and Speedwagon were both good characters (Even if I wish we'd had more time with the former before his death, though that's a story problem more than anything else), the rest of the supporting characters introduced in the final act of the story to help out all felt underdeveloped and... kinda pointless and uninteresting. I only really remember one of them due to what happens next arc.

And while again, the pacing did get better, the story did feel too short for it's own good and I wish there had been more time taken for more character building moments with characters besides Jonathan and Dio and longer fights, among other things. There are a few other nitpicks, but honestly this is going on long enough.

In a lot of ways, Phantom Blood feels like a pretty standard shonen story. But it's a well told standard shonen story with a lot of great moments, a compelling if basic story and a really tragic conclusion, that was a ton of fun to watch. It may not have held up great, but I was still really invested in the story and to see what the show could do from there.

And on that note I'm glad to say, Battle Tendency was a huge improvement in pretty much every way. Apart from just having more room to breath thanks to having more episodes than Phantom Blood, Battle Tendency had a better story, a much more dynamic and, frankly, interesting main character (Even if the cross dressing scene was cringy and the perverted moments were annoying) in the form of Joseph Joestar, great villains (Particularly Wamuu) and better, more creative fights.

Honestly this whole arc was just a blast. It was full of great tension, brilliant action scenes and great animation, the supporting cast was better utilized for the most part and there was a good group dynamic between the major characters, the stakes kept getting higher, and yeah, it felt like a truly "Bizzare" adventure. And all the while feeling like a natural extension of the story started in Phantom Blood.

I'm really struggling to find any weak points to this arc, other than it felt awkward that one of the supporting protagonists was a nazi soldier and he was more or less one of the good guys. I mean, Von Stroheim was an entertaining character sure, but I honestly just feel uncomfortable with the idea for a number of reasons. The stupid political climate we're in right now probably isn't helping with that though.

But other than that tidbit, the show was fantastic. I don't really want to say too much and risk spoiling anything, just go watch it yourself if you haven't seen it or go watch Super Eyepatch Wolf's video about the series on YouTube, he does it much more justice than I ever could.

Needless to say though, I'm now a Jojo fan. I think I might wait until the dub for Stardust Crusaders is done or at least further ahead before starting that series, since I have some other shows to be watching right now, but it's something I really look forward to.

I also got a hold of the third DVD set for One Piece, taking me up to episode 78 of the series. This is where things got interesting for me, since the 4Kids dub I watched as a kid cut out a lot of stuff around the crew actually reaching the grandline and just after it, which I was aware of going in, and I really don't remember much of what happened after the Straw Hats reached the Grand Line and before they got to Alabasta, or at least before Trace (Aka Ace, what was up with that change?) showed up. I remember my watching the show was a bit more erratic at the time since I kept missing episodes and having to make sense of what was going on at several points while waiting for the episodes I missed to re-air.

Needless to say I'm not fully sure what to expect going forward whereas I knew almost everything that was going to happen to most of the episodes of One Piece I'd seen before. And I had no idea about what happens in most of these episodes I just watched, so this was a relatively fresh experience. And overall, while I don't think a lot of these arcs were as good as anything between the arc introducing Usopp and the Arlong arc, they were all good in their own right, and I'm sorry some of this stuff got cut by 4Kids. The Warship Island arc was a surprisngly good filler arc with a likeable new character in the form of Apis, and a really great conclusion that I didn't see coming. Pretty fun and moving, honestly above the standards of what I usually expect from a filler arc. The stuff with Laboon the giant whale was pretty good too (Though, any story that lets me look at a flashback involving an adorable baby whale is automatically going to be good in my mind). And the last several episodes involving the giants had some really great conflict and action.

So, yeah. For a set of episodes where I was really unsure what to expect going in, I had a pretty good time watching all of this, and I look forward to more One Piece episodes whenever I get my hands on the fourth DVD collection.

And rounding things up as far as anime shows go, I also watched the first 13 episodes of the series Tenchi Universe.

I have had a weird experience watching Tenchi stuff. I remember watching Tenchi related shows as a kid, but my memory is really hazy and I only remembered bits and pieces, like Ryoko arriving on earth being chased by someone in a big robot suit (Which I thought was Ayeka for a while for some reason, but when actually watching the first episode of universe it was Mihoshi... I seriously wonder what wires got crossed in my head to make me think that was the case for all these years whenever the Tenchi series crossed my mind), and a moment at the end of episode 8 with Ryo-ohki.

But, after looking into the Tenchi franchise further and plot synopsis for the series and clips, I realize that as a kid I also watched a few episodes of Tenchi in Tokyo. So, for years I guess I basically thought Tenchi Universe and Tenchi in Tokyo were the same show, and since I had so few memories of anything Tenchi related, I didn't realize until just recently.

Yeah, this has been a weird experience for me. But not one I regret. So, bits of weirdness aside, what did I think of Tenchi Universe?

Kinda meh so far to be honest. On the one hand, the plot is a lot less clunky and better handled in places that the ova series. But on the other... I think some of the charm of the ovas was lost in the transition to tv. Mainly because some of the characters, mainly Ryoko and Ayeka, don't feel as endearing or likeable as they were there. Most of the cast is fine, but a few of the changes to motivation and personality felt weaker than their original selves, Ryoko and Ayeka's bickering certainly comes off as more annoying and less creative than it could be in the ova's. Though I guess Kiyone was a good addition, though her being glad in her debut about the possibility Mihoshi was dead did bug me for a bit. Yeah I understand that Mihoshi could be a very frustrating person for anyone to have to put up with, but come on now.

The show could be hit or miss. Most of them are entertaining, a few of them were great like episode 9 though some like episode 8 felt a bit lacking. The Time and Space Adventures arc espeically felt very hit and miss and wasn't really as interesting as I thought it would have been, and I was honestly glad it didn't last too long.

Honestly as a whole, I'll say it's not bad, but I'm a bit underwhelmed by the experience so far. I hear the second half of the show is really good though, so I'll get around to finishing that as soon as I can and give my final thoughts next month. So far though, while it has some things over the OVA's which have a number of flaws, I think I still enjoy the original story more.

Now, getting around to the anime movies I watched this month, first we have the first film in the Digimon Adventure Tri series, Reunions. I really loved Digimon growing up, admittedly I always prefered Tamers as my favourite series, but the original series is what I watched first like many people and it holds a special place in my heart as one of my first anime. I actually recently re-watched the whole series since it finally came out on a full season DVD set here in the UK, and while some parts show their age I honestly think the show still holds up decently well. At the least, I still love it.

So, you'd imagine I'd have gotten around to watching these movies sooner right? Well, I thought about it, but honestly I always much prefer watching my anime dubbed whenever I can help it, so I've been waiting a while now for the UK DVD releases of the films to make a start on the series. The first film only very recently came out here.

Ah well, better late than never. So, what do I think of the movie.

Well, it's a pretty decent start to a film series all things considered. Though admittedly not great, it’s a really slow start. But I attribute that to it being the first in the series and having to re-introduce all the characters and their current situations, and set up the plot. In which case, it did a... mostly good job. Everyone was still pretty likeable and mostly how I'd expect them to act at this point (Except Izzy apparently having a crush on Mimi now. That I don't know where it came from), and while it doesn't feel like all that much really happened, it was still pretty fun seeing everyone again and I am interested to see where everything is going.

The animation was mostly pretty good, though the fights themselves all felt a little too short and generic for me. Though hey, this is Digimon, I kind of expect that. The action alone isn't what makes the show fun and worth investing in, character stuff was always more important and the film still seems to focus on that. Though admittedly even if I wish the final fight had gone on longer, Agumon and Gabumon shifting through all of their digivolutions before becoming Omnimon was pretty darn awesome.

I do have some complaints. Like, Tai apparently having some kind of PTSD, or some other trauma in regards to all the destruction caused by Digimon battles felt poorly handled. I dunno, watching him in the original series again recently and with how he was in 02, his suddenly being afraid to have agumon get involved in the final fight felt a bit contrived to me. I could have bought it if the movie actually explored Tai's mental state more and did something interesting with it, but apart from the frequent flashing back to the same rubble over and over again it only seemed to have been done as a convenient excuse to keep him and Matt from merging their Digimon into Omnimon straight away and cutting the battle with Alphamon short. Maybe the other movies explore it more and handle the idea better, but it felt half hearted here.

Also, from what I've heard the apparent decimation of the 02 cast in the opening apparently goes about as unnadressed in most of the next few movies as it does in this one. Soooo... yeah. What the heck Toei!?

If you want to know how I feel about Meiko, the new digidestined... I have no opinion. She barely appeared in the film and did nothing but have her partner be chased after by Alphamon, so I'm just going to see how she plays out in the next movie. Fanfictionny as it sounds though I am on board with another Digidestined, especially if it means one more girl on the team, just so long as she's a worthwhile addition.

So, yeah, pretty good start, fun bit of nostalgia though nothing really special yet. Though certainly better than the frankenstein's monster of a movie cobbled together from short films they tried to sell us last decade. I am interested in seeing where things go from here, though things could go either way with whether I enjoy the other films or not.

Next up we have another Naruto entry, Naruto Shippuden 3: The Will of Fire. I'm going to keep this one short because, honestly, I don't feel like I have a lot to say about it. he story was decent, I like how all of the Konoha 11 got at least one cool moment and a chance to be useful in this movie, some jokes were funny, the story was decently told and I didn't find it too preachy like so people did, probably because I do try as hard as I can to remain an optimist, the action was good, and the ending was a lazy cop-out followed by a dumb joke. Still an enjoyable movie, glad I saw it, but it could have been more and that bit of laziness really hurt the film.

And rounding it all up, I also finally got around to watching a film I ordered the DVD to a month or two ago but never got around to watching until three weeks back. The critically acclaimed 5 Centimetres per second... and it was boring. Like... really, really boring. I can't remember the last time I was so uninterested in something boring.

I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm just not the type of person this movie was made for and if people like it, okay, fair enough. But this entire thing felt like a pointless waste of 60 minutes. The whole thing was just an hour of these boring characters pining over people they like and moping about "Oh, we can't be together" because they're either too afraid to spit it out, or for other reasons I don't care about.

No, I don't care if it's "Atmospheric" or whatever. Nice animation and cinematography alone do not a good movie make. I didn't care about any of these characters, the story was boring, almost nothing here was interesting, and it all just felt pointless by the end of it like absolutely nothing was accomplished at all in the whole film.

And it's not that I don't get a lot of the things it was trying to do, I do have an idea. But the problem is, I don't care, because it wasn't entertaining and I kept thinking that my time could have been better spent watching a Miyazaki movie instead.

Maybe it is just me. If you like the film or see it's merits better than I did, good for you. But personally, I was just glad when it was over and I don't plan to go back to this movie for a long, long time.

And, well, that about covers it I think. Again, sorry this update was so late and if I didn't go into as much detail as I could have about some things, I was rushing. Either way, it was an interesting month for me, with a lot of different experiences. Hopefully I'll have another month as productive as this one soon. Anyway, if you read all this then thank you very much. As always, please leave whatever suggestions you can for the list below and i'll see you all again with another update at the end of the month this time, hopefully.

Series:

Mobile Suit Gundam

Cowboy Bebop

Digimon Frontier

Digimon Data Squad

Digimon Fusion

Yu-Gi-Oh 5D’s

Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal

Yu-Gi-Oh Arc-V

Sailor Moon (Watched the entire first season and was about halfway through season 2. Should really get back to watching the full series)

Sailor Moon Crystal

Yu Yu Hakusho (Up to episode 94)

Ranma 1 ½

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

Jojo’s bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable

Hunter x Hunter (2011)

Fullmetal Alchemist

Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood

One Piece (Up to episode 78)

Bleach (Up to episode 20)

Astro Boy (Any series. I just want to be able to say I’ve watched something from this franchise).

Kill La Kill

Gurren Lagann

Fairy Tail (Up to episode 203)

Little Witch Academia

Tenchi Universe (Up to episode 13)

Death Note

Yuri On Ice

Fist of the North Star

Code Geass

Food Wars: Shokugeki No Soma (I watched about 9 episode, need to catch up)

Your Lie in April

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Mob Psycho 100

Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

Phoenix Wright anime

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid

Natsume’s Book of Friends

Revolutionary Girl Utena

Eureka 7

Black Cat

Black Shooter Rock

Gunbuster

Afro Samurai

Space Dandy

Vision of Escaflowne

magical girl lyrical nanoha

Shin Sekai Yori

Baccano

Cyborg 009

Gaogaigar

Danganronpa

Yo-Kai Watch

Pretty Cure

Future Boy Conan

Yona of the Dawn

WataMote

Space Patrol Luluco

Rurouni Kenshin

Steam Detectives

Death Parade

Movies:

Your Name

Garden of Words

Paprika

Tokyo Godfathers

The Boy and the Beast

Millenium Actress

Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro

The Digimon Adventure Tri Movies (Watched the first one)

Yu-Gi-Oh: The Dark Side of Dimensions

Pokémon: Genesect and the Legend awakened

Pokémon: Diancie and the Cocoon of Destruction

Pokémon: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel

Pokémon: I Choose You

Ghost In The Shell

Memories

Perfect Blue

Naruto: Guardians of the Crescent Moon Kingdom

Naruto Shuppuden: Bonds

Naruto Shippuden: The Lost Tower

Naruto Shippuden: Blood Prison

Naruto: Road to Ninja

Boruto Movie

Fairy Tail the movie: Dragon Cry

Godzilla: Monster Planet

Mary and the Witch’s Flower

Princess Arete

Tekkonkinkreet

#Outlaw Star #soul eater #bleach #jojo's bizarre adventure #one piece #tenchi universe #digimon adventure tri #Naruto shippuden #5 centimeters per second #anime

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jacereviews · 6 years ago

Text

Review: Mobile Suit Gundam

Television (Anime) Consumed in: English Sub Also known as: Gundam 0079. OG Gundam. Gundam TV

Note: This review covers only the first television series. This is not the franchise as a whole or the 0079 movie trilogy. Those will come along eventually.

Airing from April 1979 to January 1980, animated at Studio Sunrise and directed by Yoshiyuki Tomino, I’m sure most if not all of you know what “Gundam” is even if you might not have watched or read any of it. I have watched the debut of this long-running series over the last few weeks and had the lovely experience of seeing the birth of Real Robot Mecha and many other pieces that would become part of Anime Culture. Though the question tends to come up with genre fathers, does it still hold up? Or did this simply work in an era of lower standards? This review will not contain any major spoilers, though for the sake of analysis I will have to discuss how the series handles its plot and characters even if I avoid going into major detail. Alright, let’s rock.

PLOT: So while Mobile Suit Gundam *is* the story of the One-Year War, it is also not. The year is Universal Century 0079. The Earth Federation now covers more than just Earth, with lunar colonies and artificial satellite space colonies known as “Sides”. However Side 3 has risen up in rebellion, calling itself the Principality of Zeon, and has in a swift move of advanced technology and facist war culture fought a destructive war against the Earth Federation, taking out many Sides and even conquering parts of Earth. By the time the show has started, this war has cost a toll of half of the human population. However this show isn’t about the war as a whole, more so it’s the story of one ship, the White Base. Classified military vehicle White Base docks at Side 7, carrying with it prototypes of the Earth Federation’s Mobile Suits. However Zeon gets a jump on the federation, launching an invasion on Side 7. The White Base makes its escape with the civilian population of Side 7 on board. The rest of the series follows the voyage of the White Base, from its escape to Earth, to its fights in the operation to end the One Year War. Rather than a large scale lens the plot is told through mostly the experiences of the White Base and its crew, we actually see more from the perspective of Zeon than we do from other Federation forces, and every instance of other Federation views are directly on the White Base. While this focus can lead us to becoming intimately familiar with a size-able cast, it means that any large scale operations the White Base partakes in feel similar to the independent skirmishes it partakes in, as we see only the perspective of the White Base crew and the opposing general, mostly hearing about other fronts through radio reports and discussions. However this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but those looking for a bigger war story might be a tad disappointed. In general I found the plot to be rather engaging. It mostly moved at a pretty fast speed and kept shaking things up enough that the constant battles didn’t get very old. As the stories are told in a more episodic manner most conflicts tend to get resolved in a timely manner and we move on. However the downside of the episodic nature is occasionally you just get uninteresting episodes (such as Episode 7) where the whole thing feels pointless and feels like it needs to move on with the overarching plot. Aside from the arc on Earth dragging on occasion most individual episodes tend to make noticeable progress and push along the course of the narrative. Occasionally it even feels like the story is moving too fast, some enemies get steamrolled, some interactions turn a significant result after only a few minutes, but it never felt like the story overall moved too fast, and a lot of these happened towards the end of the series, where anyone familiar with the production of Gundam might be able to estimate why. Though mostly grounded, towards the end the plot takes some strange turns with the introduction of the concept of Newtypes, which could make the show more or less interesting depending on the viewer. To briefly touch on the ending, I thought it was pretty good. It’s definitely not the most climactic of endings (as one wouldn’t except a war story to climax with a final episode called “Escape”) but it was satisfying none the less. It was messy and chaotic only insofar as war itself is messy and chaotic, and it put a good bow on the stories of our characters, though some epilogue would’ve been nice (like perhaps a “Where are they now?”).

For this section I’d give a 7.5/10, it’s good but nothing amazing.

CHARACTERS: It might seem odd that I didn’t mention any characters in the plot section, but that’s because the crew of the White Base act together as a unit, though definitely not to discredit their individual characters. Let’s start with the main character Amuro Ray. Amuro is the 15 year-old son of the Federation engineer Dr. Tem Ray, he moved out with his father to Side 7 so his father could work on developing Mobile Suits. Amuro himself is pretty technology-savvy (having built the series mascot Haro). Through a large part being forced and a small part choosing himself, he ends up piloting the prototype mobile suit, Gundam, after the invasion of Side 7. As a natural pilot and engineer, he becomes the leading man of the White Base’s combat forces, being the main pilot of the Gundam and doing some rodeos in the other Mobile Suits. Over the course of the series we see him develop from a semi-anti-social teen who’s hesitant to shoot another human to an ace soldier. His arc develops slowly with plenty of bumps caused by his immaturity, but he does naturally grow and develop over time and by the end he’s quite the force to be reckoned with. While not a particularly unique or shockingly nuanced character, he’s more than serviceable and in a lot of ways represents different aspects of the world of Gundam. Being both the civilian dragged into the catastrophic war and eventually being our lead into the secret of the Newtypes. Other people of note on the White Base include Bright Noa, the military officer pressed into active command of the White Base after its captain becomes incapacitated. He starts off as a rather unsympathetic hard-ass, who’s stiff nature both causes him to be effective in crisis but also to break hard rather than bend. He learns to warm up and adapt, over time becoming the heart of the White Base and its leader. By the end of the show he was one of my favorite characters. Sayla Mass is also a character of note, initially working as a coms officer and eventually becoming a pilot. She’s the only female pilot and despite taking a long time to become decent, she becomes one of Amuro’s most reliable comrades by the end. Her past also slowly becomes revealed as it holds some of the secrets to the origin of the One Year War. Last character of the White Base I want to give special mention to is Kai Shinden. Kai starts out as the cynical voice of the cast, showing a desire for self-preservation and satisfaction, being generally unsympathetic to the “we’re all soldiers now” narrative everyone else plays. However for a few episodes in the late 20s his character arc becomes the main focus, it’s one of the stronger parts of the show in my opinion, and seeing him go from unlikeable douche to a character with his own baggage and reason to fight was nice, even if the arc itself was tragic. However the characters I mentioned early are stand out rather than the whole cast. I mean no disservice to Hayato, Ryu, Mirai, and Fraw Bow, who have some pretty good development of their own, just more interweaven into the overarching story rather than taking a front seat. They’re good characters in their own right, but they aren’t the shining stars you’ll never forget. As I mentioned earlier in the plot discussion, we also see the perspective of Zeon quite a bit and as such they have some pretty strong characters themselves. First and foremost is the show-stealer Char Aznable. The Red Comet, Char is a Lieutenant Commander of the Zeon military, and the one leading the chase of the White Base. Char is a very strong character both in combat and presence, he stands out for his masterful Mobile Suit control (notably his Mobile Suit is painted red) and his quick thinking and strong tactics. Even in a losing battle Char is known to keep his Mobile Suit intact and is already preparing for the next battle ahead. As much as Char spends his time hunting the White Base, he has grander ambitions within the Zeon Military. His wit is not only in combat strategy, but in politics and people, making him a joy to watch. He too has a hidden past, covered up like his face, which he always hides with a mask. Some other notable Zeons are Garma Zabi, the son of Zeon ruler Degwin Zabi, who alongside his siblings play major roles as opponents and leaders in the Zeon military. And Ramba Ral, a lieutenant in the Zeon military and an old fashioned soldier through and through. He’s rather likable with his noble patriotism and respect for his opponents, treating them as equals rather than lessers. He’s a good man who just happens to be on the opposing side, he inspires admiration and respect from both his soldiers and the viewers. All in all Gundam does a good job of developing and both likeable and large cast. Char himself is worth a bonus point.

8/10, loveable cast but only Char reaches anything above good.

VISUALS: Keep in mind this series was made in 1979. It’s old, no way around that, but not necessarily bad. The designs are pretty good even if there’s not a lot of stand out. The Mobile Suits and technology generally look pretty good, but I felt some of Zeon’s newer weapons introduced in the later half were a bit much on the design aspect. The Gundam itself is iconic, but I wouldn’t call it amazing. If anything my favorite mecha design was actually the Guncannon. The backgrounds never really stood out to me as anything too amazing, and I wonder if it’s intentional that the series mostly avoided showing futuristic big cities. The animation itself is hit and miss. There’s a lot of cool direction and interesting ideas. Due to the nature of mecha anime in the 70s, a large amount of the violence had to be separated from humans. For a war story there’s very little blood as most battles are fought with machines and explosions. A good amount of times some interesting presentation tricks were taken to show death or extreme violence. Covering up blood and death in the chaos of war is hard to do believably but Gundam pulls it off. Towards the end though the gloves come off and we occasionally see some people get straight murdered. However to balance out all the unique tricks and ideas are loads of animation errors and inconsistencies. Weapons and gear changing between scenes, pieces of machines vanishing for a bit, derp faces, you name it. The series has lots of them but they’re never really distracting but aren’t fun (or are fun depending on who you are) to notice. The only real egregious one is a derp face Ryu makes once that keeps showing up in the episode opening recaps (which aren’t themselves bad) for a bit. Other than that they mostly go over with no problem and don’t much damage the experience. Though there are interesting ideas in direction, I never really found any point where the animation was particularly impressive. It’s a 70′s TV anime though, so we just have to accept that. Not everything can be Akira. After the introduction of Newtypes we occasionally get some unique and trippy visuals but they themselves aren’t much to write home about even if they’re nice to watch.

5.5/10, It’s mostly passable, the good and the bad balance out a lot. Though the mecha designs are iconic for a reason.

AUDIO: Starting with voice acting it’s a pretty flat even. Char’s got a good Seiyuu, so does Garma. Nothing too amazing, no Mamoru Miyanos here. No real negatives either, the kids can be annoying but they’re little kids, little kids are annoying. The narrator is pretty good and Haro’s got a nifty sound. Everyone is nicely distinct though. It’s average and that’s fine. The music is more notable though. There’s some good bops in there, the few times the show puts a full insert song make for a good time, though the regular OST does it’s job quite well. Some of the combat themes have some nice kick to em, and Lalah’s theme is pretty memorable. Large part though the soundtrack isn’t that memorable. Nothing outside of action scenes really stuck with me. There were a few times the soundtrack sounded confused, cutting from piece to piece uncomfortably and on a few rare moments it felt like they were using the wrong track for certain scenes. Nothing particularly noticeable unless you’re trying to pay attention to the OST though. The OP’s pretty good, definitely grew on me over time, by the late 20s I found myself singing along to it on occasion (and once in public). The ED’s pretty nice and quiet and pretty alright, didn’t do much for me personally.

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Overall 6/10, it’s decent but not much more. Few really good moments, few missteps.

FINAL SCORE: 7/10

While the show is by no means perfect, it was still a damn good time that even made me cry once. It has aged but many things have aged worse than it. It shines a lot in it’s ideas and characters, but has noticeable hickups along the way. Not only is it important in the history of mecha and the Japanese media industry, it’s also just a genuinely good show with a lot of heart. I’d still give it a recommendation to fans of mecha and classic anime, though the movie trilogy or Origin manga might be a better telling of the story (I’ll go through both eventually). It’s a good show on is own, but as the first step into a mega-series I’m excited to see where we go from here. All in all, Doan Cucruz didn’t deserve to be cute from the dub and DVD, his episode was good, Tomino.

#mobile suit gundam #gundam 0079 #OG gundam #Gundam #0079 #Anime #Anime Review #mecha #classics #classic anime #blackwinged

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