I legitimately thought this movie was a fever dream I had after watching the original series several years ago.
Reviews
6 Reviews
Godzilla: The Planet Eater
(2018)
Godzilla takes a nap: Part 3
31 May 2019
Warning: Spoilers
The best movie where a man has sex with a moth girl while the moth girls twin sister gets cooked into a soup.
The one Kaiju battle in this movie is pretty much Godzilla trying to slap magical space-spaghetti while moving at 2mph.
HOW IS THIS THE SAME WRITER WHO WROTE PSYCHO-PASS AND MADOKA MAGICA!?!
The one Kaiju battle in this movie is pretty much Godzilla trying to slap magical space-spaghetti while moving at 2mph.
HOW IS THIS THE SAME WRITER WHO WROTE PSYCHO-PASS AND MADOKA MAGICA!?!
We all die eventually
29 July 2018
A-plot 10/10,
B-plot 10/10,
Characterization 10/10,
Pacing 7/10,
World Building 7/10,
Voice Acting 9/10,
Soundtrack 8/10,
Animation 10/10,
Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms is one of the best anime films to release in the last few years. Almost everything about this film is perfect, from the well defined characters and the compelling plot to the beautiful animation and soundtrack. The only problems I had with this film are for things that didn't really matter like the minimal world building and a few unnecessary characters. Although one real problem I think the film had was the pacing especially in the first half. There are several time jumps in the film which skips over quite a bit of time and several moments that are hinted at but skipped over that I would have liked to have seen and I think would have made the ending more impactful. Because of this I think this story would have also worked really well as a 8-12 episode series. Despite these problems, the plot and characters were more than enough to keep me invested. I highly recommend you take any opportunity you have to check out this film.
Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms is one of the best anime films to release in the last few years. Almost everything about this film is perfect, from the well defined characters and the compelling plot to the beautiful animation and soundtrack. The only problems I had with this film are for things that didn't really matter like the minimal world building and a few unnecessary characters. Although one real problem I think the film had was the pacing especially in the first half. There are several time jumps in the film which skips over quite a bit of time and several moments that are hinted at but skipped over that I would have liked to have seen and I think would have made the ending more impactful. Because of this I think this story would have also worked really well as a 8-12 episode series. Despite these problems, the plot and characters were more than enough to keep me invested. I highly recommend you take any opportunity you have to check out this film.
Batman Ninja
(2018)
a ...A Monkey!
29 July 2018
Warning: Spoilers
As a fan of both DC Comics and Anime in general, I was hugely disappointed. This movie had so much going for it, DC's animated stuff is almost always good and it had big anime creators working on it. The movie fails at being both a good DC animated movie and a good anime, there is so much wrong with this movie.
While I didn't go out of my way to find the subbed version like I do for most anime, I don't see how the dialogue could be any better. All the villain interactions are basically one-liners except always bad, and the heroes just describe what there doing all the time. Speaking of characters, there are to goddamn many of them, there never needed to be more hero characters than just Batman. It's hard to feel like there are any stakes for him since he has the entire bat family to back him up. They also barely get any screen time and don't really need to be there. The villains have the same problem. While I can see why they would include multiple villains rather then just the Joker, they're only there to fight the unnecessary hero characters, so it's just unnecessary heroes we don't care about fighting unnecessary villains with little to no screen time. There's so many known DC characters I constantly forgot this even takes place in Japan.
The plot is also a huge mess. For one, Batman is the biggest dumb-ass. He's supposed to be the worlds greatest detective yet he falls for every single one of the Joker's traps and he can't solve the most obvious of things. He also felt very inexperienced like he's only been Batman for a few months, which he is certainly not considering he has cycled through all of the Robins in the comics. I cringed when he questioned what to do without his technology. There's also this bat ninja clan who prophesied the arrival of Batman, no, it's not explained. They're only there to shatter your disbelief and lower the stakes even more because Batman didn't have enough allies already. There was also this part where Joker loses his memory and becomes a farmer and then Red hood beats him up in hand drawn animation. That part only exists to waste your time and to make you uncomfortable.
The finale, oh my god the finale. If you didn't think this movie was dumb before, the finale cranks the bulls**t meter up to 11. It involves Gorilla Grodd handing a flute to Robin's baby monkey friend who also has a baby monkey girlfriend, them playing the flute to summon a giant army of monkeys which then pile up and morph into a giant monkey to fight five giant robot castles which combined like Voltron into one big robot castle. Then the giant monkey swarm in the shape of a big monkey merges with a swarm of bats which were summoned by the bat ninja clan to form a giant 1950's batman. I cannot make this s**t up. I don't remember the comics or cartoons ever getting this absurd, even anime never really goes this far without an in continuity explanation.
The animation is CGI with cel-shading to give it a more rough sketch/hand drawn look. While the environments and characters look nice, the character movement is quite stiff and robotic at times. The fight scenes aren't very well choreographed and are often interrupted with talking. The facial animations aren't very pleasant to look at, especially the male characters without their masks. There is a completely hand drawn animation section in the middle of the movie which I previously mentioned. It looks really cool but is a complete waste of time.
With Marvel stepping into Animation with "Big Hero 6" and "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", DC is in a bit of a weird spot. While their animated stuff is recognized and praised, they are mainly direct to DVD and watched by fans only. If this is their attempt at trying something new, then they are in serious trouble. With their live action stuff failing miserably, they need to step up their game real fast.
While I didn't go out of my way to find the subbed version like I do for most anime, I don't see how the dialogue could be any better. All the villain interactions are basically one-liners except always bad, and the heroes just describe what there doing all the time. Speaking of characters, there are to goddamn many of them, there never needed to be more hero characters than just Batman. It's hard to feel like there are any stakes for him since he has the entire bat family to back him up. They also barely get any screen time and don't really need to be there. The villains have the same problem. While I can see why they would include multiple villains rather then just the Joker, they're only there to fight the unnecessary hero characters, so it's just unnecessary heroes we don't care about fighting unnecessary villains with little to no screen time. There's so many known DC characters I constantly forgot this even takes place in Japan.
The plot is also a huge mess. For one, Batman is the biggest dumb-ass. He's supposed to be the worlds greatest detective yet he falls for every single one of the Joker's traps and he can't solve the most obvious of things. He also felt very inexperienced like he's only been Batman for a few months, which he is certainly not considering he has cycled through all of the Robins in the comics. I cringed when he questioned what to do without his technology. There's also this bat ninja clan who prophesied the arrival of Batman, no, it's not explained. They're only there to shatter your disbelief and lower the stakes even more because Batman didn't have enough allies already. There was also this part where Joker loses his memory and becomes a farmer and then Red hood beats him up in hand drawn animation. That part only exists to waste your time and to make you uncomfortable.
The finale, oh my god the finale. If you didn't think this movie was dumb before, the finale cranks the bulls**t meter up to 11. It involves Gorilla Grodd handing a flute to Robin's baby monkey friend who also has a baby monkey girlfriend, them playing the flute to summon a giant army of monkeys which then pile up and morph into a giant monkey to fight five giant robot castles which combined like Voltron into one big robot castle. Then the giant monkey swarm in the shape of a big monkey merges with a swarm of bats which were summoned by the bat ninja clan to form a giant 1950's batman. I cannot make this s**t up. I don't remember the comics or cartoons ever getting this absurd, even anime never really goes this far without an in continuity explanation.
The animation is CGI with cel-shading to give it a more rough sketch/hand drawn look. While the environments and characters look nice, the character movement is quite stiff and robotic at times. The fight scenes aren't very well choreographed and are often interrupted with talking. The facial animations aren't very pleasant to look at, especially the male characters without their masks. There is a completely hand drawn animation section in the middle of the movie which I previously mentioned. It looks really cool but is a complete waste of time.
With Marvel stepping into Animation with "Big Hero 6" and "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse", DC is in a bit of a weird spot. While their animated stuff is recognized and praised, they are mainly direct to DVD and watched by fans only. If this is their attempt at trying something new, then they are in serious trouble. With their live action stuff failing miserably, they need to step up their game real fast.
Solo: A Star Wars Story
(2018)
Just a movie
5 June 2018
Warning: Spoilers
This movie adds absolutely nothing to the Star Wars universe and simply details events mentioned as filler dialogue In the main films. While there are original characters and locations never seen before this movie feels all around risk-less. The film is also very predictable and quite humorless.
The character of Han Solo isn't even really expanded on either, his new romantic interest Qi'ra who I assume the writers introduced to add more depth to Han Solo himself did nothing for the character. In my opinion her potential lies more in the sequels for this movie which will probably never happen considering it had the worst theatrical opening in the series. The recasting of Han Solo is fine. While he didn't have the iconic voice or face, the writing mixed with Alden Ehrenreich's charismatic performance works for the younger version of the character they were going for. Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian is alright, throughout the entire film he seem tired. Lando is supposed to be a laid back guy and his character was captured well in the writing, but his performance seemed a little too laid back. Most of the side characters aren't worth mentioning since they're pretty shallow but don't really need to be more than that. The droid character L3-37 was cringe worthy since she was just another sassy rebellious droid similar to K2-S0 and even BB-8, except she has the sass meter cranked up to 11. Her character is all about how she wants to be treated equally as a droid which was painful to watch as a parallel to the real world mistreatment of minorities since shes so unlikable in the first place. Paul Bettany delivers a pretty decent performance as the villain.
Just like L3 the jokes are cringe worthy. Most of the time the soundtrack and timing didn't even shift properly to make way for the joke, not that it mattered since they were all horribly written, which is a shame since I honestly think more frequent and better written jokes could have saved the movie. There is one good exchange between Han and Lando near the end of the movie which is followed up a few minutes later by a predictable but still decent joke.
The scene where Han kills Beckett feels all around weightless and predictable. It doesn't feel like as big of a deal as it's supposed to be since Han has been killing armies of disposable henchmen the entire movie and Beckett's character is so generic.
The highlights of this movie are either the CGI space battle bullshit or the still humorless character interactions. I think this movie would actually work better as a start to a trilogy than a stand alone movie, but not a Solo trilogy. Instead make the trilogy about Darth Maul's crime syndicate except have a different protagonist each movie (Probably Boba Fett than Obi-Wan). That way people can get the character movies they want without throwing away all the setup of this film. Some of the side characters of this movie could also return (Probably just Qi'ra).
The character of Han Solo isn't even really expanded on either, his new romantic interest Qi'ra who I assume the writers introduced to add more depth to Han Solo himself did nothing for the character. In my opinion her potential lies more in the sequels for this movie which will probably never happen considering it had the worst theatrical opening in the series. The recasting of Han Solo is fine. While he didn't have the iconic voice or face, the writing mixed with Alden Ehrenreich's charismatic performance works for the younger version of the character they were going for. Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian is alright, throughout the entire film he seem tired. Lando is supposed to be a laid back guy and his character was captured well in the writing, but his performance seemed a little too laid back. Most of the side characters aren't worth mentioning since they're pretty shallow but don't really need to be more than that. The droid character L3-37 was cringe worthy since she was just another sassy rebellious droid similar to K2-S0 and even BB-8, except she has the sass meter cranked up to 11. Her character is all about how she wants to be treated equally as a droid which was painful to watch as a parallel to the real world mistreatment of minorities since shes so unlikable in the first place. Paul Bettany delivers a pretty decent performance as the villain.
Just like L3 the jokes are cringe worthy. Most of the time the soundtrack and timing didn't even shift properly to make way for the joke, not that it mattered since they were all horribly written, which is a shame since I honestly think more frequent and better written jokes could have saved the movie. There is one good exchange between Han and Lando near the end of the movie which is followed up a few minutes later by a predictable but still decent joke.
The scene where Han kills Beckett feels all around weightless and predictable. It doesn't feel like as big of a deal as it's supposed to be since Han has been killing armies of disposable henchmen the entire movie and Beckett's character is so generic.
The highlights of this movie are either the CGI space battle bullshit or the still humorless character interactions. I think this movie would actually work better as a start to a trilogy than a stand alone movie, but not a Solo trilogy. Instead make the trilogy about Darth Maul's crime syndicate except have a different protagonist each movie (Probably Boba Fett than Obi-Wan). That way people can get the character movies they want without throwing away all the setup of this film. Some of the side characters of this movie could also return (Probably just Qi'ra).
Gunbuster
(1988–1989)
If Interstellar was an anime (Sort of)
5 June 2018
For a six episode miniseries Gunbuster (1988) is somehow able to cover all of the narrative requirements of a full length anime series. As Hideaki Anno's directorial debut some of the concepts and ideas he is well known for are explored here, though not to the same degree and scale of his more well known show "Neon Genesis Evangelion". Most of the focus of the show is placed on the continuation of the overall plot with a fair amount of time focused on the development and inner thoughts of the main character Noriko. The story is mainly focused on the idea of how light-speed travel distorts time, and based on that the show is able to deliver some memorable and emotional moments typically not found in series' of this short length. Some complaints I have with this show is how the first episode is painfully 80's (if that makes sense) and tonally doesn't transition well into the rest of the series. Another thing I didn't like is how the first instance of nudity felt very undeserved and inserted in for the sake of appealing to an older audience. Gunbuster is still however a great anime that should be used as a reference for future miniseries'.
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