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if you love to Spy x Family, this movie will be a treat for you.
The first half was your average episode, both animation and story-wise. With the second half the difference is like night and day. The choreography of the fights is amazing, and so is the pacing, photography, compositing, and backgrounds. You can definitely see is a movie. Not going to lie, it was hilarious how the biggest amount of sakuga was in the toilet God sequence.

It's also great at establishing the characters and the world for those who never watched the show, so that's a good excuse to force your friends ... to watch it ;)

My only small complaint (🤓☝️) is that I wished that Official HIGE DANdism's song was played during the movie and not at the very end in the credits. It's a fantastic song on par (or even better) than the first opening, and listening it with the cinema's speakers is just godly. Maybe I'm a little biased haha.

And any Italian fellas, the dub is really good :)

Totally recommended!

Certainly, I am the least adequate person to talk about this movie and the lore of Shinkai since it's the second movie of his I watch after Your Name, and that's where most of the people who already watched his stuff might complain. Rather than spotting the similarities to his previous works, focus only on this "new" story. But it's easier said than done.

Not gonna lie, both at the start and the end I was thinking "is this Your Name 2?", but it can probably be defined as a spiritual successor. HOWEVER, forget romance. A problem with Suzume (making it go from 10 to ... a solid 9) is how this theme was clearly evident but wasn't developed properly, making the finale feel not entirely satisfying. Think of it as more a platonic love. The movie is about family, losing loved ones, and especially on the unfortunate natural disasters that occur in Japan.

And also, forget the romance because the math wasn't mathing, but no spoilers here.
Furthermore (part 2), for the Italians, the dub is great (only some unusual word choices at the start) and Daijin's VA is fantastic.

Other than this, the rest of the movie is perfect. The best advice is to watch it. If you didn't like it you only lost 2 hours of your life.

Thank you for reading.

Unfortunately, due to the prejudices surrounding the Bridge-era Yu-Gi-Oh, many people are missing out on such a great show. The problem that may set people back from watching it is the focus on comedy and pacing, but if you are here I presume you already have experience with Sevens. When the plot gets going, it becomes so good. Seriously. And it shows especially from episode 20 and even more with the end of the first season, which just aired recently.

The beauty of Go Rush is how it raises so many questions, and throughout the arcs, everything starts making sense in a way. The writers ... are doing a fantastic job at not forgetting plot points, and making sure that the secondary/filler characters make a quick reappearance and aid in the plot. It’s also amazing how they are expanding the lore by conencting the previous series, which no other anime in the franchise ever did (at least successfully), but no spoilers.

Each plot point is resolved so well that it doesn't feel like "lol yeah let's now move on", but you can see how the characters grow throughout the anime. Kinda reminds me of Gurren Lagann (particularly the opening during the battles' climax!) but that's too much of a strech haha. Speaking of music, the anime is blessed thanks to Frederic and Yusuke Saeki, and we are also getting a new opening by Bradio!

One big downside is the animation. Unfortunately sakuga is almost nonexistent, but some episodes visually are impressive. Covid, the anime airing weekly, the current state of the industry, and Bridge animating also Shaman King impact a lot the production. Thankfully, the great story makes up for it.

Should you watch Go Rush? Yes, if you enjoyed Sevens.

This review is written after episode 132 (final episode of the Masters Eight Tournament).

Edit: Bruh after watching the ending I feel like the last 3/4 episodes were either written by ChatGPT or an NPC because it's the most incoherent and unsatisfactory ending I have ever seen in anime. Goh's Project Mew is so anticlimactic (Wattpad stories are much more rewarding) and the last episode makes no sense at all, like why is Goh mad that Ash will go on a journey by himself after deciding he wants to travel alone too?? This is just a waste of time.

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Pokémon Journeys started as a fresh ... take into the franchise, and its premise was initially acclaimed for being different that its predecessors. Now there are two protagonists, and their travels are focused throughout all 8 regions. However, the execution was really poor. After the epic of XY, and the sakuga fest that S&M was, many of us thought Journeys was going to be the best of the best, but it wasn't that at all.

The "bad":
• Fillers: with weekly animes that have been running for years, it's natural to have these episodes. S&M personally has the best ones, with these episodes just being a wholesome experience for us to enjoy, Here, they compose 80% of the story with very few - and short - overarching stories, and these generally are:
- Goh catching Pokémon that won't appear ever again, without any character development
- Random stuff that gets dragged out for 22 minutes. That's not a bad thing (like in previous installments), except that here they don't provide any value in the story.
• The animation: again, with weekly animes it's VERY difficult to maintain a healthy level of sakuga, in fact S&M went through a long stage of pre-production*. However, after the first 20 episodes or so, the art style is less curated, that's because the team doesn't have enough people (as confirmed by Chiaki Kurakazu), which probably impacted the flow of the narrative. With the Masters Tournaments, the situations seems a little better and I hope it will continue for the rest of the anime. Props to the staff was persisting despite all of this.

The "good":
• Openings: using the same song but with different artists was an interesting directive choice, and Rica Matsumoto and Daiki Yamashita on OP4 was pure hype!!
• Episode 132: the last episode of the tournament was a masterpiece, arguably better than SM144. It also marked the long-waited return of Takeshi Maenami, Aito Ohashi, and Osamu Murata, 3 incredible animators that disappeared due to the production issues mentioned earlier.


I haven't talked about everything, but you should give Journeys a try and see if you like or not. Thanks for reading!

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* The Canipa Effect's videos on this provide a good insight on the production.