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Jan 1, 2025
Trigun: Badlands Rumble
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Spoiler
I'm not the biggest Trigun fan in the world and even back when I was a fan of it, I always remembered this movie being boring and dull. I decided to watch it again for a 3rd time to see if that opinion of mine still held water and yes, it still does. Anime movies based on TV series tends to be a hit or miss but Trigun Badlands Rumble feels like it got made because Madhouse wanted a quick buck. Compared this movie to Cowboy Bebop Knockin on Heaven's Door and everything about the former feels like a bad unfunny joke. I'm not the
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Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Dec 29, 2024 Mixed Feelings Spoiler
Trigun was one of the anime I first remember watching back when I got into checking out anime again back in 2012, what I especially remember about it since I went in blind was that the show had the coolest opening ever(and it's still awesome now) where Vash is portrayed as this most badass dude ever who seemed to be this really competent gunslinger and the first episode happens and he's like the opposite of how he is portrayed in the opening, I remember that aspect hooking me, I also remember the rest of the show being pretty good and having one really good villain
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through Lagato Bluesummers. However, watching it now, especially the more the show goes on, I start questioning what I even found appealing about the 2nd half to begin with. It made me realize I was overly harsh on Stampede and while I don't think that show is good, it at least seemed more skillfully written than 90s Trigun. What should've been a fun trip down memory lane just got me more and more aggrevated while watching causing me to write this review in the first place. I have experienced so much fiction whether it'd be anime or other mediums that does what this show does but better.
Before I start going into what made me so apathetic towards the show as a whole, I will praise the first couple of episodes of the series. These episodes are pretty entertaining stuff, it's like if a series like Slayers were to take place in a pseudo wild west setting rather than fantasy, it's dumb over the top slapstick fun. Vash is as a protagonist is at his most tolerable here since the tone is lighthearted and silly and the episodes basically have that sitcom approach and anticipation of how will a moron like Vash get out of this wacky situation. There is a moral at the end of the episode like many of those kinds of shows, but these episodes made me realize that Trigun is really at it's best when it's more of a goofy comedy than as a serious story about morality. These episodes prevent from calling Trigun an "awful show". The character of Nicolas D. Wolfwood also carried me through the later episodes too, much like Stampede, he was the character I often rooted for over Vash, and if he wasn't in the later episodes of 90s Trigun, I doubt I would be able to get through even if his death was underwhelming. Then Lagato Bluesummers show up and while the writing heads into sort of questionable terrority with how Vash's no kill rule causes more problems than it solves, it doesn't get extremely insufferable...yet. Where Trigun does start to lose me is in the flashback episode with Vash and Knives in space. Apparently Vash has an evil twin brother named Knives and he was barely alluded to and didn't even make an on screen appreance beforehand, when Knives popped up in this flashback episode, if I didn't watch the series previously, I'd be like, "how the hell is this guy?" I'm also asking other questions like why is the whole idea of humanity looking for a new planet to live on suddenly being mentioned now? This is where I say Trigun Stampede is improvement because at least with that series, Rem, Knives and Vash and humanity is shown at the very first episode so you know this is a thing where in 90s Trigun, it comes so out of left field. This is pretty much where 90s Trigun starts to annoy me more the show goes on. A serial plot gets introduced and it just feels incredibly half baked in almost every aspect to to me. On top of all this, it can all feel bizarre and out of place too. If you were one of those people who liked the show for the goofy episode comedic portions, the sudden appreance of a darker serial plot can feel out of place. At least in a story like Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, the police case nature of the show had it's episodic crime drama feel more natural within the story since the Laughing Man case often had dead ends and the titular character himself would hide and reappear after a couple of episodes. Samurai Champloo is about over the top wacky hijinks with occasional serious episodes with a loose excuse plot about looking for the Sunflower Samurai. This leads me to my next issue, the pacing is absolutely dreadful from episodes 18-23. Knives gets spotted in some abandoned town and it's established that he is Vash's archnemesis and he has to stop him but it takes at least 5 episodes to actually get to the town where Knives is spotted, this wouldn't be so bad if the show was episodic but this is the writers' attempt at a serial story and as a result, you could go to episode 18 and skip all the way up to episode 23 and nothing of geniune value would be lost, at the most all you have to do is just fast forward and skip to when Meryl and Millie meet Vash again and that's it. Wolfwood even knew where Knives' true location was the whole time which makes these episodes even more pointless. Next isssue are Trigun's villains and I remember particularly Lagato being well written and after watching the show again now, I'm not so sure. His introduction and his conclusion are good but everything inbetween is just dull and boring. All he does is send in Gung Ho Gun members after Vash and that's about it. Speaking of the Gung Ho Guns, they graudated from the Metal Gear Solid 3 school of villain characterization where they have over the top names and looks but often don't survive more than one encounter against the heroes and don't have much in the way of characterization other than they are evil and they in the way of Vash and Wolfwood. The only Gung Ho Gun who actually amounts to anything is Wolfwood's teacher since he killed the guy but he gets killed off in the first few minutes after the Wolfwood death episode, you think he might be important but no. This is where I propose that Lagato should've been cut out of the story entirely and should've been Knives doing all the dirty work the former was going. The backstory of Lagato and the Gung Ho Guns are never explained or even how Knives' doomsday plan or goals of wiping out humanity was going to work or what plants even are? If Knives was the one giving the orders to Gung Ho Guns, was the one who killed Wolfwood, and was the guy making Vash's life a living hell instead of Lagato, it would make him a much more memorable villain. Stampede even does this to varying degrees where Knives in that show destroys towns and is more of a geniune nuisance to Vash and did more outside of killing Rem. Sure, the part where Vash has to make the decision to take a life would a little harder to do since Vash does need to fight Knives at the end but you could have a new villain introduced where he antagonizes Vash for a while and almost kills Vash's friends and he is so powerful that Vash has to take his life. It's a little weird but considering how little Lagato does after his intro, nothing of much value would be lost. Knives being the one who killed Wolfwood would make the latter cross weapon getting the win for Vash that much more poetic. The biggest issue I have with the serialized episodes of Trigun if Vash himself especially now that the story takes itself more seriously. I'm not a big fan of pacifist characters in fiction but Vash is a sub standard one even within the context of those kinds of characters. Everything about Vash's morals and everything he knew was because he got brainwashed by Rem, not because he geniunely came to those conclusions. Every time he comtemplates anything, it's often what, Rem would do not what he would do. It's hard to take a character seriously when they got brainwashed by a woman who has been dead for so long. Compare this to characters like Kenshin Himura and Thorfinn, they both killed many people and often have to struggle with the horrible things they have done but eventually when they choose the life of a pacifist, it isn't because someone told them to do it, the conclusion was because of their struggles. The biggest problem with Vash however is just how much his actions geniunely doesn't lead to anything beneficial especially in the long term. He spares the villain or takes too long to neutralize them and many innocents die. The worst of this is when he destroyed the lives of the people on the Flying Ship and even caused Brad's death, or how not killing the Gung Ho Gun attacking the plant destroyed the ship. It's never even explained what happened to those people but the show just keeps doing this. Every time Vash shows compassion, it either leads to even more undesirable outcomes and humanity hating him even more. The show ultimately proves that Knives was right but not because of his actions but because Vash's idealism gets him nowhere. It rarely if ever gets to anything desirable. Compare this to other stories like Dragon Ball where Goku sparing Piccolo and Vegeta actually turns out to be a positive in the long run and turns out to be very valuable allies. In superhero hero stories like Superman, Spider-Man and Batman, in many of the versions of these characters, the respective cities for these characters come to accept these characters. The DCEU has Superman initially be mistrusting of humanity, but throughout Man of Steel, he gets the respect of Lois and the military and by the Synder Cut of Justice League, humanity embraces Superman as a symbol of hope. Does Vash really get any of this? My issue is that a lot of what Vash does never leads to anything long term, Meryl and Millie respect him, some villagers do but at the end of the day, most of humanity fears and hates Vash even by the end of Trigun, not much has changed. This leads to my final issue, the ending is just awful. Not much has changed and that promised land that Vash was telling Wolfwood about and took the moral high ground on him over never even happened. Did Knives realize the error of his ways or was his crippled so hard that he can't move anymore? If it's the former, then the face turn is too sudden and if it's the latter then Knives probably prefers to be dead than live with Vash. The whole thing felt like the animators ran out of money. Overall, I wanted 90s Trigun to be a fun trip down memory lane but all it did was make me question what teenage me saw in the show. The comedic episodes are fun but the show stops doing them and introduced a seralized plot that is just half baked and poorly executed that if it weren't for the sunk cost fallacy and Nicolas Wolfwood, I would've dropped a while ago. I wouldn't call Trigun a terrible show since I enjoy parts of it but I do not want to watch it again.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 1, 2024 Mixed Feelings Spoiler
Bleach is a show that is complicated to talk about for me. Back when I first watched the series, I was watching it around the time where they were airing the Soul Society arc on TV and that was like starting the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and you start with the Two Towers and as a result, the previously established world building and context was lost on me and I was kind of just "eh" if not borderline apathetic towards the show among other reasons. I would catch Bleach again on TV later on, and the funny thing about it is that I watched
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the series at least 3 depressing points in my life. After me saying all this, it sounds like Bleach should be an anime I very much enjoy and that I should be singing nothing but praises for it but I can't. I recently watched it again because of all the hype surronding the 1000 Year Blood War arc adaptation and it made me curious if me dropping the series around the Arancar arc 10 years ago was a wise decision or if I was just impatient, turns out me disliking Bleach post Soul Society arc was very much me not being impatient. Bleach is a show with a good framwork but the execution is strongly lacking.
Before I start criticizing Bleach, I will be positive about it for a few paragraphs. When it comes to the openings, style, and especially the music of the series, the show is great, the OST is fantastic stuff, it's up there with anime like Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, Death Note, .hack//sign, and Full Metal Alchemist 2003 in how the music is both atmospheric, immersing you into the scenes, and being great songs in their own right, some Bleach songs I still listen to this day. The Tensa Zangetsu Bankai theme or "soft strums" is one of my favorite anime songs of all time and "nothing can be explained" is pretty much my brooding music. Bleach's characters can be very well written and charismatic, not all of them since it has far too many for the show to handle, but I do very much enjoy the members of the the Soul Society with characters like Byakuya Kuchiki, Kenpachi Zaraki, Mayuri Kurotsuchi, among many others. These 3 characters I mentioned can often be borderline like villains than heroes. Kenpachi is a bloodthirsty battle driven psycho, Mayuri in some ways is basically if the X-Men villain, Mr. Sinister was on the side of good, and even Byakuya can be a little too much on the smug side even Genryu Yamamato's powers seemingly fits the powers of a villain more so than a hero. Rukia and Renji's backstories are pretty interesting and the Gungrave fan in me really did enjoy drawing the parallels between with them and Brandon Heat and Harry MacDowell. However, Bleach does have characters who aren't very good good at all and at times get more focus than the characters I mentioned like Orihime Inonue and Yatsura Sado. Uryu Ishida can be a decent character but that's the problem with Bleach, most of it's interesting and good characters are almost never given anything interesting to do or fight villains who are one note, and barely has any personal connections with. Ichigo on paper is a pretty interesting character, sure it can sound a little corny with how he how much he loves to emphasize that he protects friends and family but I do find him interesting in how he kind of thinks like a mobster where if you mess with anyone in social circle, you directly mess with him. He talks like he is selfless when you can argue it's more out selfishness. There is a lot you can take a character like this but Bleach doesn't really do this more on that later. The first 60 something or so episodes of Bleach, I'd say are solid stuff, Ichigo's backstory on how he blames himself for his mother's death I find to be compelling since it gives a good enough reason for his hero complex to be a thing and why he has such an obessesion with protecting those he loves. It also explains why he is so serious all the time. Sure it may sound a little too similar to Yu Yu Hakusho but I'd argue Bleach does a good job at being different like how Ichigo chose to be a Soul Reaper out of reluctance where Yusuke had to find out after dying that people cared for him. The Soul Society arc is basically Saint Seiya meets the Green Lantern mythos. Speaking of the Soul Society arc, it's generally good stuff, Rukia is pretty compelling in how she is conflicted on whether or not she deserves to live or die and her backstory of being a street urchin who blames herself for the death of the only person who cared for outside of Renji is compelling stuff. The part where the aforementioned "soft strums" song when Ichigo saved her from the execution admittedly got me teary eyed. Byakuya is built up very well as an antagonist, where it might be Bleach's best and only good use of the Worf Effect, where the power gaps between him and Ichigo is slowly closing but it at the same time, kind of far, and the latter needing to learn Bankai fast really adds urgency to the story. This will also be the only time I praise Sosuke Aizen as a villain here since in the Soul Society arc, he is kind of compelling in that Momo geniunely wants to believe he is a good person and the story in turns does a good job making you buy that Aizen could be that but ultimately, he was nothing more than a two faced liar, it's all foreshadowed very well since Toshiro is the guy doubting Aizen's "true" intentions. His plans get a little silly but compared to what happens later, this is just least of the how dumb it gets. There are some issues with the arc, like how it begins with Ichigo's and his friends, the latter pretty much disppears for a lot of the arc but I'm willing to overlook this. The later two filler arcs of Bleach like Zanpakuto Rebellion and Gotei 13 Invasion are solid and are far better than the later canon arcs post Soul Society like the Arancar and Fullbring. The characters introduced in the Soul Society are given more interesting villains to fight with the former being their own swords and the latter being clones of themselves. And the Gotei 13 Invasion arc in general was the one time where I was like, "you know Bleach can be cool" back when I watched it on TV. These two arcs prevent me from giving Bleach a 4 and instead raises my score to a 5. I won't go too much into detail here since these are filler arcs and I doubt many will even watch them since they have no bearing on the overall canon, but if you are like me, and you want to see some of the better characters in Bleach given interesting stuff to do then it is worth watching, if you like Byakuya Kuchki like I do then I say Zanpakuto Rebellion is a must watch since he has a very epic fight with Koga and it adds a lot of depth to his character, only problem is, this isn't apart of Bleach's canon so it's up to you. This already tells you a lot, if Bleach's most well written stories post Soul Society are later filler arcs and not the canon then that tells you everything, the supposed me being "positive" for a few paragraphs might've went on longer than it did but I still stanby that everything related to Bleach's canon post Soul Society is a huge mess. The Arancar arc might be something I will use as proof that characters can't carry a dull and boring plot. It starts off okay with me even respecting Ikkau for beating his enemy without a random powerup but once the Heuco Mundo portions of the show begin, everything and I mean everything starts falling apart. Orhime was already nothing more than a quirky airhead and now there is an entire arc focused on rescuing her, at least Rukia was interesting. What's worse is that Orihime's "kidnapping" doesn't amount to anything, she never comes close to destroying Hogyoko, Aizen never needed her to invade Karakura Town and she gets kidnapped again for no reason after Ichigo spent multiple episodes fight Aizen's minions and Grimmjow, and Kenpachi also fighting one of Aizen's henchmen that he has no personal connection with. It doesn't end there either, this arc barely has much of a plot, character development, or learning anything new about the characters, it's esstentially just one and I mean LONG fight scene. Sure this is shonen this what you watch these stories for but to describe the Arancar arc of Bleach is this: What if the Dragon Ball Z's Namek Saga had Vegeta fight characters like Cui, Zarban, Dadoria, and the Ginyus for 20-30 episodes and every fight was as long as the final battle with Freiza? You get this. I stopped watching Bleach in 2015 because nothing happened for multiple episodes on end, and it turned out me and seemingly many other people were smart in dropping it around this arc. The only good villains in the Arancar arc I had any attechment towards with were Grimmjow and Yammy since they actually did some villainous stuff like antagonizing Ichigo's friends and showing how powerful they are, seeing Grimmjow finally get beaten was nice especially considering this is the only rivalry in the Arancar arc that got buildup and payoff. None of the other Espadas are even on this level since they show up, have a long fight and then have a lengthy flashback revealing their backstories right before they are about to die. However all the good I can say comes back with more negatives, remember how I said, I liked Byakuya, Kenpachi and Mayuri? They pretty much become benchwarmers in Heuco Mundo when the real fighting starts happening in Fake Karakura Town and that is after them fighting boring and one note villains they have no personal connection with. Ichigo as a character I stopped taking seriously too since his win against Uliquorra was completely unearned and he pretty much got a powerup out of nowhere to beat him. It was already questionable that Ichigo was able to use his Hollow Powers without completing his Vizard training but I can argue that was just him learning as he is going but this is just nonsense since it's pretty obvious that Ichigo needs to win but he hasn't learned anything besides Hollowfying and Getsuga Tensho and on a side note, you know how in shonen where the protagonist trains and learns new moves? Ichigo just has his Bankai, Getsuga Tensho and Hollowfying(this eventually gets taken away too), so have fun watching the same repetitive fights with him. Then there is Aizen, I don't even know where to get started with Aizen post Soul Society, he's like the kind of guy who claims he is really good at video games but can't play without cheat codes or assist options. There is his motivation that he wants to kill the Soul King but the thing is multiple episodes will go by and not much is revealed about the Soul King or even getting much insight into Aizen's motivations...until the very end of the arc where Kisuke does his whole sealing thing on him but by that point Aizen is almost beaten you had hundreds of episodes to explain this, too little too late. There is extremely overpowered abilties in which if you see his shikai, you are under his hyponsis, you can't break out of it, and there is no way to fight back, this makes every fight with him boring as all hell since it's hard to tell if the heroes even know they are under his hyponosis and every fight with Aizen up until his final battle with Ichigo is him effortlessly winning. Frieza and Cell at the very least had their moment of vunerability while also being dominant where Aizen doesn't show his vunerablity until the end which by that point, I stopped caring. Another issue is what even was the point of the Espadas? Aizen during the Fake Karakura Town fight effortlessly beats the Vizards and Soul Society with only Yamamato being the only one who could lay a dent on him. All Aizen had to do was make Wonder Weiss and that was it. He was apparently afraid of Kenpachi, Mayuri and Byakuya but why? Were they immune to his hyponosis, but you need to touch his shikai in order to hurt him so could Kenpachi hurt him? Never made clear. Of course then there is the whole him planning Ichigo's entire life and the entire series up until he fought Aizen again, many have criticized this reveal but what I find silly about all this all is nothing more than Kubo giving Ichigo a personal stake to defeat Aizen since the former is given no real stake in having the latter get beaten. Aizen was basically a Soul Society matter and outside of Ichigo and him having that one fight in the Soul Society arc, Aizen has done nothing to Ichigo. This retcon just feels like a laughable attempt at giving them a personal connection considering how silly and ridiculous for Sosuke to somehow have every win and loss Ichigo had go according to plan, this is what I mean when he feels like someone who says he's good at video games but needs to cheat to win. After all of this, the Arancar arc is already a poorly written mess I've written multiple paragraphs about it but the Fullbring arc? It's also bad and poorly written, XCUTION is even more dull and one note than the Espadas since once the Soul Society shows up towards the end, they get beaten extremely easily despite them apparently being important characters to the story. At least the Espadas put up an actual fight. Ginjo is a poor man's Sensui even if that has been said many times. There is so little shown about Ginjo's past as a former Substitute Soul Reaper and there is yet another retcon regarding Ukitake giving them combat passes for survalliance but why or for what reason? Who knows. The arc ends before Ichigo can question Ukitake and he shockingly forgives him very easily too. On top of giving Ginjo a proper burial after all the stuff he put Ichigo through. Then there is other awful things about the arc like how Ichigo's Fullbring training was ultimately pointless since his actual Soul Reaper powers come back not too long after the former was taken and why did Rukia and the Soul Society keep it a secret from him? To throw off Ginjo and XCUTION? What's even the point in that? They pretty much stood no chance to begin with. Other issues include how Orihime, Chad and Uryu might become important again to the story after not providing much of anything to the story as a whole but that is ultimately a red herring since the first two get hypotonized and Uryu outside of revealing Ginjo being a villain doesn't provide much. One good thing about the arc was how Ichigo's friends and family were used against him since it's nice to see the thing Ichigo fights for being put on it's head. However no one of geniune importance even dies. This leads to my final issue with Bleach, is there any long term progression for anything? Sure the characters are slightly older by the Fullbring arc but that's about it. No one major even dies, there's barely any long term character development and the show by the end of the Fullbring arc is barely that different to when it started. Is there any more information revealed on the Soul King? No. Does Ichigo or anyone's character fundamentally changes? No. You can criticize Dragon Ball for not having death be permanent but at least there is SOME plot progression. Kami and Piccolo fuse, Gohan grows older and gets married, Vegeta and Bulma hook up, Dende becomes the new guardian of earth and Vegeta learns humlity and Mr. Satan even starts to become a geniune ally. Naruto even had the Shinobi world end in some form of peace by the end of Shippuden. Yu Yu Hakusho even attempted to give Yusuke a character of arc of slowly becoming more like a demon which could've been great if the 3 Kings arc was better. Bleach has none of this and this makes me question why I got to end of the anime's original run at all. I might watch the 1000 Year Blood War arc when it ends next year but I'm find it hard to care now, Tite Kubo just isn't a good writer. Bleach had a solid framework but the execution is just severly lacking on all fronts to even reccomend to anyone at all if they don't have a previously established nostalgic connection to it like I did.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Aug 25, 2024 Recommended Spoiler
Gungrave is a show I heard about years ago, it did have a dedicated cult following over the years, but I would I never thought I would enjoy as much as I did, I consider the Gungrave anime to be the greatest adaptation on a game of all time. With so many games getting adaptations now and with me playing the Gungrave games themselves in recent years, I decided to watch the show again for the first time in over a decade and years later, I still think the show is geniunely fantastic.
Before I start describing what makes it so great, I might as ... well address the first episode, it's often said that you shouldn't watch the first episode but I argue on it's own, it really isn't that bad, the first episode sets up the flashback sections and the "genre shift" of sorts the story will take later down the line in a similar way Berserk 1997 does, the only difference is, Gungrave has an actual ending and a great one at that. The problem arises is that this episode eventually gets revisisted with not much changes later in the series, so then the question becomes do skip the first episode or the aforementioned later episode? I'd say watch them both and if you have the option to put the later episode on times 2 speed if you are getting annoyed by the deja vu. It wasn't really an issue for me since I found the show so engrossing but I consider doing this. Now with that out of the way, after playing the Gungrave game particular the first game from 2002, the more I appreciate the anime more than I already do. The best way of describing Gungrave is that it's the aforementioned Berserk meets the Godfather with designs you might recognize from the Trigun series. The thing with the Gungrave game is that it's primarily a third person shooter, where all you do is kill things until you fight a boss and you do this for 2 hour until the credits roll, a game like this might not even sound like it would make for a compelling crime drama but the flashback sections is where the show is elevated above many game adaptations back then and even now. Characters like Bear Walken, Ballad Bird Lee, Big Daddy, Bob Poundmax and Harry MacDowel were mostly just bosses you fight in the game, they had cool designs and you kill them. In the anime however, these characters are much more fleshed out especially Bear, Big Daddy and Harry, where they might seem one note in the game, in the anime, you know their relationships, struggles, values and morals. This is what a good game adaptation should do, expand on characters that didn't have much time to develop in the game and flesh them out in a medium where they are able to. The character of Grave/Brandon Heat himself comes off as somewhat dull silent protagonist, in the anime however, Brandom is the kind of guy who speaks with his actions rather than words. The flashback sections in the Gungrave anime to me rivals some of the best movies, the episode "Family" in particular is probably one of the greatest standalone episodes I have ever seen in anime if not ever even. The way it makes me sympathize with a respected mobster who chose his son is something I watch and experience media for to begin with, to make me consider and feel things I might not otherwise have felt. These sections are widely praised and they are no doubt great but something that I hear from some is that the show goes "downhill" after they are done, I personally have to disagree with this, I think the 2nd half isn't all that different from the way Berserk changes post eclipse, a big reason for this is that the characters of Blood War and Dr. Tokioka especially the latter, he is the link that carries the sci fi elements of Gungrave together since he was there since the early episodes and is a reason why the "undead soldiers" even exist at all. These two characters is what prevents the transition from being overly sudden. Here's the weird thing, the 2nd half is mostly faithful to the Gungrave game. Sure some scenes are expanded upon but the 2nd half mostly follows the same story beats as the game kind of like the Zack Snyder Watchmen movie, and much like that movie, the thing that the anime changes is the ending. In the game, Brandon climbs up a huge tower fighting enemies and then the final boss is Big Daddy's undead corpse. In the anime, the ending is similar to Cowboy Bebop's except much better executed than that since Harry MacDowel and Brandon Heat's dynamic is much more fleshed out than Spike and Vicious's. The ending of Gungrave to me might be one of the greatest ficitional endings ever in how much it wraps up the story in a nice and tidy bow, a very tragic bow. This is however where this leads me to negatives, the character of Mika is pretty useless and a little on the grating side. The thing you could argue with the Gungrave game is that Grave and Mika's bond is the heart of the story and in the game, Grave lives at the end and Mika becomes a capable character in the sequel to the 2002 game, Overdose, since Grave dies in the anime, Mika kind of serves no purpose and doesn't really do much of anything outside of getting Grave in trouble, she ultimately never really drives the plot forward in any way. Another issue is Dr. Tokoia who is vital to keeping Gungrave's 2nd half consistent with the 1st just isn't that great of a character in his own right, much of his dialogue consists of saying he doesn't deserve redemption and that he is horrible for what he did and that's about it, his character feels like he was missing a backstory into what lead him to want to experiment on dead people to begin with. Also, I don't like complaining about "plot holes" per say, but how was Dr. Tokoia was able to procure Brandon's body even though he got shot from a high tower with so many people looking at his corpse? Not a big issue, but it's just weird. Final issue is that the world building is kind of vague, it takes place in a fictional city yet there is refrences to things like the Iraq war or "orcmen" used in the middle east or how Blood War's backstory is connected to that. The city in Gungrave seems to be like a city in a superhero story at first but then it seems like there is more than just a city and there actually is a bigger world but the story is kind of ambigous about it. It's not a big issue but like the Tokoia plothole, but it's something that just gets me thinking for reasons I doubt the writers intended. Overall, Gungrave is a great show and to me still the greatest video game adaptation of all time. I don't think anything from here on out will ever really top this series for me. I think the Gungrave game is just "okay" but the anime is one of my favorite anime and TV shows of all time and that is what a story based on any game or medium should do.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Aug 17, 2024
Naruto: Shippuuden
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Spoiler
Naruto Shippuden as well as Naruto as a franchise is a series I have a complicated relationship with over the years, as a kid I remember liking the story pre timeskip or "Part 1" a lot, even after my brief break with anime from 2008-2012, I did eventually pick up Shippuden and I recall enjoying the story to varying degrees at least the canon stuff up until the War arc. I skipped all the fillers of course, but one major issue with the Shippuden series is that there is A LOT a filler in between major arcs and A LOT of mixed canon filler when
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the major arcs did get adapted and it only got worse when the series went on especially during the War arc, it eventually got to a point where I started to hate the post time skip parts of the series for almost 10 years since I stopped watching the series back in 2014, now I'm watching the series 10 years later and much of my thoughts are the same just that now, it's much easier to watch since all the episodes are avaliable and I can skip all the mixed canon filler. Going to separate this review to 3 sections, "the good", "the bad" and "the ugly".
The Good - The pacing of the major arcs is mostly pretty good. There is going to be mixed canon filler stuff like during the Kazekage Rescue and the battle on the Tenchi Bridge but I have watched stuff like the original 90s anime of Dragon Ball Z, so I'm kind of used to the way some of the longer fights can be especially the battle on the Tenchi Bridge. In spite of all this, Naruto Shippuden up until the War arc managed to avoid something that plagues many long running shows, not just shonen which "arc fatigue". Every section pre War arc never lasted overly long and new story arcs were getting introduced at a reasonable pace. At the very least the staus quo does change by the end of the series and all though characters like Sasuke are problematic, at the very least he doesn't take the entire series to kill Itachi. The Akatsuki are also pretty good villains, most if not all of them have their own goals and motivations for joining and avoid being the "generic doomday villain" which is stuff you can find with a lot of stories that feature many villains or superhero team up stories where they just write villains for the sake of adding a number so they can challenge more heroes. Pain is also a better villain than I remember him for being too, when I first watched the Pain arc, I found his "pain" monologues to be dull and monotonous but now, it's kind of interesting where he esstentially wants everyone to understand each other by feeling the pain of others and everyone feeling pain. It's more interesting I initally gave him credit for. Characters like Sakura and Shikimaru are given more to do now especially how Shikimaru is given his own arc now and starts to change and mature as a character, he was already a great character in Part 1 and Part 2 and post timeskips just makes him better. Sakura is also less annoying by comparison to Part 1 and she is even given a major victory and even tries to take matter into her own hands. I wouldn't call her a great character by any means but she does become someone I can sort of respect as opposed to character like Hinata who I already discussed in my Last Naruto movie review. One final positive is that while characters do get brought back, I admire Naruto for actually killing off it's major character like Jiraiya and outside of say, Orochimaru all the characters are brought back for a temporary time and then are written out of the story. Orochimaru being alive is somewhat understandable since he sort of has immortality to sorts to begin with. Naruto at the very least avoids an issue that plagued a show like Yu Yu Hakusho where that series was just too scared to kill off any of it's major characters and Togashi would often pull punches much of the time. Final positive is that Naruto, while I'm not going to call him a great character due to reasons later on does slowly start to mature and become more tolerable the more the story goes on, even if his "talk no jutsu" requires heavy amounts of suspension of disbelief, I'd take this over keeping villains alive and then having them still remain evil, neither is great, but talk no jutsu is slightly more tolerable. I do commend Naruto to varying degrees that the series' status quo is completely different by the end of the series compared to the start. The Bad - Shippuden does have a lot of good going for it but there is just one issue that plagues the series that prevents it from being consistently enjoyable and that is both the character of Sasuke Uchiha and his relationship with Naruto. Many of often cited the Chunin Exams of Naruto to be the high point of the series but there is just one big major problem with it, that arc splintered Naruto's audience, there's two kinds of Naruto fans, those who watch it for Naruto and Sasuke's "friendship" and rivalry and those who watch it for the side characters, I'm sort of in the latter but a huge problem that plagued Naruto and Sasuke is the fact that Kishimoto wants you to think Naruto and Sasuke has been together for so long when in reality, they were only together for the Land of the Waves arc all the way to Sasuke's fight with Yaroi. When Sasuke says, "you are the one I want to fight the most" to Naruto. That is the last geniune interaction Naruto and Sasuke even have. After this there is lots of episodes where Naruto and Sasuke don't speak or have interactions with each other, this becomes a problem the more series goes on. The series loves to tell you Sasuke and Naruto have been on tons of life threatning adventures together but that isn't really the entire pre timeskip of Naruto. Technically speaking when only counting canon, Naruto only really spent time with Sasuke during the Land of the Waves and Forest of Death, thats it but Kishimoto will love to act like he's done so much legwork and pats himself on the back for it. This is pretty much where the problem lies, Naruto in Part 2 spends so much of the series chasing after Sasuke instead of trying to achieve his own goals. The series will bring this up constantly on how Sasuke chose to leave and how Naruto could've gotten "stronger" instead of chasing Sasuke, the self awareness doesn't make Naruto come off less of a creepy yandere. The thing with Naruto is that he CAN be a good character but he shines whenever Sasuke is not around. I kind of get what the series was going for to some degree but Kishimoto loves to think he did the leg work when he didn't. If Naruto and Sasuke didn't have such a lack of screen time gap inbetween Sasuke's fight with Yaroi and when Sasuke left the village and if they had more missions together than MAYBE I would want Naruto to have Sasuke come over to the light side but instead Naruto just comes off as a stalker. Then there is Sasuke and I will give the series this in that he eventually kills Itachi but for one he was just a dull and one note character who just acts stoic and not much else especially how lacks compassion for so much of Shippuden. After Sasuke kills Itachi, he spends much of the series being a one note revenge driven psycho who wants to destroy the Leaf Village in spite of the fact that if it weren't for a retcon(Sasuke would be dead if it weren't for Tsunade, so Itachi was never really that sympathetic) yet Sasuke believes that Itachi was ultimately good. The funny thing in all this is, that it weren't for the reanimations of Itachi and Hashirama, Sasuke would've never have temporaily turned face during the War arc so Naruto's ploy to bring Sasuke back to the village is rendered that much more rudundant. Sasuke does admittedly became a more interesting character post War arc since he actually has some compassion to show with the stoicism by saving those kids in the fighting arena. The Ugly - Basically everything War arc related, you can put in the entire arc minus Obito's face turn. I'll be positive for a minute that I think Obito while not being a good villain was the most tolerable part of the arc since he's the only villain that remained a player all the way through rather than eventually getting written out like Mardara and Kabuto were. As for the War arc itself, where do I start, it's full of red herrings and retcons. I'll start with the red herrings, there's many but there's mainly just two, the Kages, the Allied Shinobi Force itself and Madara Uchiha. The first few sections of the arc is painfully boring because they are basically focusing on side character and since I knew how this played out, will eventually get taken out of the story like Choji and Darui. The Allied Shinobi Force basically become one big protect mission for Naruto and eventually Team 7 and the resurrected Shinobi who weren't undone by Itachi and the Kages who basically jump started the arc and had a summit arc dedicated too them ultimately get beaten by Madara off screen and get put in the dream world. All of these are big hyped up parts that lead to nothing. The retcons are too numerous to count and they aren't even good ones. I can be here all day and this write up has gone on long enough but the biggest ones are the Indra and Ashura and Black Zetsu ones. The former makes Naruto and Sasuke magically connected by destiny and robs them of their agency and the Black Zetsu one writes out the Madara out of the story, a villain they were fighting for episodes on end. They were fighting Madara for so many episodes and they don't even beat him. This makes the War arc look worse in the long run. It makes Kaguya look worse since she was the villain the good guys were able to beat and Madara had to be taken out by someone else. The War arc wouldn't be so bad but the filler makes it even worse. The pacing makes an arc that was already horrible and slows the pacing down to a crawl. There's filler episodes every few episodes between the canon ones, you can skip those but then there is mixed canon filler which is sometimes hard to tell which is canon or not, it got so bad, that I got the Naruto manga out side by side with the anime and had to look up what parts can be skipped since the most popular anime filler sites don't tell you which parts are supposed to be skipped. One more thing I will say is that the ending up to episode 500 isn't that great. The last 7 episodes focuses on a wedding, ship and character I already don't care about and it ends on promoting Boruto a show I don't even want to watch. It really does suck for the people who watch Shippuden back in 2007 just to be told, "now the adventures continue in Boruto". Overall, Naruto especially Shippuden, or Part 2, or post time skip is one of the biggest mixed bags of an anime I have ever watched. There are good parts, there's bad and there's parts that made me wonder what why I was even watching. As it is now, the Naruto Shippuden anime is hard to geniunely reccomend. If you want to watch the Naruto story and not read manga, Naruto Kai might be ideal and the Storm games might also be better than the Shippuden anime especially during the War arc, say what you want about Storm 3's non canon ending but it did make the Kage look more powerful and the anime is full of non canon stuff anyway. It depends on how much you of a gamer you are. As it stands, unless it's been another 10 years or I'm really feeling nostalgic, then I might watch Naruto Shippuden again but hopefully by then, a real Naruto Kai gets made.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 17, 2024
The Last: Naruto the Movie
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Spoiler
I remember watching this movie 10 years ago and strongly disliking it. This was back in a time where I really started to dislike Naruto considering how bad the story was getting and much filler hell the Shippuden anime was going through at the time, it wouldn't even end until 3 years later after this movie came out. Now that I'm kind of softer on Naruto, the original series is really good and have finished Shippuden all the way to the end while skipping as much filler and mixed canon as possible, I still definely think this movie is bad. Expecting great writing out of
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an anime movie based on a TV series is too much, I know but even judging the Last Naruto movie on that standard, it's still awful. I don't like to complain about the anime I watch, I really don't. I would rather talk about anime that I think is really good or at the very least flawed in a stimulating way. The Naruto Shippuden anime is the latter btw. This movie isn't this, I was either bored or zoning out and was just waiting for it to end.
What makes this movie especially grating to watch is the amount of production value that was put into the movie. The animation is quite nice and has clearly more budget put into it and looks better than the anime is based on is. The fights are okay even if it lacks the clear fist fighting choreography that some fights in the anime did. What makes The Last Naruto movie more sad to watch is that unlike say something like Tekken: The Motion Picture, this movie has a budget and a lot of the animators worked hard to make the movie. To sum up The Last Naruto movie in a few words, it's basically, "Naruto x Hinata" ship the movie. Sure the movie may try to fool you into thinking that it isn't with it's doomsday plot of the world coming to an end but this is very much a romance movie at heart. Before I get into why the romance doesn't really work for me, if you aren't a Hinata Hyuga fan well guess what? This movie just isn't going to be for you. In many ways, if you aren't a fan of Hinata I struggle to figure out who this movie is even for, if you are a new comer to Naruto and just want to come to this movie for the production values and fights, you won't get that here. If you are a Naruto fan and don't like or care for Hinata, you won't get much out of this all the other characters like Kakashi, Shikimaru, Sai, Rock Lee, Sasuke, and any other character not Naruto and Hinata are basically just side characters with nothing to do. At least stuff like the Dragon Ball Z movies before Battle of Gods took place in their own universe and were all about the fights and Battle of Gods at least had more going on than canonizing the world's most uninteresting ship. Hinata Hyuga was a character I never once liked. To me she is everything bad about the whole, "hardwork vs natural talent" narrative and dicussion people love to have about Naruto. I really want to say this movie did an incredible job at having her character win me over but it didn't. Hinata is a character that is as bad if not worse than characters like Kaguya and Black Zetsu. At least with them, they get beaten in a few episodes and leave the story after. Hinata on the other hand has this movie and the last 7 episodes of Shippuden dedicated to her and everything post war arc related is the creators really wanting to shove this "ship" down your throat. Everything about the movie is connected to Hinata and hinges on how much you like her, her sister gets captured, the main villain wants to marry her, the movie makes a big deal about the scarf Hinata makes for Naruto, the Hyuga clan are suddenly important again after hundreds of episodes of being irrelevant. What annoys me about all this is that they had hundreds of chapters and anime episodes to make all this seem important and create possible set up for the movie but instead everything comes out of left field. With Hinata and the romance itself, everything about it is painfully uninteresting. The character herself becomes a main character out of nowhere without ever earning her keep. This just sums up Hinata in general. When Neji defeated her in the Chunin Exams, the Leaf Jonin came to protect her. What does she do after? Nothing until she confesses her love to Naruto in one of the dumbest ways you can do it, and almost gets killed, then she does absolutely nothing until Neji dies protecting her and Naruto. Does she contribute anything to the War arc? No, she ends up becoming one of the many characters Naruto babysits during that arc and ends up in the dream world Madara created. Now the movie centered around Hinata should win me over right? Nope, its just her usual character interactions of her being incredibly nervous around Naruto and being incredibly shy and quiet(what riveting character development after hundreds of episodes) and then she surrenders herself to the enemy while Sakura is the one to heal Naruto and Shikimaru is the one talk Naruto out of doubting himself. What did Hinata do? Nothing. The only thing of worth she does in the almost 2 hour movie help Naruto destroy an orb. How impressive. This just sums up her up in general. She becomes an important character without earning any of it. Her character interactions despite confessing her love in the Pain arc, she still can't say how she feels. This might sound ranty, but everything about Hinata I just detest, she's not even clingy character in an interesting way. She was a one note character from the start and she still is with this movie. Overall, I did want to like the Last Naruto movie and have some enjoyment out of it like I did with Shippuden. The Naruto story post timeskip had many highs and many lows but this movie is nothing but lows. I can't think of many high points and it might've been a mistake watching this movie again at all knowing what it's really all about.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jul 19, 2024
Kaijuu 8-gou
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Spoiler
It pains me to write a negative review on any anime series I watch, I geniunely wanted to enjoy Kaiju No. 8 and have a fun time, maybe just have an average mindless "turn your brain off" show but due to the reasons I will explain, I just couldn't stand watching it.
Show is very derivative of Evangelion, Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia. I'm not a big fan of either of these shows but all 3 of them feel more competently written than this series. Why I watched this show and why it was even on my radar was due to the fact ... that there is a 32 year old protagonist. The protagonist Kafka Hinbino is 32 years old that is struggling to figure out what to do with his life and wonders if he can still amount to something at the age, this is a great premise for a show like this and it's something I geniunely relate to everyday. The thing is, Kafka is a 32 year old in name only, the guy is basically My Hero Academia's Deku in terms of personality and how much he wants to avoid using powers, and how he uses his knowledge and him "studying" the things around him to be effective at anything than outright combat. He cries a lot, is super hyperactive, screams like no tommorrow, and just acts more like a teenager than someone who is 32, he acts so much like a kid half the time, I wonder if he is secretly DC's Captain Marvel in that he is child inside of a man's body. This could've been something that made this series stand out and why I came to this show at all but instead, I just can't help but get super annoyed with most if not all of Kafka's antics. If the guy was a teenager, fine act this way, but what is the point of making what seemingly is a fighting shonen with a protagonist way older than than he is 15-18 when he doesn't act his age? If the other characters didn't constantly call him an "old man", I would never even think that he was a full grown adult. Never read the manga but there is lots of scenes that seem like they would flesh out the story like how did Kafka control his Kaiju powers for 3 whole months with no one noticing, why did the Kaiju monster inside Kafka took took so long to take him over? The side characters and especially Mina Ashiro who basically the show hypes up as this super awesome action hero and Kafka knew her since childhood but yet not much is actually shown, like what were their childhood like outside of the few seconds flashbacks that were shown? When did Mina and Kafka start to become more distant from each other? How did Mina become the "badass" woman everyone can depend on? All that is ever shown of Mina during flashbacks is her crying as a child, that is not enough for me to believe she would grow up to become capable and dependable. As it stands Mina is barely any different and one note as Mikasa was in season 1 of AoT while having Levi's personality. She also seems to be the only famous soldier in the whole show, aren't there other decorated war heroes besides her? Why does she have that tiger around? The lack of her character being fleshed out makes her so dull to me. Since their might cut manga content, this leads me to my next issue It never really feels like humanity is really losing, Attack on Titan did this better. At least in that show, a human monster hybrid made some degree of sense since humanity was clearly on the losing side and Eren is given a power to change the tide of the war. In AoT, right from the start, the Titans are made to be powerful threats and they are so powerful that humanity has to be behind a wall to thwart them off, and every time the soliders fight in AoT, they take heavy casualities. In Kaiju No. 8? Most of if not all the Kaiju are pathetically weak and there is still human civiliation at the start of the show even in the first episode, the Kaiju is beaten which already dimishes them as a threat. Then there is weirder inconsistencies like how did the Defense Force get infiltrated and get attacked during training drills despite the fact that they've been training soldiers for years and are so proficient at killing Kaiju? Then Kaiju No. 10 comes so out nowhere into the story with barely any build up or even any hype for his initial appreance that I pretty much didn't care when he was on screen. Where did this dude come from? What is so special about him? I know so little about him and the show barely hyped him up that I was like, "huh?" There was also stuff like how Kaiju have existed in the 1970s, if so, how exactly did the war lasted this long? And so much of the stakes have to be told, like when Kaiju No. 6 showed up he caused a lot of damage, I would sure love to see how Kikarou's mom died. Maybe this gets explained later on but there is such little of anything here that I don't know if I care enough. There is also the fact that AoT takes place in a fantasy where Kajiu No. 8 takes place in modern day and I'm asking questions like, why is Japan the only country that seems to matter in this whole conflict? Even the fight between Kikarou's dad and Kafka feels it's trying too hard to echo the courtroom scene in AoT. There is a lot of exaggerated expressions and terrible over the top humor especially in the early to middle part of the series. If you wanted me to be turned away from the show right from the offset, you put this stuff in. There's lots of tonal whiplash or "bathos" in this show where something serious would happen followed by something humorous and over the top, it took me out of the show multiple times, for example, early in the show, there is a scene where Kafka saves a little girl from getting eaten by a Kaiju then it's followed up by a couple of seconds of exaggerated expressions and over the top shouting comedy. Kakfa's Deku like personality didn't help and many of the downtime and even serious action scenes are basically this. It was almost Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood levels of obnoxious. None of the characters really stand out except for maybe Reno Ichikawa. At least he's interesting in that he's trying to prove himself to everyone and kind of feels like an underdog. Kikoru feels like a generic one note female tsundere like Asuka Langely from Evangelion. Kikoru's father appears so late in the series that it's almost impossible for me to get attached to anything he does, he just comes off to me as a typical strict dad who seemingly has compensation issues. A lot of the other characters I can barely recall being anything of note. I might not like Chainsaw Man that much but at least that show had Aki and Kishibe, this show there is no one even gluing me to my screen. I wanted to like this show, the adult cast and the fact that Production I.G tend to make anime that appeal to me are big reasons as to why but instead I was watching an anime I question why I even bothered getting to the end of. I was either bored or zoning out for much of my watch Kaiju No. 8.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Dec 4, 2023
NieR:Automata Ver1.1a
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Spoiler
I am going to start off this review by saying that I am not really a fan of the game this anime is based on, I found Automata's story and especially it's characters to be inferior to the first Nier game even though it's been a while since I played the latter. I found the plot of the Automata game to be very barebones in terms of themes and character that I found the idea of beating the game 5 times over 20-30 hours to be a tedious affair that I don't want to go through that again. The story and the combat are both
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too dull for me to want to revisit.
So why I did I watch the anime at all if I never liked the game? I find the belief that you need to be a "fan" of the source material in order to check out and enjoy the adaptation to be a pretty misguided belief. There's a good number of people out there who never read a superhero comic and there are many who are apprehensive about the industry in general but is that going to stop those same people from raving about how much they enjoyed the Sam Raimi Spider-Man and Christopher Nolan Batman movies? No it won't. To use an anime example, the Gungrave adaptation from the 00s is one my favorite anime of all time and that was based on third person shooters that were just "decent" at best so I'd say it's possible for me to enjoy this adaptation of Nier Automata despite me not liking the game. Long introductions out of the way, what did I think of this show? I'd say as an adaptation of the Nier Automata game it's really misguided. The best of way of describing the show is that it feels like it was made for people who can't get into video games at all so what the anime creators did was create a 90% faithful adaptation while adding in new scenes that don't develop the two main characters, made changes that don't contribute much, and removed aspects of the game that showed the game's narrative was never that great to begin with. I'll start with what was already similar, the basic plot of the game is still here and if this was a story and writing I was a fan of I would find this to be okay but watching the anime just reminded me of how much I never liked the game's story to begin with. 2B and 9S are just painfully dull lead characters and it's not because they are androids, it's because their character interactions are just the bare minimum for a character dynamic and most of their interactions revolve around the same thing, 9S gets overly excited and tries to have a fun conversation with 2B and the latter just stoicly dismisses everything 9S throws at her. There are some exceptions like when 2B and 9S discuss what they are going to do together after the war but these are few and far between. 2B doesn't have much going on with her outside of just being stoic and 9S only had two modes, acting casual around the people he works with and getting antagonistic towards "machine life forms". Maybe if this would be forgiven if there were any backstory reveals or any hints as to why the charactes act the way they do and the anime never shows it much like the game. The characterization of 2B and 9S are in the lore of the Nier Automara game and I thought the anime would incorporate that and it didn't. For example the reason why 2B acts so stoic in the game and anime is because she is forced to kill 9S and can't bring herself to kill do it which is why she acts dimissive towards 9S. I thought anime being a passive medium might be easier to portray this but they didn't which is such a shame. Now there are the villains for the season which are Adam and Eve which who are just painfully dull. Most of their interactions consist of Eve wanting to "play" with Adam and the latter being primarily interested in reading books, that what is all consists of. You'd think Adam in the anime and by extension Eve in the game would do some villain things like actively get in the way of the lead characters, do some collateral damage or just do something to make me dislike them or be interesting foils to the leads in some way but they aren't. Eve dies in the anime instead of Adam but the latter goes through the same "character arc" where they both experience loss and then just turn into over the top nilhilists, what was the point of changing who dies if the writing is going to remain the same anyway? Some of the bosses with them are removed and Adam gets beaten with the Hammer of Dawn instead of fighting 2B which makes me question if you can remove key boss fights from the game and mostly have the same story then were the bosses really that important to the story to begin with? This is yet another reason why I am not big on the game. Then there is the plot which is just super padded. It starts off with 2B and 9S joining up with the resistance, they randomly meet up with Adam and Eve and then a bunch of stuff happens in between that has nothing to with furthering the main characters' goals start happening, they go to an amusement park, they meet up with Pascal do some favors for him and then Adam randomly pops back into the story, the robots go crazy and then Adam does too and barely anything relating to the characters getting closer to their goal was achieved. Some good things about the anime being faithful to the game is the audio since the english dub actors and the soundtrack both return for the anime and they were the best things about the game and I am glad I get to experience them both without needing to deal with tedious gameplay and beating the game 5 times within the context of the story. The puppet shows that take place after the end credits are also really fun and enjoyable since they have more personality than the game and anime does, the characters get to more expressive in them. The main difference is and this is where I get a bit more positive is that there is now a character named Lily and the scenes with her were not in the game and I found thse scenes with her far more interesting than 2B and 9S. Her introduction established both that she spent her whole life being an expendable pawn and that Yorha doesn't treat the earth resistance with much care or respect so in just one scene of the first 10 minutes of the 2nd episode I care about her more than 2B and 9S, and she gets fleshed out more than 2B and 9S ever do throught the game and this part of the anime. She is also a connected to a backstory reveal with A2 that the game never fully shown which already puts the anime slightly above the game, only slightly. Which starts to make me wonder why not make the whole anime be told from Lily's perspective instead and the audience views 2B and 9S' actions through her. Halo Legends did this with the "Babysitter" short and it could've worked just as well here. Either do this or incorporate the characterization in the lore of the game into the anime. Overall, I wanted to like this show over the game and in a backhanded way, the fact that the anime is mostly faithful to the game makes it much easier to revisit the story again instead of me beating the game 5 times and doing 30 hours of dull combat and awkward minigames. At the same time, I wanted this series to be more than a mostly faithful adaptation, I wanted it to make geniunely like a story I never liked that much but it ultimately failed in that regard.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Aug 7, 2023
Biohazard: Death Island
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Spoiler
The movie surpassed my super low expectations I had for it, the movie isn't geniunely good at all but it's not the garbage I was expecting it to be either. It's middle of the road and I am surprised it accomplished that much.
It establishes itself that it's a dumb action movie from the first 10 minutes with how Leon finds the truck holding a vital character minutes after being told about his relevance to the plot and getting into a dumb motorcycle chase and highway fist fight later, if you can't accept the first 10 minutes of the movie and then you might as well ... shut it off. I can go on about the dumb crap in the movie, and some of it that bugged me was how they established a virus that acts like FOXDIE from MGS and how it's basically kryptonite for RE characters, which is a funny way of creating stakes and tension for the movie since it needs to seperate the team and make sure Rebecca and Jill play their roles in the story somehow. A big issue however is the that villain is basically Obito Uchiha garbage levels of writing where he wants to destroy the world because he was forced to kill his friend. Give me a fucking break, and so much of his character is expressed through endless amounts of excessive monologuing most of it is during the middle point of the movie. His backstory is just too much of a boring sob story to even make me care and his characterization being expressed through monologuing doesn't help. Some nitpicks as a "fan" of the games is that it's rather silly to see characters struggle against typical zombies when they have beaten them over 9000 times by now and it's also rather amusing to see Lickers get killed by one shot to the head with no use of a shotgun or high powered weapons considering in REmake 2 they take over 3 shotgun rounds to kill and the REmake games were the ones being refrenced in earlier in the movie. Good things about the movie is that Jill is handled decently and is the best character in the movie. Her character is decently foreshadowed as being the "underdog" lone wolf of the team is decently contextualized within the first 20 minutes. I also like some of the nods to the games like RE5 and 6 which kind of does a good job at creating some degree of a continuity in a franchise as messy as RE's. Rebecca's role I also kind of liked since it does a good at making her establish her role as the medic of the team and the action was decent and wasn't wannabe John Wick like Vendetta was. The ending climax with the super sayian hulk wannabe boss fight was hilariously over the top. It's basically an over the top climax boss fight you'd find in an RE game particularly the third person over the shoulder games. Overall, for an RE movie it wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be especially considering how much RE content has been produced as of late. Still, not "good" but at the very least tolerable.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 5, 2023
Hellsing Ultimate
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings Spoiler
Hellsing Ultimate was a show I watched almost 10 years ago and it was back in a time where I was waiting for each english dubbed episode to come out since they would take a while for them to release. Watching it again almost 10 years later after the final dubbed episode released and all it really did was confirm my thoughts that Hellsing Ultimate is an average show carried by an amazingly well acted english dub.
If the dub wasn't as over the top and amazingly directed as it was, I probably wouldn't even have made it through the show. While the OVA isn't ... super terrible or overly repulsive, I also think the writing overall is average at best and it also caried by the animation and art direction. The big issue with the show overall is the character of Alucard and while I do have some entertainment value from watching him primarily due to Crispin Freeman's excellent performance as him, as a character who supposed to be on the side of "good", he is just a character that is just too hard to get behind, Crispin Freeman does a good job at selling me on the material and his character design is pretty good, the first issue is that he basically just a maniac who enjoys killing people and inflicting pain on to other, this wouldn't be too bad if he went through an arc of slowly regretting all that but he doesn't. On top of that, and I don't like saying this crticism towards any character but he is just way too "overpowered". Alexender Anderson early in the series was the only one who managed to provide him with some semblance of challenge, more on that later but everyone else Alucard fights are barely even a threat to him. Luke Valintine and the "Dandy Man" just scratch him a little and then he transforms and then wins and many of the fights ends this way. Anyone who isn't named Alexender Anderson, barely even puts up a decent fight. The writers know this, so mid way through the series Alucard is literally waiting on a boat while all hell breaks loose around the characters. The episodes with Cerez and the Mercs have a decent amount of stakes and tension because they can't win super easily as Alucard has, the villains are only able to do any damage in this show at all is because Alucard spends so much time on the boat. If he wasn't, the Major and the Arch Bishop probably would've gotten killed extremely easily. This all feels like the kind of writing Superman gets bashed for having but at least he has villains who can hurt him like Parasite, Metallo, General Zod, Braniac, and Mister Mxyzptlk and Darkseid where Alucard only has one which is Alexender Anderson. On top of all this, Alucard isn't going through any existential crisis and making his next plan of attack while waiting on the boat, he is simpily just waiting there with nothing happening which makes me think the writers of the series couldn't figure how to keep around in the series at all times. He is also way too overpowered to do the Dragon Ball Z thing of having the protagonist get taken out of the story for a long period of time. This is where Alexender Anderson is a rather fascinating character, he feels like the true protagonist of the story. He has a code of honor, needs back up and doesn't kill unless if the people he is killing absolutely deserve it like the Arch Bishop for example. The fact that Anderson needs back up with his Paladins on top of him struggling really badly against his rematch with Alucard and him giving up his humanity in order to beat him makes me think that he was the true protagonist of the story. He is easier to root for than Alucard is. Steven Brand's performance as him is also fantastic much like Crispin Freeman's as Alucard and admittedly their "ham to ham combat" with each other was very entertaining. Then this leads to the final encounter with Alucard and Walter, the latter's betrayal literally feels like an asspull since the writers needed another opponent who knows how to fight to face Alucard since Anderson died beforehand and it's really poorly written since Walter before this betrayal never seemed like he had any resentment towards Alucard and any signs he was evil. If he was, he would've turned Integra over to the Major the first chance he got as opposed to letting her escape. The fight is basically Alucard mostly winning which is already really dull and of course Walter gets a "hero's death" in spite of all the bad things he did. I started to zone out when I got to this part of the show. Other parts where I zoned out was during the forced comedic expressions comedy scenes which I never really found funny and it can cause a massive tonal whiplash during the more serious moments. The ending was full of this stuff and it can be jarring since Integra lost someone who was "important" to her. It was 30 years later sure but that is also convient since you would need 30 years to rebuild Britain after all the damage that happened. I also got sick of the excessive if well acted monologuing by the Major especially. The "War" monologue earlier in the OVA was decent but it really started to get over done and the final episode could be shorted down a great deal if the Major would just shut up and accept his own death instead of talking, talking and talking. Overall, while I don't dislike Hellsing Ultimate and it was certainly better than the Gonzo show released years prior, the well acted and directed dub is why I reccomend this show at all. The writing overall is average and the animation and art direction also carries it a good deal. It just has too many issues for me to give a high reccomendation.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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(Anime)
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(Anime)
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It establishes itself that it's a dumb action movie from the first 10 minutes with how Leon finds the truck holding a vital character minutes after being told about his relevance to the plot and getting into a dumb motorcycle chase and highway fist fight later, if you can't accept the first 10 minutes of the movie and then you might as well ...
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Hellsing Ultimate
(Anime)
add
Hellsing Ultimate was a show I watched almost 10 years ago and it was back in a time where I was waiting for each english dubbed episode to come out since they would take a while for them to release. Watching it again almost 10 years later after the final dubbed episode released and all it really did was confirm my thoughts that Hellsing Ultimate is an average show carried by an amazingly well acted english dub.
If the dub wasn't as over the top and amazingly directed as it was, I probably wouldn't even have made it through the show. While the OVA isn't ... |