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May 23, 2018
I mean…I don’t know what to really say about this because it’s so short theirs not much too it. It seems like an interesting story I suppose. I liked the way it was presented as a sort of prison break and I actually found it much more compelling than the actual show. Mostly due to the main characters Scrooge and Carol(Get it? ‘Cause Christmas) having a much more interesting backstory and better personalities in a 10 minute short than Shu and Inori had in the whole series. I guess I just don’t know why this was made. I know it was to promote the game
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of the same name(which worked effectively because I want to play it now), but it seems like an awful lot of effort went into a game promo. The arts great, the action scenes are cool to look at and the story, as short as it is draws you in. It seems to me that more effort for a good story went into this game than it did for the whole anime and I find it odd. I suppose one should watch it if they liked the original anime with Shu and Co. Or if they want to learn a bit about the game before getting it, but other than that, you won’t be missing out much if you skip it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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May 19, 2018
I mean,if you need an example of the It’s Not Rape If You Enjoyed it trope, then look no further than Koisuru Boukun! My God is this creepy. I mean yes, there are a lot of ecchi animes with the storyline of getting the person drunk and then molesting them, and then eventually the drunk person will start liking it sort of thing, and they’re all bothersome to some extent but this one I found extra disturbing. Maybe because it’s played for laughs, or perhaps because the guy who gets drunk is totally straight and doesn’t like gay people, but the guy plying him with
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alcohol has sex with him anyway, but it’s probably a combination of both.
Now I don’t’ know if it’s explored more in the manga or not and maybe it’s because the anime is so short, but the way it’s played off like Tatsumi liked it eventually so why is he complaining is just gross. I might end up reading some of it, just to see because the angle the story takes is a different one than regularly seen in a yaoi manga. With the homophobe having to learn to like gay people, it’s an interesting take. Also it’s well drawn and animated, the characters are for the most part enjoyable; I really like Tatsumi’s grumpiness. I just don’t like the “love story” aspect. If you’re into that sort of fantasy, or can look past it, I’d suggest this. If not well…it’s only a couple episodes so it wouldn't be a complete waste of time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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May 4, 2018
Note: I also wrote this review on Goodreads under the name Animelove24 but it is my review.
All You Need Is Kill is a manga drawn by Takeshi Obata(the same guy who did Death Note and Bakuman) based on the light novel by the same name written by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. In it the main character Keiji is in the army trying to defeat a group of aliens called Mimics who have come to take over Earth. During his first battle, Keiji is seemingly killed by a Mimic but somehow wakes up the next day. This is repeated a few times before he realizes in order to
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get out of the loop he must defeat the Mimics and the story is basically him running around training and trying to go through the same day over and over without dying. It's like Groundhog Day but with aliens.
I found the story over all to be a fun little adventure story. It was funny at parts like with the sour plum eating contest, and heartwarming in others, such as wheb Rita and Keiji find, what I'll call their "common ground" without giving away spoliers. We also see the main character, whose very relatable in his quest to just live, grow as a person and push himself to his physical limits. It's also fun to watch him go through all the same things everyday. While it does exhaust him a lot after a while it's pretty funny to see him know everything that's going to happen, especially when he uses that knowledge to sneak past a bunch of guards. Keiji is also strong willed and I like the even after over 50 loops he still hasn't given up and doesn't even go off of his mission for a second even though he very well ould and it'd be understandable. I liked Rita as well. She definitely a badass as the only one whose known to been able to take down the Mimics in combat and she walks around carrying a giants axe that ways a couple tons so she's pretty tough. But she also has a softer side as we get to see in her backstory. Rita loves her family and her friends and is shown to be just a regular girl at heart. She's stubborn, she cries, loves jewellery likes to have fun as shown in the cafeteria scene and that's what I really enjoyed about her character. I like it when writers create female characters who have all kinds of different facets to their personalities and aren't just the stoic, unfeeling, bitchy type characters we usually get; she is called The Full Metal Bitch but she's also called The Valkyrie so it evens out. That all being said, I hated what became of her after she and Keiji have their "bonding moment". She just becomes the love interest after that and has no real character besides at the end which I won't spoil, but it's a bunch of crap.
The artstyle is well done. Takeshi Obata is also very detailed with his work and has his own in dividual style which a lot of sharp lines and hard edges which is different to see inanineor manga. It's part of what made Death Note stand out more than it already did. He also does good with movement especially with hair. It actually moves like real hair and seems silky and smooth. He also didn't great with making Keiji look exhausted from all the hard work he was putting in to defeating the Mimics. He looked exhausted and like he was about to break and just the way the eyes were drawn and the bags under them made me feel tried just looking at him. I also liked the interpretations of the mech suits and the Mimics. The suits looked sufficiently heavy as well as the axes and the Mimics looked like what the Langoliers should have looked like. Terrifying monster balls with teeth that look like they're oozing evil. I will say on downside is all the action scenes. I'm not sure if it's just the style of manga books overall or if it's that Obata doesn't draw action that often but I found it hard to really tell what was going on half the time. The characters would start doing something and then the next panel would be them doing somethibg completely different with no inbetween panels. This was especially prevalent in the final two battles. Overall I do enjoy Obata's art however but perhaps he should stick with doing the more person centric stories.
Other things I didn't like besides the action scenes and the way Rita was treated as a character were...well there's really only two things. #1 The ending. The ending was a load of bullshit. Without saying any spoilers, it makes sure Rita definitely not pass the Mako Mori test, if you catch my drift. She's such a cool character and to be reduced to THAT pisses me off. It also brings my to #2. The whole thing with the Mimic antenna makes no goddamn sense. Here's where it's going to get into spoilers, so if you don't want to read those, skip to the 👍(this includes ending spoilers). Okay so here it's goes. If whomever kills the antenna Mimic in their first loop slowly becomes an antenna over many different loops, made known by a headache one gets when becoming one, Rita should have never been able to leave her loop without the Mimics winning that battle and leaving her alive. Because the way it is explained in the story, is that the only way to get out of a loop is to ultimately kill all the antennas after destroying a bunch of other parts of the Mimic army, and Rita was an antenna during that time then she should have been stuck there forever because killing the antenna ultimately also restarts the loop so she couldn't kill herself. Therefore the only way to win an battle with antenna type Mimics is to let them win because that is the only way the loop stops. That also brings me to the bullshit ending where Keiji and Rita have to fight to the death because they have to kill all of the antenna but they're both antennas because they've both gotten the headaches for this loop and therefore there was no reason for Rita to fucking die because they shouldn't have been able to get out of that loop. What I'm saying really, in shortened terms, is that either the Mimics should have won that battle a longtime ago or Rita should be stuck in her first loop forever. I don't know if it's explained better in the books or not but here that whole thing makes no sense.
👍 Okay spoilers are officially over. Time for the end thoughts. Overall I did enjoy reading this book. Like I've said, I liked the artstyle, the story is an interesting look at what someone might do if the were stuck in the same day forever and the characters are fun to watch. There are a couple nitpicks here and there and two big nitpicks near the end of the book, but in the end if was a fun adventure to go on and makes me want to read the actual book and see the Tom Cruise movie. I probably won't read it again just because it's not really my genre but for anyone whose really unit sci-fi I'd say give it a whirl.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 23, 2018
The way I would describe this anime is…half decent. There’s nothing really new here and nothing really terrible either.
I liked the idea of it. A boy named Kurogu really wants to start kabuki club as he sees it as dying art and wants to bring it to a younger audience. The thought of learning about a new bit of culture and seeing all the cool costumes for used for Kabuki was a nice thought. And the kabuki is interesting. From what I’ve gleamed it uses pretty simple stories like a band of thieves or too people in love and uses fantastic costumes,
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specific, almost dance like movements and sound effects to bring it to life. And all that was fun. It’s just the rest of it that fell flat.
None of the characters are that interesting. I can’t even really remember their names. Kurogu is the basic overeager boy who is always happy and lives with his mother whom he for some reason calls by her first name which is kind of confusing; I did like that he never let anything stop him from achieving his dream and he apparently sucks at the thing he loves so much and Tonbo is the quiet, nerdy, tech guy who just does whatever Kurogu asks of him. For the rest of the characters after the initial conflict of getting them to be in the club are just kind of there afterwords. Kaoru for example, is a great actor but she’s in the drama club and also a girl so they have to find a way to borrow her from the drama club and have a girl in kabuki which doesn’t really happen apparently unless they’re a love interest. And she’s shown to be an amicable girl who just wants everyone to get along. And you’d think after finally wrestling her away from the stubborn manager of the drama club and even going through a competition to get her in the kabuki club she’d be a bit more of a focus. But she almost never talks after that and other than one episode there's no more conflict between the two clubs. The same for Hanamichi. They work really hard to get him into the club even though at first he scares them and it goes through this whole thing of him being a tough guy who’s secretly a softy, but then he’s just a side character after that and they do nothing with him afterwords. He also changes from tough guy to gay stereotype so quickly, there was no really point to it in the first place. Maruko is my favorite character be far. She makes the costumes as well as cosplay outfits. She’s so sarcastic and just basically hates being there it’s really funny. But once again she stuck in side character land. It could have done so much more with them instead of just more focusing on trying to get the one guy to join the damn club he doesn’t want to join.
Jin and Shin were the most interesting; Jin mostly because the show seems to be focused on his joining the kabuki club and he gets the most development due to it. Jin is really amazing at kabuki but thinks people in the club are just doing it for fun and looks down on them for not taking it seriously. He’s overly polite and a perfectionist which sometimes gets him in trouble such as when Kurogu and Tonbo show up at his house he can;t just kick them out and instead offers them tea which is kind of funny. He’s trying to work hard to be as good as his famous kabuki actor grandpa and gets into conflict with his father for the former not being around a lot and Jin’s not being a regular boy. As for Shin, he’s a good kabuki actor with a apparently famous kabuki actor as his dad who tragically died. But instead of wanting to be like his father, he wants to be a rock star. Shin is loud and obnoxious, basically you're typical anime rocker dude. Something that's stands out a bit is that he has to live with grandma because his mom married a man that lives in the U.S. and moved there.
That brings me to the second problem with this anime besides underdeveloped characters. Seriously issues are never taken seriously. Jin doesn’t get along with his dad and constantly fights with him? Never bring it up again. Kurogu’s mom is never home? Oh he’s fine! He has Tonbo! Shin’s mom abandoned for a man and moved to America which upset him so much that when she does come back to see him perform he wants nothing to do with her and gets depressed enough to not want to leave his bed? Get over! We have a show to do! And it works! These issues are brought up and then brushed aside almost immediately like they don’t’ matter but they do! It’s like the story writers wanted character development but didn’t understand how to deal with the fall out and it’s infuriating to see characters who are suppose to be friends say that the other characters problems are basically stupid and don’t matter.
My last point is about the voice acting. It’s atrocious. Well two parts are really and that's enough to make me hate it.. Hanamichi’s voice starts out fine. It fits the design they gave his character. But then once he joins the club, he’s given this high-pitched girly voice that doesn’t match at all and starts acting like the gayest stereotype imaginable and it’s grating. I don’t know why he couldn’t keep his old voice. The second part is when they actually do kabuki. Every time the club started putting on a performance I dreaded it. Not because it wasn’t well done. The costumes were great, the sets were cool, the interactions backstage were fun to watch, but the voice they use for it made me want to jab a screwdriver into my ear drums. It made me miss the moments of them just talking about the plays or just hanging out eating lunch. Which those parts were fun, don’t get me wrong. I liked all of the characters practicing and figuring out what plays to do and who does which part, or having them just hanging out and being friends. Hell, the most interesting episode was watching them update a play so that younger audiences would get it. But kabuki is the main focus so it was just constantly me pulling my headphones halfway off so I would have to listening to it that much. And I get that it’s apparently the actual voice used for actual kabuki performances but my God, it felt like someone was yelling directly into my ear and doing it in such a slow, agonizing manner like people who think that the deaf will hear them if the talk slower and more exaggerated. It drove me insane.
Overall I’d give Kabukibu a D. The setting is whatever, it’s just Japan, the animation is smooth, the characters are underdeveloped, I don’t really remember much about the music, the only conflict is getting Jin to join the club and every other one is brushed under the rug, the art-style isn’t anything new and the voice acting is annoying as all hell. I wouldn’t re watch it, or hope for a season two and kind of wish I hadn’t watched it in the first place; even if I did learn a bit about kabuki. It’s just one of those anime that you watch and soon enough, forget about.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Aug 18, 2017
Note: I also wrote this review on Goodreads under the name Animelove24 but it is my review.
** spoiler alert ** Junji Ito, from what I can tell just loves to mix humour and horror, however I can't tell which this story is trying be more. I guess I would classify this as a more Cabin in the Woods type of deal and less The Ruins. The concept is scary, weird tentacle fish monsters that will take over a person's body and turning them into some horrifying, bloated monster resulting in some great images(some of my favourites are the giant shark, the gas faces and the
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whole part when Kaori is left alone in her room). However they also make that body very gassy resulting in farts and burps which I guess isn't really my cup of tea when it comes to funny? Or it wasn't supposed to be funny? I'm not sure. There was also a part involving a circus that seemed totally out of place but I'm guessing was there to add some lightness to the story, but for me just made me think 'Why on earth is there a circus in the middle of all the chaos?'.
Some more things that didn't make sense were, how where some of the animals alive after being on land for what I presume was hours? Why were there machines the size of whales when they were meant for people? Why did the organic machines turn on Kaori? What are the rules for the germs?(SPOLIERS)Why was Tadashi not infected but Kaori was?(END SPOILERS)What's up with the ghost faces in the gas? So many questions, so little answers.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I would have liked this book more if there was some semblance of structure and atleast some rules to this world, which in my opinion makes the stakes higher and makes you feel more for the characters situation.
I will say I really liked the second bonus story; The Enigma of Amigara Fault which is about people who find holes shaped perfectly like their bodies in a mountain and those holes draw the people into them; walking until they get so far they can't look back so they have to keep walking into the hole. That story legitimately scared the pants off of me and stayed in my mind for days with just the visuals of people getting squashed and the thought that no matter what they try they have no choice in the matter. The thought of getting stuck in there and the claustrophobia really gives my anxiety just thinking about it.
Overall it's a fine read but not something I'd go after again. If you're looking for straight-up horror look elsewhere but if you're looking for horror why a dash of possible humor, this book may be for you.(Except for last story because that is terrifying.)
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 18, 2017
Note: I also wrote this review on Goodreads under the name Animelove24 but it is still my review.
This review will be consisted of what I thought of each story.
Futon: A nice short start to the collection. A little bit horrifying, and a little bit funny. I gets you prepared for how all the other stories are going to be.
Wooden Spirit: This one I just found really weird. I didn't really get why the woman was there or why the house turned into a monster. I definitely liked the first one better.
Tomio. Red Turtleneck: Here is where I feel the 'Horror' part of Fragments of Horror
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began. I liked the fortune tellers curse aspect and Tomio getting his comeuppance was nice. And the visuals with the gore were done spectacularly. If I had one problem with this story, its that the curse kind of really had no rules put to it. The whole main plot of the story was that Tomio had to hold onto his head so it wouldn't fall off but at one point he takes his head completely off and then puts it back on and doesn't die. It really takes away a lot of tension the character is seemingly immortal. I also found the introduction of the children near the end to be pointless. I guess the author was trying to explain why the fortune teller did what she did, but the children only stick around for a few pages so its kind of moot. It would have been better if there had been no explanation. Overall the story was nice and gory which is what I think it was trying to be so I would recommend reading if not for the story, but for the visuals.
Gentle Goodbye: This is probably one of favourite stories from the whole book if not my favourite. It's a nice sweet story that's full of gore or disturbing images which is a bit of a nice break from the first few stories. Of course is has some supernatural elements, which I can't really mention without spoiling it, but they're not too intrusive as to mess up what is essentially a love story. I would definitely recommend this one for anyone who loves a good supernatural Tale but without it being too scary
Dissection-chan: Dissection-chan is weird. Very, very, extremely weird. Its a story about a psychotic girl who wants to dissect herself/ have someone dissect her and a boy whose life has been intertwining with hers since childhood. It's well written story with some creepy images and good character development with the girl Dissection-chan with you at first thinking she is just plain crazy and then slowly develop into thinking that there might be something to her wanted to be dissected with it going back and forth between those thoughts until the very last panel which in my opinion is one of the most disturbing in the book.
Blackbird: I really liked the visuals in this horror The bird woman in particular is a nice blend of creepy and beautiful. The story itself is odd. I didn't really understand what was happening, perhaps a weird bit of time travel or something. Some bits were a bit horror of course and as such it was slightly disturbing but I was mostly just confused. That being said if you can get by ignoring the confusing time travel and just pay attention to creepiness and visuals its a nice little read.
Magami Nanakuse: This story didn't really make much of an impact on me. It was very short, there wasent really a lot of development within the main characters journey, and all I can really say is that the surprise reveal with the main characters fate is of course a super creepy image that I loved.
Whispering Woman: Hands down my favourite story. Pictures: Gorgeous. Story: Slightly creepy but with a bit of a realistic relatable element which are the creepiest sort of stories to me. In this story a woman is hired by a girls father to help her make decisions since the girl is incapable of doing so and the woman does so by whispering suggestions in her ear. As the story goes on you begin to wonder if the woman is all she appears to be as her appearance starts to become more and more deteriorated the more the girl listens. It's not as creepy or horrifying as the other stories and there aren't a lot of disturbing images, but I think that point serves the story well. I would definitely recommend this above all others.
TL;DR: The whole book itself is a nice collection filled with stories ranging from terrifying to funny with some drawings in it that are quite beautiful in their own disturbing way and is a good introduction to Junji Ito's work.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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