SLIGHT SPOILER WARNING!
Byousoku 5 Centimeter, otherwise known to all of us as 5 Centimeters per Second, is a very well-known anime among the anime fanbase as a whole. Chances are, your anime friend may have watched it and loved it, or if they were like me, felt indifferent about the whole thing. 5 Centimeters per Second is no way a bad anime in any sense of the word. The anime succeeds at many things, like breathtaking animation that has been widely praised, but when I was done
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watching it, there was a feeling of emptiness that was left behind me. It wasn't intentional to the story, but more of a feeling of dissatisfaction. As the credits roll, I sighed and that's when it clicked with me. 5 Centimeters per Second may be a beautiful anime, and you may (or may not) think it is a masterpiece, but today, I'm here to tell you why I didn't enjoy the anime as much as many other people did. Whether it be the somewhat unmemorable scenes of scenery overload or the lackluster characters and rushed pacing.
Before I tag on the story, I think it is best I start on a positive note with the best thing this anime has to offer--its animation. The animation in this anime is truly superb, and looking back on old clips of the anime, I was taken away by how beautifully rendered and drawn everything looked. The scenery bounced with colors, the characters seemed well-drawn. So, why did I give the animation a 9? Well, the problem is, they aren't memorable. If I cannot remember the moments where the main characters danced around the cherry blossoms, nor can I remember how the animation brought life into that said scene, then that scene loses some of its importance. I also felt like some of the character designs were a bit too generic. While the main female love interest and the love interest in act two had their own personality in their designs that made them stick out, Tono, the main character, possessed only maybe one or two original traits in his character design. I get that the animators were trying to catch a realistic yet simple look with his design, but it doesn't work as well as the likes of the two other main characters. Other than that, the animation was beautiful, but due to the lack of any real memorability and importance to me, and some character designs being too flat for my tastes, I will have to give the animation an eight.
The sound design is unmemorable to me. I could not really remember a lot of the music from the time I watched it, and I mean nothing comes through my mind when I try to remember the music. Despite that, the voice acting was very well-done. When emotions were supposed to be felt, the voice actors hit through with their words and did add a lot of emotional support on the more important scenes. Not one hit short or weren't as good as the other because they all shined equally. And, instead of something like The Asterisk War (it comes to mind in terms of horrible sound design), where the weapons sounded like toys and the sound design was just lackluster in general, the sound design in this anime is great. The sound of their footsteps and the sound of birds chirping added a lot of life into the world they were living in.
Now for the worst part of the entire movie that had left me with such a feeling of dissatisfaction. The story and the characters. What this movie had not realized is that fitting three 22 minute acts into a 56-minute movie was one of the worst decisions they could have ever made. In short, this movie is very, very rushed. And, I do not put that term lightly. One of the few examples where this was most shown was in the very first arc. After shown the childhood of the two main characters together, and we fast-forward to the scene where they reunite, one of the few reasons I didn't like this scene was because of how unimportant it seemed. Since the pacing was fast, and the anime was not that long, they skipped all moments that could have unlocked more potential and character development. We see them talk for only a few moments, see them kiss, and then skip away to the girl leaving. The issue I found with this was because there was so much potential to develop the already weak characters or to bring a closer connection to their relationship, but due to the tight pacing, they threw it all away. This is also seen in the worst part of the entire movie--Act 3. Act 3 is the worst because it seems so out of place. It derails a bit from the first and second acts and throws away everything important that was made in the second act. For example, we see the second love interest cross paths with the main character once again after the second act, they look away for a second and then--that's it?! We never get to hear anything about her for the rest of the movie, from what I remember, and she is never brought up again. She was about the best character in the entire movie, and the fact she was pushed to the side to try and connect the already weak connection between Tono and the first love interest is why I really did not like the third act. This is where most of the movie's mistakes shine through. This is where I realize the poor development of the characters, and how much time could have been dedicated to fleshing them out. And the ending was the last reassurance of disappointment I had for the film before it faded away to the credits.
This movie is not bad. This movie has a lot of positives to it. But, due to the rough pacing and structure of the story, it tripped and fell many times, making the story overall unsatisfying. You may love this movie, but I just think it's somewhat good. I mean, despite my hate for the story's pacing, I still found myself somewhat enjoying it and seeing what it had to offer. I'm glad you might have enjoyed it a lot, but I found myself sighing at these mistakes.
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Dec 26, 2016
Byousoku 5 Centimeter
(Anime)
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Mixed Feelings
SLIGHT SPOILER WARNING!
Byousoku 5 Centimeter, otherwise known to all of us as 5 Centimeters per Second, is a very well-known anime among the anime fanbase as a whole. Chances are, your anime friend may have watched it and loved it, or if they were like me, felt indifferent about the whole thing. 5 Centimeters per Second is no way a bad anime in any sense of the word. The anime succeeds at many things, like breathtaking animation that has been widely praised, but when I was done ...
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Dec 5, 2016
Ao Oni The Animation
(Anime)
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Not Recommended Preliminary
(3/13 eps)
Ao-Oni is one of the most well-known of RPG Maker games, as if you were to go and talk to someone about the best and the worst, you'll hear mixed reactions about Ao-Oni somewhere in that conversation, or maybe not. Some people consider Ao-Oni a great game, spawning other fan games to accompany that one, while some may argue how memorable and scary it really is. No matter your thoughts on the classic--the game had a large following with its fanbase and became very popular. Now, the main problem with the anime is not that the story structure is
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off and the pacing was off-beat as well (even though it is), but it lies in more of what Studio Deen is born out of. Like how Studio Bones is born with action and smooth animation in their blood, what Studio Deen has in their studio making blood was not picked out correctly for the making of what was supposed to be a proper adaption. Ao-Oni has been known for its sense of humor, and because Studio Deen is always on board to try and make a comedy anime, Hetalia being one of their biggest hits, and instead of making a horror anime, they followed through with the attempt to be as funny as Hetalia with similar episode structure and sub-par animation, and boy, did it hit hard.
Before I start, I should probably tell you--I haven't been a huge fan of the Ao-Oni games unlike a lot of people who have seen this anime. While I don't have the strong opinions of that a fan would have if they saw what happened in the creation of missing potential, I do think what I say will be truthful, and will hopefully help you decide whether to watch this anime regardless of my experience with the game itself. I don't know all the character's names either, and I can't really give much to say in terms of how the game plays out compared to the anime, but regardless, I shall begin my review as I dissect this monstrosity. So, if I had to tell you the story of this animation--what would I tell you the plot was? Would you expect something dark or at least something a bit brooding, or do you expect an episodic misadventure story with no continuation, and barely follows much of the video game plot itself, and only scrapes part of what actually happens in the video games? Well, obviously, it's the latter, and on the other hand, it is also, unfortunately. The story in this anime is little to none, as we are given short exposition at the start before being thrown into the hell of an undivided and organized mess of episodic plots containing each scenario and the monster. While some could argue the handling of these expositions are necessary for newcomers, the way they are handled also hurt the diehard fans. The expositions start off with a dark scene that is supposed to be seen as something like the anime the fans would want, and then abruptly tricks the reader and tells them instead of it being the horror anime they once thought it was going to be judging from the start, is now a cheesy cliched comedy. The plot for each episode isn't interesting either, and each description I read was filled with uttermost translation errors and grammatical mistakes. While it isn't a formula, the plots aren't interesting or new--and the characters aren't fleshed out enough to make us intrigued to figure out how each character reacts to each scenario, except we are just given stereotypes like Tsundere to the female character, and nothing else other than that. The comedy is also flat, and unlike Hetalia, which had decent comedy, this anime has left me with a boring, straight face. One of the few good traits of this anime comes with its length, as each episode is only around five minutes, which is good enough for my attention span so I don't grow bored while endlessly watching the series, but that doesn't help stop all the garbage the anime throws at us and pollutes the water with, metaphorically speaking. Now, what about the animation? The animation can only be summed up with subpar. While the color design rolls off the eyes in a nice way, the colors sparkling and making the experience a bit more tolerable, the animation other than that is nothing short of uninteresting. In comedy anime, good animation is important to make your scenes funnier, and if there is slapstick, you gotta work out talent to make the animation look neat. With what I can remember of this anime, the characters move like what would be similar to moving cardboard puppets with the leftovers of a popsicle stick. The animation isn't smooth, and while sometimes it does work effectively, other times it isn't anything special. The animation isn't anything eye bleeding, unlike something similar to Avenger, one of the ugliest anime I have seen so far, but only charm can save the category of animation. The colors and the decent art style is why it isn't below five, but other than that, this isn't a No Game, No Life or a Kill la Kill, folks. The sound is nothing short of unmemorable and not special. I didn't even think there was music in the anime at first funnily enough, and whatever sound effects I can remember them doing was nothing more than piss poor. The voice acting is average at best, and you can tell they tried their hardest while voice acting the characters, but they really do just sound like anime characters. The Tsundere girl was given her Tsundere-like voice, and the others sounded just the same--very anime-character-sounding. To make your comedy anime successful, there are three things you need to take a shot at in order to get good results. Characters, animation, and the literal jokes themselves. And, if your animation is shitty, and your characters are also one-dimensional, then your jokes will end up falling flatter than a plane in a plane crash if that makes sense. The characters can only be summed up in stereotypes in this game--and seem like lesser versions of the characters in the originals. Only imposters that make up a small part of their real selves. The kid with the glasses is supposed to be the smart one due to his glasses, and that is only much of his personality, and the Tsundere girl only has Tsundere in her personality traits, and the coward is the coward, and that's it--and the main character has literally no personality whatsoever. While it is a challenge to cram and flesh out character develop in five minutes per episode, the thing with something like Hetalia was that the characters were able to be developed through comedy as well in a clever way. While Hetalia is only a decent anime, they had already known how to be clever with their character personalities and the comedy. Hetalia had a fucking larger cast than Ao-Oni but they had better characters than Ao-Oni The Animation could ever pull off. If I had seen these characters being eaten or killed, my face would only light up with excitement as I just realized that this was the only exciting thing that could ever happen in the show. P.S, the characters get eaten a lot and even that is uninteresting. Overall, the reason why this show failed was because of Studio Deen's desperate attempt to try and create another Hetalia to gather more cash rather than invest into making something that everyone wanted. Instead of getting a realistic, well-made horror anime, we're given what seems to only be a shell. A generic anime that could literally go without the label of Ao-Oni on it. A generic anime that both disappointed fans and newcomers with the right mind, a generic anime that failed in almost every section of creating an anime, and a generic anime that I can't even be generous enough to call generic, but a steaming pile of shit. Good job, Studio Deen.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Sep 23, 2016 Recommended
**THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS**
**DISCLAIMER: I HAVE NOT PLAYED THE GAMES!!* tl;dr : DR is a very enjoyable and quite suspenseful series with a wacky sense of humor that is dark in some senses, interesting and fun character designs that take a spin on the stereotypes of your usual anime characters in a high-school anime, however, the anime falls short with some of the character's lack of personality and the fact some of the story is hard to keep up with. **STORY** The story in this anime is one of the key features to why it is so great. If you didn't know, the main premise ... is about a bunch of elite high-school kids who are forced to kill each other in order to leave the hellish school and graduate. Not only that, but you need to not be /caught/. If someone fails to identify you as the murder, you live, and the others die. There is a lot more to the premise, as that is only scratching the surface to this somewhat original take on the popular One Man Left type of story telling used in most horror. However, if there was a few things about the story or how different parts of the premise was handled, it lies in the investigations. In my opinion, I feel like the investigations are a bit short-lived and need to be stretched out with a bit more spice to make it quite interesting and kinda fun to figure out. However, in this case, most investigations are just some of the characters walking around explaining some topics about the murder scene while the show gives us details about the things surrounded around the murder scene. I would of liked more mystery, which is saved by the classroom trials. (I'll get to those later, I promise). And, while I'm not thirsting for more in the investigations, I do agree they could of been done a lot better. And, then there is some parts of this show that are very hard to follow, and I had to replay short moments of the episode or ask a friend about what the flying hell was going on because of how weirdly it was described to me, a viewer. This is mostly show in the two ending episodes where everything is unfolded like a blanket of sorts, if I can find a good comparison. I found it quite frustrating and a bit unenjoyable for me to sit through because of how hard it was for me to understand all the things that was being thrown at me. As for classroom trials, these were quite interesting, but got somewhat mundane after a few times. While the saving grace in this is the ability for the creators to build together good plot twists and interesting debates in these trials, in the two final episodes, the trials came off as...boring. This is a bit of a nitpick, which is why it doesn't really affect the rating of the story, but I feel in some of the episodes, the characters overreact to some of the most weirdest things. For example, in the first episode, everyone freaked out over the video tape of their parents. I remember one of the characters taking it to the extreme by screaming and running away and crying. It wasn't like the characters were dying, or the parents were dying, in fact, it was just a video of them standing in a well-lit room cheering the characters on before it shifted into a weird land. This is well explained later down in the show where it's revealed the world is in shambles, but the characters simply didn't know that before that was revealed to them. It just seemed unrealistic to me. Another thing to note too is the fact that the execution scenes, while some do a good job of showing some brutal yet satisfying death scenes, some of them fall short. I feel like the writers and creators could of done a better job at making the execution scenes and how to make them satisfying and brutal. I'm not sure if the execution scenes are from the game or not, because if so, then I can't really say much about it, but if not, then I think it's a problem that should be fixed. Overall, the story is a 8 **Art** The art in this anime is very good in my opinion, and it shows to have a distinct art-style in comparison to the moe and average schoolgirl anime you'd see these days. The character designs are very interesting and well done, as you can tell their personalities from how they look. For example, Sakura. You can tell from her rough and tough look, yet her innocent image with the simple slip of schoolgirl clothing she is tough yet sweet on the inside with feelings. And, with Togami, that he is a smartypants that strives to be the smartest out of the group, and it goes on. The artists did their jobs in terms of character design, however, if I had to be honest, some of the character designs are not very original. This is mostly shown in characters like Naegi, who is just your typical teenage boy. However, even then with very uninteresting character designs, I still found there to be personality in how they were handled. Naegi is small and cowardly, kinda like how his character designs show him off to be. And, one of my favorites in terms of character designs, Monokuma, as he is perfectly illustrated. It fits his character very well, and makes him part of why he is one of the best characters to a lot of DR fans in the series. In terms of animation, the animation hasn't really bothered me, as it's really just average in terms of how smoothly it moves and how it's drawn in most shots. The characters were very well-drawn, and the scenes where the animation shines brightly the most is in execution scenes. You can clearly see that they put effort into making a twisted, whacky fun-fest of horror in these executions. All the way from the artstyle and how descriptive and spooky it is all concocted, to how the animation is shown. Stilted, yet it fits. It fits well. Overall, the animation isn't anything special to be considered beautiful or outstanding, but is it great? In some cases, hell yeah. The executions, the classroom trials and how stylized some of the scenes are make it quite an interesting treat to snack on while watching. **SOUND** I don't really /care/ about sound when it comes to anime, as it really depends on how well I can hear the characters and if they are crystal clear or just plainly hard to see. In this anime, there isn't much to say about in terms of sound. I can hear everything from the character's voices, and it's very crystal clear. Nothing else. However, you can tell that the staff put some effort into the sound. A good example is if they are in a large room, like the cafeteria, you can hear their voices echo throughout whenever they yell loudly. While I do admit that it goes away and it's short-lived, it's neat. And surprisingly, the dub is good. It's decent. It's the version I watched, and it was fairly enjoyable, especially the English role of Monokuma, in which the voice actor portrays his character very, very well and it's one of the reasons that Monokuma hits powerful in this anime in terms of character. So, 9.5 out of 10. Not much to say. **CHARACTER** This is the strongest point in the entire anime. Besides Story and the art, this is one of the reasons why DR is so special. The characters to be summarized, are basically stereotypes of your average anime based on a high-school. Except, the creators actually try to develop them somewhat. You can actually care about the characters in this, despite being a spin on the stereotypes used in boring, uninteresting characters. Characters like Yamada or Sakura who are usually just underdeveloped personality types in some other animes are used in a way where you can kinda root for them. However, there are some problems in the character department. For example, Naegi. Naegi, in my opinion, is the weakest character in this story. He has no personality, as he brings nothing new to the table. Unlike characters like Celestia who bring an interesting, new personality to take in as you watch the story unfold in front of you, Naegi is just there. We don't know much about his past in this anime, as it's rarely dived into. And, that brings up one of the biggest problems in the character department. They are very uneven in terms of how much they work out the characters. Some of them are developed and are given a past, while some remain blank and just stuck with that boring, stereotypical personality. The creators didn't give enough time to stretch out the characters at least a little bit equally so we could learn more about them, as if your characters are what the entire thing is about, it's important to set aside a good understanding of the characters. Naegi and the love interest that is first shown at the beginning are the biggest offenders of the no-personality rule. But, despite some of the rough patches in character development, you get very, very enjoyable and entertaining characters that make watching DR a blast for me. Monokuma is one of the best villains I have ever seen in a show in a long time in my opinion. He's snarky, he's rude, he's funny, yet he's strangely cute. And, this goes along with his character design and his voice-acting, and every inch of detail put into this character makes him pack a powerful punch, and he is one of my top five favorites. Overall, despite some of the rough patches, the cast of characters are bright and interesting. 9 out of 10. **ENJOYMENT** I had an absolute blast watching this anime. Not only because am I a fan of the whole One Man Standing formula sometimes used in horror media, but because of the characters and how well they were laced together into the horrifying situations thrown at them throughout the story. The suspense in this was great in my opinion, and a lot of the drama and plot twists that were thrown at me had me stuffing popcorn down my throat and my eyes widening in surprise. The aspects of intensity, mystery, truth, suspense of horror made this fun to watch for me and it's why it's one of my favorite animes. My only issue with the enjoyment is, like I said, near the end of the series, 11-13. Through then, the plot takes a slight dip in terms of enjoyment, and as I mentioned in the story, it's very hard to follow some of the plot that is going on during the episode, making me having to restart parts of the episode to fully gather and process all the information that is thrown at me. However, problems like these often track down to one thing. How much that is being thrown at me, how uneven the character development is. It all comes down to the thirteen episodes. The fact that they were just...thirteen episodes. While, I feel like the story wasn't really rushed and I enjoyed the pace it went by, some of the problems I listed would not be as major if there was more space and time to give more of the characters development and to slowly feed the information of a classroom trial or investigation to the viewer to fully chew. Due to the short times and episodes, of course, we are going to have rushed and fast-paced classroom trials to try and get through without wasting too much time for the next episodes. Despite this, I found the anime quite enjoyable and a blast to watch. It was a great introduction back into the anime world, as this has proven to strike a path for more great anime shows to come my way. **OVERALL: VERDICT* With this show, I think I feel a light eight to a somewhat strong nine. Somewhere in the middle, a 8.5, to be exact. Overall, the show is very enjoyable and was great to watch. As a fan of horror, it certainly did not disappoint me, and I recommend you go and watch it to if you're looking for wacky humor, suspense, drama or you just love horror overall. This is my first review, by the way, so I apologize if some of my reasoning is flawed or bias, or I'm being too generous in terms of how I rate the series. But, this is what I feel deep down inside when I take a look at this anime. Anyways, it's 12:30, and it's time I end this review...here.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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