Back to FranBunnyFFXII's Profile FranBunnyFFXII's Profile

NOTE: This review contains mild Spoilers for Maquia, and Wolf Children(Okami kodomo no Ame to Yuki)

I've been trying to catch up on a lot of anime films and Maquia was one of the films that got a lot of praise and was on my watch list for a while, so I decided since it was so well rated, it's an excellent choice for a date night film.

Unfortunately, So much of the film was littered with unfulfilled setups, followed with almost random time skips and odd character motivations.
Practically everything it did that people praised it for Wolf Children did significantly better.

The animation quality was simultaneously very ... good, but in the same sweep the animation style was restrictive and overly simplified character appearances to the point of having almost comedic designs that couldn't be taken seriously.

The main character Maquia being essentially stuck as forever 15 years old(she doesn't age) made it so the character was fairly difficult to take seriously as well, and many moments fell flat because of the lack of real development and synergy of her character with her son.
She has very little development and is a stagnated character, and this is made even more incredibly apparent with the way Leilia and Krim DO have reasonable developments and changes to their characters. It makes Maquia's lack of real development a significant juxtaposition.
The weight of the character's position, and many short sighted swings in the story that skip over so many things, make it very difficult to become emotionally invested and find anything to empathize with the character.

A lot of people in reviews talked about how it was a reasonably emotional portrayal of motherhood and the challenges that come with it... But there's another movie that came out 5 years before that handles practically everything Maquia does in terms of the portrayal of motherhood VASTLY better in every regard.

From the animation style that allows a significant range of character detail, and an incredibly immersive and drama supporting animation to the Main character who deals with her children growing up, and making choices and her developing along with them.
Wolf Children doesn't randomly skip around through time frame, and instead smoothly transitions through many age mile stones for the children, without dropping bait and switch and dropping setups.

Wolf Children also cleverly develops Hana's children away from their initial expectations into their end of the film growing selves incredibly well. You simply don't expect Yuki and Ame to take the paths that they do, and it so skillfully executed that it's absolutely marvelous every time.
And all the while, Hana is learning and growing with them, taking the falls in stride, working through the struggles and finding the positives where it matters.
Especially considering Ame and Ariel. Both being characters that pull away from their mother to learn to go their own path.

The problem I think with Maquia isn't necessarily that it was written poorly, or anything to that degree. It's that it didn't have enough run time.
I think every single problem that the Maquia film had was rooted in the fact that it's a 2hour movie, when it would have been ideal as a 24~26 2 season long anime. OR at least 13 episodes with an OVA(like Violet Evergarden). So much of the setup, skipping around, and lack of pay off in so many of the situations in Maquia come from the fact that it had to portray almost 2 lifetimes worth of a story in a 2 hour movie.
This is something Wolf Children essentially had perfected. It was ideally set for a film and paced things carefully and quietly so that it'd fit nice and neat and hit the right beats while as a film.

TL;DR

Both films are about "mommy struggles", and Wolf Children blew it out of the water, where as Maquia didn't seem to know what to do with it and should have been an anime series.
If you're looking for a good film for Motherhood experiences, Skip this and watch Wolf Children instead.

This show is the definition of edgy teenage trash, and bad writing in a single series.

First major problem before anything else is the sheer amount of horrid exposition there is.

Talk, talk, and talk, accompanied with many simple and pointlessly bad scenes. Horrible usage of framing, and dialog to seem to excuse what it's intended purpose is.

It wants to have some redeemable understanding of a vile character and an excuse for anything it wants to show.

From Anachronistic clothing choices, to bad writing, and screenplay, the anime just trips over itself over and over again with no real impact of the horror it's trying to portray.

There is ... an easy way to handle all of what this is trying to accomplish without talking your head off. And that's proper use of Show Don't Tell. Every single backstory plot point can be handled without the ridiculous level of exposition being deposited at the viewer.

It is ridiculous how meaningless each scene is as the character so bold face announces or calmly explains exact what they are about to do.

This is just awful writing, containing a horrible subject matter that appeals to 13 year old boys who have no idea how the real world works, but it's bad and someone needs to pay for it!

What could have been a genuinely avant-garde approach in animation for talking a serious subject matter turns into an immature poor attempt at making an excuse to sell smut.

It comes off as a shallow edgy teenage fantasy littered with exposition dumps and anachronisms that come off as written by someone who has the emotional depth of a 12 year old boy who's never gone through a single hardship in his life except mom took away the PS4 for not doing his homework.

Not only that but the music is generic, the sound design is bland, and the voice acting is pretty mediocre. It's about on par with generic 2000s era hentai.

Hey at least it has some standard modern level animation, and passable sound. Not enough to redeem much of anything this series does.

This is the kind of stuff that makes Darling in the Franxx look like a bastion of good story telling, and we all know how bad Darling got.

This series is a travesty in action, and I cannot understand how anyone thought it was a good idea to publish this. But hey I guess we aren't all writers and lovers of great story telling.

One of the forerunners of the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things genre, unfortunately this series was completely overshadowed by the release of Lucky☆Star.

This series is an interesting glimpse into the anime culture that was developing before the massive influence of Lucky☆Star and K-on! dramatically changing the landscape for this kind of anime.

The series is mildly experimental relying more on light story than daily gags, and I plays with social commentary on Japan's declining population. One of the first if not the first anime to ever do so.

The story is charming, the artwork is insanely sweet, the characters are realistic yet fictionally adorable, and the soundtrack ... is actually really unique for the time. I can't think of a single anime that has ever used a percussion based OST for motive and mood setting like Manabi Straight! has.

If you are a fan of the Cute Girls genre, this is a series that is all too often overlooked, and forgotten about.

It is an absolutely sweet yet goofy light drama that reminds me of popular Shoujo-ai story telling over the modern CuteGirls typical daily life gags, despite being not being Yuri.

For those who critisize this series for being unoriginal, remember that this came out before Lucky☆Star, K-on!, Nichijo, Gabriel DropOut, Minami-ke, Love Lab, Yuyushiki, Non Non Biyori and really most of the genre.

For the timeframe, Manabi Straight! was fairly unique take, and it still has a unique ring to it to this day.

Always remember the context of time frame and culture when rating and judging an anime.

And in such Gakuen Utopia Manabi Straight! stands out as quite an interesting and unique attempt at a genre that had yet to flourish.

Before you read this review, I have to warn about major spoilers because to be critical of this and give a proper insight I have to mention happenstances that are genuinely problematic to the point that talking in general terms will not make enough of a case. If you have not seen Darling, go watch it before reading my review.

Darling ended up being, to say the least, was a mixed bag of good, fine, and bad all in one sweep.
It has some potential to be great, and strike a chord in terms of relatability. But it mostly blows it by having some really odd narrative ... choices and design choices that really make it a headscratcher.
The world building, atmosphere, and even the sound design is pretty good.
Darling has some real good concepts and a good underlying foundation to work with
However it is all heavily brought down by it's poor writing and narrative planning with some very obvious flaws that shouldn't have gotten past storyboarding.

Major Complaints

1. They never actually fully explained that stupid lewd piloting system that completely tosses you out of immersion. They leave you the entire series wondering what the actual fuck is up with that design. Multiple times it seems to get close, and then explains a few things then dodges any full explanation that would play well into the narrative and dispel the immersion breaking quality.

The control system of the Franxx makes no sense what so ever.
Even if you push away all sensible reason and logic, it is still an aspect that just does not make any reasonable sense what so ever, and none if is reasonable explained.
To say the least, having a girl in doggy position with controls mounted to her ass with a guy nearly riding her in a chair does not seem like a wise way to pilot a 20~40 ton piece of fucking military hardware.
And then there's the "two girls can't pilot a Franxx" situation that got a focus, but then later on 2 guys are, and "well it works because he's an alpha" Make up your mind. Either keep the rule or don't set it up. This feels cheap and stupid.
There is always something to be given leeway by a suspension of disbelief, or a leap of logic, but the series doesn’t really do much to explain this head scratching design, or give something to grasp For that leap to suspension of belief to be made.
I do realize that this complaint is probably more problematic to me than others but it is still indicative of a writing issue within the series.

2. This is largely about the poor writing but to caveat it requires situational explanation that point out some major narrative flaws.
For example: why isn't Zero Two on the Strelizia Apus? There is no good narrative reason for her body to have been left behind like that, AND they didn't even show that her body was ejected or anything like that.
The scene goes off as the Apus awakens and the whole mirage image shows. But none of that is a reason for her to be not in the ship. But wait she is there mentally? I'm sorry, fucking what?
Instead she's a catatonic dead weight taking proxy damage by transmission, and then turns into a statue doing nothing.
Why? So Kokoro could have something to cling too? It has to be asked, Why couldn't Zero Two have fused with the machine like Hiro, they couldn't both of done that or the horn fusion that ZeroTwo and the princess did?
This makes even more of a stupid choice when in the moment of 2nd wind/heart they kiss and touch. Why didn't they just have them both physically on Strelizia?
This seems like a really dumb idea that wasn't thought through.
Zero Two dying at the end really isn't an issue at all. I'm not sure why people got so up and arms? cause "Mai Waifu" dies?

The real issue is how the rest of this crap around it went.
VIRM not dying in the finale is the stupid part that causes a large narrative issue. It instantly tanks the whole sacrifice pay off.
I really wonder who thought this was a good idea? Why not just have them both there physically, and then they die and sacrifice is meaningful cause VIRM is gone, and humanity can move on it's own free path.
This is really dumb.
The ending montage is also weak and feels like cheap feel goods that don't really feel earned because of the poorly written setup of the end.

These situations highly the notable lack of consistency in the story telling that probably shouldn't come from a combined studio effort known for making great anime series.

My Commentary Input about this and responses to other critical reviews:

People saying "It goes to shit in the 2nd half/after ep15" I'm not seeing it.
Darling doesn't even really shift gears to much, it goes through a prep arc, then begins it's main story arc, and it lightly follows the TRIGGER/Gurenn Lagann(Gainex) blueprint.

It doesn't really change tone, and it doesn't really go off the deep end like people are saying it does. It's pretty consistent as it plays through it's story. First half versus 2nd have not really any different in terms of approach. Things just get bigger stakes get higher, you get a backstory, and it's pretty much the same quality and progress all around.
The biggest faults are its writing choices and errors. In some parts it really hits the ball out of the park, in others it flops and makes stupid and irritating choices. It does this the entire time though, not just in the 2nd half.
In-fact I would say it should have really ended after Ep6, and then had an OVA episode or two, to wrap up some here and there things, include ZeroTwo's back story or something like that, and do a send off.

Honestly Darling comes off as someone wanted to remake Elfen Lied(Seemingly evil pink hair girl with horns, technically not human, socially isolated, kills humans and uses them for a purpose, was tortured and experimented on by humans, meets young boy when she was a young girl and has a memorable life time moment together then they both lose their memory only to find each other later and remember it all), combined with Evangelion except with feminized EVA mechs, then minus the meaningful psychological traumatic stuff, and add some TRIGGER formula ontop.
And it really got none of it right, except the TRIGGER big robots in space theme. Hurray, Gurren Lagann.
And then cherry ontop of the whole thing is a "Go have some kids, our population is dying" message.

Telling young people to go get laid, and promoting teen pregnancy thing is a bit.. I dunno...awkward.
But I guess if you need to restart your population better start 'em young and replace a lost generation? I get it but it's still kinda weird.
The backstory behind Zero Two and why Hiro is important to her is legitimately the best part of an otherwise mediocre anime series that fails to live up to expectations of it's initial premise and world setting that was incredibly well designed, and is very compelling.

ZeroTwo's initial character that leads into her backstory really struck an emotional chord with me and made her a rather compelling character, which is the best part of the series. It changed the way I saw ZeroTwo dramatically, Especially after seeing ZeroTwo trying to recreate the picture book. It made the search for picture books feel real. This was the one part of the series that drew me in and I broke and cried at this point. It is genuinely really emotionally painful to watch and that feel of wanting to help ZeroTwo was soul crushing.

The backstory setup actually turned Hiro from an annoying character, and ZeroTwo from what seems like an obvious bait character into more relatable and enjoyable characters. But these are the only characters that have anything compelling about them.

All the other characters however are just bland, or annoying.
With the exception of Goro and Kororo, everyone else was legitimately an annoyance to watch.(I do have to say thought Goro in Japanese was miscast. That voice and acting for his character was unfitting.) And Kokoro while sweet and kind, seemed to be there as a prop rather than a character.
Everything else within the series is ok or headscratcher. Good choices here and there, floundered by stupid ones afterwards or repeatedly ignoring issues.

I give it an overall rating of 6.5/10.

Well I guess Evangelion and Elfen Lied got that Season 2 everyone wanted. To bad it kinda blew it.

It has been a while, so I took the time to sit down a re-read of the Elfen Lied manga since I had recently rewatched the anime and have been on a re-watch binge during the pandemic.

And my reaction is simply "Wow that was a beautiful mess" a beautiful story that has a lot of stuff that undermines how powerful and impactful it could be.

I 100% understand why the anime does a lot of the things it does. I mean I kinda already knew why, but trying to see where the things work and dont, you really see where Lynn Okamoto got totally out of ... touch in terms of keeping cohesive story.

You can read from volume 1~7 skipping page 203, and then skip to volume 10 Pages 76 to 138, to read the part about Lucy and Aiko, and then skip to the last 5 pages of Volume 11.

All of that stuff that you'd skip is utterly pointless and irrelevant.

Literally none of it matters. It does effectively nothing for the story line.

It only introduces and handles a bunch of largely irrelevant and throw away characters. Has a revival of a character that was appeared to be killed off, and there is some real strange absurdities that just don't have a reasonable foundation.

I think the one good part of the Manga after the 2nd half that really makes it worth reading is the story behind Arakawa, the scientist girl who was the assistant to Prof.Kakuzawa. In the anime she has a noticeable presence, and plays a key role in the ending, but we don't get to see much more than that.

The manga gives her more detail, more personality, and a stronger purpose to play... but that kind of ends up being entirely undermined and pointless. It's worthy reading to get to know the character more, but not much else.

The anime is a lot better by many metrics, and the areas that I highlighted to read basically give the context you need to understand a few details and "plotholes" in the anime. Many things that were changed serve the narrative and philosophical ideas much better. Especially concerning Kaede(Lucy), Nana, and Mariko I completely understand why Nozomi was dropped as well.

From my perspective, Lucy(and Nyuu), Nana, Mariko, Kurama's, and Kouta's place in the story are all more meaningful in the anime than they are in the manga. Especially Mariko and Kurama's. The end and situation they face in the anime is astoundingly profound and powerful. But in the Manga there's a lot less substance and feels more like their lives were tossed away for the sake of just making Lucy feel more evil.

Even more so because the Anime and the Manga end in effectively the same place with only a few minor differences.

The manga is much more cluttered and has a lot of ends that aren't tied up. The first half stands out as fairly good, and well inspired, and serves as a great foundation to the setting and story.

However, there's a lot of meaningless narrative parts in the 2nd half of the manga that do absolutely nothing at all. A lot of it simply feels like Lynn got carried away.

The entire run is loaded with pointless ineffective violence, and panty shots worthy of the shallow and fanservice-y accusations that get tossed at the series that the anime really doesn't do.

There's a lot of things in the entire manga that is ecchi, gratuitously violent, or rapey just to be explicit, but it really just doesn't do much but harm the quality and atmosphere of the manga. So it comes as a pretty reasonable change that the anime toned it down, and then utilized it more for effect and presence. Substance is better than quantity. And the Manga didn't utilize it's violence and adult themes as effectively as it could have. Something the anime exceeded at.

The biggest problem I really have with the manga is that it is not as much of an emotional driver that sinks into your soul like the anime does. The Manga has good emotional moments, but it really does not pull at your heart like the anime does.
The anime just does this exceedingly well, while the manga exceeds at being violent and perverse.

As a first time manga run, it's surprisingly well done, has a lot of recognizable value, and it serves as a fantastic source material for adaption, but standing on it's own, it has a lot of issues that detract from an otherwise beautiful and powerful story.

When people say this is a hidden gem, they aren't exaggerating. The air time slot and DVD release of this in both Japan and the Americas was poorly timed and this series got overshadowed and forgotten because of it.

This I would say is the closest thing to being a proper implementation of what Evangelion was after without the meandering plot and loss of focus that troubled EVA during it's later episodes. If you were at all disappointed by the way EVA handled itself later on, then this anime does a great job of picking up a very similar concept and follows through without needing ... a movie or OVA to wrap it up.

This anime focuses on its storyline and the effects war and service have on people. It's a very serious tone, and deals with a naturally unlikable main character. But this I feel kind of plays well with the rest of the cast as it lets the viewer focus on the full cast rather than staying involved with a singular character. It plays the unlikable protagonist character well, and does a great job of pacing the story, and developing it's entire cast with a believable progression, while still keeping strongly to it's sci-fi setting. It is a good example of the "Unlikable Protagonist" story and writing element.

The series pulls directly from Shakespeare, Russian and US Army inspiration, and delves deep into the psychology of loss, and the tragedy of war.

The sound and soundtrack is fantastic and has many unforgettable themes that stick in your head long after. Silent Wind, the "Nior" Theme, Wonderful World, and other tracks are easy to remember long after because they are so distinct and well composed. Though the ending theme is very odd and overly 90s cliche and could have been much better it's one of the only disappointments of the series.
The English dub is also very good, and is one of the few examples of very well thought out and very well played and performed dubs. IT's close to Ghibli level, not exactly, but very close.

The art style however is a bit odd and uncharacteristic of the time frame, and anime as a whole. While it pulls from it's 90's origin, it takes a significant strive away from standard expectations and leaves undefined features contrasting with overly defined features on the same character. It gives the show a distinct style unique for anime. It's strange at first, but it grows on you and plays very well with it's visual story telling.

Interestingly enough, they were unexpectedly well focused on military details and getting them correct. There are things in the anime that are real parts of the US Military. Things that I expected any animator to just guess and replicate, they instead got accurate with a small waiver of artistic liberty. They even got the PX Military exchange shop correct. That's a really minute detail that most people will definitely miss.

The show wears its military, Russian, and Shakespearean inspirations on it's sleeve and plays out much like a Drama play, and there is even an additional OVA that goes over the history of a fan favorite character(Sue Harris).

It's clever, smart, and explores tough subjects and hard to face realities.
I would definitely recommend this if you're into heavier themes, and harder to deal with subject matter. Any one with military service in the US will appreciate the military detail as well.