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Spy x Family is an average anime that tries to cover up its lack of identity with a whole lot of polish. For plenty of people, that works. For me, it doesn't.

If you're reading reviews, you probably already know the premise by now: A spy, an assassin, and a telepathic child form a fake family, with all of them trying maintain their secret lives while putting on a facade of normalcy with each other and the world. The problem is that it forces the show into a jarring amalgam of genres and tones, sometimes shifting suddenly in the very same episode.

Start with ... the wife struggling with preparing breakfast. Cut to a brutal, bone-crushing interrogation. Cut to childish shenanigans at school. Cut to a bomb threat. Cut to the dad flustered because he can't figure out how to entertain the kid.

Spy x Family wants its audience to take it seriously even while it doesn't take itself seriously. Everything is over the top, from a kids' dodgeball game complete with "special power" moves to an assassination attempt where thirty assassins are all trying to take out a single target. Yet we're supposed to be deeply invested in the political climate of two nations in a cold war, all the while chuckling at the ineptness of two professionals who can't understand basic parenting.

No matter what you're looking to get out of an anime, you won't get enough of it here. Do you want slice-of-life humor? Gritty intrigue? Flashy action? Oh, you'll get it, eventually - drip-fed little by little while you struggle through the parts that don't interest you. And if you like overlong exposition and more attempts to develop dull side characters than the main cast, you'll certainly get that too.

I can see why people like Spy x Family. It's got great visuals, excellent voice actors, and can be quite funny at times. But given all you have to slog through to find the bright points, it's just not worth it to me.

At the time of this writing, Spirited Away is ranked #2 among anime movies on this site. In my opinion, that is sorely inaccurate. Reading the reviews for it, there are a lot of remarks about the excellent animation and soundtrack (rightfully so) and the strong character design (understandably so), but beyond that, the praise begins to falter. People struggle to justify the disjointed nature of the film, sometimes going with "shows remarkable creativity" and sometimes just falling back on "makes me nostalgic." Viewers who liked it don't know why they liked it, and that doesn't surprise me.

In short, Spirited Away ... feels like a three hour recreation of someone's dream that was carelessly edited down to two hours for the sake of runtime. For starters, the movie has no true plot. Chihiro (the protagonist) has lost her parents in a spirit world and needs to get them back and escape. With that as a distant theme, the movie proceeds to throw characters and situations at us that are only tangentially connected to each other or that goal.

Are there high points along the way? Absolutely. The animation far surpasses the usual anime standard. The musical composition is excellent. The characters are unique and well-defined. Everything is vivid and bombastic and well-done...except for an actual STORY.

I'm afraid the only way to properly explain my issue is with specific examples from the film, so there are spoilers ahead. You've been warned.

Let's start with Chihiro's helper and guide, so to speak: Haku. You begin to get an impression that he's someone like her - someone who got lost in the spirit world but managed to survive by becoming Yubaba's assistant. He helps Chihiro get on her feet and avoid trouble, and then promptly ceases to be anything more than a plot device. Haku steals a trinket from Yubaba's sister for a reason that's both not fully explained and ultimately irrelevant. Yubaba's sister is angry enough to try to kill him, then just forgives him when the trinket is returned. He promptly loses any interest in taking it again, remembers he's a water spirit (...okay?), and that's the last we hear about him.

How about No-Face? An interesting character, absolutely, but pointless overall. Yes, there's a scene where he helps Chihiro, but after that, he eats a bunch of people, spits them out, and becomes a seamstress. Fun.

Characters don't so much "develop" as they change into completely different people for the sake of the story. People hate Chihiro...until they don't. There's a baby that cries and throws fits because he's worried about the germs outside...then he goes outside willingly and becomes a nice person. The witches are angry one moment and friendly the next.

And then there are all the little inconsistencies and allowances made for the sake of making the story work (or forgotten when it no longer matters). For example, there's a big deal made about the importance of names and how losing your name is losing your identity, but it's only relevant for two characters: Chihiro and Haku. Chihiro forgets her name but then sees it on a card and remembers it again. Haku makes a big deal about how she needs to hang onto that card so she'll always remember...and then it's never touched on again. Haku can't remember his original name, and this is treated as significant, but then Chihiro figures it out for him and exactly nothing comes of it.

Simply put, this is a mess of a movie that nonetheless gets praise because it's presented well. Perhaps I just don't have the context to really understand it (for example, maybe there are lots of details I didn't catch because I'm not familiar with Japanese culture or mysticism), but from my perspective, as someone who appreciates a good, coherent plot, Spirited Away fell utterly flat.

Oh, Evangelion. What to do with you.

Let's start with what little good there was. While I can't truly judge the art, as I only saw a camrip, it seems to have the same quality as the previous two movies - that is, very good. At times things seems very busy, like there was a lot of junk on the screen that didn't need to be there and a lot of unnecessary camera work (rotating around and such), but maybe those things would be fine in a normal presentation, rather than a camrip. That's all I'll say on that, as any more ... would be speculation.

The soundtrack was, as always, top notch. Wonderful orchestral and choral compositions provided an excellent soundscape for the movie. I didn't pay much attention to the sound effects (camrip), but they certainly seemed functional. However, I've listened to the OST over and over, and it's still fantastic. Great soundtrack.

Unfortunately, that's where the good in this movie stops. I've been a fan of NGE since watching the TV series five years ago, loving the characters, art, music, and plot. The first Rebuild movie blew me away, and the second excited and intrigued me for what was to come. After watching Rebuild 3, I was sorely, sorely disappointed.

If you came into this expecting any of what was in the last movie's teaser to happen, think again. I don't believe a single scene from the teaser was present in this movie, and it almost makes me wonder if I watched the right thing. Obviously I did, but there should not be that much of a disconnect.

The major problem is that this movie plays out as though it was written by someone who saw only the faces of the characters and heard only the ending of Rebuild 2. NOTHING is the same as how it was before. Unit-00 makes the tiniest of cameos (I think; remember, this was a camrip), Unit-01 is present but never really visible, and Unit-02 is barely anything like its original imagining. Mari now pilots Unit-08, Rei pilots Unit-09, and Shinji pilots Unit-13. Almost everyone has a new plugsuit.

Worse still, the pilots are still their same ages, but everyone and everything else has aged fourteen years since the end of the second movie. This means we see characters that never existed before, don't see characters that are familiar, and Misato, Ritsuko, Gendo, and Fuyutsuki are all older and not really displayed in any capacity that reminds you of how they once were. NERV is almost gone, and there's a new rebel faction that's been fighting it. None of it offers any connection to past movies, and its presentation makes the movie feel like a completely different movie with pseudo-familar NGE faces pasted on top.

Kaworu is present and plays what we're told is an important role, but the movie could've gone on without him. The Rei that's present is a different clone from the one in the two previous movies, and adds nothing to the movie. Mari has as little development and character as before. And finally, the plot is pointless and meandering. The movie is truly little more than, "Okay, you just saw Third Impact, now let's kick off Fourth Impact." It's bad.

If you were hoping for a triumphant third installment in the Rebuild movie quadrilogy, I'm sorry. This isn't it. This is a poorly made, poorly executed failure of a movie.

Until I saw this movie, I was rather unimpressed with the Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya anime. I had seen the first season and really liked it, but the second season severely disillusioned me. I got it into my head that the things that drew me into the original 14 episodes were the art, the humor, the variety, and the novelty. With Season 2, it seemed that once you took those away and focused on the plot, the anime was mediocre at best.

Then this movie came along and restored my faith in the series.

The thing that stood out the most to me after ... watching Disappearance was how well the characters were made. Here we have a movie that essentially removes the main (and title) character from the plot, and it's just as good, if not better, than the previous works. Kyon and Yuki get some serious development, and the other characters play their parts as well. More on this later.

The next major aspect of this movie that left me in awe was the art. I'm don't often give out 10s when I rate things, as I generally consider that to be an ideal rather than an achievable state. Furthermore, one might say I'm in no position to comment on the art, as all I've seen is a low quality camrip. One would be wrong. In general, the art was very good, though Haruhi still looks like Season 2 Haruhi instead of Season 1 Haruhi (the face is too long, or the expressions are different, or something; I can't put my finger on it). But the landscapes and background continue to be beautiful, the animation is pretty good (for anime) and some noteworthy work was done on lighting effects, too. I remember being very impressed by the way car headlights illuminated the characters as they drove by. I can't wait for a good quality version of the movie so I can see the art in all of its glory.

The plot is very well-written and very evocative at times, though it does require a prior understanding of the setting. Kyon becomes the center of the plot, rather than a narrator pulled along by Haruhi's shenanigans, and I find this to be very refreshing. After a standard intro with Haruhi directing traffic as usual, he wakes up to find himself in a world where she doesn't exist. Since it was her actions that brought the other characters to him, none of them know him either (except the other students in his class). Although to me it seems like he's been granted a wonderful gift anyone in his position would have dreamed of (that is, a world without Haruhi), he makes it his quest to find out what's happening, why it's happening, and what he can do about it. We get a nice "what could have been" experience with some great allusions to past events and insights into the different characters. When the main plot twist came, I was still unaware of it right until the moment that it was explicitly made clear. In retrospect, there were indicators, sure, but they're simply part of the well-written and well-executed story. You feel a good deal of sympathy for some of the characters as new aspects of them become known, and any movie or show that can evoke the feelings in me that this did is a great work.

There's not much to say about the music, other than that it's generally new and original, that it sounds good, and that's it's placed very well in order to emphasize different scenes and events. The song played over the credits is a nice touch in both its lyrics and a capella style.

So there you have it. If it's not clear already, I thoroughly enjoyed this film and the additions it makes to the existing anime. It's well-written, well-executed, well-drawn, well-animated, well-scored, and it takes characters that are already full and complex and adds to them. At the time of this writing, Disappearance has taken the #1 spot on the "Top Anime" list here, and it's well deserved. If you get the opportunity to see this soon, do it, and if you have to wait for it to be available in your area, you have my sincerest sympathies.