Krav40's Profile - Reviews - MyAnimeList.net

Last Online6 hours ago
GenderMale
BirthdayOct 12, 2002
LocationStockholm, Sweden
JoinedOct 11, 2018

Mar 20, 2020

Fate/Zero 2nd Season (Anime) add

Recommended

Brace yourselves, because this review will be chock full of spoilers of both Fate/Zero Season 1 and 2.

It's not often you get a show so captivating and entertaining as Fate/zero. With its battle royale plot, where 7 masters and servants fight in order to attain the holy grail that can grant any wish. It includes a variety of adrenaline-pumping and fierce fight scenes, as well as it's many remarks to philosophy, history, mythologies and old legends, including f.ex alexander the great from ancient greece (Rider) ,the legend of King Arthur from Great britain (Saber), etc. It’s safe to say that Fate/Zero is a show that ... pushed both my intellectual and emotional buttons.

Fate/zero has many great things that I value in anime, like f.ex stunning and vivid visuals from Ufotable, entertaining and charming dialogue from the its writer Gen Urobuchi and a slow-paced but exciting and entertaining plot by Type-Moon. If there is one single person who was the reason for me watching this in the first place, then that would be both the infamous and famous writer Gen Urobuchi, who has made a well known name for himself as "butcher" since his shows often contains dark material, like f.ex gore, dystopian and even rape and severed heads, etc.

Overall, I would define Fate/Zero as a shocking tragedy. The biggest tragedy in Fate/zero was the journey of one man's realization that his idealistic worldview was skewed from the beginning and caused more damage than good. The other being one man's repressed and unknown desires that where actualized in a corrupted and evil way at the very last episode, his wishes could’ve been done differently if he had integrated it rather then repressed it for so long. These two men, Kiritsugu Emiya and Kotomine Kirei where made to be rivals. Kirei being a christian mage who is a traditionalist who tries to be a “good man” by executing those that in his eyes perform evil and Kiritsugu, a merciless killer who tires to execute every single mage out there from childhood trauma that lead to utilitarismen. In banal terms, the bad guys won and the good guys lost.

Speaking of Kiritsugu, he was easily my favourite character in this show and the one who I wanted to see win the most. His philosophy of the world is similar to mine, i.e in order to save the whole human race, you have to sacrifice few people. As a viewer, I can admit to many of his actions going too far. As to f.ex killing his own father and his caregiver, Natalia Kaminski. But, I do empathize with him.

Apart from him, Gilgamesh and Iksander where also great characters in the story. Both being servants who were overall had the strongest personalities. Gilgamesh being a arrogant guy who called everyone “morgels” and Iksander being the reincarnation of Alexander the great. What I really liked about this was how these two where legendary kings who tried to integrate with modern society. Seeing f.ex Iksander commenting on books about him and watching war movies was really fun to see. Gilgamesh also appeared in a human form, who gave advice to Kotomine Kirei.

One of my biggest problems with Fate/Zero was the anti-climactic nature of many of its spectacular and enthralling fights. There are surprisingly few fights in this show that leads to a death in this battle royale, but like I stated in my introduction, almost all of the fights here are really cool to watch thanks to the clear and high-budget animation by ufotable. What also bugged me was that almost every single servant was so friendly with each other. F.ex in Episode 7, they have a wine meeting where they talk like they’re close friends, but they had the intentions of wanting to kill each other for a price! The dialogue however thankfully saves a lot of things about Fate/zero, with Rider and Saber f.ex in that episode talking about their experiences with their own kingdoms and their motives for the war, tying again into the glorious philosophical side of this anime.
I can’t also forget the 40-minute long first episode was also too much of an exposition dump, they could’ve spaced out the theory parts a bit more into the later episodes where we got to know the characters a bit more and not introduced almost every single character in the exact same episode. I think this makes the show hard to get into by not really inviting the audience, instead just blasting exposition at you.

Overall, Fate/Zero was a show that pushed both the intellectual and emotional sides of me. It started out slow, but got more entertaining and interesting the longer it went on. The philosophical aspects of the show where its virtue, with its many anti-climactic fight scenes being its vice. Kiritsugu Emiya was my favourite character, and I liked seeing every character and their perspective and what desires they had on winning the holy grail.

VERDICT: 9/10

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Dec 18, 2019

Psycho-Pass 2 (Anime) add

Not Recommended

As a follow-up, Psycho-Pass 2 serves little to no purpose.

This season does not lead to anything, it doesn't present any new ideas and worst of all, it tries to copy many things that are good about the first one, but fails miserably.

This could mainly be the fault of the staff being switched. The first season was made by Gen Urobuchi, Shiotani Naoyoshi and Production I.G. While they went off to make the upcoming film, another studio and staff went on to create this season in the meantime.

In the first season: The pair of Urobuchi and Production I.G was a match made in heaven. ... Since Urobuchi is known for his grim and dark stories that include many twists and lots of exposition (I.e Madoka Magica & Fate/Zero) & Production I.G are a studio that are famous for making cyberpunk shows with tons of world-building like Ghost In The Shell & Eden Of The East, while also being involved with other classics such as Evangelion & FLCL. So, a writer of grim and dark stories and a studio famous for their cyberpunk with tons of worldbuilding and action was a great choice. But what sold Psycho-Pass for me was having Hana Hanazawa as the main role, who is one of my all-time favorite seiyuu!

Anyways, Psycho-Pass 2 is made by a completely different team, which already dismisses the originals show’s vision. This is noted clearly in terms of it lacking things that made the first one so awesome, shittier characters, a boring plot, and a much, MUCH worse villain.

First of all, the villain is a Makishima-Lite. They’re both eerily calm villains who had been outlined by the sibyl system, thus wanting to destroy it, but what this new guy lacks is the charm or even intellect as Makishima had. What made Makishima so scary compared to Mr.school shooter was that Makishima wanted to see the splendor of human souls. Nothing about the new villain stand out. He just feels so vanilla and plain and also what a coincidence that his name is Kirito.

Secondly, speaking of the characters, most of them were really bad and poorly written. When they are presented to us, they have no characterization like f.ex a backstory, quirks, and motives. Many of them fill in the role of characters that are absent this season like f.ex Kogami who is replaced by Togane or Makishima who is replaced by Kirito. However, the characters that aren’t a replacement are either completely boring or so dislikable that you want them out of the show. Those that are boring are not apart of the narrative like all of the characters in season 1 where. F.ex a boring one was this guy who is a read head and all that we get to know about him is that he’s shy but actually really smart. We don’t get a backstory as to why this might be, we the viewers have to just accept this. And an example of someone who was dislikable was Mika, who I rooted for at first. But with her arrogant and naive attitude and her at first, holding a grudge against Tsunemori and then trying to help her only to fail miserably was disappointing to see.

Togane was, however, an exception and he was one of my favorites from this season, I thought that he had the most interesting progression and I thought that the way he hides his true intentions was interesting because he is quite an enigma. But still, one of the reasons why I liked him was because he was similar to a character that isn’t in this season.

With many of these characters, they lack some flesh to the bone with the characters. What made the characters in the first season so interesting was that most of them used to have a motive, but over time lost it, like f.ex Kogami became jaded and lost his purpose for being a detective since his college buddy got slaughtered. Masaoka had similarly to Tsunemori, the instinct of justice but lost it when he realized that he didn't have control over who was or wasn't a criminal. Ginoza became stressed out after an incident that happened and has been frustrated ever since then. The only one who still had a purpose was Yayoi, who wanted to be an enforcer because her girlfriend had become a latent criminal, but that was still revealed later.

Thirdly, there are no new questions that have been raised like f.ex Is the Sibyl System moral and who counts as a criminal? These questions got risen up in the very first episode of S1. But here, no new questions have appeared. One of my favorite things about the first season was all of the ideas that it presented and questions like “What is law”, “What makes someone happy”, “What is moral and immoral” while showcasing many different sides to the spectrum.

First, we had the MWPSB where everyone had great intentions and carried out them with hoping to serve good, while usually doing so. Then, we had the critic of the Sibyl System, Shogo Makishima and his crew. He and his crew were totally against the idea of the Sibyl System and only wanted people to make sure that they were right. Then, we had the main sibyl system, which used criminals' minds to govern people and their crime coefficient. These people were outliers, who had strange ideas and ambitions while also being criminals themselves and criminally asymptomatic, meaning that they are unreadable. What’s so great about this is that if any of these are good or evil is completely up to the viewer. My view is that even though the Sibyl System may not be perfect and a bit immoral, it’s fucking awesome since it makes sure that most people are happy with only a tiny fraction of outliers.

Fourthly, the very first 3 episodes were all TERRIBLE! We are immediately rushed into a situation where they are trying to arrest a criminal who's bombing different locations for Kamui. But we get absolutely no information about what's happening, why there even arresting him and why we should care. We just seem to have to figure that out ourselves. Which in some cases might be understandable and even necessary, but doing that in the FIRST episode of a NEW season just feels useless and out of place.

The missions that appear in the first couple of episodes lack the excitement that the first season delivered. Since none of the new characters question the system, the stakes are incredibly low and the criminals are just crazy lunatics compared to in S1, where the criminals were more or fewer puppeteers by Makishima. And yes, the criminals here also seem to be that as well, but he feels like he controls them extremely poorly. Like f.ex he just lets his buddy die without any reason. Whereas in S1, Makishima disposed of his pawns for a REASON.

Conclusion: Psycho-Pass 2 is a really bad follow-up, even the things that it does well are things that were common in earlier episodes.

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Nov 29, 2019

Daicon Opening Animations (Anime) add

Recommended

EVERYTHING started here, well, in terms of Gainax at least.

Daicon is a two-part entertaining yet unintentionally educational OVA released by Gainax with the first part being released in 1981 and the other one in 1983. What makes Daicon Opening Animations so interesting and different than any other OVA I’ve ever seen is the extraordinary context that it fits in, this little two-part OVA will give you all the necessary knowledge that you will need to know about the foundation and early history of Gainax since this was their very first show. Gainax was founded by a group of three otakus in the early ’80s. They ... were these three chads; Hideki Ano (who would later become the creator of Evangelion and director of Kare Kano), Hiroyuki Yamaga (who would become the president of Gainax for over 30 years) and Sadamoto Yoshiyuki (would be later be known for his character design for almost every original Gainax project including such shows as FLCL, Evangelion, Diebuster and more). These men were such huge otakus back in the early 80’s that they wanted to make shows themselves, Anno has stated that they were not only inspired by anime and by many other media like Ultraman, DC, Sci-fi movies, etc. Which is why Gainax became so great in the future, they were otaku of MANY different things, not just anime or manga.

Daicon was their first thing that Gainax ever made and it’s instantly noticeable for this having less production value than their later works, which is inevitable and understandable since this was the first thing they made. Even though this lacks the budget, which is noticeable in the animation quality and the choice the OVA having no dialogue, which I guess was because of voice actors being too expensive. Even though that’s the case, Daicon still oozes with creativity, beauty and most of all PASSION. What’s most noticeable is the plot that feels extremely sci-fi, with a girl who is given “special water” to water a radish which can turn into an enormous spaceship. However, the best thing about Daicon is its plentiful and endless references to other pop culture like f.ex DC, Marvel, Star Wars, Ultraman, Godzilla, as well as numerous popular anime. Which at the time where the likes of Gundam, Captain Harlock, Urusei Yatsura, Space Battleship Yamato, etc. They’re all included here as a tribute to these works as well as otaku culture in general. Daicon is also paired off with quite an amazing tune called “Twilight” from Electric Light Orchestra which fits the OVA so well.

Overall, if you're a fan of at least two Gainax shows then I would consider this a MUST-WATCH! You will get so much history, beauty, and joy here. Even if you're not, I highly recommend since this was the beginnings of a studio that would later create such beloved shows such as FLCL, Evangelion and Gurren Lagann. This may have not changed my personal life, but I do consider this to be a masterpiece and a hidden gem if you like this I also highly recommend Otaku No Video.

じゃあね!

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Nov 25, 2019

Dororo (Anime) add

Recommended

Basically “Anniki” x200.

Dororo was certainly an interesting show but I felt like it could've been done much better. I would say that this show had tons of potential and it didn't live up to all of it. However, that's not to say that I didn't have a good time with the show. I began watching all the way back in February but put in on-hold until recently, last month to be specific. Back when I saw this is spring, I went into this one completely blind with no expectations. This was not only the first seasonal anime that I've watched to completion but also my ... first episodic and historical animu, which is quite cool.

But the thing is that I wasn’t the biggest fan of this style of episodic direction. This makes it so that a lot of episodes are worse in terms of animation quality and following the plot than others. I felt like they should’ve cut down some episodes and focused more on its plot, which I felt was the best thing about this show.

I felt like Dororo really delivered plotwise. That they’re two kids that have had to grow up in a tough and unfair environment felt brutal and made the world of Dororo bleak, heavy and dark. One of them being sacrificed by his own father, who is the ruler of the whole country, and the other one becoming an orphan by the age of 9 and having to cope and survive with no money or shelter. It makes you empathize with them easier and when you see them succeed it makes your heart warm up, like f.ex with Hyakkimaru slowly gaining back his limbs and senses. Like I stated before, my biggest complaint is that it felt like the plot could’ve been more focused and tighter, since some episodes went off into completely different directions, almost feeling like a filler in a long-running shounen show like f.ex Naruto or Dragon Ball.

The style and atmosphere of the show were calming yet cold-hearted and brutal. Even though the world in this show is not a world you would want to live in, it’s tough and brutal with demons, monsters, and people killing each other for land or food, samurai getting eaten alive, but it still looks pretty gorgeous to me, with its mountains, I also loved the style they were speaking in, it fits well into the Sengoku period in Japan and it sounds pleasant to the eardrums.

Most of the characters were great, there was still an old man who went around with a stick giving random advice to Hyakkimaru and Dororo, I mean how often do you see that type of character in an anime? Hyakkimaru was by far my favorite character in the show by his characterization being really strong. He has a wish to fulfill, to regain his body, that’s sick. His family however sucks and he has to fight against them in order to fight. I really like Dororo, except for her screaming Aniki she was the humanity that Hyakkimaru needed. Because she is a kid, she lacked some characterization but the whole thing about her having this map on her back was the coolest thing about her and a really great plot device as well.

I would say that the fighting in Dororo, it’s not Brotherhood-tier, but it looked really good and all of the fight scenes between Hyakkimaru and his brother were the best ones in the show. It felt like the animators really pour their hearts and souls into making those scenes.

The show had an amazing final conclusion that was satisfying and had a time skip that you might not be prepared for, so yes this is a slight spoiler but it’s the last 10 minutes so it doesn't really matter all too much.

Overall, I liked Dororo quite a lot. But, I heavily disliked the episodic style of the show because of them focusing less on the plot and more on unnecessary side characters that won’t appear later. And since Dororo had such a ridiculously good plot, it felt like wasted potential to me for not fully utilizing it. It could also be because episodic shows might be more character-driven and looser, which I suppose a lot of episodic shows are. Then again, I have to watch more episodic stuff to draw any conclusion.

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Nov 5, 2019

Otaku no Video (Anime) add

Recommended

- If you're into playing tennis, that's just fine and dandy. But if you watch anime, you're weird? Why?!

Otaku no Video was a brilliant and educational little two-part OVA that follows this guy who wants to be the ultimate otaku or the "otaking". Its mainly inspired by the real story of how Gainax was founded, which we're obsessed with anime fans who wanted to make their own stuff. What I loved about this is how passionate and in your face it is. This show is not only very good in terms of its message of embracing YOUR inner otaku, but it also includes parts ...

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Nov 2, 2019

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Movie 2: Lagann-hen (Anime) add

Recommended

"Listen, Simon. Don't Believe in yourself, Believe in ME! Believe in the Kamina who believes in you!"

Don't get me wrong here.

I fucking LOOOOVE Gurren Lagann! For the past 8 months, it's been my all-time favorite anime. Everything about TTGL is brilliant including the plot, characters, music, and art, in which Gainax had done an excellent job of making sure all of these factors were amazing. However, beyond that, I love the themes about evolution and ambition, two values which hold up very high to me. This show inspired and uplifted me, made me think about my life in a different way and made me realize ... the goals and dreams I had deep within me, that's how powerful this show was to me! But, let's not beat around the bush, this is going to be a review on the second movie, NOT on the excellent series.

The second Gurren Lagann movie recaps episodes 17 to 27 of the original series and includes some new stuff as well. As I said in my review of the first movie, I wasn't a big fan of that. It felt rushed and I disliked the divergence from the original series.

However, in this movie, the divergence was handled much better with an epic and mouth dropping final 10 minutes which was 100x better than the original ending. This movie succeeded in trying to do its own thing. Like the first movie, it also succeeded at throwing new information like f.ex Nia writing a letter to the deceased Kamina, Simon figuring out that she will die and Nia being much more of a badass!

Nia in this film got her own mech and she becomes way cooler and much less of a damsel in distress which she was a bit in the OG series. But just a bit, she was still a fantastic character in that as well.

But that wasn't the case with the other characters. Simon, Yoko, Kittan and Rossiu had the exact same things happen to them as it happened in the series, which I felt they could've given us more information about these characters. I would've really liked to know more about Simon and Kamina's deceased parents, which they had given us no information about. I would also really like to have known more about that first scene in the OG series, which I speculate is Kamina's father and Boota in the first war before the anti-spirals took over. However, I think a prequel would be great because it would explain Kamina's father, Lordgenome and the anti-spirals. Which we only got 10 minutes in the first film. Furthermore, another issue that I had in this movie is that like the first one, It feels way too compressed. Gainax could've made these two movies a bit lengthier.

To conclude, this movie was great all around but could've elaborated on some more things e.g anti-spirals, most of the main cast, Lordgenome, Kamina & Simons parents, etc. But, I highly recommend you watch this, mostly for the new stuff that's added and for the final battle, which was all around glorious. Still, though, it's not as fantastic as the real thing and you have to watch the series before these movies! It was still a tearjerker, especially that wedding :(

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Nov 1, 2019

Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Movie 1: Gurren-hen (Anime) add

Mixed Feelings

Don't get me wrong here.

I fucking LOOOOVE Gurren Lagann! For the past 8 months, it's been my all-time favorite anime. Everything about TTGL is brilliant including the plot, characters, music, and art, which Gainax had done an excellent job of making sure all of these factors were amazing. However, beyond that, I love the themes about evolution and ambition, two values which hold up very high to me. This show inspired and uplifted me, made me think about my life in a different way and made me realize the goals and dreams I had deep within me, that's how powerful this show was to me! ... But, let's not beat around the bush, this is going to be a review on the first movie, NOT on the excellent anime.

This movie is much like a recap movie of the first 15 episodes of the main series. But, it's not a recap movie like e.g the first two Madoka Magica movies. No, the Gurren Lagann movies include new footage and information that wasn't spread out in the main show. I'm going to try to spoil as little as I can, but an example in this movie was that they explored Lorgenomes backstory and how the world of Gurren Lagann came to be. There are many other things like that which get explained here. I think this is a great thing to do because even as amazing as TTGL was, there were still some questions left unanswered that left some wide gaps.

The purpose of these two movies was I think to fill in those gaps like f.ex who was Lordgenome or how the world of TTGL was made while also recapping the most essential parts of the story, which I think these two movies succeeded excellently at. There were quite an alarming amount of things that I hadn't noticed or forgot about in the main series e.g how Yoko came from an underground village with Dayakka, that the whole show was post-apocalyptic or that Dai-Gurren ship was originally enemy property which the gang had invaded.

However, with all that being said, there's not much else to take home. What I disliked about this movie in particular in how rushed it felt. It felt like Gainax knew they couldn't pack in 16 episodes worth of material in a duration of just two small hours, but tried to anyways. It's not as though they only included the most essential moments and the new stuff. No, they also diverged from the main series for the reason to alter the story, which felt totally unnecessary. This was most clear towards the end, where they try to defeat the gunmen.

To conclude, this movie succeeded in adding new and interesting stuff but failed in trying to bring its own thing, instead of just being obedient and faithful to its original source. The result was a mediocre movie which I won't revisit any time soon. But, wait! Don't watch this before the main series please! Watch these two movies AFTER the main 28 episode series, then watch these two moves. I would also recommend giving a lot of time between watching the series and the movies because then it will be easier to contrast and compare the two. Speaking of two, I will now go on to review the other movie!

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Oct 19, 2019

Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (Anime) add

Recommended

*Light spoilers for the first season of Higurashi*

I used to live in the countryside in a small town with a population of only about a thousand inhabitants. I lived there between the ages of 5 to 9, hearing crickets and doves as soon as I woke up to walk to school. Walking across the crowded forest on my way to school and going into class where there were only about 50 students. This was the calm and innocent feeling of living in the countryside.

But what if all of it was a lie?

I was only a child back then and I had no idea about the ... less nicer things about this small town. My parents used to back then fight almost every single day and I had no idea why my dad went away from long periods of time, to me and my brother, this was very painful. Our school had also a substitute teacher who the older students speculated was into kids in a perverse and inappropriate manner. My parents and school used to hide these two things from me and often I would get annoyed and would want to know the truth.

So what does this have to do with Higurashi?

Even though I'm drawing parallels between my own life and this anime, my own circumstances have unknown and unrevealed things about them, similar to Higurashi. But, Higurashi plays on the fact that what if things were much much worse.

Well, all the 6 arcs in Higurashi go from being cute and innocent to being downright chilling and insane. This shift appears slowly with the show planting seeds in the early part of the arc but then the seeds growing into killer plants that eat humans alive! This type of shift in tone created a dynamic that is unlike anything I've seen in an anime before.

One of the many great things about Higurashi is that you get clues about what is going on, more and more you get to know who is behind these atrocious actions and what families in this village are responsible for the insanity. F.ex when Hinamizawa would always happen a natural disaster that would kill everyone or that Rika can predict the events that will occur.

What makes Higurashi stand out is that it's not just a horror, it incorporates elements of slice of life, harem and psychological horror. 3 genres which I all love. All these elements gave the show a nice balance between being light-hearted, innocent and cute with it being sinister, depressing and dark. Being set in rural Japan during the summer in the '80s created a creepy and sinister atmosphere. With an underlying and confusing mystery lying behind every action that the characters take, which exploited the setting to its greatest lengths.

Speaking of the characters, all of them were great and well-developed. With backstories that were captivating, interesting and also frightening, especially Renas and Keechis. When I got more and more clues about what's happening, the more I started to empathize and sympathize with these characters and their horrendous circumstances.

This whole show felt like one big science experiment to see how the characters would react if one of them turned insane when everyone else could only watch as they were slowly turning insane. Then after the shit hits the fan, a new arc begins and everything suddenly becomes normal again, only for the events to repeat one arc at a time. Having this show separated into 6 arcs with them going from cute and innocent to sinister and insane made me want to binge all of it. Seeing the characters being blissfully ignorant of their environment was an aspect of this show that added to the horror, and this made me want to scream at them to investigate what was actually going on instead on. The mystery is in general what captivated me and made me stay for the whole thing.

However, not everything about Higurashi was great. This show had some shady and goofy looking animation. Thankfully, all of the other things compensated for this but man, they could've invested more into it. Because the VN looks like royalty-free clipart, it seems like they tried to adapt that style of the characters to the anime. When it came to the arcs, "Curse Killing" could've been cut down two episodes but otherwise, they all were in the perfect length. The gore could also be ridiculous sometimes, that the makers of this wanted to just add shock value.

The sound was fantastic in Higurashi, the sound of doves and crickets reminded me a lot of the town I mentioned and I loved both the OP and ED theme, which I rarely skipped.

Overall, Higurashi reminded me of my old town a lot and aside from the art design and one of the arcs being two episodes too long, I loved this show in the unknown mystery, how the arcs where set up as well as how much I could relate to it and I'm excited to watch season 2 which I will also review.

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Aug 15, 2019

Akira (Anime) add

Recommended

Now where in 2019, the same year that the movie is set and where it will be getting an anime adaptation. Does Akira still hold up?

Often hailed as a classic and being influential to both anime and even Hollywood, Akira is about two delinquent gang members called Tetsuo and Kaneda who are in conflict with another gang called "the clowns". During a battle with the two gangs an accident happens, Tetsueo is caught up with an "esper", which makes Tetseuo experience unusual pains and hallucinations. Tetsuo gets sent to a hospital where he starts to get experimented with. The world is set in Neo Tokyo ... where gang violence and terrorism often occur, where both the government and the military work together to try to hide "Akira"

I'm not a watcher of older anime, so I'm in no way an expert of them. But, the visuals here are extremely impressive for being pre-digital. It's a grim cyberpunk aesthetic with lots of neon colors and very detailed art. I also really liked the mystery of what Akira is. Is it a person, a machine? A weapon of mass destruction or some sort of god? Why is it so important and why is the government hiding it?

The mystery aspects of this film where compelling and interesting, one of them are of what happened to Testeuo. They're scenes here where we don't know what is actually going on with him, where he might be hallucinating or he might actually witness these bizarre things happening around him, one such scene was in the hospital where he saw stuffed animals becoming larger ones . There are a lot of things which make Akira considered a classic but that doesn't mean that everything about this movie has aged well. The characters are themselves are what leads me into some of the less good parts of this movie.

I sadly didn't care for most of the characters, Kaneda was annoying and really thick-headed. There were moments where he tries to hit on some girl during like three different occasions. The whole motorcycle gang where annoying and shouty, this was intentional but that doesn't excuse how dull most of them where. They lacked personality and we didn't even get to know many of them that well except for Kaneda and Tetsuo.

The villains here being the military and government which captured Testueo felt very one-note and boring. There was this military general who was everywhere in this film but he was so boring and had no personality except just being a strict douche.

My least favorite thing about Akira has to be the ending. I get that it tries to pull a "mind ***" but this just felt dumb and makes it's so the movie doesn't feel complete, because the manga was still getting published at the time. I can't deny though how visually stunning them last 10 minutes of this film were, god ***!

Overall, Akira was a visually gorgeous movie that even though being influential and important, is kinda overrated and could've developed its characters a bit more. This was still was a really enjoyable film and I would still recommend watching this.

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May 17, 2019

ef: A Tale of Melodies. (Anime) add

Recommended

Note: This is a review of both ef a tale of memories and melodies.

What makes an anime stand out? Could it be the studio which the anime is made? Could it be the source which the anime has come from? Could it just be because of the characters or plot? One of these anime that stand out for me is the Ef series, a fulfilling and beautifully executed romance visual novel adaptation done by studio Shaft, the same peeps who made Monogatari. And in this show, they do almost everything differently than other anime within those two genres.

What really makes the ef series stands ... out is that no one is talking about or hyping it up. It's a shining diamond that is so obvious to see yet no one notices or even makes the attempt to look at it. I mean, this anime has some of the most dazzling, creative and gorgeous animation tricks I've ever seen and they combine this with alluring and wonderful symbolism. An example from the show is when Kuze, a violin player had these maks on his wall. These masks were extensions of his personality but they weren't him, only a mask to hide his real pain that he went through. The symbolism here makes this anime appear so marvelous and vivid for its genre and source material. The themes here about love and passion were interesting and done in such a way that you felt what the characters were feeling instead of them just going to school and hanging around and randomly the girl starts falling for the dude.

The anime was also told in parallels, meaning that during the first season, half of the season is about Hiro in Otowa, Japan who is trying to become this manga artist who meets a girl by accident who he starts hanging around with. And the other half is about Renji who is this lonely guy from Otowa, Australia (yes, they have the same names, cool right?) who tries to become a writer and meets a girl by accident who he starts having around with. The way the pulled that off was something I've never seen before it sounds like a disaster on paper but it worked wonderfully.

This series didn't feel shallow like a lot of visual novel adaptations that are made as quickly and with as low of a budget as possible. And believe me, I've seen dozens of anime with that source material, most of them are extremely similar and are almost clones of each other. And to compare with other melodramatic anime like Air or Kanon, this anime didn't feel forced and did things differently with its symbolism, art tricks, having few cliches, the parallel storylines and also interesting characters, and with those anime having almost NONE of that (sorry kanon and air fans).

One of my favorites was Hiro, who was such an uncliched and interesting character. The way Hiro deals with this is also different than most boring and uninteresting romance/harem protagonists, they usually try to help almost everyone and give up on themselves. Hiro wants to become a manga artist more then he wants to breathe air so it's no surprise to see Hiro do things differently than other people.

I really felt a deep sense of connection and a bond within all the characters. Even if they live in different cities they all know each other and that was unique for a show like this. The mystery of this show was a bit tedious at first, like when a girl called Yuuko who appeared at random places and gave out random advice.

What I also find tedious was all the supporting cast in a tale of memories, who felt like they were there and didn't have a purpose. But they became main characters in Season 2 and got explained again.

Overall, this anime drowned me with emotions and even if I tell you that this show is worth watching, you probably won't actually watch it, will you? Because the anime industry has become such a hype machine with people just drooling over certain shows and not taking the chance and exploring underappreciated works like this. I recommend this to almost everyone, even if you don't like melodrama, this is a type of melodrama that is not like other anime with self-insert protagonists and bullshit endings.

EDIT: There are some visual novel adaptations that are great, like Steins Gate & Higurashi. In this review, I'm talking more about dating sims, not those two.

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