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Feb 7, 2015
Work days can be exhausting. Solution? A light-hearted anime to help you unwind!
Unfortunately, this isn't the right anime for me. It consists of three friends bantering and goofing off, which would be fine if they were witty and interesting individuals, but alas! they are dull as wallpaper. Their bantering is downright banal - in fact, the high point for me was the pun "mochi-vated". And I'm a person who LIKES banter!
The characters were: a normal, straight-laced kid; her two lesbian best friends who want to fondle her; and a big-busted teacher, who her friends also want to fondle. I am pro-LGBT, and it's annoying to
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see lesbian characters used purely as fanservice/objects of comedy. I wish the creators had used more quirky, unusual, bizarre, and even grotesque characters.
[In Secret Code: Ja sam zapravo odgledala samo dve epizode, ali ovi jebeni birokrati brisu moje komentare o serijama zatosto "nisam dovoljno odgledala za pisanje". Moram negde da priznam da sam samo odgledala dve (citav sat ovoga!), pa cu da napisem ovde i mozda ce neko da koristi Gugl Prevodilac. U ovakvim serijama, cak i jedna epizoda ti kaze sve sto trebas da znas.]
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Dec 14, 2014
Interesting show! I could discuss it for a long time, but instead I'll make this quick.
This show is a journey. The viewer travels with Kino and Hermes as they go to many different lands and see different cultures and customs. Each episode tells a story of a hypothetical society and is engaging by appealing to our curiosity. It presents a world open to questioning, and wants us draw our own conclusions and learn more about life, etc, etc, etc.
The world of Kino's Journey exists in an allegorical space. There is very little meticulous attention to logic of the "real world" - it ignores concepts such
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as geography, diffusion of technology, agricultural production, trade between societies, spread of culture, etc. It simply asks a question and builds a society around it - What if machines did all the work for humans? What if everyone could read everyone else's mind? What if there was an surgery that created a definitive distinction between children and adults? Kino stays at each society for three days, and through this brief window into each society we can speculate about the connections between our own world and maybe (on the conceptual level) reconsider the values we hold in our society. The nature of the show is also relaxing (despite many dark episodes) because as a traveler, we have few stakes in each society - we are simply outside observers.
Unfortunately, at the same time Kino's Journey is a little... shallow. This is of course true by nature of the show, because each society is constructed as an allegory and we only see a small aspect of each. But beyond this, the show generally sets up very simple scenarios that get fairly repetitive in nature - most center around conformity and how bad it is. There are fairly obvious messages such as "Censorship is bad! Adults aren't always wise! Work can be meaningless!" It reminds you that many animators were probably once outcasts in highschool. There is generally a clear divide between "right" and "wrong." In one episode, Kino arrives at a society which is a silly caricature of the Roman Empire which simplifies the complex original into a world of hedonism ruled by a psychopath (who has an evil MWAHAHAHAHA laugh). Without spoiling, while this story offers some interesting thoughts on revenge, it's mostly a shallowly developed "defy the oppressive regime" story. The worst story is probably the shallow take on literary censorship where the entire society is preoccupied with books and the Evil Government wants to ban books (because you might stop distinguishing books from reality!) while the Brave Rebels wants to bring them back - would an entire society be so obsessed over literature? The societies can get one-dimensional like this.
But there are some gems in here as well - an episode meditating on work, an episode about a brave inventor, and the last episode, which is probably the strongest. The aesthetics help enrich the show as well - designs of the different cities are Western-inspired, but the creators have put their unique spin on things so that the world feels familiar yet different. Technologies come range from "real world" stuff to common sci-fi designs to Vinciesque machines and steampunk. The colors are toned-down with earthy browns, grays, greens, pinks, and blues - stuff you find in nature. Music is one of the most surprising aspects because a variety of acoustic instruments are used to create a soundtrack unspecific to any time or culture. It adds to the flavor of the show and helps make it memorable.
So in all, though the show isn't anywhere as "deep" as I had expected, some fascinating concepts and the lovely music & aesthetics built an interesting world I was glad to explore with Kino.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Oct 22, 2014
Alien 9 is kind of a predecessor to Madoka Magica - 3 girls battle aliens while facing their various psychological problems. Problems arise because some situations are very traumatic, and some aliens can actually know human's innermost desires and use them to manipulate the girls.
But Alien 9 isn't even close to Madoka Magica for several reasons. The setting is given thin development - where are these aliens coming from? Why must elementary school girls fight them? Who is the teacher? etc. Likewise, the story feels a little... incomplete. As if it were meant only to advertise the manga.
Also, it's unfortunate how annoying the main character
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Yuri is. Here is my old reaction to Alien 9:
"A potential-packed premise and solid storytelling crash and burn due to an off-the-charts annoying protagonist whose constant whinging, crying, complaining, and self-pity make every second of Alien Nine physically painful. This is hands-down the most annoying anime I have ever fully watched."
This is probably me bitching, but I don't like whiny little girls as protagonists. Yuri is always whining and bursting out into tears, and she doesn't even have any real "issues"! Even if she did, why would I want to watch an anime about a character I don't care about? If I were her age, I would have LOVED to fight aliens. The other two girls who actually had problems were far more interesting because they at least went into the challenge with some strength and bravery.
That said, I still think Alien 9 has many strong points. The animation is excellent and the soundtrack is appropriately weird.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Oct 21, 2014
A fairly standard story. A young man must save his true love from a greedy merchant. Decent way to spend an hour.
Pros:
-- (Nice aesthetic) - Renaissance Italy combined with mecha and other classy tech
-- (Specificness) - the story is a small piece of a larger tale, so instead of being another tale of The Ultimate Hero defeating The Ultimate Evil, it's a more personal journey of a man realizing that he loves a woman and should save her, even though they're not lawfully allowed to be together
-- (Engagement) - the story is fairly absorbing and moves along well. We have sympathy for out hero and
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root for him to outwit his enemies
Cons:
-- (Overcomplicated) - This is a fragment of a larger universe, so not only is there an infodump at the beginning, but one needs to go to Wikipedia if one is to understand what exactly is going on.
-- (Straightforward) - The actual plot is basic: hero vs. irredeemably greedy, lusty, and gluttonous old ruler. Guess who wins?
-- (Deus-ex-machinas) - The story is so simple, you'd think this isn't needed; but apperently the plot must go in a certain direction, and several fortuitous coincidences conveniently steer it the right way.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Oct 21, 2014
Hugely disappointing. Madoka Magica was exquisite - a deconstruction of a genre and a meditation on hope and selflessness vs. selfishness. The plotting was brilliant because despite tackling abstract ideas, it was firmly anchored in the emotional reality of the girls. It was both a breathless ride and a fascinating philosophical exploration. It was brilliant.
Madoka Magica did not need a sequel, but because Money Must Be Made, there is of course a movie. The Rebellion Story does many things right - the production values are large, evidenced by the mind-bendingly creative, surreal, detailed, heavily stylized animation. The music's good too - it ranges from creepy
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to pulse-pounding (nothing less should be expected from Yuki Kajiura). But there is no real STORY. The first hour is fan-pandering (the girls are running around fighting together! as a team! yaaaay!) and the second hour is Homura angsting about nonsensical existential tripe and then a random plot twist which tears up the structure of the entire movie and shocks you into watching the second movie. The whole thing is so incongruous to the original series I'd be laughing if I weren't crying over what could have been.
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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