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Imagine being an animator at Studio CloverWorks and being worked to the point of hospitalization as production mismanagement causes the entire finale to not only miss its air date, but get pushed back an extra three months. Imagine being forced to continue to grind and toil for three more sleepless months. Imagine all of that, and the final product is a complete joke - a non-ending that spends half its runtime on recapping the events of the series (meaning that 2 out of 13 episodes are recaps) and the other half sputtering in narrative circles. Questions remain unanswered, conflicts unaddressed, the genre and tonal clusterfuck ... is entirely unresolved, which seems especially egregious when you spent 22 minutes reminding your audience of each and every one of those open points.

WONDER EGG PRIORITY SPECIAL: MY PRIORITY wanted the abstraction of NEON GENESIS EVANGELION's original ending, but provided none of the thematic weight or substance or artistry, and instead I can't help but think this show was a total sham. The early episodes trick the viewer into thinking that it will be a thoughtful piece about the societal pressures and mental maladies that bring people to the point of suicide. At first, WONDER EGG PRIORITY is flashy and dramatic and oh so mysterious, an enchanting facade meant to lure in the suckers, but the moment you venture deeper it becomes apparent that the foundation is shoddy, the construction utterly careless, and the entire framework collapses upon the most surface level inspection. WONDER EGG PRIORITY was a scam, the ruse fell apart, the charlatans in charge were forced to cobble something together to appease the mob, and this half-assed, meandering, timewaster of a special is the result.

Imagine being worked like a slave and for all your work, all your effort, this is the final result - not because you didn't try, not because you didn't care, but all because the people in charge never knew what they were doing in the first place. What a disaster.

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS***

Technically not finished, as the final episode has been delayed for at least several months due to the apparently nightmarish production schedule, but I feel confident sharing my thoughts about the product we have so far. Looking around online, WONDER EGG PRIORITY seems to be writer Shinji Nojima's first and only anime, and that is very apparent. On the one hand, you have a story of four young Japanese girls who have been affected by suicide as they grapple with such heavy topics as bullying, abandonment, abuse, and discrimination, just to name a few. On the other hand, you have a story ... where four cute anime girls do battle with outlandish, pastel-colored monsters and CG-animated gremlins. I'm not convinced these two aspects really gel.

Oh, sure, the monsters are meant to be representations of the traumas of different suicide victims, but at a certain point fantastical setup feels so arbitrary and transparently symbolic that I got the sense that these elements were involved not because that's really what's best for this kind of story, but more because this is an anime and anime have to have cute girls and sakuga-filled battles with wacky weapons and animal sidekicks. I have the distinct impression that Shinji Nojima was interested in telling the story of four girls dealing with suicide and that everything else was added to "suit" the medium.

Unfortunately, all the flashy animation and wacky monster designs fell rather flat. The show wants to be brutal and scary, but it's so obviously aping the MADOKA MAGICA playbook that the intended shock is rather muted. MADOKA MAGICA wasn't effective just because horrible things happened to cute girls, it was effective because it was a well-written and directed series where horrible things could happen to characters we liked and cared for. At this point, I am utterly desensitized to images of magical girls getting hurt or bleeding or dying. That alone is not going to win me over.

WONDER EGG PRIORITY's cast of main characters are likable enough, but the format (in which each episode follows a main character protecting the apparition of a different suicide victim) means that a lot of development goes to single-episode characters, characters whose traumas have to be summarily exposited and reduced to a single cause over a runtime of 23 minutes. It's not conducive to depth or nuance; the obvious symbolism seems, in part, an attempt to lend these characters a surface-level gloss of depth and complexity.

It also feels arbitrary when the show can't seem to decide how literal or abstract it wants to be. The beginning seems to ground a lot of what is happening as some sort of magic, where things aren't necessarily one-hundred percent real, but there are at least a few concrete rules. For instance, in the dream world, any injuries the girls sustain is supposed to be carried into the real world when they awake. Unfortunately, the show proceeds to completely ignore this as characters are shot, cut, and thrown through concrete without any consequence, so what are the stakes? This gets even worse when the show later shifts towards science fiction and demands that accept that not only was everything somehow a product of technology, but we are also expected to swallow that AI, androids, dream hacking, etc. are all real in an otherwise seemingly modern setting.

Still, one could make the argument that WONDER EGG PRIORITY should be praised for focusing on different aspects of mental health and raising awareness of the troubles of teen girls in Japan (if not everywhere). Unfortunately, the sudden and completely unwelcome shift towards science fiction places the blame for girls' suicides on a malevolent AI bullying teenage girls in their dreams, which somewhat undermines the social commentary. I guess if it wasn't for that pesky robot then all the unfair societal expectations and abuse wouldn't have mattered after all.

WONDER EGG PRIORITY is beautifully animated, certainly, and it has its charms early on as the narrative unfolds and the story seems full of possibility. It's clear that a lot of love and work went into getting this thing to air. Unfortunately, this feels like a show that bit off way, way more than it could chew, either because it wanted to tackle grandiose ideas but didn't know how to meaningfully condense them into a 12 episode format or because this is the product of a screenwriter trying to write for a medium he's not personally familiar with. In any event, something that at first seemed so full of promise fell flat, and while I'm curious as to how they'll try to wrap this up (especially with so many loose ends), I'm skeptical that it'll be able to address all my problems with it.

Not Eggscellent

"A cat is fine, too."

A Whisker Away is cute and charming at times, and the elements of a great children's story can be sniffed out, but the execution ultimately undercuts a lot of that potential. The movie stars a young girl still grappling with the fallout of her parents' messy divorce. Alienated from her parents and her stepmother, as well as from the other children in school, she's formed an unhealthy obsession with one boy in her class, acting out as a means of trying to win his attention. She has also been granted a magical mask that allows her to turn into a cat ... at will, which she uses to get closer to the boy without him knowing. Magical cat shenanigans ensue.

This movie is hampered out the gate by a really wonky and disorienting opening that layers flashbacks upon flashbacks. I think it was something of a misstep to essentially start the plot proper with Miyo already having the ability to turn into a cat; too much of the beginning has the audience trying to play catch-up. The use of flashbacks continue as the plot go on, and unfortunately I found their clumsy application served as a continuing disruption to the flow of the story.

Once we get into the movie proper, I was genuinely invested in Miyo's plight. I could see some viewers being mad at her bratty, self-centered behavior, but she seemed to me a believable take on a troubled young girl in such a situation, likable even in the face of her outbursts. Sure, she's kind of absolutely batshit insane ("You insulted my not-actually-my-boyfriend boyfriend? I'm going to JUMP FROM THIS ROOFTOP!"), but, in a sea of unmemorable, dime-a-dozen snoozer protagonists, it makes her standout. I also gave the movie a lot of credit because, obviously, it had to understand that her one-sided, stalkerish crush on this clearly uninterested boy is not a healthy thing, and it would surely address that... until the movie decides that, actually, they should be in love after all.

That last bit captures my biggest gripe with the movie. Miyo and the boy (whose name already escapes me) end up in a romantic relationship because that's what kid's movies typically do. Nevermind all the setup and outright acknowledgement that Miya's behavior towards him is unappreciated, invasive, and essentially harassment, we've got audience expectations to meet. There's a version of this movie that doesn't reward Miyo's bad behavior so blindly, that lets her grow without a needless romantic development. Maybe they can be just friends, maybe she has to learn to respect his space and let him decide what comes next, whenever he feels comfortable, but a simple kiss and declaration of love don't feel like the right lesson here. Despite the movie's setups and characters hinting at a story with a little more weight and self-awareness, it ultimately trods the path of the safe and predictable and utterly toothless. Even the ending sequence, set in a magical cat dimension, is meant to be magical and whimsical, but it all feels a bit rote and familiar.

The visuals are nice for the most part, but there is some very obvious use of CG backgrounds and objects (particularly the cars) that I found grating. I understand the utility of CG as a tool, but unless it's integrated in a way that serves the art style of the series or film, it's going to stick out like a sore thumb, and I would've hoped that a theatrical-tier film like this wouldn't have to resort to such shortcuts so obviously. If that kind of thing doesn't bother you, then you probably won't find much to complain about, though you might not see all that much in the way of sakuga moments to gush about either.

Finally, the film feels like it gambles heavily on the viewer's fondness for cats. If you think there's nothing cuter than a kitten, you're sure to be smitten. Otherwise, your mileage may vary.

A Whisker Away is ultimately a middling effort that can't rise above the predictable and well-trodden. Still, I think some of the character details and Miyo's particular brand of psychosis give the movie a personality I can at least appreciate, if not really love. As a children's movie, it's cute, it's fun, it's mostly harmless, and I'm sure kids will like it just fine (and the adults in the room won't be bored or enraged). When you share a medium with the Studio Ghibli canon, however, you've got big, big shoes to fill, and this is barely substantial enough for a pair of kitten mittens.

I have my misgivings about the original Ghost In The Shell film, but the one aspect that is above reproach is its visuals. That film is so gorgeously drawn and animated that it set a high watermark that few films have approached since.

It is an immense disappointment, then, that Oshii's followup is so garishly ugly. The movie is an absolute eyesore, with primitive, unflattering CGI composited alongside stiff 2D animation. The fluidity and expressiveness that defined the original's animation is mostly absent from this entry. It's somewhat baffling, too, considering that the use of CGI elements in Stand Alone Complex was employed to mostly great ... effect - and often blended in very naturally with the traditionally animated characters and backgrounds.

The ugly, muddy visuals make the movie a difficult watch, and the muddied plot at the film's center isn't engaging enough to make up the difference. It's a plodding detective story where the framework is only hazily sketched out, with a lot more telling and expositing than natural showing. The philosophical soliloquies that one would expect from the franchise are here, but it's hard to care about, say, the prospect of mass produced dolls being implanted with manufactured souls if we basically never see these robots acting as such. There are some interesting concepts at play, but it feels as though Oshii is banking on you giving him credit for those ideas rather than having to execute them in any meaningful fashion.

It's perhaps unfair to compare Stand Alone Complex's characterizations of the cast with Oshii's works, as they are essentially two separate universes. Still, in Stand Alone Complex, Batou and Togusa have a great dynamic despite their marked differences, with their interactions being a frequent highlight while never descending too far into cliche "buddy cop" territory. Hell, Batou is perhaps my favorite character simply for the thoughtfulness, haggardness, and loyalty beneath his "dumb muscle" exterior. Here, however, both characters feel so drab and lifeless in comparison; Batou is mostly left to mope and pontificate. Watching Innocence, it's as though there was a black hole where Batou and Togusa's relationship should be. Even if I can't fault Oshii for not sticking with the characterizations of a separate universe, I can still take issue with his versions being so drab and dull (especially when a similar scenario was later handled so much better in the Solid State Society film).

Innocence is a disappointing successor to Oshii's original, and it fails to build upon the improvements introduced in the Stand Alone Complex series. In some ways, it's like an ugly facsimile of Ghost In The Shell, strung-along in a pantomime of all the things you'd expect in a Ghost In The Shell story. For my money, this puppet imitation just doesn't have the same soul.

Wading through the muck of cliche-ridden, creatively bankrupt Isekai franchises that is drowning the light novel, manga, and anime market, it's a breath of fresh air to go back 20 years and experience such a story that isn't a thoughtless, slapdash power fantasy.

Oh, man, Now and Then, Here and Now definitely isn't that.

The show has garnered a reputation for being grim, and it's definitely deserved. Our protagonist, Shu, seems like typical shounen fare - a brash, headstrong young boy who believes the best about everyone and stands up for what he believes. Things are very quickly twisted, however, when he's whisked away to a ... hellish desert world (or, perhaps, Earth long, long in the future), where a tyrannical warlord uses his army of soldiers (many of whom are children) to exterminate all who would oppose him. We watch young children be beaten, tortured, raped, and murdered. It's grim, heavy stuff, but it creates an interesting challenge for our young hero - Can he cling to his ideals in such a place? And can he somehow convince the people around him to change their ways?

Now and Then, Here and Now wastes little time with its 13 episode run. Its characters are strong, if archetypal, and the plot unfolds at a brisk pace. For all the cruelties and suffering our characters undergo, Shu's optimism and idealism serve as a strong counterbalance, and makes the series' finale feel so, so earned.

I love so much about this show, and I really wish I could heap more praises upon it - but then we come to the villain. The evil King Hamdo is so ridiculously, ludicrously, impossibly manic from the first second that it's difficult to take him seriously at all, let alone believe that he has somehow maintained any position of power. The seiyuu certainly goes all out with the Doug Walker-esque shrieking and the screaming, but when you start at "batshit raving looney" it doesn't give you anywhere to go; I'll be charitable and chalk this up as a failure in the writing or in the directing. I found every scene with King Hamdo to be grating beyond measure, and unfortunately there's a lot of them.

The actual method of isekai (a teleporter device controlled by King Hamdo's faction) is also very transparently a convenience to force the plot to happen and nothing more. You would think a device that lets you go to other worlds/places in time would be incredibly useful for a resource-strapped army that can barely scrounge up enough soldiers, let alone water or food, but somehow it just apparently never comes to mind. It's also noteworthy that Shu never once seems to vocalize any interest in going back where he came from, despite the day-to-day agony he's supposed to endure. Again, you'd expect the thought to occur, but it just never does. I wonder if the writer dreamed up the setting first, and only later introduced the "modern kid in a fantastical setting" plot element as a means of introducing and exploring that setting.

Despite those flaws, there's so much to like about Now and Then, Here and Now; I might even go so far as to say it's got soul. If you're tired of most of the anime that's shoveled out today, I'd definitely recommend giving something a little bit older a try. There's a world beyond seasonal anime (another world, you could say), and it's well worth exploring.

Howls' Moving Castle starts off on a strong foot, doing its best to impress with a lush and imaginative world, but it all ultimately fizzles out. In some ways, this feels less like a Hayao Miyazaki film proper, and more like someone trying to ape a Miyazaki picture. All the familiar story beats and thematic haunts are there, but they're thrown in a blender, and the end result is a story that (like the eponymous moving castle) completely comes apart by the end.

At its core, Howl's Moving Castle is about two things (at least, by my reading). First, it's a story of a young girl ... coming to discover her own inner beauty and resolve through love (as represented through a witch's curse), and two, it relates the horror and heartbreak of watching war turn a loved one into a monster (also represented by a curse). These are strong elements, but Howl's Moving Castle starts throwing so many characters and turns at us that these central threads get lost in the tangle. The war is clearly, CLEARLY, meant to be evocative of the Japanese perspective in World War 2, but we quickly lose any thread of what's supposed to be going on - and then everyone decides that there shouldn't be a war because, hey, it's the end of the movie and we need to wrap things up.

The characters really get the short end of the stick from all the narrative clutter. Howl and Sophie feel more like distant, hazy sketches than fully realized beings, and everyone else is completely left by the wayside. It doesn't help that the movie keeps adding to the cast as it goes along, mostly to its detriment (the evil witch and spy dog tag along and everyone just goes with it because, hey, Spirited Away also had the somewhat antagonistic Baby and No Face join Chihiro in her journey, so it should also work here without any of the deliberate set up).

For a movie that belabors getting to its end so much, it's odd how little time it sets aside for actually concluding, ultimately culminating in one of the most slapdash finales I've seen in a while.

The animation is beautiful, the soundtrack is stirring, all the technical highlights one would expect of a Miyazaki film are here, but the final product feels desperately in need of focus. On the one hand, I doubt that Hayao Miyazaki put too much stock into Spirited Away's financial and critical acclaim, but the movie does feel like a victory lap from an artist feeling victorious, invincible, and above a second draft.

Mirai is a pretty picture that's marvelously animated and sharply directed (I love the long shots where time passes just off screen, as if the house were this timeless constant), but the end product just doesn't come together. It feels like there are two stories here - one, of Kun learning to be less of an annoying little shit, and the other, of the magic of learning your place in your family tree and coming to understand where you come from. Unfortunately, these plots don't work in tandem or feel like they really play into each other; we just start with the A plot and ... then eventually the B plot just takes over. Since the story is essentially a series of vignettes, the movie has a real herky jerky sense of pacing that doesn't help matters.

I don't want to bitch about our main character being an annoying brat, since he's a toddler and that is the point, but as an adult viewer (and Mirai certainly doesn't feel geared towards the tykes) I don't know how much I'm really supposed to get from his personal journey of learning, "Hey, maybe I shouldn't cry ALL the time."

So much of Mirai is nice in theory but its unfortunate narrative decisions kept me from ever getting invested in any of the proceedings. I'm also a little put off by how damn hard the movie tries to be whimsical; it's more transparent than cellophane in its intentions to woo you. But hey, it's purty, so that's nice.

Can it be a coincidence that the best animated entry in the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise is the story with the least Haruhi Suzumiya in it?

I'm going to say no.

I tore through Kyoto Animation's two seasons of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya this past week, and it's been a rollercoaster, with some highs matched by abysmal lows. A big part of my problem with the story of Haruhi Suzumiya is that Haruhi, the unwitting God of all creation herself, is a repugnant, detestable brat and the show only seems fleetingly aware of this fact. Beyond the admittedly ballsy and experimental Endless Eight (in which the show ... commits to a groundhog loop plot so hard that 8 episodes of a 14 episode season depict almost the exact same scenes happening over and over and over again), I think what made Season 2 such a miserable slog is that the two arcs it adapted feature Haruhi at her most unrepentantly obnoxious; when a character almost socks her in the face and I'm rooting for him to do so, there's a problem.

The moments where the show worked best, however (almost all being in Season 1), focused on the relationship between Haruhi and her put-upon straight man foil, Kyon, as he challenged her, grounded her, and, through their interactions, brought out her more redeeming qualities. I think part of why The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya works so well (apart from Haruhi being absent from so much of it) is that it reorients the focus back toward her dynamic with Kyon.

In this film, Kyon awakes one day to find himself in a world where Haruhi Suzumiya seemingly does not exist; no one remembers her, and all of his formerly supernatural companions have reverted to mundane teenagers. Unlike too much of the show, here there is a genuinely compelling sense of mystery, and the narrative has real forward momentum as Kyon takes an active role in uncovering the mystery. Plus, dropping him into this drab, dull world without the loud-mouthed ball of chaos to boss him around, makes the audience actually come to appreciate Haruhi's presence, even if only in this context.

In a way, this film reminds me of the last five minutes of Neon Genesis Evangelion's final episode, in which Shinji imagines his life as a cliche anime rom-com, but where Eva worked through that premise in about 5 minutes, this is film a languid, measured 160 minutes. Still, despite the film's length, I was invested in the story throughout; as slow-moving as the film can be, the characters are given room for a little more nuance and distinct personality than what they displayed in the series proper, and it goes a long way to giving viewers a reason to care.

I actually found Haruhi somewhat charming and endearing by this movie's end; you cannot imagine how much of an accomplishment that is. If this is indeed the last mainline Haruhi Suzumiya story to receive an animated adaptation, you could do far worse than to end the series on a note like this.

If I hear one more Little Red Riding Hood allusion, I am going to lose my mind. You know a movie's commitment to a metaphor is in trouble when you're yelling, "Okay, okay, we get it already!" at the screen - and you're only thirty minutes in.

I think a large part of my gripes with Jin-Roh is that it's a tale of inter-and-intra departmental conspiracies and coups, but it's hard to care when said governmental agencies (and, really, the setting at large) are so hazily sketched out. This is the kind of storyline right at home in the world of Ghost in the Shell, but ... there Public Security Section 9's place is clearly defined (and, unlike here, filled with a memorable cast of characters). Fuse, our main character, suffers from PTSD over the course of the film, but it feels like the impact of his inability to shoot a young terrorist, and the soul-searching the incident sparks in him, is minimized because we have no idea what he was like beforehand; we just have to take his and others increasingly ridiculous claims that he's a "beast" or a "wolf" at face value even though all evidence points to the contrary. It doesn't help that the central metaphor is so belabored that it becomes grating and hard to take seriously the more the film drags on.

There's some beautiful animation on display, with sequences reminiscent of The Third Man's delirious final chase in the sewers being a particular highlight, but they can't carry the stilted script. Perhaps this would have benefited from a longer adaptation that could have better fleshed out the world and its inhabitants instead of cramming everything into a tight 100 minutes. A bad movie is one thing; a bad movie with so much care and craftsmanship on display is damn near heartbreaking.

Makoto Shinkai seems desperate to recapture the broad, crowd-pleasing elements of Your Name, but bungles the execution on every front.

The "romance" at the film's center is weirdly inert. Our main character Hodaka is a hapless doofus and Hina, the love interest, is devoid of personality, less a believable person and more a walking plot device to be fawned over. Hodoka and Hina have so little romantic chemistry I assumed that the film wasn't seriously trying to pair them at all - woe is me for giving Weathering With You the benefit of the doubt.

It's a crippling problem in your YA adventure story when the young ... adults at its center are the least compelling members of the cast. Suga and Natsumi, the actual adults, are the most interesting characters, so of course they're mostly sidelined in service of the dumb plot at the film's center.

Also, it really sucks that the Your Name characters have cameos here, because this retroactively puts a huge damper on that film's ending. It also just underscores the contrast between how much I liked those characters and how little I cared for Hodoka and Hina and most of the supporting players.

My problem with Weathering With You's characters really speaks to the fundamental weakness of the script. Shinkai copies so many of the beats from Kimi No Na Wa's plot structure, but to greatly diminishing returns; Weathering With You is never as funny, never as moving, never as satisfying. The antagonistic police and child services here are so hopelessly incompetent that it defies belief. The weather angle is initially interesting, but the fantastical elements feel half-baked by the film's end. There's nothing inherently wrong with the core of the film's themes (despite all our advances, man is still subject to the whims of nature, and what matters most is forging friendship and love despite the adversity), but man is it delivered in the most hamhanded, tone-deaf, and outright batshit way possible. Avoiding specifics, by the film's end, our main character's selfish dimwittedness has crippled Japan's economy (assuming it is just limited to Japan) and doubtlessly killed people (potentially everyone!), all for "twoo wuv."

The conclusion is borderline experimental, which I'd normally give points for, but it feels more like the result of Shinkai's tone deafness than meaningful artistic vision, and most damningly of all, it's just plain unsatisfying. (It also comes across as a statement of abject apathy towards the effects of climate change, which is a hot take, to be sure, if not a very convincing one.)

But not to worry, not all of the problems lie with the script. Shinkai directs like he has the tinniest ear for music, interrupting every potentially dramatic moment with overblown pop songs, sometimes shuffling through multiple songs in mere minutes. There are way, way too many flashbacks and montages and flashback montages, to the point where it makes you wonder if Shinkai is a Youtube AMV editor at heart stuck making million dollar movies.

It's not that Shinkai doesn't have a talent for pretty animation and backgrounds, because you get that here in spades, but it's all in service to a hollow story. I've never been the biggest Shinkai fan, but this is a real lowpoint - and a perfect counterargument to anyone who suggested he could be "the next Miyazaki" with a straight face.