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Oct 29, 2018
It's basically just fanservice.
There's a lot more to say than that, but it sums up my overall position on Accel World: Infinite Burst.
The movie begins with an approximately 40 minute long recap of (mostly) the first half of the TV series. This is something I'm not a big fan of, but have seen before in anime movies tied into a TV series and I guess I can understand the intention if it's to bring the audience up to speed with the plot. I still don't agree with that choice, but I can understand it. But here it's immediately ruined by the fact that
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not only does the recap mostly overlook the second half of the show, but also a long series of other events only covered in the original light novels, leaving the viewer very confused as to what's happening at the start of the animation-new material in the movie if the show is all they're familiar with.
SPOILER WARNING: major plot details follow
These include, but may not be limited to, new characters, Sky Raker's legs having been restored, the fact that Nega Nebulus and Prominence are now one legion (???), the ability of Scarlet Rain's fortress to transform into a four-legged tank and some kind of large flatbed truck-tank thing, and the fact that it seems to have a time limit now, the fact that many characters who were previously only acquainted through the game seem to now know each other in real life and make no big deal of it (despite the fact that the importance of hiding your real life identity was stressed very heavily by Black Lotus in the TV series), and the fact that Silver Crow now throws around Incarnate abilities against AI opponents who aren't using them despite the fact that this was said to be extremely dangerous for one's mental state. I assume most or all of these are explained in the intervening light novels, but there's no explanation to be found within Infinite Burst itself (nor, on a more meta level, for why this arc was chosen to be made into a movie now when so much of its foundational material is unexplained).
The actual plot of the movie is also rather poorly explained and rushed. The hook is solid,that a girl in the middle of a gymnastics accident accelerated into the infinite neutral field right before falling into a coma and has thus been stuck there. We learn that something's going on to disable security cameras and lock people out of parts of the accelerated world, the party gathers at a point outside of the disabled area and is able to pierce the veil using Rain's truck and the Green King's shield, and then they fight a large horde of monsters summoned by a legend-class enemy Nyx, who has apparently been summoned by the trapped gymnast, and Crow and Lotus enter her fortress and have a brief confrontation. This all has the makings of an interesting narrative with some good tension and reveals, but it goes by so fast that nothing has much weight; the new content of the movie only makes up about half of its 80-minute runtime, only about 1.5 times the length of a single episode of the TV show. I have no idea why half of the movie was given to recap when the other half feels so rushed, but regardless of why, it severely hampers the story.
That being said, the art and soundtrack are still great, the characters are likable for what we see of them, and some of the fights are quite well animated. Seeing this stuff in action is cool for people who already know the story, or fans of the original show that want to see more stuff from the characters they like, but as a movie it's pretty weak, and I genuinely don't understand how the same people that made the TV series, which I think has great pacing and narrative construction, could have messed up this badly on the movie. I don't really know enough about how anime is produced to speculate, and I'd love to hear an explanation if anyone has one. Overall, I wasn't expecting anything as great as I thought the show was, and I was still pretty disappointed.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Sep 26, 2018
I gotta start this review by saying I love memes. There's a lot that can be done with absurdist referential humor that strikes me as incredibly clever or inspired. When I say something has memes, or is a meme, know that it's not an insult, it comes from a place of appreciation.
Konosuba is a show with incredible meme potential, which is how I was first introduced to it. A lot about the show's set up is really clever and subversive, to the extent that it would be silly to try to list everything. It starts off blowing back expectations when the protagonist dies a
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pathetic death and is made fun of by a goddess, and everything spirals out from there.
This is probably the aspect of the show I would praise the most. There are also a good number of clever moment-to-moment jokes that had me chuckling. However, the show didn't really have much for me beyond that. My favorite comedy series, stuff like D-Frag! and Cromartie High School, have similarly clever set-ups, a lot of hilarious situations, but also more wordplay and understated humor, arguably more developed characters, and most importantly are more consistently surprising. Konosuba's characters all have an obvious "thing" to them, a core element to their personality, and I didn't really see much past that. Despite the narrative subversions, this lent a certain element of predictability to how some of the comedy played out that definitely diminished the appeal for me. There are certainly charming and funny moments, but there were also some that I found somewhat dull, and as the show went on I was surprised less and less often.
A lot of this is subjective, of course; comedy is perhaps more than most other genres. But I didn't like Konosuba as much as I was hoping to, based on the premise; it was reasonably enjoyable but in my view rarely inspired beyond the initial set up. 6/10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Sep 26, 2018
(Note: this review is for the first season only. I haven't finished the second season, but what I've seen of it addresses a number of my issues with the first and I would rate it at least a point higher.)
Log Horizon is a show that can't escape comparisons to Sword Art Online. And I get why; they have similar set ups but LH takes a much more grounded and realistic approach to MMO design in many of the ways that SAO trolls big fans of the genre. It certainly deserves praise for that, if that's your kind of thing; the game mechanics and culture of
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MMOs are well-depicted from what I understand of them, and have occasional clever impacts on the plot. However, in my opinion many of the other aspects of the show are mediocre to the extent that it ends up being merely an okay package, at least to someone like me who has played casually but never really been engrossed in a real MMO.
The characters are a mixed bag. Shiroe is an interesting subversion of the typical sort of protagonist you'd expect in a show like this, being a brainy tactician who lets others do the more direct fighting, and he's a reasonably interesting character beyond that as well. There are also a few others I found pretty inspired, like Krusty and Raynesia, who have a great dynamic that feels very human despite one of them being the world's equivalent of an NPC. However, I found much of the cast pretty boring and somewhat stereotypical a lot of the time, and rarely very developed. The visual designs are also kind of mediocre in my opinion; they're not terrible but there were very few characters I looked at and immediately thought "I want to know what's going on here" or "that guy looks awesome". They're serviceable on average but rarely great.
The story is in kind of a similar place. There was one arc I thought really stood out, with a surprising revelation about one character and subsequent action around it, but otherwise I found the conflicts pretty dull. The one thing about the show I would give unadulterated praise is the OP, which is a damn good song that really gets you hyped for the show and probably kept me a lot more invested than I would have been otherwise. Ultimately, there were a few things I really liked about Log Horizon, but I thought it was frequently mediocre and didn't always hold my interest. 6/10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Nov 30, 2016
I came into this show with high expectations from Fate/zero and other Fate works, and while I definitely can't call it bad, I was a bit disappointed.
The good:
The art and animation are gorgeous; the style from Fate/zero is maintained and might look even better. Fights are very fluid. This is probably one of the best-looking anime I've ever seen.
The voice performances (I watched the English dub) were quite good for the most part. I really wish they had brought Liam O'Brien back to play Archer though; his performance in the earlier Fate/stay night anime was amazing.
The not so good:
The pacing
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felt a bit strange. I felt like the writers were doing their best to convince me that the events transpiring were very tense and happening very quickly, but what we actually see kind of meanders along or stalls. I'd be fine with either of things if they committed to them, but the result is kind of this awkward mismatch between the impression we're supposed to get and how the characters are reacting to it, and the pacing that we actually see. In my opinion, the story arc of UBW is not quite deep enough to hold a 24/25 episode anime, at least the way they chose to adapt it, so we have a lot of detail added that sort of strangles the action, as well as some scenes where not much is happening.
I also thought that the character focus was a bit off. The story of UBW, as I understand it, is primarily about Shirou and Archer's characters and ideals and how they clash. Neither of these characters, especially Archer, received an amount of focus proportional to this - we do learn things about them, but they don't feel very prominent in the story. There are a number of other interesting side characters and backstory details and such, but the placement of when we actually learn about them is sometimes confusing and can distort the narrative flow.
All in all, I would not say that FSN: UBW is bad; it's very exemplary in animation at least and certainly has positive aspects to be enjoyed. However, I do think there are a number of areas that could have used some revision and may prevent full enjoyment. 7/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Aug 24, 2012
I have to say, when I heard about Infinite Stratos, I was intrigued. A not-too-distant future with mecha that can (mostly) only be piloted by women? The male protagonist has to face the difficulties that being the first male pilot thereof bring, while surrounded by attractive women? Sign me up, man. Unfortunately, Infinite Stratos is, in application, less concerned with the initial premise, and more concerned with crafting various scenarios that allow the "harem" aspect to really be shown. This is not necessarily damning in and of itself, but a few other problems prevent IS from being the series I think it had the potential
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to be.
The first fact is something that most viewers will find hard to deny: with a few notable exceptions, the vast majority of IS is fairly generic. Most of the girls who keep appearing to follow Ichika around fall into this category as well, having little characterization and undergoing strange personality shifts from their initial appearance. Some are hit by this harder than others, and one is actually fairly interesting and innovative (I thought her few episodes were probably the highlight of the show), but overall the setup is rather clichéd. Not bad, in and of itself, but definitely not new or developed to its full potential.
Another problem I thought this series had was the (in my opinion) strange shift in tone that happened towards the end of the show. The ending, in my opinion, didn't really "jive" with the rest of the series and kind of sticks out as...not quite the same as the rest. It kind of seemed like the writers were trying to create a "big finish" for the season and the characters, but honestly I think something with less grandeur would have been okay if it pieced together better with the other 10 or so episodes.
So, ordinarily I'd give a show like Infinite Stratos something like a 6, for an overused scenario and (IMO) strange ending. However, the series was helped by many of its base aspects (nice art, great sound, a couple of interesting characters amid the mostly flat ones), and given that there were a couple of episode I really did enjoy, my final verdict is a 7, for "incomplete overall, but with some attractive aspects". If you're looking for a series that is going to draw you in with its complex plots and deep characters, Infinite Stratos isn't really going to suit you. But if you want something that's both fairly easy to follow and has some spots of quality amid the overall rough surface, you might want to give it a try.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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