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I'll try to be brief because I'm not great at articulating my thoughts. And some *SPOILERS* for those that want to see this still. This "movie" starts out promising enough with Adroc Thurston trying to save the world...even though, from the sounds of it, he was at fault for it all in the first place. New animation, new music, and we hadn't seen this story in all of Eureka Seven before. (At least that I can recall, it has been a while since I had watched the series in its entirety.) So Hi-Evolution takes a step in the right direction and then takes a huge ... step backward to tell its incomplete story of Renton Thurston (Beams?).

The story after the introduction (and death) of Adroc focuses entirely on Renton and his relationship with Ray and Charles. It briefly touches about the weight that Renton has to deal with being the son of Adroc, but nothing in depth. His sister and his grandfather are nowhere to be seen or heard. It hardly scratches the surface of Renton's time with Gekkostate, and worse yet barely covers Renton and Eureka's relationship. Holland is still an asshat, but for some reason this is part of his charm...newcomers will have no idea why though. They hint how Dewey become the Dewey Novak we know from the series. The movie is not quite clear if it is telling a brand new story or if it is telling a jumbled version of the series.

As someone who fell in love with the series, I followed this as well as I think any fan would but it jumps back and forth in time far too much. And why is there so much text on the screen?! I fail to imagine that many non-fans went to see this, and good Lord if you didn't see three lines of text on every scene change. This movie over explains every little detail with the text and almost tries to distract you from what is going on screen. Another thing that disappointed me, but bears no weight on the overall product, was that JYB forgot how to Renton. There are flashes of the voice still being there but after 10+ years after the fact I think JYB can be forgiven for not being able to replicate the voice like he did in the series and Good Night, Sleep Tight, Young Lovers. (I'd mention Stephanie Sheh's Eureka if she was in the movie for more than a handful of scenes.) Still, to repeat, that did break my heart a little.

To me I feel like Tomoki Kyoda and Dai Sato maybe didn't quite understand what made Eureka Seven resonate with us. Aside from the pretty good opening, this movie is a jumbled mess. And while I was happy to see it focus on two characters that deserved a better fate in the series it disregards and jumps around way too much to be enjoyable and, better yet, comprehensible. I almost feel too nice to be giving this movie the score I'm giving it. But there are some nice moments in between it all, you just might not be able to make sense it when it happens.

So the new DBZ film has arrived and I was fortunate enough to have a theater that was showing it. For any DBZ fan this should hit right in the childhood as one of the first villains we ever knew has come back from the dead. The set up is this, Frieza has a couple thousand goons left years after his demise, and they finally set out to use the Dragonballs to bring him back to life, luckily for them Pilaf and crew already had 6 of the 7 found by the time they arrive. If you are wondering why the Z fighters didn't take ... notice, it was mostly due to only 2 of Frieza's goons coming to Earth instead of the entire army. With their very impressive technology Frieza is back from the dead and decides before he gets his revenge with Goku that he will have to train first. Roughly 6 months go by and Frieza is ready to fight and brings the whole "Frieza Force" along for the ride. Of course Goku and Vegeta are both away training with Whis while Beerus is still taking his very long nap(s). As one would expect the fight begins without them and to me it appeared to be a means to allow characters like Tien, Krillin, and Piccolo a little time on the screen before Goku and Frieza take up the rest. To be frank that's about all there is for story, it's pretty light on this one but on the plus side it is far less silly than Battle of Gods was. (Depending on your taste that may or may not be a good thing.) Thing is there is still humor to be found but this concept is a bit easier to accept than BoG was.

If you were looking for character development you may want to look elsewhere, aside from a couple lines pointing out Goku's and Vegeta's flaws our characters largely don't change. Despite Frieza's new form he is really just the same as you remember him from the end of his fight with Goku. If you were like me I had a soft spot for Gohan when I was growing up and to see him become the most powerful fighter at the end of the Cell Saga, by the Buu Saga his character was probably the 3rd most powerful amongst the heroes. If you are wonderings where I am going with this I wanted to say I still think that Gohan may have been the most powerful fighter on Earth despite his lack of any training while Goku and Vegeta were away. It's hard to say exactly since the power levels of these characters has gotten so disproportionate as time has gone along. In the end I hope Gohan gets back into fighting in DBS, would make things more interesting assuming that DBS goes into unknown territory.

Now for the "transformations," largely they are cosmetic and serve only to tell us that certain characters are more powerful than others. Also when Frieza invades Earth the Z fighters didn't even bother we just got a couple lines explaining that Frieza is more powerful than before and there it is. His final form is something akin to when Goku went Super Saiyan for the first time but if you are expecting some new attack or anything like that you will be disappointed. Also the form of Super Saiyan God that we saw in Battle of Gods may have been an incomplete form so we do see a slight variation but as I said it's merely cosmetic. This is where the padding in DBZ comes in. While we make fun of the fact that it took characters forever to change into a new form there was some gravitas to that. Because now the transformations happen so quick you feel underwhelmed by the experience unlike when we first saw Frieza take a new form or when Goku went Super Saiyan.

Kind of in line with what I was just saying because of the lack of time we don't feel that our heroes are in any kind of danger. A good example is how frequently Bulma goaded Frieza and yet he did nothing. I think in DBZ chances are Bulma would be dead, even with the 5 episodes of filler. Perhaps it was that I couldn't imagine Frieza magically getting so strong that he would be more powerful than Majin Buu. In any case there are just one too many deus ex moments that undercut any possible danger we may feel for the characters.

The fights were well done as one would expect for anything Dragonball related, however...there was an increased use of 3D animation which for the most part did not blend well with the traditional animation. There are a few cases where you couldn't tell the difference, but the filmmakers made a point to make it obvious to us when they were using it. I hope for future features or Dragonball Super that they either stop trying with the 3D or develop and blend the technology for better use.

I may sound fairly critical of this movie but it's way easier to point out faults initially than the pluses. Look at the score(s) that I gave this movie, I do feel this is a step up from Battle of Gods and this definitely had my attention more there was a point where I could tell I was truly drawn in versus being aware that I was watching a movie. If you are a fan of the series or just want a trip down nostalgia lane this a good way to spend your time for an evening.

I'm going to try and be brief, I just finished watching this. And as of right now I'm not entirely sure why it acquired the popularity it has received. Don't misunderstand, on it's own it is a decent series but there are at least a handful of things that make it less than stellar.

1. The overall atmosphere of the show, at it's best it can be described as very depressing. I can't think of a single episode that was even remotely upbeat. I'm not saying that being bleak is a bad thing for a show but with all of the death and destruction that goes ... on throughout it's tough not to come out a little sad after each episode.

2. The characters, while we have our main three in Eren, Armin, and Mikasa the rest of the cast is expendable. Without going into spoiler territory I found it difficult to keep track of characters and their names based on how frequently they died. I merit that to the author wishing to keep the readers, or in this case the viewers, on their toes since we won't know who is next. Kind of poetic when it comes down to it but still annoying when I shouldn't get too invested because they could be dead 2 or 3 episodes after being introduced to them. Aside from that Eren is a difficult lead to get behind, and I know this comparison will tick some people off, he reminds me of Shinji Ikari in some respects. While Eren initially is quite the opposite they both encounter these moments where Eren and Shinji have some sort of moral or ethical dilemma which slows down any momentum the show had. After a while you just tire of Eren's internal monologue because you know by the end of it he reaches the conclusion we knew was going to happen. He staggers too frequently and has to have someone constantly giving him some sort of advice to keep moving forward.

3. Pacing, the pacing of the show at times is well done and at others feels drawn out. There is about a 4-5 episode arc that should not have taken near as long as it should have other than to feature a "villain" and show many many people die in the process. I understand establishing a character but we didn't need that many episodes dedicated to it. Since this relates to pacing in a way I will mention that the ending is abrupt/inconclusive, setting up for the future second season. I'm not familiar with the manga so it's possible the anime caught up close enough they figured they should stop and give the manga-ka enough time to create more chapters. Either case what I assumed would be the end for the season and what turned out to be were two different things entirely. Not that that is a bad thing but rather I felt like it was a stalling tactic for Production I.G.

After all of my complaints I will mention the positives, the animation style was unique and, as I would expect from Production I.G., well done. The sound didn't catch my attention until I started marathon-ing the series but it was reminiscent of Hans Zimmer's score from Inception which is a good thing from my perspective. And honestly despite my complaints I did enjoy the show and invested in the characters that lasted more than an episode or two. We were left with a tease of what's to come and I plan to continue watching when the next season comes.

The latest Bleach movie to come stateside was released this past Tuesday and having just finished it I felt like writing my thoughts on it. The story is incredibly basic something akin to a DBZ movie in that it takes place in a fictional time after the Ulquiorra v Ichigo fight but before Ichigo returns to fight Aizen. That being the case the movie interestingly follows events similar to the series, the first episode that is, but after that comparisons stop. Ichigo must go to Hell to save his sister from a man that wants to be free from Hell. This story is the weakest ... of the four Bleach movies, but upon retrospect less is more in this instance. Why? They don't try to bog down the movie with establishing new rules for new characters that will likely be gone before the credits roll. The movies before and the filler episodes were guilty of this because they created rules that contradicted the Bleach universe. With all due respect this story is mediocre and I think most people will agree. Before I forget the opening action scene was quite beautiful even if we've seen it once already. And the other action scenes have the same amount of detail, however, pretty much all of the fights end in a predictable fashion. But the movie does throw in a minor twist shortly after, while it's not shocking at least the writers were trying at that point. The animation in the film is superb, it's not the best I have seen it certainly ranks up there at this moment. The Bleach movies have always had one good thing going for it and that has always been the animation. The sound was not bad but the re-use of the same soundtrack that we have heard since episode 1 doesn't help matters any. As for character they kept things normal, thankfully the movie did an ok job at portraying characters at a normal strength level. Sometimes these shonen movies will create villains that far too powerful to be convincing, and only one character truly fits that description. This movie isn't terrible by any stretch of the imagination but with a lackluster story and decent fights this movie will probably only be enjoyed by diehard fans of Bleach.