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Sep 24, 2024
I am always going to have a soft spot for the third generation of Pokemon, especially the anime from around that time. Pokemon Heroes, Jirachi Wish Maker, and Destiny Deoxys are some of my favorite childhood movies, possibly the movies I rewatched the most. But looking back on them now as an adult, they're not anything special. I can enjoy them now only because I enjoyed them as a kid.
Spell of the Unown is a much different story. I did watch this as a kid too, several times, but not quite as much as those others. Yet as I grew older, I'd remember it as
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the greatest movie. Now that I finally took the time to rewatch it, it's very easy to see why. The movie is genuinely fantastic, and manages to tell a gripping story that is full of the imaginative wonder of the Pokemon universe with a stunningly mature and thought-provoking plot, with one of the most unique and realistic conflicts in cinema, let alone those meant for kids.
Therein lies the single greatest achievement in this movie: how it creates a believable and threatening character-vs-character style of conflict without a villain. Molly, Entei, and the Unown are collectively the movie's antagonists, but I don't think it's accurate to call any of them villainous, spiteful, or malicious in any way. Entei was created to be a father towards Molly, and naturally sees Ash and the protagonists as a genuine threat to her, attacking them solely to defend his "daughter". Even when the heroes make it into the heart of the castle and confront Molly, Entei gives them multiple chances to turn back and leave them alone before attacking, giving the impression that he's a not a single-minded beast, but a rather a reasonable guardian. Even though he kidnapped Ash's mom, this was again just because it meant a lot to Molly, and as a corporeal illusion created by the Unown's power, it's not as if he was knowledgeable enough to realize how this was a wrongdoing. As for the Unown, even though it's their powers that cause all the disaster and calamity, it's heavily implied that they don't have full sentience and control over their own spell, and I personally see this as just a sequence of unfortunate happenstance. The Unown just so happened to be uncovered from a sort of statis, only to immediately resonate with the unstable emotions of a young child with a tragic upbringing.
That child being Molly... Molly is just a lonely, confused, and emotionally vulnerable little girl, and all she wants is a loving father and mother figure in her life. This wish directly yet unwittingly sets off the eponymous spell of the Unown, creating a veritable safe haven for her at the direct cost of the entire surroundings, but given the tragedies in her young life it's difficult to say that she doesn't deserve this. Even when she initially sees the disastrous effects of the Unown's powers firsthand, she still clings to her fantasy, wishing for it to continue in spite of it all. Yet this doesn't come off as malice or hostility, but rather as a self-defense mechanism. Being so young that she can't fully comprehend the situation, she crawls further back into her shell and the presumed warmth and safety that Unown and Entei give to her. And it's incredibly difficult not to feel genuinely sorry and empathetic towards her - and I say this as someone who's barely emotional at all. The writing in this movie isn't deep, but Molly's character and the story surrounding her proves that it doesn't need to be deep or complex to leave a powerful impression on the viewer.
Also, I can't praise this movie without mentioning Team Rocket. As could be expected of the trio, they absolutely steal every scene they're in, with some of the most striking quotes from the movie. Meowth sarcastically predicting "About three seconds if we jump" down to the bottom of a crystal pit gave me a genuine chuckle. James seeing the Unown and exclaiming "I haven't seen this many strange letters since I the last time I placed a personal ad" makes me question how that cleared the age rating but I'm glad it did. And how they all save Ash from falling out of the fortress window, by Meowth justifying, "If anything ever happened to you, we'd be out of show business!"
All of this is amazing, and is why I can praise this movie in retrospect, but there are a few issues that drag the movie down, and possibly provide the final clues as to why kid-me ranked it below the third-generation movies. Firstly, for a "Pokemon" movie, the actual Pokemon battles are pretty underwhelming. Ash battles a random trainer at the start during the opening credits, but the fight choreography is nothing special. Brock and Misty get a chance to battle Molly while they infiltrate her crystal castle, but she curb stomps both of them, on the basis that the Unown's illusory Pokemon are more powerful than real ones would be. The movie is short, and these fights could have been prolonged - this may slightly dampen the mature storytelling aspects, but it would have been more fun and memorable to kids. Another minor issue is how most of the movie takes place inside the crystalline fortress created by the Unown's spells. At first, it's gorgeous, equally beautiful and unsettling, which perfectly matches the tone and story. But as the movie reaches its end and everything is still made up of the blue-ish hued crystal, it blends in on itself and loses all of its impact. Not to mention how the end of the movie is horribly anticlimactic regardless. I won't spoil it, but it's no surprise that I could never remember the ending.
It's easy to see why I didn't rewatch this movie more often as a kid. It's dark, tense, and surprisingly mature, not quite as fun or as colorful as the rest of the anime I revere so much. But it's because of all of those reasons that I can look back on it as an adult and confidently proclaim it as the greatest Pokemon movie of its time. Despite its minor issues, Spell of the Unown has aged phenomenally compared to its counterparts, and remains a wonderful memory to both kid-me and adult-me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 18, 2024
Others: This anime is brain rot.
Me: Yes. And?
My Deer Friend Noko-tan is one of the better comedies to come out in recent seasons. It's certainly one of the most memorable, if nothing else. The sheer amount of gags they manage to create from deer is ridiculous and fantastic in equal measure. That's one of the things I respect most, when anime can take a singular focus and go all-in, taking it far beyond any conceivable limits, and Noko-tan exemplifies this completely.
(But what about the accusations that this show is just mindless brain rot? Didn't your intro to this review imply you agree with it?) That's
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the point. The point is, it's pointless. Noko-tan is dumb, insane, all over the place, and it's all the better for it. A coworker of mine commented a while ago that Dadaism seems to be on the rise, a hundred or so years after it was originally coined. The idea behind that artistic movement is that not everything needs to have some profound point, not everything needs to be taken seriously. I genuinely think my coworker is onto something, though I'd peg the 21st century resurgence to be a little bit earlier than now, nearer to the era of YouTube Poop. But it still rings true. You don't need to turn your brain off completely, so long as you can sit down comfortably in the roller coaster, buckle up, and let yourself get taken for a ride. That's precisely the experience Noko-tan attempts and succeeds at giving the viewers.
Is this anime peak comedy? No. Is it great comedy? Deer god, yes! The timing and setup for gags are executed wonderfully, taking turns and twists out of nowhere, while maintaining a rapid-fire pace that achieves a lot of comedic payoffs in its runtime. All this because the creator apparently had a wacky idea one day about a girl with deer antlers, and imagined a world around that girl, and this anime is their vision brought to life. Everything that happens is a direct result of this insane type of world-building, with gag setups that are as ingenious as they are psychotic. Everything might be centralized on deer, but that in itself is a major achievement. In that respect, Noko-tan is one of the most creative animes I've ever seen.
To offer a bit of pointed criticism, I think Bashame is a bit of an underutilized character. Between the main cast, her personality is the most one-dimensional, and most gags beyond her introduction are just, girl likes rice because deer haha. There's no chaotic antics like Shikanoko, no sharp straight-man retorts like Torako, and no spicy siscon obsession to counterbalance the deer hijinks like Anko. Plus, I said this anime is memorable, and taken as a whole, it is, but individual scenes and setups blend together, and I find it difficult to remember what all happened during the middle section, having watched the anime as each episode aired. I could rewatch them and enjoy it just as much, but it doesn't have the same lasting impact as other great comedies.
I had two goals with this review: to leave a positive rating and wholehearted recommendation, and to address the disparity between existing positive and negative reviews, because as of time of writing, the number of reviews that don't recommend Noko-tan dwarf those that do with a tally of 27 negative to 17 positive. I'm not trying to disparage those reviewers or imply in any way that they're wrong - this anime genuinely isn't for everyone and that's fine! - but I find the ratio strange. Compare the user ratings for Noko-tan to Joshiraku and The Vampire Dies in No Time, two other shows with wacky, bizarre, rapid-fire, barely-continuous comedy and plot progression, both with a similar average user score (7.44 and 7.27 compared to Noko-tan's 7.31). Both of those shows have barely a handful of negative reviews compared to swathes of positive ones. (Incidentally, I recommend all three, for virtually identical reasons.)
So why are people just now feeling compelled to voice their displeasure? Is it some kind of societal pushback against meme culture and its impact on the broader Internet? Is it just because it's vogue and trendy to attack and vilify Generation Z? Should I invoke the spirit of Alex Jones and claim it's a far-left conspiracy to condemn and eliminate dumb and simple fun anime that refuse to push any sort of liberal agenda? Are these people just unhappy and don't like fun? Really, only one of these thoughts makes any amount of sense (obviously the third one) but even so, it still baffles me how this anime specifically has come under fire. As someone born in 1997, I consider myself to be between the Millennial and Z generations, and this has led me to having a bit of a nuanced perspective. I remember recently enough, how much flak the Millennial generation was getting for being terminally online and dumb, too idealistic to have any meaningful real-world practical knowledge - and I agreed with a lot of this at the time, but I've come around to see it all as mostly baseless criticism levied against them by Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y. We're seeing the exact same thing happening again, but towards Gen Z. Because of that, I think it's far too early to draw any major conclusions about the broader societal impacts of these trends, since all it amounts to is stereotyping. All this to say, criticizing this anime purely on the grounds that TikTok is dumb and so is the generation that uses it, is doing a huge disservice to the actual quality and creativity shown by this anime, as well as being willfully ignorant of the other myriad absurd shows and elements that have been in the anime medium throughout the 21st century, not to mention the Internet in the mid-2000s.
At the end of the day, just look at the premise for this show, and a small handful of the things people are saying about it. You'll know immediately whether it's hot trash or a comedic gold mine. Because you will lose brain cells from having watched this anime. To me, it was completely worth it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Sep 7, 2024
Golden Wind might be the only anime I can describe in one word: PEAK.
Undoubtedly the greatest animated JoJo arc so far, and genuinely what I consider to be the greatest anime I've seen. It's been over a year since I've watched it, and it's stood out in my mind all this time as the apex of all animation. Incredibly stylized art and animation that takes full advantage of the medium, especially with the stirking use of colors. Outstanding action that goes beyond the already-high standards set by the earlier JoJo installments. The greatest cast of characters thus far, with loads of chemistry among themselves both
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at the start, with legitimately genuine and heartfelt development as the plot continues.
This time, our JoJo is the Italian delinquent Giorno Giovanna, the bastard son of Dio from when he was possessing Jonathan's body, just barely making him a part of the family. His personality is basically a perfect fusion of Dio and Jotaro's: He's ruthless, charismatic, and unpredictable like Dio, and focused, stoic, and driven like Jotaro. All of these traits combined makes Giorno the best protagonist up to this point. The absolutely absurd way that he's connected to the JoJo bloodline just makes it better.
Because as overpowered as he seems, the enemies in this series too are the most threatening in the series. In Stardust Crusaders and Diamond is Unbreakable, stand users could have been anyone, so it took a while for legitimately menacing villains to show up in each arc. This isn't an issue per se, and it made sense for the context of those storylines. But in Golden Wind, Giorno is deadset on climbing the ranks of the Italian mafia, and let's not delude ourselves, even the lowest member in the family would need to be immensely ruthless and cunning - they wouldn't induct you in the first place if you weren't. This in turn leads the fights to be the smartest and most intense thus far. Prime example, Giorno can adapt his power to heal his allies' major wounds - and his enemies know this, so they go out of their way to target him first, isolating or eliminating him so he can't heal or support his team. And for most of the fights where Giorno isn't directly involved, it's usually because that tactic worked.
On that topic, how are the stand fights? Ever since the franchise introduced stands in Stardust Crusaders, they've been the single most iconic component of the series, and Golden Wind has the best of them by far. Everyone's stand is incredibly powerful, leading to the fights having higher stakes and more intensity than ever before. Most of them last longer than one episode, without feeling like they're being needlessly prolonged, it's just that the circumstances and action are extreme enough to warrant it. Things reach an apex during the fight against White Album, one of the bloodiest fights so far against a stand user with such a psychotic personality that is equal parts threatening and hilariously entertaining. And every fight that follows it matches its quality equally, culminating in the fight against Green Day, a gruesome and malicious ability whose user is a vile, sadistic monster. For the characterization, the buildup, the action, and the perfectly cathartic climax, I have no reservation in calling this the greatest stand fight in the series. The beatdown Giorno gives at the end lasts for seven pages in the manga - completely deserved! - and the animation makes it even better.
Lastly, the pacing. From Giorno's introduction to Diavolo's inevitable defeat, the speed of the story and fight progression is akin to an F1 race, blitzing from start to finish while masterfully executing the course's twists and turns. By the end of the first episode, Giorno is already entrenched in his first stand fight against his soon-to-be ally Bruno Bucciarati, and subsequent encounters all happen immediately after the last, leaving no time for the heroes to rest. It's a veritable gauntlet, contributing even more to the sheer intensity of the show I was praising earlier. That's not to say there isn't any downtime for us, the viewers, just that it happens in quick and impactful moments between the fights. There are flashbacks for the heroes and enemies, as well as cuts to other characters outside the main party, and plenty of jokes and humor interspersed throughout to maintain levity. The most iconic example being the "Torture Dance", but my favorite is after the White Album stand fight - I already mentioned how bloody that fight is, so when that user is dead and one of the heroes arrives to see the aftermath in the most compromising way possible, the sudden juxtaposition led to one of my loudest laughs from any anime I've seen so far.
If I'm going to be completely honest and critical, it's not perfect. Giorno's and Diavolo's stands are a bit sloppy with how their powers are set up - I'm not even going to attempt to explain King Crimson, and Gold Experience's ability to reflect damage is never invoked beyond the first two episodes. Also, the stand fight against Man in the Mirror ended with me exclaiming "Okay, that seriously shouldn't have worked" - the only time I think it's too ridiculous, even by JoJo standards - and the anime ends with the stand "fight" against Rolling Stones, a sort of prologue to this arc which is thoroughly pointless and uninteresting, I'd consider it the worst stand fight in the overall series. And yet despite this, Golden Wind carries so much bravado, so much oomph, that I can willfully overlook these admittedly major flaws, because it does everything else masterfully.
I need to repeat this one more time. Golden Wind is PEAK.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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Aug 5, 2024
Before I write this review, or even watch the movie in the first place, I want to state my own history with Final Fantasy 7 and the overarching franchise first, for perspective. I grew up with Nintendo consoles and MMORPGs, never owning anything Playstation until I was in high school, and that's when I began to rapidly explore everything I reasonably could in the Final Fantasy franchise. That said, I deliberately put off 7 specifically, instead playing every other mainline game before it. I was (and still am) a bit of a contrarian, and when things become incredibly popular, I tend to get skeptical and
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more critical, and I genuinely didn't think 7 would live up to the hype.
I played it for the first time as a sophomore in college. And to put it short, I was right.
Don't misinterpret me, I thought it was very good, but not great, and far from the masterpiece that the Internet had led me to believe. In particular, I'm not a fan of the characters - and of relevance to this movie, I don't think Cloud or Sephiroth are particularly engaging, mainly due to having bland personalities. Granted, they have genuine character development and backstory, but that's not enough to endear them to me, considering how much of the game has them both act too stoic and cold to leave a positive impression. By this point in my life, I'd experienced so many colorful and fantastical worlds from all the other Nintendo RPGs and MMOs I'd played, so despite how much good there was about the game, FF7 came off about as dark and smoggy as the city of Midgar itself. At the time and still now, I swear by 5, 6, and 10 as being the peak games of the series (for single-player games, anyways - 14 is its own beast entirely). A year or so later, I played Crisis Core, and while I think it made the story retroactively better, by virtue of fleshing out the backstories for both characters, I'm still annoyed that this wasn't a bigger role in the original.
And one last note, having now played through Final Fantasy 14's story through the conclusion of Endwalker, I genuinely think that Emet-Selch fills the same antagonist role, purpose, personality, and everything tangentially related that Sephiroth had in 7, except so much more improved, to the point where I can confidently call him the greatest fictional villain, and I won't be able to separate my opinion of him from Sephiroth as I watch the movie.
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Within the first ten minutes, the movie confirms my existing opinion with this absolute "gem" of exposition: "He hated the planet so much that he wanted to destroy everything." This line, exemplifies why I don't like Sephiroth as a villain. To me, it doesn't matter what a character's backstory is if their immediate goal is as shallow and naive as this. Compare this to Emet-Selch, who's end goal might be virtually the same, which does come off as fatiguing for the order of ascians alongside him, but he opens up more about his personal struggles, and how it ties into his past and present person - all while being amazingly entertaining. When people say how much they like him as a villain, I sure hope they're referring to his intimidating presence, because I didn't ever get anything like that from the base 7 and Crisis Core.
My biggest problem with the first half is how it keeps setting up new elements without explaining or even showing what they are in relation to the overarching plot. First, it keeps hyping up geostigma as some kind of threat, but *what is geostigma*? Is it a disease? Magic? Bile? Can it spread from person to person? How does it manifest? How many people have it? I can't take this seriously when I don't know how severe of a threat this is. Also, who were those three people on motorcycles, and why do they have the worst case of one-dimensional personalities? Their prattle is completely hollow. I genuinely don't want to compare this to the "you don't understand me" emo edginess of the mid-2000s, but there really is nothing to understand with a lot of this drivel. On top of that, there's so much waiting and delay and emptiness between major events. I was thirty minutes in when I started seriously considering upping the playback speed.
In the context of a standalone movie, this is heavily flawed. Now, how is it in terms of a sequel? It's horribly unnecessary. The plot of FF7 was wrapped up about as perfectly as it could have been, with Cloud defeating Sephiroth in an iconic duel (that's undermined by being an unloseable fight, but that's besides the point). This movie unties the plot and adds the most obvious contrivance to keep milking the FF7 brand - that being, Sephirith didn't actually die, he's in the planet all along! Oooh! ...Give me a break. That's a cop out, not a concrete foundation to a sequel to one of gaming's most beloved stories. And this opens itself up to the next big plot twist of the movie, the incredibly predictable revelation that Aerith didn't actually die, she's in the planet all along! I didn't know anything about this movie's plot beforehand, yet I hate that I called this from so early on.
(In retrospect, I'm not sure if he really was in the planet, mainly because the movie doesn't explain that part. One of the characters just transforms into him, no reason is given, other than, he's a remnant... whatever that means.)
Speaking of characters, everyone in this movie is incredibly flat and uninteresting. As much as I think Cloud himself is a lukewarm protagonist, I can appreciate how he has some legitimate, albeit subtle character development in the base game. Right before the final boss fight, he states to the team, quote, "Let's mosey!" It sounds dumb, but it's brilliant, showing that Cloud doesn't need to keep his cold persona to be a badass soldier, and can embrace his country-boy upbringing more freely. Why does he have to backpedal to being an emotionless supersoldier for this movie? In fact, he's even worse in this one, almost coming off like a flanderized parody of Cloud that assholes like me would cite about the original game. And Sephiroth is even worse. When he appears, he just spouts the most cliche emo one-liners and attacks. He's just a villain for the sake of being a villain. Still better than the three guys before him, on the grounds that he wasn't obnoxious.
So, what did I like about this movie? Well, actually a few things. First, Reno was solid, the exception to my ranting about the characters above. He couldn't salvage every scene he was in, given that they were already too dull to begin with, but his presence never made them worse and often enhanced them with some much needed silliness that perfectly contrasts his legitimate skill as a mercenary. But the big thing are the fight scenes. I will complain that there is too much downtime between action, but the action hits incredibly well when it does happen. From Tifa's encounter in the church up to Cloud's engagement with Sephiroth, all of them are incredibly choreographed and entertaining. Specifically the moment where everyone helps throw Cloud up into the sky to pierce through a monster's big glowy energy attack, it's honestly more silly and over-the-top than I was expecting and yet that made it all the better, I unironically love it. But still, there's not much action to go around, even the fight against Sephiroth was too short to be impactful.
Still, as a complete package of a movie, this was honestly terrible. It's going down in my memory as a worthless footnote in a part of the Final Fantasy franchise that I already think is too overrated. Play the original game and Crisis Core, but leave it at that.
(Footnote: I originally wrote this review for a community event at retroachievements.com and its Discord server, wherein watching and reviewing this movie was one of the tasks. My username there is MeloDeathAtmoBlack rather than epicninjask123 like it is here.)
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Aug 5, 2024
I thought this would be a comedy. I saw the genre tagged as such, thought to myself, two high school girls who hate each other's guts but have to put on a show anyway - lots of gag potential there. Thing is, having watched the full series now, I have no clue why it's tagged. This anime is genuinely not a comedy, and I don't think it was meant to be one.
That said, having realized this about midway through episode 3, I was going to drop it, move on, say it's not my thing and call it good... except that episode ended with a fairly
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dramatic twist that kept my attention. So despite not being particularly drawn to these types of shows and dynamics, I figured I was invested enough already and finished it up.
And by now, I can reasonably say, this anime is flawed, particularly in its pacing. The plot starts off about their radio show, but that very quickly becomes an afterthought by the aforementioned shake-up in episode 3, instead being relegated to one scene per episode, as if to remind you, the viewer, that they still do it. Considering this is the foundation of the entire plot, even being baked into the title, it's a strange decision.
Every further subplot is introduced and resolved within one or two episodes, making this feel like the writers and directors had so many things they wanted to say, yet not giving any of them enough time or depth to mature or develop. The first and biggest offender of this is that plot twist I've mentioned twice already - wherein news breaks out that one of our deuteragonists got a major role by sleeping with the director, which overshadows anything else about her current situation and threatens to destroy her entire career, if not her whole life. This is played out to be as serious and earthshattering as it could be, and rightfully so, yet by the end of the very next episode, big shock, it was all a lie, the director is actually her father, so the reason they appeared to be getting more than friendly with each other is, well, because they were - just not in "that way".
This impact lasts a little bit into the next episode, but the plot moves on to the next big issue: stalkers. And then the duality of voice actresses' profession personas vs real life and how that affects their relationships. And then the risk of not hitting it big before becoming old enough to permanently make it into the industry. And then imposter syndrome. All of these are poignant issues that deserve attention and discussion, but cramming all of them into twelve episodes gives it no breathing room. As a story, it's nice and entertaining, but it lacks depth and impact, and I'm going to forget most of these scenes in detail within a few months.
(There's probably something to be said about comparing it to other similar shows, like Oshi no Ko, but like I hinted at earlier, I don't typically watch these sorts of stories, so I've got no frame of reference.)
All that said, I still generally like the anime. The character interactions are nice and wholesome, and the payoffs for each conflict feel earned and satisfying. While I criticized the pacing of the show, the actual scenes that happen from moment to moment are overall solid. Nothing exceptional, but there was never a single moment that struck me as anything less than enjoyable.
And the final episode does something particularly genius. The climax of the show has Yasumi finally removing her mental inhibitions and fully breaking out of her shell to deliver her best performance yet. While this is going on, we see work-in-progress stills of the planned episode's storyboard, complete with placeholders like notes calling the background "cave 1". And most tellingly, besides the voice acting, there are no sounds whatsoever. I'm so used to climaxes being loud and bombastic, that stripping it down to this paradoxically makes it even more intense and engaging - while also being an intriguing look into the behind-the-scenes process of creating anime. It's brief, but it stands out more than anything else in the show before it.
Overall, I can really only think of this anime as nice... but not particularly good. If you like these sorts of dramatic tales of interpersonal dynamics, then you'll probably enjoy this more than I did, but even so, I don't think it has enough depth to fully recommend.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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