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Apr 14, 2025
Ramayana is a decent movie, but it's plagued by pacing issues. Despite being 2.25 hours long, it somehow manages to feels like it needs to be longer. Ramayana would've been much better if it were a 12-episode series (or maybe 24 episodes or a movie trilogy). There are simply too many events to cram into the length of a single movie.
Because of the quick pace, there's never enough time to establish any importance to the events or emotional connection to the characters. Problems get solved as fast as they're introduced, and there's a noticeable lack of dramatic tension. There's so many scenes where an enemy
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gets introduced, only to die a minute later, making it feel like the protagonists never really struggle.
The limited screentime gets dedicated almost entirely to the events of the plot, but rarely ever to characterisation. I can remember plenty of what each character did, but hardly anything about their personalities, so it's hard to get emotionally invested. So when they die or get injured, there's a lack of weight to those scenes. It's difficult to feel bad, even though you can tell that you're intended to care. Similarly, when Rama and Sita are reunited at the end, there's a distinct lack of emotional payoff. While there were a few scenes that depicted Rama despairing over being separated, there's not many scenes that show why either of them value each other. We rarely ever see the couple bonding together. Thus, it's easy to tell *that* Rama was in despair, but not *why*.
This highlight's Ramayana's frequent failure to "show, don't tell". Characters will often voice their beliefs and motivations aloud, rather than the film demonstrating it through their actions. This leads to a lot of missed opportunities to develop the characters' personalities. This issue might partially be caused by the limited runtime. It's a lot quicker to have a character say "I should do ABC because XYZ" than to demonstrate it using a sequence of shots.
The rapid pace and lack of characterisation gives Ramayana this weird problem where it's somehow boring and not boring at the same time. When I think of a boring movie, I think of one where each scene makes me feel something like, "Ugh, there's nothing happening. Please move on and show me the next scene". Ramayana has the opposite problem. The scenes are too short to build dramatic tension, characterisation, or emotional significance. The problem isn't that nothing happens; the problem is that nothing that happens feels meaningful.
STORY + PLOT
The plot points themselves (i.e. what happened and the order of events) were great. This shouldn't be surprising, considering it's based on a traditional epic. That being said, you could argue that Ramayana didn't create a great story; it merely adapted a great story that already existed.
Of course, the pacing was terrible. Also, I thought it was odd that the part where Rama helps Sugriv reclaim his kingdom is done entirely off screen. I'm sure the limited runtime was a factor, but it feels like it should've been included. Lastly, I appreciate that Ramaya has a theme of always trying a peaceful solution first. It's a nice touch that many action films neglect.
CHARACTERS
Pretty bad, due to aforementioned pacing issues. The only personality traits I can remember are that Rama is honourable and prefers peace to violence, and that his friends/allies are helpful.
CHARACTER DESIGN
Average. I wasn't in love with any of the outfits, but they weren't terrible and felt like they fit the universe. Most of the time, the characters were distinct enough to easily tell them apart. On occasion, I got confused between Kumbha and Nikumbha, but it makes sense for them to look similar since they're brothers. I also confused Neel with Sugriv once, especially since their builds and outfits/armour are quite similar.
One final thing: Rama is significantly more pale than any other human character in the film. Sometimes, it's almost pure white. While I suppose this makes it easier for the audience to identify the main character, the political implications are... less than stellar.
ANIMATION
Although it's not really my style, the animation is very good. It's easy to tell what the characters are doing, and the animators were able to successfully portray a wide variety of complex movements and subjects (humans, animals, monsters, weapons, objects, etc).
FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY
Decent. It's strongest when the fighters are using different weapons. The only noticeably bad choreography was the initial swordfight between Rama and Ravan at the end (prior to Ravan's transformation). It was pretty boring, as it consisted almost entirely of simple forehand strikes. Moreover, Rama doesn't win through superior technique, but because Ravan gets too carried away and gets his sword stuck in a piece of metal after trying to hit Rama. I guess this is a nice bit of characterisation, but it sacrifices the choreography. Also, instead of using this opportunity to strike and kill Ravan, Rama strikes Ravan's sword and breaks it (a cliche trope). It's surprising to me that the only fight with bad choreography is the final, most important one.
In general, many of the fights have the same problem as the scenes: they're too short. They are only long enough to show the audience what happened, but not long enough to establish dramatic tension or characterisation. So a lot of the fights are anticlimactic.
VOICE ACTING
In the original English dub, it's terrible. Some VAs are better than others. Some of the voices fail to express the same emotion as the animation. The timing doesn't match well with the lip flaps. Sometimes they don't even pause at the end of their sentences.
I don't know Hindi, but it doesn't look like the original Hindi version is any better. I have not seen the remastered version in either language.
MUSIC + SFX
Passable. No major complaints, but not very memorable. The recording and production quality is decent for the era, but subpar by modern standards.
ENJOYMENT + OVERALL
5/10 Good animation and story, but the movie's limited length causes so many pacing issues that it ruins many other elements of the film. Ramayana can sometimes feel boring, not because it's slow, but because it goes through plot points so fast that it lacks dramatic tension or characterisation.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Jan 16, 2023
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS
(although idk if anyone cares about spoilers for a movie like this)
tldr:
it's a superhero-style kids movie from the 60s. the plot is fairly simplistic
main issue: anti-war theme conflicts with the rest of the film
other issue: some very obvious racial and gender stereotypes
side note: there's a few segments with rapidly flashing colourful lights, but I'm genuinely not sure if it's rapid enough to cause epileptic seizures
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This film follows the adventures of Joe Shimamura, a racecar driver who dies in a car crash, has his body stolen by an evil organisation called "Black Ghost", and unwillingly gets brought back to life as a technologically-enhanced cyborg. Joe finds out that he's the 9th person to fall victim to this. Black Ghost has secretly been encouraging two major nations to go to war, and it profits off the weapons that it sells to both sides. The cyborgs are just another weapon, but they (along with the professor who created them) turn against Black Ghost and escape.
We have a cast of 9 cyborgs:
001 - baby that talks in uwu speak. body of an infant, but has a brain with super intelligence
002 - can fly using jet thrusters inside his boots/feet
003 - super vision and hearing
004 - fingers can shoot bullets, knees can shoot missiles
005 - super strength
006 - breathes fire
007 - basically ditto (the pokemon), except he can become whatever he thinks of (doesn't need to copy something nearby)
008 - basically aquaman
009 - main character. OP compared to the rest, probably since he's the latest model
The bulk of the movie involves them fighting Black Ghost. This includes normal soldiers, spy dolphins, cobras and dinosaurs with missiles, and a moderately large armoured spider. Near the end of the movie, they take down this green goblin boss (not to be confused with the Green Goblin from Spider-Man), who confesses that he isn't the *real* leader of Black Ghost. It's actually a computer, which was created as a military tool for WWI and WWII. That computer got Black Ghost to kidnap 003 and alter her mind to become a mindless robot, so that she can attack the rest of the cyborgs. 009 defeats the computer, bringing 003 back to normal. But before the computer dies, it starts a nuclear time bomb. The cyborgs escape just in time, and they each eventually return to their homelands. They promise to meet again when the time comes, because the "true enemy" isnt Black Ghost, but humanity's greed and capacity for war, which may never go away.
Quite frankly, the story would've been fine if it didn't try to end on that theme. Without it, it would've been just like any other superhero-style children's movie from the era. However, adding the theme of "humanity too easily goes to war, and that's bad" creates the following issues:
1) If evil nature of *humanity* is the true evil, why make the primary villains a goblin and a computer?
2) The theme of "war is bad" conflicts with the way the cyborgs are depicted in combat. When the cyborgs fight (and presumably kill) Black Ghost soldiers, it's portrayed as either heroic, cool, or in some cases comical. This is a common issue in war films, and you could solve this by explaining when war/fighting is justified. But the film never goes into such depth.
3) If human greed/evil is the enemy, and the heroes are cyborgs, then there's the potential implication that humanity can only be saved by submitting to our superior technologically-enhanced cyborg overlords. In the movie, the heroes don't win by convincing normal humans to put an end to war. They fight a war against Black Ghost for them, because humans are too stupid to make the right decisions on their own.
Theme aside, we also have the issue where the distribution of superpowers is heavily unbalanced. 009 is massively OP. He's magically able to fly a plane despite never having done so, and this explained by saying "his skills as a racecar driver were enhanced". (Because obviously, flying a plane is just like driving a car, but harder.) More generally, he doesn't actually appear to need the help of his allies. It's more like they just help him without being asked, and he's just mildly grateful that they do.
As for the rest of the team, 001 and 003's powers are really only useful for giving the team information that can advance the plot. 004's power to shoot bullets and missiles is only marginally better than the rest of the team, since all of the cyborgs have pistols that can shoot both bullets and missiles. 008 gets the short end of the stick, as his Aquaman abilities (basically just being able to swim underwater without needing oxygen) are only useful in the water. Furthermore, 009 can do the exact same thing (and more), and so can 007 (because he can transform himself into a fish or other sea creature).
We also have this weird point in the middle of the film where 009 decides, as the team captain, to only bring half his team to fight Black Ghost. The rest are left to "protect the professor", but I can't see why it required more than one of them (if any) to protect him. And it's not like they don't work well together as a team; just earlier, they all fought of the enemy air force just fine together. This really just felt like an excuse to put aside a few characters to save the main heroes ex machina at the very end. (There's a few remaining Black Ghost soldiers stopping them from leaving the island. Realistically, the main heroes could've just shot those soldiers without any help.) Alternatively, you could interpret this as a way to avoid needing to animate so many unnecessary characters in the latter half of the film.
And then there's the uh... problematic issues. To be fair, it's a boomer film from the 60s, and I'm judging by standards over 6 decades later. But I don't think I can leave a comprehensive review without mentioning them.
Most obviously, cyborgs 005, 006, and 008 are American Indian, Chinese, and Black caricatures, respectively. This is *mostly* just through the way their faces (and clothing during the end scene) are drawn. 006 and 008 are the only ones shown to use a smoke pipe, and 006 quotes Chinese proverbs at one point. Also, I'm not sure if it's worth pointing out that the professor and 002 have comically large noses, with 002's being hooked. My guess is that this was just a stylistic choice to make them more visually distinct, since I didn't notice any stereotypes connected to that.
On the same note, 003 is literally the only female cyborg, and she's depicted carrying 001 (the baby) when we first see her. In the beginning of the film, she's pretty much just a plot device to give the heroes information. In the middle, her big sadge backstory reveals that she was a ballerina whose parents were killed in the war. She's the only cyborg who doesn't want to keep fighting (until 009 convinces her). At the end, she becomes a damsel in distress for 009 to save. Overall, she's probably the most useless at physically fighting the enemy soldiers, second only to the cyborg with the body of a literal baby.
Lastly, the film ends with the theme that "those who make military technology are worse than those who actively fight in war", followed by an atomic bomb exploding. Whether or not this is Japanese postwar propaganda, I will leave up to you to decide.
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2/10 overall
- animation is pretty good for the era, and the music is average
- but the story and theme don't really work well
- additional minus point for all the sussy bits
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jan 12, 2023
This show is depressing to watch.
It revolves around two sisters living by themselves together, but the older (adult) one keeps spending all of the money on manga, so the younger and more responsible one (in elementary school) is always upset. While the elder sister isn't necessarily malicous, she's so irresponsible that she's very hard to feel positively about, even if it's played off as a joke. This is pretty much the entire show, and it just gets repeated over and over.
I'm not sure how (or even if) this was supposed to be funny, because it was just sad to watch. It's kinda painful, because you
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just spend most of your time pitying the kid. You can clearly see that it's gotten so bad that she has a warped perception of what normal people can afford. It feels like watching nearly an hour of child neglect, if not abuse.
Also, I don't know why they made this a spin-off to Lucky Star. The only connection between them seems to be brief character cameos. This could easily have been its own series.
The art style is what you'd expect from Lucky Star, and the OP is pretty nice, but it doesn't make up for its faults. In the technical department, everything feels okay. Not great, but nothing bad.
tldr: writing is repetitive, but the technical aspects are okay. may likely be (mildly) depressing to watch
overall rating: 4/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Dec 16, 2022
This was a fun read. I liked the overall concept, and the artwork is very strong. There's even a full-colour page, and it's beautifully illustrated. The character dynamics feel fun, and you get a good enough sense of their personalities considering how short the manga is. The main character reflects on a very emotional journey and even a bit of philosophical exploration.
It's hard to say why it's so good without spoiling it, so I'll just say that the plot is probably the strongest point.
The only downside I can think of is the transitions in the timeline. The story's structure goes: start of the journey back
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home -> flashback to when they were on their way to defeat the demon king -> back to the journey home. I was initially confused after the first transition, since I didn't realise it was a flashback. I'm not really sure if it's because the story/panels were unclear, or if it's because I just didn't pick up on the clues fast enough.
Either way, it's a really good read. As a one-shot, it's quite short, so I'd highly recommend it to anyone who has a few minutes to spare.
Overall rating: 9/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Dec 15, 2022
I genuinely don't know what to make of this anime. Every episode except for the third ends with a girl making a "wtf??!" expression, and that's precisely how this anime made me feel.
If taken seriously, I cannot recommend this to anyone. But I will say: the 1st episode? I found it genuinely funny.
There's not really any plot to be spoiled, since the synopsis says it all. Each episode is a 1-minute short about some sort-of-mecha girl. Except instead of a giant mecha, it's a plane, car, sussy robot, battleship, and... an okinomiyaki-making robot??
The transformation sequences seem like they come out of nowhere, due to the
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sudden changes in theme, visuals (2D -> 3D), and music (classic -> anisong). I am inclined to believe this entire anime must be a shitpost.
Oh, and they make the fanservice really obvious. idk why they added it; it doesn't really add anything, and it feels unwarranted. But I genuinely can't tell if it's supposed to be appealing, or if it's just part of the shitpost.
Overall, I'm rating 2/10, but it did get a good laugh out of me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Aug 12, 2022
Overall: 5/10
It's okay. If you want a relatively easygoing slice-of-life anime that focuses on a cat, you might enjoy this.
Unlike the 2002 version, this version is a bit more grounded in reality. There is still an element of poetry to the narration, but it doesn't feel like it's lost in abstraction. It also has colour and feels less depressing, despite generally covering the same themes. They also introduce some side characters; we now get to see the cat owner's friend and mother.
Despite all this though, I can't say that there's a whole lot going on here. We see the cat owner struggle as she transitions
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from college into the workforce, and we also see how the cat is with her throughout this period. We also get to see a bit of the backstory as to how the two met. But that's kind of it.
Many other reviewers have praised this OVA's simplicity and philosophy. But other than some vague themes of "life goes on" and "persevere through tough times", there's not a whole lot that the show has to say. It doesn't even really offer a solution to the cat owner's problems; they just get solved without us knowing much about how. In pretty much all of the episodes, we see her struggle with some issue, and then suddenly cut to her being okay a few days later, without knowing how that happened. Of course, her cat is there to comfort her, but that's really all we see. Now I don't think the show is meant to offer some kind of deep philosophical insight. But what I *am* saying is that the simplicity is just that. Some may praise the simplicity, but it's also a limitation on how much the show can express.
As for the technical aspects, the animation looked fine, and it's good to see that unlike the 2002 version, it's not just a slideshow of background images. The sound design and music is fine, and the voice acting is well done. But I wouldn't say anything is particularly spectacular.
Overall, this OVA was okay. It don't think it's anything spectacular, so don't expect anything game-changing from such a short mini-series. But if you have a bit of time to kill, and you like cats, or just want to see some slice-of-life with a mild amount of drama, this might be the show for you.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Aug 12, 2022
my rating: 4/10
The OVA was okay. If you're not into poetry, this isn't worth your time.
The story is told from a cat's perspective, who spends most of the film talking about his day-to-day activities. His words have a poetic tone filled with imagery. Some people might like that, but if you (like me) are not into poetry, I doubt you will enjoy this OVA. Some have described this show as "philosophical", which is true to an extent. But don't expect anything deep; it's just a cat pondering life for a few minutes as he watches his owner. Some other reviews have said that there's a
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"twist" midway, but it's not much more than a shift in tone.
As for the visuals, it's all in greyscale, and most of the shots are just random bits of scenery. Most of the OVA is spent panning over those drawings, with not much animation actually happening. They scenery is really well-drawn and quite detailed. The human also drawn fairly well, but nothing special. They style she's drawn in looks typical of the early 2000s.
But the one thing that threw me off was how they drew the cat. He looks very cartoonish, unlike everything else in the film. I actually laughed when I saw him. It's funny how derpy he looks compared to the serious tone of the visuals and narration. And I don't think humour was the intention.
Overall, I can't say that the film was particularly bad or anything, and I only rate it slightly below average because I don't find poetry very entertaining. But I also don't see any strong reason to recommend this to anyone. If you're into poetry, I'm sure there's better stuff out there. If you're into art house and/or philosophy, don't expect much depth from an OVA that's not even 5 minutes long. And if you're not into any of that, this will just feel boring. The only good use of this OVA I can think of is to show what "art house" or "kino" is like (to someone who doesnt know), without wasting too much of their time.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Feb 7, 2022
If you like kino or art house, you might enjoy this. But otherwise, it's definitely not worth your time.
I'm not even sure what to call this show, since I wouldn't call it an anime or OVA. I don't recall seeing any animation; it's mostly just a long series of paintings shown one after another, each one being slowly panned over by the camera. And when I say that, I mean SLOWLY. Painfully slowly. You could probably watch this at 5x speed and not miss out on much. Some may argue that this pace allows every viewer ample time to scrutinise every fine detail of the
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paintings. Instead, it ensures that for each painting, every viewer is absolutely certain that they've seen enough.
The show repeatedly alternates between this snail's-pace slideshow and live-action shots of a man lazing around aimlessly. Many of these shots are set in an endless white void. It's hard to tell if it's meant to be a mediocre imitation of The Matrix or a pretentious, abstract visual metaphor for something (perhaps the show's amount of creativity and meaning).
Throughout all of this, there's some voiceover dialogue to accompany the visuals. But it just sounds like the rambling of an art student who's trying to sound profound but has nothing meaningful to say. Sometimes there will be ambient noise, which either *is* music or takes the place of music, depending on who you ask.
The only thing saving this show from being completely empty are a small number of close-up shots of an ant nearly drowning, only to be saved by the man. This is followed by an awkward shot of him holding it up to his face; I'm fairly certain they were trying to portray him as closely examining the ant while pondering the fragility of life, but to me, it just looked like he was gonna eat it. Combined with the dialogue, this sequence about the ant came off to me as an awkward attempt to make philosophical commentary on the nature life and death, while simultaneously trying to avoid the ire of whatever the Japanese equivalent of PETA is.
Overall, this show ends up feeling extremely pretentions, made only worse by how dreadfully slow it moves. There's virtually no story or characters to speak of, and whatever message they're attempting to communicate is vague and hollow. The sound is bland, the live-action scenes are either awkward or boring, and there's no animation to speak of. The art itself (i.e. the paintings) are not necessarily bad, but they're not great either. The live-action cinematography has a gloomy colour palette of black and white and grey, cloaked in a slight but noticeable tinge of mouldy yellow. Stylistically, the paintings and cinematography create an overarching sense of emptiness. Not the kind that's aesthetically or philosophically interesting, but the kind that bores you to sleep.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Jan 12, 2022
The first half is pretty degen. It's nearly a hentai OVA, and definitely NSFW. Some might say that the film criticises the ecchi/hentai industry, but if you take an honest look, it doesn't really go beyond just lampshading. If it's really trying to critique the industry, how does putting the characters into ridiculous sexual scenarios do anything meaningful criticism? It's basically just fanservice trying to pretend that it's not.
The second half feels a lot more like a normal Kaguya-sama episode. There's a cookoff competition, and the usual antics occur. I'll admit that I found it quite funny, and I actually laughed several times. That said,
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the main joke does start getting a bit repetitive after the first time, and it becomes pretty predictable.
Honestly, it's hard for me to rate this OVA as a whole, because the two halves are so much different from each other. I've decided to give it a 5, since I guess the fun of the second half more or less makes up for the first.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Nov 8, 2021
This show is bad in almost every regard. The pacing is absolutely awful, with no sense of flow. The dialogue often has this strange pace because of how quickly some characters respond to each other. The plot is basically a generic JRPG quest with some mecha randomly thown in. And deus ex machina is everywhere.
The characters include a generic annoying protagatist, useless damsel-in-distress love interest, forgettable supporting characters, and comically evil villians. The music is mediocre at best, but only if considered on its own. When put in the context of the film, the music sometimes feels out of place. One of the major battle
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scenes was probably supposed to be full of tension, but it had this relaxed, almost cheerful music that didn't fit at all.
Also, the ecchi scenes are just really unnecessary. There's already the perverted bishop, who's essentially a generic dirty old man. But then you also have the main villian and villainess, who are basically lolicons. No, I am not throwing that word around offhandedly. She literally calls him that, says she's "interested" too, and then they just laugh it off together. Even if the film lampshades it, it really doesn't makes it any better.
The only things that aren't absolutely awful about this film are the art, which is fairly average compared to other shows from the era, and the fact that the film shows you some mercy by keeping its runtime under an hour.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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