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Nov 1, 2017
I'm not typically one to criticize a work for being too gory. Grotesque imagery is typically fine by me, as long as there's some substance to go along with it. The problem with Ultra Gash Inferno is that it has almost no substance, with it's stories having very little point to them at all, most of them simply trading on shock value alone. The characters in them also aren't very memorable.
The only good story out of the nine of them was also the longest; the final tale, titled "Nonresistance City". It didn't exactly explore any interesting themes or ideas, but it at least had a
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cohesive tale which was just messed up enough to be mildly interesting. Even so, without any thematic elements or character development, the story still feels kind of pointless and empty by the end of it, despite it being the standout tale of the book.
The art throughout the book was extremely detailed and very well drawn, with plenty of interesting as well as experimental panel compositions.
However, the high quality of the art can't save the pointlessness of the stories, and the whole thing ends up feeling like just a bunch of cheap schlock made for a very specific audience. I can truly only recommend this to people who enjoy guro for guro's sake.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Sep 4, 2017
Well, gosh. This was painful to watch. I'm really glad this was only 5 minutes, because even just that 5 minutes was almost unbearable to sit through.
The characters are annoying, but on top of this, they're written nonsensically. The story consists of one random gag after the next, to the point where it's almost impossible to follow what's going on, and even if you could, I don't think you would want to. Each gag is meant to gross-out the viewer and give a certain amount of shock value (since these are cute little girls doing and saying these kind of things), however, this aspect isn't
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even well done, and just feels overly forced. In the end, the gags end up just being gross instead of funny whatsoever, so it's just painful to sit through
Music is unremarkable and sounds like it was cheaply produced, inoffensive but unmemorable.
Voice acting is poor, with generic high-pitched "cute girl" voices that are grating to listen to.
The art style wasn't very good, and is what you'd expect from a generic "cute girl" anime. Bright colors, weirdly proportioned bodies, dull backgrounds. However... I will say this... it was at least animated adequately. For that, it gets +1 point from me, but... overall, that's not nearly enough to salvage the rest of it, and I would say anybody and everybody should just avoid this travesty altogether. It's not even good for a laugh.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Sep 4, 2017
Dark Cat is an early 90s OVA that has two main focuses in it's story. The first follows Aimi Koenji, who is hopelessly in love with a boy in her school, Hiroki Koizumi. However, Hiroki is in love with somebody else, who ended up rejecting him. The other is a tale of two brothers, Hyoi and Hiroki Koizumi, who have the power to transform into creatures known as "Dark Cats", and who are busy fending off evil monsters that are being awoken in humans by the main villain, an ogre named Jukokubo.
Either story on it's own would be somewhat generic, and combining the two makes
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the anime seem a bit unfocused. However, the two tales intertwine at the end. I can't say the story was super unique, but it was at least entertaining for the duration, even if it's somewhat poorly executed with some plot holes.
The characters are pretty basic and forgettable, but they were interesting enough for the story they were telling. The ending also didn't seem very satisfying, which is a downside. I would say the story is probably the weakest part of this whole thing, but it's got just enough in it to keep things interesting for a 50 minute OVA.
The visual directing also isn't very great, consisting mostly of very typical shots, without anything impressive standing out. This doesn't do any favors for the art, which seems to be dated, even by 1991 OVA standards. It definitely looks more like the kind of thing that would have came out 5 years earlier than it did. Still, the art wasn't atrocious to look at, even if it was kind of plain and unrefined.
The music was great, and was definitely the highlight, being one of the more memorable aspects of the anime. It had this 80s J-pop sound to it which felt really reminiscent of the era, and worked well in the setting.
Voice acting in the Japanese dub was above average. There weren't any standout performances, but each actor did an adequate job at voicing their character, even if the lines they had to read were somewhat generic.
Overall, it's not anything special, but it's a decent enough anime to check out if you're bored and can forgive some rough edges and a generic story.
Story: 4
Characters: 5
Art: 6
Sound: 8
Enjoyment: 7
Overall: 6
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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May 16, 2017
An odd film based on a manga by Yamakawa Souji, Shonen Kenya (or, "Kenya Boy"), tells the story of 11-year old Wataru Murakami, who gets separated from his father as they are travelling through Kenya. He must then survive the perils that he encounters, with the help of a few allies he meets along the way.
The story is pretty standard when it comes to adventure films, and it seems to have taken much inspiration from classic black & white jungle adventure films of the 30s and 40s such as King Kong, Gunga Din, or the many others that were released during that era. However, the
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plot here doesn't have much of a structure to it, jumping from one scene to the next without much of any reason or purpose other than to showcase some action or animation. Much of the middle of the film is spent in action scenes that exist for little to no reason, where many of the characters' goals and motivations aren't resolved or moved forward in any way. This tends to make things drag quite a bit. There's also a plothole here and there that will introduce questions that never get resolved, and were seemingly overlooked by the directors. I will say, however, that that main story at both the beginning and the end of the film are well executed, but still aren't anything other than average in terms of content.
The characters tend to be somewhat enjoyable, but also aren't anything special, and the biggest problem I have is with the lead character, Wataru, who tends to change his tone and behavior from scene to scene. In the beginning he starts off as timid and shy, then once he's separated from his father he runs for his life. After a day or two has passed, he suddenly becomes able to do acrobatics and fight off animals as though he's lived in the wilderness all his life. He also occasionally has outbursts of cockiness that seem entirely out of character for him, then he goes back to being kind-hearted. It seems like the writers just didn't really know what to do with him and so they just wrote his character as what it needed to be for the scene without giving things much thought. The odd part is that many of the supporting cast don't suffer from this kind of multiple-personality writing, only the lead.
The animation is a mixed bag. The film opens with some experimental animation using flat colors without any lines, and then switches to a two-tone black & white animation style for the opening credits. After the credits are over, we then switch to the main look of the film, which is fairly standard looking 1980s CEL animation that tends to look only marginally better than TV animation of the era, not being able to stand up to other animated films from that time period in terms of quality.
However, the experimental animation doesn't take a backseat for long, and aside from the other two styles I mentioned, we get a bunch more. For instance, there was a scene where the animation consisted entirely of blue linework on a black background, and you could see the film reel around the edges of the screen. There was another scene where one native tribesman was completely uncolored so you could see the background through him. You might assume this was simply in error, but all of the other tribesmen around him were colored in, and he was uncolored for TWO consecutive shots, which made it seem bizarrely intentional. These different animation styles tend to range from "unique" and "interesting" to "baffling" and "bizarre", but no matter how they come across they really don't tend to add much of anything to the film's overall style, leaving it feeling like the art director just slapped these elements together for no reason at all.
The soundtrack is executed well enough, and sets the tone well. The main theme also sets a nice tone, and was pretty catchy, but nothing that's going to get stuck in my head for hours. The voice actors all played their roles well, and had good delivery on their lines, but there wasn't any breakout performances that would be super memorable. Overall, the audio side of things is well executed, above average, but nothing remarkable.
Overall, Shonen Kenya is an odd film, which seems to try to do too much and, as a result, this ends up being it's downside. There's a decent story buried in here, but all of the stuff around it feels like it was just jumbled together without much thought or care going into any of it, leaving us with a slapdash film that feels bizarre in it's execution and confusing in it's presentation. The main story isn't interesting enough on it's own to warrant such a complicated production, and these bizarre elements only bring it down further and make the bland story more difficult to enjoy... so I'd really only recommend it to people who are simply curious about seeing the bizarre side of the film, anybody else could easily just skip this one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jul 4, 2016
A lot of OVA based on manga don't do very much character set-up, and instead just drop you right in, assuming you're already familiar with the manga and it's characters.
The Legend of Koizumi is no stranger to this, and does very little set-up for it's cast of characters. Despite the fact that they're all political figures, the lack of very much introduction is very jarring.
The story is also very jarring, as it simply jumps from one scenario to the next, trying to squeeze as much as possible out of each episode's 8-minute runtime. This seems unnecessary, especially considering each story doesn't actually have very much
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of interest going on, and they all follow the same basic formula of "Koizumi gets into a match of mahjong with a political leader and pulls off some great play". Perhaps these stories would be more interesting to me if I understood the rules of mahjong, but since the writer doesn't do anything to explain the rules, I don't have that context, so the stories simply fall flat to me.
There also isn't much comedy to be had here. The funniest part would likely be how they paint George W. Bush as being a child, but that's simply one good joke out of a 27-minute runtime. The rest of the humor is supposed to come from flashy sequences that are supposed to be so over-the-top that it ends up being ridiculous, but this didn't actually work very well for me, so the presentation just ended up feeling somewhat lackluster.
That's not to say the art is bad, as it's very nicely done, with great character design befitting the political setting, and smooth, detailed animation as one would expect from an OVA. However, the art can't save the poor directing and pacing.
The sound design is also very well done, feeling loud & powerful at key moments, and the voice actors also do a nice job with their characters. The soundtrack is perhaps a bit generic and forgettable, and while the ending theme is catchy, I doubt it will stick with me for very long.
Still, despite these good aspects, the lack of congruity or interesting aspects in the story make this no more than simply a fun romp through a crazy world. It's a somewhat enjoyable watch, that has a handful of flaws and overall manages to feel somewhat tepid and uninteresting in terms of it's story, despite it's over-the-top, ridiculous nature.
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Mar 11, 2016
The fifth One Piece film centers around Roronora Zoro, which is a nice change of pace, but does it live up to the name of "One Piece"?
Story: 6
The story isn't too complex, with a lot of standard tropes that we've seen before. Luffy & crew are in search of treasure as usual, but Zoro ends up going off on his own after receiving a message from an old friend in the form of a knife. This old Friend of Zoro's is known as Saga. From there, there's lots of adventure and conflict between different groups, as well as a predicament that involves a ritual sacrifice.
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None of this is too interesting on their own, but they all come together and are presented fairly well to make for an entertaining enough plotline, one that is enjoyable to watch, but not super impressive.
Art: 4
The art, when compared to the One Piece films that came before this, really seems to drop the ball. The iconic One Piece character design is still here in full form, as expected, and there's plenty of good-looking, well-animated shots, but there's also plenty of instances of obvious-looking limited animation, making me think the budget was decreased a bit from the previous films. However, even aside from all that, the most baffling parts are the moments where the animation becomes so low-resolution that it looks like pixel art instead of a drawing. Honestly, some shots in this film look like they came directly out of a Sega CD game. It's just entirely unacceptable, and the moments of good animation can't excuse these moments of exceedingly poor animation, making the overall animation less than average.
Sound: 7
The soundtrack is what you'd expect from One Piece, no surprises there, but it still sounds good. The audio design is loud and booming, as expected from a theatrical release. The voice acting from the Japanese cast is also just as well done as it normally is in the show, and the new characters they introduce also had solid performances from their voice actors. Overall, the audio in the movie is nicely done, but it's nothing to write home about.
Character: 8
The cast from the main show are in full form here and, for the most part, just as likable here as they are there. As for the new characters, they're a mixed bag. Maya is a pretty standard young priestess girl and isn't very interesting, and the main villain Saga is also a pretty standard bad guy, who used to be good but was turned evil by a cursed sword. However, Saga's underlings have pretty nice visual designs, and are a bit more complex than Saga himself, since even though they're the antagonists, they're not clearly on the side of good or evil. Also, the old lady from the village has some great moments.
Enjoyment: 7
Despite it's shortcomings, the movie was still pretty fun to watch. There were a lot of good moments, but also a few moments where I was bored and wondering how much more of the film I had left...
I would recommend it to fans of the characters who want to see them on another (fairly standard) adventure who can forgive a little bit of roughness from the animation side of things.
Overall: 6
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Oct 2, 2015
6 Angels is a contentious work, it gets a lot of flak from the community, and I feel like much of it is deserved. However, I went into it without any pre-conceived expectations, and in this review, I shall judge the show based purely on it's own merits.
Set in the year 2031, the show tells the story of a special task force named the Rose Guard, who apparently patrol all over the world. However, we never see any of that, as this tells the story of them crash-landing in a specific place and trying to fight off some crazed cyborg terrorist.
The story is kind of
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basic, which isn't great, but I would be fine with it if it was presented well... however, it's not. The story is presented in a fairly slapdash manner. One scene jumps to the next, not giving the viewer much time to focus on anything, turning the whole thing into this big jumble of events that felt like the creators just wanted to show one thing, and then another, and then another... instead of taking the time to craft a well-told tale. They also throw a theme into the last episode that feels very forced, coming off more like a public service announcement instead of an actual theme of the show. This is likely due, in part, to how the theme was not even hinted at until that one moment in that last episode, so there's no buildup to it, it just comes out of nowhere.
I feel like it's also impossible to do a review of this show without mentioning just how poorly done the subtitles are. Only one group did the subtitles for this show, and I doubt anybody else will give it a shot in the near future. Still, the poor subtitles aren't the fault of the original creators, so I'm not factoring it into my score. Some may feel like the subtitles play into how the quality of the story is perceived. However, with my limited knowledge of Japanese I was still able to work my way through the subtitles to understand the story well enough, and even in doing so, it still wasn't very good, or well-presented. Thus, I still feel the story is poorly done regardless of the poor subtitles.
The characters are just about as basic as the story, but I feel like they are at least a little bit entertaining. They all have very one-note personalities, but they play off of each other decently and tend to be moderately enjoyable, despite being completely unmemorable. They are also somewhat inconsistent, their motivations from episode to episode don't really seem to mesh, and this weakens them, making them feel just... poorly done. I do think there are a few good character moments here & there, though... so they're not entirely without merit.
The art is pretty mixed. There are moments where the show can look really good, and moments where it looks like total garbage. A lot of the poor side of the art comes from the incredibly outdated looking CGI. The 3D animation looks like some pre-rendered PS1 cutscenes, and it makes some amount of sense based on when this anime was made. However, it clashes so heavily with the 2D elements which altogether look much better.
The 2D art has a pretty decent art style to it, with the main characters having designs that look very common for the era, with a few villain designs that look kind of cool & cyberpunk in some cases, making the art feel almost like a mix of old & new. The few times that they had 2D drawn backgrounds, they looked pretty nice as well. However, in most cases, the backgrounds were done using CG, which kind of ruined the appeal of many scenes of the show.
The animation itself was also a mixed bag, some moments definitely look like they were animated on a tight budget, with still-frames and not much movement, while other moments actually looked fairly good, with nice looking 2D animation that complimented whatever moment it was being used in. However, the latter became less common after episode 3, and the second half of the series felt even less impressive from the animation side of things.
The soundtrack in the show was pretty decent, as were the sound effects being used... however, it's kind of crazy how much lower the volume was on both of these compared to the voice acting. The overall audio mix made the music & sound effects have less impact... despite them actually being somewhat well done. The voice acting was above average, but kind of had an amateur feel to it. Some characters felt more natural than others, but a lot of them seemed to have performances that were just slightly wooden, without as much life as you'd expect. There's a few performances that stand out, but none of them really shine at all, making the voice acting feel very average.
In the end, 6 Angels is an anime that feels like it has more potential than it's actually able to deliver upon. The art occasionally looks nice, but occasionally looks bad. The characters are pretty one-note, but can sometimes be entertaining. The whole thing just feels very inconsistent. If they were able to execute on their premise with just a little more finesse, I think I would have enjoyed this a bit more, despite the horrid subtitle work. However, in it's current form, it's simply a show that had potential and managed to end up as a disappointing pile of garbage... with only a few glimmers of what could have been, remaining present underneath it all.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Aug 23, 2015
God, this was incredibly strange.
It starts off somewhat mundane, but after the opening moments, each scene ended up taking place in another surreal, abstract setting.
In some ways it's like watching a series of surrealistic paintings come to life. The visuals are absolutely incredible, and everything is animated very nicely.
However, the part where it falls apart for me is the incredible lack of a plot, storyline, or character development. The main characters simply go on this wild adventure through these random lands of insanity and they discover them together with the viewer, without having much of a personality at all, simply being there essentially as a
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surrogate for the viewer.
Thus, there really isn't much to be said about why any of the stuff on-screen is happening, it simply just happens... for seemingly no reason.
The art is nice, and REALLY interesting to look at, so it's worth watching for that alone. I also really like the soundtrack, which gives the whole thing this creepy, atmospheric tone. However, I can't simply ignore it's faults on the story side of things. It seems as though it's all style and no substance at all.
Story: 3
Art: 10
Sound: 9
Character: 2
Enjoyment: 8
Overall, I give it a 7/10.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Aug 14, 2015
I went into Jinrui without any real expectations about it. I went into it after only seeing one clip, so I had almost no idea what to expect. However, what I got wasn't very enjoyable, and ended up just being somewhat average, with slightly more negatives than positives. Let me explain why.
The show's story felt very... aimless. Everything that happened in it was somewhat incidental for the characters, and even within the context of these episodic plots, everything that happened in the show came off as very... flat... bland. The ideas for each of the episodic stories seemed interesting, but the execution seemed poor. It
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was hard to care about any of the moments in the show as they were happening, because there wasn't any weight to anything that happened.
I feel like part of that might be because of the characters themselves. The main character had very little in the way of originality, and had basically the same few reactions to everything that happened. There was no depth to her, and that got tiring since she was the main focus, as well as the narrator. The other characters also lacked depth. That could be somewhat forgiven, as they weren't the focus of the show... however, I would still always prefer a cast with some "depthful" characters instead of a show without any (is depthful a word?).
It should also be noted that the way the characters interacted with each other is very typical and uninteresting. They all talked to each other in the same, unnatural way we see in plenty of other anime. This style of dialogue is tiring for me to sit through, and it's one of my main sticking points with this show.
The only characters who weren't written in this way were the fairies, who managed to be endearing and cute, but are only one small positive within a cast that I'm almost completely negative about.
On top of the characters not having much depth, I also didn't care much for their visual designs. Perhaps they're a little better than the standard, mainstream stuff that gets cranked out left & right nowadays, but only by a small margin.
On top of that, while the backgrounds had a somewhat watercolor style to them, which fit with the whole storybook theme... the art as a whole simply didn't impress me at all. There were never any really breathtaking moments with really impressive animation or backgrounds... and despite their attempt to give it a unique style, it doesn't go far enough with it. In the end the whole thing just feels very common.
You could say the same thing about the show's soundtrack. The opening theme is catchy, but sounds incredibly similar to many other anime themes... as well as the main score, which sounds like it could be inserted into many other anime without much of a problem. The same goes for the ending theme. The soundtrack is not unique in any meaningful way, and just comes off as boring, and even a little repetitive at times.
The voice actors I suppose do fine with what they are given, but I feel like the script is written in such a typical manner, that they are kind of resigned to their fate in many cases. Everything I said about the script can be applied to the performances as well. Most of the characters are typical and uninteresting, while the fairies are the one small standout.
My enjoyment of the show was... basically non-existent. I feel like a few episodes had good concepts that weren't capitalized on, the best of these being the "manga creation" two-part episode. However, I feel like that was kind of the height of the series' enjoyment for me. There wasn't much in the way of comedy for me, either... with only one or two moments that I actually found funny, and I think only one that I laughed at.
Story - 4
Art - 5
Sound - 5
Characters - 4
Enjoyment - 3
Overall, it's something that I definitely wouldn't watch again. I probably wouldn't recommend it to anybody, either. While it tries some interesting things, it fails at basically every one of them, as well as the overall execution being painfully middling.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jul 26, 2015
I went into Colorful not knowing what to expect. I hadn't watched any previews beforehand, or read any synopsis. The only thing I knew about the film was the front cover, with a boy laying in flowers. Well, the movie that I watched ended up being more interesting than that, but I still feel it has some flaws. Let's discuss.
Story - 6/10 (Concept - 10/10; Setting - 7/10; Structure - 5/10; Pacing - 5/10; Theme - 9/10)
The story has a really interesting setup. A person is revived from what appears to be "purgatory" at the beginning of the film. He then has to fill
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the shoes of a middle-school student who recently committed suicide, all while trying to prove that he's worthy of living in this kid's shoes after what happened to him.
Things start off well, with the plot being rolled out at a good pace, but after the beginning moments of the film, things start to slow down quite a bit, all the way up to the ending. Each scene feels like it overstays it's welcome just a little bit, making the whole middle of the film feel quite slowly-paced.
This isn't helped by the poor structure of the film, where things seem to happen without any cause or reason. Throughout the film, there isn't really an arc to the story. There's no consistent buildup to the climax, it's more like a bunch of peaks & valleys between dramatic moments and casual moments, with a bunch of different story threads intersecting one another, and no clear, concise plotline.
The film ends up redeeming itself by the end by tying all of those various plotlines up into a neat little package, with a good theme as the bow on top. However, despite the film having some interesting moments, getting to the end of it felt like a bit of a chore.
Characters - 8/10
Helping to alleviate some of that slow pacing and messy through-line of the story are the interesting cast of characters. Both the main and supporting cast consists of a bunch of enjoyable characters who are fun to watch on screen, while also having unique and diverse personality traits. There are a few characters who end up having a conflict, and while this is interesting, it also doesn't actually seem to develop them all that much. I thought the characters worked well for the duration of the story, but in the long run aren't very memorable. Still, they work for the moments that they're shown in, and I'd say they're the films second strongest point.
Art - 9/10 (Artstyle - 9/10; Animation - 9/10)
The film's strongest point would be the art. The backgrounds are detailed and gorgeous, and look very realistic. The characters are designed with a lot of realism, but they all still have defining characteristics that make them stand out and easy to tell apart. However, I think the artstyle, while good, isn't my favorite. It works well for the subject matter, but it's lacking a bit of... warmth, I suppose.
The animation is also really well done, with nicely done, subtle, realistic movement throughout. Characters emote nicely, with various expressions that help to make each scene just a bit more captivating. However, while everything was very solid and clearly done by masterful animators, there weren't any jaw-dropping moments with the animation, it was all very consistent, without any one scene or shot standing out, which I suppose may have been a conscious choice by the director.
Sound - 8/10 (Soundtrack - 9/10; Voice Acting - 8/10)
The soundtrack in the film was fantastic! The songs used in different scenes conveyed the tone of the scene perfectly, while also avoiding sounding like a score and instead sounding more like actual music, which made the soundtrack a lot more noticeable. However, it wasn't noticeable enough to distract me from the dialogue in a scene.
That dialogue was spoken by a cast of voice actors that definitely breathed some life into the characters, but perhaps not as much as one would hope. I watched the original Japanese dub, and while the important scenes all had really great performances, I felt like there were some moments in-between where the performances fell a little bit flat. Not flat enough to be jarring, but just enough to make those scenes somewhat more boring than the other ones. Some of the lines also sounded like they were recorded with a fan on in the background... and it's very noticeable in quiet scenes where the only thing being heard is a character's voice and they keep muting the dialogue track in-between each spoken line. That was somewhat distracting, but not too big of an issue.
Enjoyment - 7/10
Overall, Colorful is an interesting film with interesting characters and an interesting story. However, it has a few major flaws that keep it from being perfect. The inconsistent structure of the plotline, and the somewhat slow pacing of many of the scenes are both flaws that seem to bring the rest of the elements of the film down a notch. It's enjoyable, and worth checking out, but I probably wouldn't watch it again.
Overall - 8/10
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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