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Feb 18, 2022
I enjoyed watching this movie, but not in the way that I expected. Terrible pacing, unexplained plot points, and just lots of inexplicable blank spaces where the characters just stand there longer than they should; it all just kind of melded into feeling like one big joke on itself which it obviously didn't intend to do.
First the art: The tentacle demon pillars looked pretty good actually, but they were effectively just cg backgrounds and the 7 Pillars you fight in the game don't ever even do anything besides get introduced, and then just wilt over off screen. Some of the animation was pretty good, but
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it felt wasted and like it was just trying to cover up the fact that even the director didn't know what was going on in the movie.
Now, to talk about the pacing and characters. There are a couple elephants in the room so to speak about this: first ever since the Unlimited Blade Works movie pre-Ufotable, the Fate series has always been trying to cram like 10+ hours of content into 90 minute movies, which is just never a good idea. Second, this arc in the game was supposed to be the player's big triumphant moment after a year long journey both in the game and in real time, with all of the characters you met and grew to love or hate coming to your aid, but the catch is that they only animated 2.66 out of 8 arcs, and even the characters you are supposed to be reminiscing about barely get screen time, so if you've never played the game you don't know who the heck any of these people are, and even if you know them only a handful actually get a chance to do something.
I also have complaints about the way that the story was not explained at all. I have played FGO since it came out on JP, played pretty much every Fate thing, and even read some of the novels, so I think it's fair to say that I have better understanding than the average viewer of what the story and concepts are about, but the utter lack of explanation on what was going on made me question if I was remember the story correctly. The pivotal moment of the entire first storyline of FGO didn't really get explained: like why a character walking up and sacrificing themselves actually accomplished anything, there were no visual or dialogue cues to suggest that it actually did anything and even the characters were like "cool, moving on". The movie also had this terrible habit of undercutting any tension or dramatic moment they were trying to build. I remember laughing hysterically because Ritsuka and the villain were having a dramatic argument on a static shot of them just standing there, the camera pans away suddenly, and then pans back to the same shot except there is a shield stabbed into the villain's stomach, and then it just lingers on that shot for like 5 more seconds. The final fisticuffs fight between Ritsuka and the villain which the entire fandom was kind of wondering how that even worked in the first place ended up being really lame, so that was another disappointment.
In conclusion, trying to tell multiple hours worth of story about 7 other stories in 90 minutes is a bad idea, but Fate keeps doing it anyways. This is movie is basically only for people who have completed Part 1 of the FGO story, anything less and you should probably save your time by skipping this. I at least wanted to see Ritsuka go full JoJo at the end but it seems like that wish will never be granted.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Oct 25, 2021
This review has many spoilers.
I always enjoy watching new faces in the Godzilla series try to inject new life and ideas into the series, which while I have loved since I was a kid and still love to this day, can admittedly fall into the same tropes in every subsequent addition to the franchise. And I think that this was a very good attempt by the writers at a more deeply sci-fi story in the franchise, but for me in many ways it was just that: an attempt.
I think that if you look at the score I gave the series, you might think that I
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was not really into the show, but there are actually quite a few parts I really enjoyed. The main three areas I thought the show did really well with were: the visuals, the sound design and music, and the bag of concepts that the writers were willing to pull from.
I feel like usually 3DCG in anime is a mostly negative mixed bag, with it sometimes looking better than expected, but I thought the textures and styling of the monsters was very good, and if you might be even able to stretch the lens and view it as a representation of showing how the monsters exist in the world but don't belong.
As a big Godzilla weeb, I really appreciated the use of the classic Godzilla themes and kaiju cries and roars, which really took me back and I think helped convince me that the creators of the show are also just big fans of the genre. To add even further to this point, many of the plot points and presentation of the story is dripping with references and allusions to previous entries in the series (i.e. the story of Godzilla as a urban legend like it was in the original movie, essentially taking the plot of Shin Godzilla and adding time travel to mix, the scene after Godzilla unleashes its atomic breath and hibernating also basically being directly lifted from Shin Godzilla, and *spoilers* using the skeleton of a previous Godzilla to make Mechagodzilla a la Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla, etc.) and as a long time fan, I really appreciated them showing that they knew their stuff.
However, this also directly leads into some of the issues I had with the show, which particularly start to come in during the second half of the show where it focuses on the story. I think that the story suffers a lot with pacing, and trying to convince itself of its own time shenanigans to the point where to me, it feels like they almost gave up trying to make sense at the end. The use of the lullaby to transmit information through time marginally makes sense until it is revealed that Pelops uses it to transmit information to Jet Jaguar in the future, even though the song was originally supposed to have come from the deceased Godzilla in the basement, which doesn't really make sense as to how Pelops encoded that information, not to mention why it made Jet Jaguar huge aside from the obvious reason of wanting Robots to fight giant monsters which I am not against in the slightest, but still it felt like they included too many ideas and realized on the last two episodes that it was almost impossible to tie everything together.
However, I think the biggest issue I had with the series was the utilization of Godzilla. In Godzilla's truest essence, he is an incarnation of the sins of mankind and their arrogance in using atomic power, a theme which has mostly remained true through all of Godzilla's more serious appearances, or at least he has represented the power of nature like in the Monsterverse. But in Singular Point he's a threat just because he's a big monster, and that is my issue: this show didn't have to be about Godzilla. To me, it felt like the creators had the concept for the show and later decided to add Godzilla, because it feels like they could have replaced Godzilla and all the other monsters with generic kaiju and the plot would remain largely unchanged, Godzilla just has better brand recognition. To be perfectly honest, Godzilla didn't even really come across as being the biggest threat to the characters: the Salunga and the vaguely described Catastrophe going on in India were always framed as being the more immediate threat to humanity, and Godzilla was mostly just chilling in Japan and cracking open a cold one with the boys unless people bothered him.
Despite its flaw in my opinion, Godzilla: Singular Point is a good attempt at a heavier sci-fi Godzilla story and is a good addition to the franchise and mythos that I think fans of Godzilla will enjoy, but couldn't tie together the good concepts it presented, didn't utilize Godzilla very well, and to me ultimately failed to resolve the story it was trying to tell in a satisfying way.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jun 5, 2021
I want to preface this by saying that I really tried to give Boruto so many chances and am still reading the series, but reading the most recent chapters made me so annoyed that I am now writing this review.
When I read the first like 5 pages of chapter 1 of Boruto, I was immediately expecting a dumpster fire. At the end of Boruto's Dad's story, Naruto fulfilled his dreams, became Ninja Jesus, Sasuke became Ninja Batman, and Naruto had an annoying son to remind him of what he used to be. It wasn't a perfect ending, but I still remember feeling happy and emotional
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because I grew up with Naruto and felt like he worked hard to get his happy ending.
And then BAM, they're flipping dead in the opening scene of Bort and we are subjected to a slog of meeting the titular protagonist who has all of Naruto's annoying aspects without any of the sad back story or redeeming aspects, and I think that really summarizes the weaknesses and failings of this series in a nutshell. For as much as people love hype fights and powerful characters in anime, the greatest strength of the original Naruto series in my opinion was its empathy and ability to get people emotionally invested in incredibly limited exposure to its world and characters. Many other people have written that we shouldn't judge this series on its early chapters since it was essentially just movie recap, and although I'm not focusing on these parts, I think it still exemplifies the fundamental lack of understanding of what made Naruto great in the first place. It just feels like the author only watched the Ninja War arc and took the worst parts of the series to write this one.
I actually think the dynamic of having Boruto develop an inferiority complex over being Naruto's son and having Naruto have zero idea on how to interact with his family is great, but the execution is not there. Boruto isn't as terrible of a protagonist as everyone makes him out to be, but that doesn't make him a good character, and he's certainly not a deep enough character to carry the story by himself, which is why most everyone seems more excited to see other characters. That being said, there are some interesting additions to the cast like Mitsuki and Sarada (who I still would have preferred as a main character over Boruto), but unfortunately in the manga it feels like they rarely get any chances to shine and are instead overshadowed by Kawaki and Boruto who are just kind of bland characters.
Boruto as a series also inherently suffers from the terrible power scaling at the end of Naruto, and has to somehow genjutsu not only the readers but also the author into believing that any of this makes the slightest bit of sense. Naruto and Sasuke especially get the short end of the stick after arguably being among the strongest individuals ever in the history of their world, but get nerfed to the point where Sasuke runs out of chakra by going for a walk, and a random drunkard on the street says they are part of the Otsutsuki clan and beats up Naruto so Boruto can remain relevant and also somehow defeat a god on day 1. Between the Space Ninja and the robo-ninja of the Otsutsuki clan, Naruto and Sasuke rarely seem to win any fights, especially in the most recent chapters, which feels like a massive betrayal to the powers they obtained in the original series (whether they were earned or not *cough* Six Paths BS). The real issue comes down to the villains, AKA the Otsutsuki clan which I still think was the weakest part of Naruto. The villains have no real personality, very little build up, are strong because the author said so, and also just keep popping up with BS technology and techniques that feel out of place in the series, and I am not a fan of the very paper-thin reason that Boruto and Kawaki have relationships with the Otsutsuki clan in the first place.
But now, let's get to the real reason I wrote this review: the arc with Isshiki. Without spoiling anything, this arc was really the boiling point for how much BS I was willing to tolerate, and it felt completely disrespectful to characters and story that came before it. One of the recurring themes in Naruto, is that the new generation will always surpass the previous one, and I still think that is a good message and was one of the few reasons that I was still holding out on this series was for Boruto's potential character growth to impress me. But it's clear that the author doesn't care in the slightest about the previous generation. It's one thing for Naruto and Sasuke to be defeated, but they get defeated by basically every new enemy and after a major character died in the most recent arc, Naruto barely says anything of value despite their long history together and the character's passing is capped off by Kawaki pretty much saying "Who cares, can we go home now". It's just awful.
In summary, Boruto as a series could have had some potential, but for some reason willingly chose to dive headfirst into all the worst pitfalls of the original series and disrespects both its characters as well as the readers who fell in love with the original series. It's no wonder Boruto has an inferiority complex with a sequel series like this.
Reviewer’s Rating: 1
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Dec 23, 2020
In contrast to how much I enjoyed the webtoon, it's hard to describe how dirty this anime adaptation did the original series.
First thing's first, it was personally hard for me to focus on the actual content when I was constantly being reminded that they needlessly localized the names and locations from Korea to Japan. I know the OVA did it first, but it still feels like a needless change and after GoH left everything in that regard the same as the original, so it just felt petty to me considering they are adapting a Korean series.
With that out of the way I can focus on
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the many other failings of this adaptation. As others have pointed out, the Noblesse anime starts out in the second season, with only an abridged 30 minute OVA of the first season to help viewers meet the characters and setting, which most people also probably don't even know exists, so basically the viewers are basically given nothing to go on and are thrown in the middle of the story. The first season could have provided a fun introduction to the characters while also explaining the characters motivations and backstories, but for some reason it was decided that less is more until eventually there was barely anything left.
That being said, the characters and story from this arc have been adapted pretty faithfully and even with zero knowledge of them, newcomers to the series can still get a decent idea of what each character is like and the story is simple enough that they can at least follow the plot. However, the actual substance is severely lacking: lazy animation and art quality really made it tough for me to enjoy what few action sequences there were, and even though other adaptations of Korean manhwa like Tower of God and God of Highschool had their issues, they usually compensated with their art style or fluid animation, but Noblesse sadly gets none of these and comes across as being low budget.
Overall, as a fan of the original, this adaptation missed every box I wanted, and if anyone is interested in the series after watching it, I would recommend just reading the comic instead.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Oct 7, 2019
Like other people have written already, a shounen does not need to necessarily have to be complex to be good. That being said, I felt that this first season of Demon Slayer (or Kimetsu no Yaiba) was too simple and beyond the art style and animation most of the show just felt pretty bland to me, or at least didn't really make me feel much of anything. I apologize for how negative this review comes off as, but the more I thought about it, I kept coming up with negatives rather than positives.
I think that the one area where Demon Slayer really did well with
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the "less is more" idea was the animation and art style. Compared to other Ufotable works I think the designs and animation were much simpler and stylistic which had a very clean look and allowed for fluid more animation. However, as Ufotable has struggled with in the past, they really need to do better with their 3D animation if they are going to keep using it this much. Early on it actually looked really good and they mixed it in with their regular animation very well, but later on (I think in the Spider Demons arc?) they had multiple scenes in a short timeframe which were obviously 3D, I remember it seemed pretty bad while I was watching.
The voice acting was surprisingly good. I feel like they basically had every staple in the industry voicing someone even if they were only getting 2 lines (I had to keep looking people up since I was sure they wouldn't be doing such minor roles), and they all did their parts well.
As for the characters: I generally liked the cast of characters and I seem to have enjoyed the humor more than other people, the characters were also... pretty cliche, and it feels like they have the same conversations at least once every episode. The first half of the show also got pretty slow at certain points (despite how much action there was) because Tanjiro was basically the only important character who got speaking lines for episodes at a time, which made it feel a bit redundant and slow at times. Muzan is a kind of disappointing villain so far. I found him more interesting when I didn't know anything about him, and he has not really influenced the story in any meaningful way after the first episode.
Story-wise, there's not much to say. After the first episode, Tanjiro goes to become a demon slayer, look for a cure for his sister, meets the villain of the series, then he does bunch of random missions for 15 episodes until he meets the big boys and girls in the last few episodes.
A psuedo-complaint is that Demon Slayer feels like a rehashing of things you'd find in other series. I believe my personal description of the series early on was "Deku Jaeger meets Claymore meets Golden Kamuy". This is not necessarily a bad thing as series copy each other all the time, but I also feel like Demon Slayer did nothing to really make itself stand out.
My last grievance with the show is that I was not really impressed with any of the fights besides the one in episode 19. Although there was a lot of stuff going on and a lot of eye candy animation, the fights somehow felt super slow and dragged out for the most part. Honestly, there's nothing particularly wrong with any of the fights, they just fell flat for me.
Despite all the stuff I said, I did binge the show in two days and I didn't feel inclined to stop watching during that time, so there is something here, but when I really think about it: Demon Slayer is a good looking show with very little story that didn't really make me feel any sort of way while I was watching it.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Mar 20, 2017
I'll preface this review by mentioning that I tried to temper my expectations for this movie, and tried not to have my expectations too high. Even taking this into account, I feel that this movie almost felt like Shinkai was testing out what he and his studio could do with a larger scale and budget, and this didn't come out feeling quite right (to me), and as a result, I feel that this was not his best film (I believe there was an interview in which he also stated that he felt the same). I will include spoilers in this review, so if
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you don't want spoilers STOP READING.
Story:
I didn't find this story to be particularly original, and at times, it felt a little out there (yes, even for an anime plot). The concept of a budding romance through the using body swapping has been done to death, though its usage beyond just experiencing slice of life moments was new and kind of fresh. That being said, the actual crisis of the film (a falling fragment of the comet which would eradicate a small town) felt a little grandiose compared to the overall tone of the rest of the movie.
The use of the pseudo-time travel plot element was both good and bad in my opinion. While I was watching, the fact that Taki was investigating an event that had happened three years ago, definitely added to the mystery and "what the heck" aspects of the story, but Shinkai literally made zero attempts to actually expand upon the reasoning and mechanics for why this happened. There was even a moment when Mizuha's grandmother basically commented, "Oh you get those body swapping dreams too? Your mother and I got those too. It's some weird s**t" and that was the end of the conversation besides the brief mention of the Musubi threads earlier in the film. I also feel like the "Your name is?" line felt really forced, and almost seemed like a bad pun, and it just seemed like Shinkai wanted this to become a recurring line at all costs, due to the fact that the memory loss was also never really explained. Another gripe I had was about how the movie cut when Mizuha went to confront her father, who was a total dick the whole movie, and then is apparently convinced off screen, and then everyone somehow miraculously escaped unscathed despite the fact that the comet fragments were already plummeting towards them at ridiculous speeds (I seriously think that they underplayed how long it probably takes to evacuate even just a section of a small town).
In comparison to the other two Shinkai movies I've watched (5 Centimeters Per Second and Garden of Words), the overall scale this movie attempted to tackle was larger, and I appreciate Shinkai's efforts to develop as a director and expand his repertoire, but I felt that he was both trying to have an epic story while simultaneously trying to have a slice of life film, and it felt like I watched two movies. And in many ways, that's what this film was: it was about two characters' stories which aligned tangentially through a twist of fate. But still, I felt like they could have been tied together much, much better.
Art:
I don't have much to say on this section. It was a Shinkai film. I expected stunning visuals, and I got stunning visuals, just as much or maybe even more so than any of his previous movies. Shinkai always delivers some of the most visually pleasing anime I've seen, and I'd give the visuals for this movie 11/10 if there was that metric on this site.
Sound:
The soundtrack and background music were okay in my book. The voice acting was good, though I thought it wasn't particularly outstanding. There weren't any tracks that I found particularly memorable (I generally have not in most Shinkai films, which is one of the reasons why I personally think that Shinkai is still behind Miyazaki, because he doesn't have a Joe Hisaishi). If anything, I was a little annoyed at times with the usage of the theme song at some points, because I felt like it was way overused and broke up the flow of the movie at times (though it was never terrible). It just felt like Shinkai was right up in my face about what moments were supposed to be dramatic and shoving the theme song (that I also am not a big fan of) down my throat, trying to tell me how to feel about a moment.
Characters:
To be honest, I never really felt super interested in any of the characters. For what seems like a movie where the relationships of the main characters is a huge draw, they all seemed rather bland. The relationship between Taki and Mizuha felt a little forced, like they were barely starting to see each other as friends, and then suddenly it jumped to I will love you forever (plus the added pseudo-time travel elements made their relationship overly complicated). Though I felt some flashes of chemistry between Taki and Mizuha, I just felt like this time the overall chemistry between the characters was weak, which I feel is strange for Shinkai, since Shinkai's characters have made me feel terrible before they have relationship issues. Similarly, I felt like none of the supporting cast were all that interesting either: Mizuha's two friends (whose names I cannot remember) basically just seemed like plot devices in some ways to me (with the boy being the son of the construction head and the girl being in the broadcasting club), and Taki's senpai and friend basically just tagging along to eat food and ask questions to move the plot and romance along.
Part of the reason I think this is the case is because of how the story is constructed. Because Shinkai had to devote so much time to splitting the story and setting in half, it felt like we only saw snapshots of the characters, and Taki and Mizuha never really got to interact on a truly meaningful level, or in a way which helped develop their characters significantly since they basically communicated with each other via post-it notes (which can be effective, but I didn't think was done well in this case) and groping each other's privates.
Overall:
Story: 5/10
Art: 10+/10
Sound: 5/10
Character: 6/10
Enjoyment: 7.5/10
Overall: 7/10
Though I might have criticized a number of things, I did enjoy watching Kimi no Na Wa a lot, and part of that was because of how different it felt compared to Shinkai's previous films and how I couldn't predict how the plot would progress. That being said, I would definitely say that Kimi no Na Wa is not what I consider to be Shinkai's strongest work of those that I've seen (I would probably still choose 5 Centimeters per Second for that). I definitely liked a lot of things that this film tried to do, but at the same time did not really like the execution of many parts.
I felt like in this movie I saw that Shinkai was trying to take steps to diversify himself as a director, and that I saw the potential, but that in other cases it just didn't quite reach its goal, and that he didn't take advantage of what made his other movies so successful.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Oct 25, 2014
Shingeki no Kyojin (A.K.A Attack on Titan) is a complicated topic for me. My first time through I really enjoyed it and watched about 8 episodes right through and got caught up pretty quickly. However, I was completely unable to watch it at all a second time through. I give it a 5/10 purely due to the initial impact which it gave me. I will list some of my opinions below:
Pros:
The World and Setting -- Honestly the main selling point of the show, the set up and world is one of the most original settings I've seen and it's what kept
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me engaged for the most part.
Action Sequences -- In my opinion, the action sequences were well done and the art style complemented the series well.
Impact -- The series does a nice job of reeling you in (especially the first episode) and there is really nothing else like this series at the moment and the death scenes are quite gruesome
Cons:
The Characters -- People will likely try and defend them, but the characters are just boring. Eren has an enormous rage boner the whole time, Armin is made out as being really smart but doesn't actually show any indication of being that intelligent, Mikasa was cool until Levi showed up and was basically better at everything and then Mikasa proceed to become not only less useful but an even more boring character. Erwin was one of the few pretty solid characters. The rest are so dull they don't really warrant being mentioned.
The Plot -- I'll try not to spoil the plot, but in the anime and the manga the author has only shown himself to be capable of using one plot line: Eren gets kidnapped and Mikasa and/or Levi later on have to bust his ass out. The basement was presented as this cool mysterious element, but the author has not really done anything with that, and what the manga has alluded to about the titans was something I came up with 5 episodes into the show. Really disappointing in my opinion, especially when the author created a world with so many possibilities.
Mixed:
The Music -- I love Hiroyuki Sawano. I really liked his work in Guilty Crown and Blue Exorcist, but I just felt like it was kind of out of place and didn't really fit the series really well. Maybe would have preferred Yuki Kajiura for a show like this (although she tends to be a bit repetitive).
Overall:
I really enjoyed the show the first time around, but all consequent viewings caused its numerous glaring flaws to become apparent. The pacing in the show is very poor and there are many episodes where nothing really happens for better or for worse. The show takes itself really seriously and likes to act like some events were huge plot twists when it was incredibly obvious ever since the start (although there are some which are actually surprising in the manga). It's good points sadly just don't measure up to it's flaws in my opinion, which is a shame. It's worth a watch, but maybe not a second.
Side Note: I also wish there wasn't so much Eren x Levi Yaoi material around the internet
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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