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Jan 14, 2017
Love Live took off great with the brilliant 1st season, started to stumble with the 2nd, and lands in a real belly flop in this movie. I'm really quite sad to see it end this way.
What got me hooked from the start of the 1st season was the CG song/dance performances, and this movie lacks most of that. There are some CG left in the movie that looks cool but mostly it is just "regular" animation. The graphics are good, don't get me wrong, but I really liked that kind of 3D choreography with vividly moving camera angles that the first season brought.
Sadly I didn't
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like the music either. The first two seasons had some ups and downs regarding song quality, but in this movie, none of them hooked me. At least the voice acting is alright as always.
The plot is overly simple, un-dramatic and feels mostly like an afterthought. Half of the movie is just cute but non-funny comedy, the other half is cute but rushed, non-dramatic drama. The characters that carried a big part of the two previous seasons don't get much time to bloom, and the time they do get is mostly wasted on shallow "comedy". There really are too many members of Muse; sure they all have different personalities and all, but at least some of them could have been trashed to make room for the rest.
At least it looks good. NYC really gets a fair treatment and the girls are as alive and well designed as ever.
The only thing I actually enjoyed was Hanoka's "new acquaintance", a really beautiful symbolism that could have made a bittersweet ending even more sweet (Not that the ending actually WAS bittersweet, but I guess that's the direction they were aiming).
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jan 14, 2017
So they needed five years to create... this? I guess we're lucky the story is totally non-existant so that we wouldn't have to re-watch all of the previous episodes every time a new one was released once every six months (or something), to keep up with the plot.
This is just pure ecchi, no more no less. No plot, no drama, no character. Just dumb fapping material. Kind of cute though, and very refreshing in the playful and innocent way it depicts matters that are totally taboo in the west.
There are lots of attempts at comedy that sometimes succeed brilliantly, but most of the time
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the jokes are just wierd, awkward and stupid.
I would not have kept following this OVA if it wasn't for the OP/ED music. Really cute songs that totally deserves a spot in my "good shit" folder.
Moving on...
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Dec 23, 2015
The original Air series was so good I didn't feel like taking the risk of watching the specials or movie, in case they'd mess up the overall experience. Now, several years later, I thought "meh, why not", and checked out the Summer OVA anyway. Turned out my fears were unfounded. These two episodes could easily have been merged into the TV series without affecting its quality. Sure, you get to know the secondary, "ancient", characters better, which enhances the aggregated enjoyment of Air. But at the same time, it'd slow the series down quite a bit. So I'm totally fine with the decision to keep
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this as a separate OVA.
The Summer special is not as heavy as the TV series; is has way more lighthearted comedy elements and almost no heart-tearing moments. It's just some feelgood character development, but compared to the TV episodes, these two are considerably slower and neither story nor characters get that much development. The main focus is the comedy. And that's totally fine.
Graphically and audio-wise, this OVA is right up there with the original. That is, it looks and sounds excellent.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Dec 12, 2015
Alright, so Strawberry eggs probably doesn't resonate with everyone. It touches subjects such as cross dressing, hebephilia and rabid feminism, which aren't exactly uncontroversial in the west (or I suppose in Japan). Even if you approach this series with an open mind, you'll still have to get past the whacky story, the wierd jokes, the fanservice... All I can say is that Strawberry eggs hits a perfect wavelength for me personally.
Graphically it actually looks really good, especially for a high school anime, and even more especially considering it was made in 2001. Vivid animation, nice lighting effects and above decent character design.
The voice acting is
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good enough, the OP and ED have both been in my "good anime music" folder for over 10 years and the background music is varied and fitting.
Very few high school animes manage to pull off a good combination of comedy and romance, but Strawberry eggs hits a sweet spot. The story itself, despite the whacky themes, isn't ground breaking but it's well paced and directed, and inhabited with great characters.
This happens to be one of the very first animes I watched, so I guess some of it comes out of nostalgia, but it has turned out to be one of my absolute favourites.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Feb 24, 2015
A short but sweet show without any drama, comedy, ecchi, violence or epicness. So what's left to like, then? Well, a handful of cute characters, a couple of cute scenes, a cute moral or two, some cute music... Yeah, sorry, but when a show doesn't contribute more than "cute", I'm out. I don't mind slow slice of life anime, but there is a thin line between "slow slice of life" and "no story at all", and Candy boy ends up with the larger shoe on the wrong side of that line.
I have to admit it is a gorgeously looking anime, though. The artwork
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and character designs are simply stunning. Too bad it merely consists of still frames with the occational animated mouth thrown in. I would really like to see this kind of graphic style in a more fleshed out anime.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Feb 24, 2015
Hope is the mother of all disappointment, right?
So... where did the cyberpunk go? All the yummy mood and atmosphere that the GitS movie brought is gone and replaced by a bright, clean and shiny world where it never rains. I get that a TV series rarely can stand up to a movie in terms of graphics, but the difference here is not technical, it's a design choice. This combined with the extremely episodic "mission of the week" format makes you think you're actually watching sci-fi CSI.
The main overarching plot is great, but it's spread out too thin in a tedious mess of one-shot episodes that
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has nothing to do with the big picture. I didn't quite pay attention, but I'd say that if you skipped all the "Stand alone" episodes and just watched the "Complex" ones, you wouldn't have missed anything important. Sadly, these Complex episodes are way too few both for keeping the viewer interested, and for telling the story in a satisfying way. 26 episodes is a lot, but still the main plot feels rushed. I like slow paced shows, but SaC is slow where it doesn't matter and too fast where it does.
The animation is a fair bit above average for a TV anime, and offers some cool action scenes but there is way to much dialogue. Sure, it is a complicated story with politics, corruption and a whole scifi world to explain, but all the talking gets a bit tiresome in the long run.
As for the characters, they are all cool, if not very deep. If the creators had spent more effort on character development and less on complicated but pointless mysteries for those characters to solve, this could have been a very different experience.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Feb 21, 2015
This is pretty much as good as you can get within the cyberpunk genre, and it leads the vanguard of philosophical anime. This is not an action flick, even though the few combat scenes are visually stunning and well directed.
GitS took my anime virginity back in '99 or so, but even though it tickled my curiosity, it turns out it wasn't the one that got me hooked on the anime artform per se. See, this movie isn't what you would call typical for anime as far as tropes, memes and dramaturgy go. It owes a lot to western stuff in that regard, mainly Bladerunner
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of course.
Compared to Bladerunner though, GitS is superior in basically every aspect. It's deeper, more atmospheric, better looking etc etc. The only thing it lacks is Vangelis. Other than that, the only thing that stops me from giving GitS a solid 10 is that it's rather short. I usually consider this a plus, but a story this complex and deep needs time to bloom. This movie feels more like an introduction. Hopefully Stand alone complex et al will keep up the awesomeness, cuz that's where I'm heading now.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Feb 20, 2015
Yet another high school / Harem anime. A boys-only school gets a visit by a busload of girls, and the ecchi commences! Lots of panty shots, bare tits, asses and the occational bear rape. Simple plot and stereotypical stereotypicity aside, Green green is actually quite good. The comedy is top notch, with hilarious over the top ecchi-induced perv humor, and the romance plot is decent at the very least.
The graphics are rather bad all in all, but a big plus for the earthshattering facial expressions. While the art style is dated and boring, the characters are well designed and the animation is better than
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you would expect. Stuff actually move!
The voice acting is good, although I wouldn't blame you for thimking many of the voices gets really frustrating after a while. Then again, the characters are supposed to be a bit over-the-top. The opening and ending songs are a good bit above average and BGM is neat, although a bit repetitive.
I don't say no to a bit of fanservice and wierd humour, and this anime has both in abundance. No homo, but I like it when both sexes get a shot of the ecchi-gun.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Feb 19, 2015
Well, this certainly was interesting. A pre-apocalyptic world with both gothpunk, fantasy and sci-fi elements. Could have been a total mess, but the mashup actually works. Much thanks to the great graphic design that makes the dying ashes of the world really believeable. The strong cast makes for a great pallet to paint up the core structure of the setting and the music brings the mood to even higher levels.
Sadly, while the world itself is a masterpiece, the story that takes place in it, is not. It is a tale of the Journey variety, and an unusually boring one at that. The cast moves
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in a straight line during the whole anime, and although there are lots of characters, they all walk in the same direction. The only thing that varies is the constellations of characters, due to a lot of random and pointless splittings and re-mergings of the party. On the way, there are a lot of stuff happening, of course, but all the events point in the same direction, even those that by all logic should be just "random encounters". Even the lowliest housecat seems to have something to contribute to the heroes' journey. It all feels like a two thousand year old epic, where the art of storytelling hadn't come very far. Sure, it is epic as fuck, but at least as boring.
All in all, totally watchable, but don't expect your sense of dramaturgy to be challenged or even tickled in any way.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Feb 17, 2015
A cute and actually darn funny comedy during the first half, a gripping romantic drama during the second. Peach girl could easily have been one of the best love animes I have watched this far, have it not been for two things; graphics and repetitiveness.
The art style itself I have no problem with. It's pretty standard shojo with lots of eyelashes and flowers and stuff. There are lots of hilarious facial expressions during the comedy bits. And many of the still frames look absolutely gorgeous. The sad thing is, it is very inconsistent, well beyond the point where characters look like entirelly different persons from
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frame to frame. Very amateurish. There is a high percentage of zooming, panning and tilting still frames, and the animation that do exist tend to be stiff. In my book, graphics are usually not the be-all and end-all of anime. But when it is this poorly executed it gets in the way of the immersion and ruins the experience. There are graphic masterpieces like Furi Kuri being a good bit older than this, so you can't really blame the age of this show. It's a huge shame, for the characters are generally well designed and a lot of lost potential shines through during the few really good shots.
The story is great and engaging and all, but it would certainly have benefitted from a bit of compression into fewer episodes. As it is, all the back-and-forth "oh, I think saw them hugging and I have no idea why, now my life is ruined" makes the story a bit repetitive and less plausible. I think it would have been totally possible to diet all of this down to 13 episodes. Or, failing that, extended the comedy first half or fleshed out some of the secondary characters.
I have to lift my hat for the great comedy in the first half. I didn't expect this show to be this funny, but it was totally spot on both as comedy in itself, and as a nifty way to introduce the characters and the setting before the drama takes off.
There aren't a lot of characters, but the ones that we get to meet are with few exeptions deep, beliveable and likeable in their own ways. Especially Momo-chan herself, of course. She balances on a fine line between a couple of anime sterotypes with a straight back and does a hell of a job with it. Sae-chan is another really interesting character, a type of villain seldom seen in anime.
Sound-wise, the OP quickly found it's way into my top 10, and the ED isn't half bad either. The BGM is alright and the voice acting is top notch. So no complaints in this department.
All in all, a great love story slash comedy that sadly was dragged down by inexcusably poor graphics and a bit of a drawn-out script. No regrets for watching it, I'm just sad its full potential wasn't reached.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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