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Hey guys, kanna here.
Boy, oh boy, has it been a while. I've had a lot going on, some of which included not knowing which anime to review after giving Attack on Titan Part 2: End of the World the trashing it deserved. I needed something that could restore my sanity, and that of my readers. Because both parts of the live action Attack on Titan were AWFUL.
Then, who else but Whalley commented on my Facebook saying I should review Bonds Beyond Time, the tenth anniversary movie for Yu-Gi-Oh!. It later occurred to me: there's a new Yu-Gi-Oh! movie coming out in Japan in about two months to celebrate the franchise's 20th anniversary. That movie being simply known as Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions. Not much is known about this movie, but if you want to see a subtitled trailer, feel free to watch it:
Anyway, I recently started re-watching Yu-Gi-Oh!, and I'm at my all-time favorite season from the original series, "Waking the Dragons" (aka Season 4). Dartz is such a badass villain with badass henchpeople and he's quite possibly the best written villain in the entire series...next to Yami Bakura, at any rate (although...Yami Marik was pretty terrifying in Season 2, and I had trouble keeping up with three Bakuras running around). But that's not until the second half of Season 5, and I'm getting ahead of myself.
So, because I started re-watching Yu-Gi-Oh! (and yes, that's really how the title is stylized...go sue the people who put an exclamation mark at the end of the title if you have a problem) and Whalley suggested I review Bonds Beyond Time, here we go!
So, as you probably guessed, this movie had a different title in Japan. That title was actually a little better than the English one, but the English title is still pretty good. In Japan, the film was called 10th Anniversary Yu-Gi-Oh! Movie: Super Fusion! Bonds that Transcended Time. Yeah...you could say they were a little exclamation-point-happy. It's like being trigger-happy, but with exclamation points.
The movie was first announced in Shueisha's magazine as a short film that would be screened at the Jump Super Anime Tour to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series. It was later revealed in the November issue of V-Jump magazine that the movie would be released in 3-D. The interesting thing, however, was that the film's imagery was originally produced in 2-D, and later converted to 3-D by a company called Qtec. I haven't seen the film in 3-D (I missed the theatrical release), but from what I've been told, the 3-D was really emphasized in a couple of scenes.
Here's another fun fact: all the voice actors from 5Ds, GX, and the original series all returned to reprise their roles. So we had Greg Abbey as Yusei Fudo, Dan Green as Yugi Muto/Yami Yugi (yes, he voiced both of them for those who didn't know), and Matthew Charles as Jaden Yuki. There were other returning cast members, but their characters only appear for a couple minutes throughout the film (seriously, I think we saw about a minute and a half of Pegasus, and maybe about two or three minutes of some of the other characters from 5Ds, save for Jack and Crow). This is interesting, because for those of you who don't know, most of us thought that Dan Green had retired after the death of his wife, who died from complications of childbirth (RIP Michal Friedman). But now it looks like he's back to his career.
And before you ask, I'll be reviewing the dubbed version of this. While the subbed version was great and everything, most of us grew up watching Yu-Gi-Oh! in English. The subbed version was great, and the voice actors did a terrific job with their roles, but for the sake of nostalgia, I'm reviewing the English dubbed version. I might make a few references to the abridged version of this (thank you LittleKuriboh, ShadyVox, and TheAzureCrow for such a hilarious version of this movie), but we'll have to see as the review goes on. It's time to duel, so get your game on and let's rev it up!
Our movie opens up in Yusei's era, in New Domino City. Yusei is pondering the state of the city when Crow and Jack show up and decide that they should all go for a ride on their duel runners. For those who don't know what a duel runner is, it's a fancy motorcycle that you play card games on. You know, card games on motor--oh, crap...
Thank you, Jack.
Anyway, they're just riding along on their duel runners when this guy in a mask shows up on a rather strange looking duel runner and challenges them to a duel. One thing to note about this guy is his hair. Honestly, look at it! You could swear he was related to Dartz in some way if you saw Season 4 of the original Yu-Gi-Oh!! Maybe Dartz is his great-great-great grandfather or something? I mean, here's a picture of Dartz:
And here's one of the masked guy:
You can see where I'm coming from with this, right? RIGHT?
Back to the review.
Yusei summons his signature monster, Stardust Dragon, but the masked guy manages to use some sort of weird method to seal the card in a blank one that he has. And then he just...disappears. Back at an old clock shop. Yusei, Crow, and Jack read an article that says that Pegasus is dead and dragons appeared and were destroying a good part of Europe.
To make matters worse, the three of them also discover that New Domino City is vanishing because of the change in history. The Crimson Dragon appears and gives Yusei's duel runner the ability to travel through time. So, off he goes, staying within the speed limit of 88 MPH (see what I did there?), into the past to save the future.
We then cut to Jaden's era, where we see Jaden evading attacks from a bunch of stolen monsters somewhere in Venice, Italy. Stardust Dragon is among the monsters attacking Venice, and it's here where we get my favorite line from the Abridged movie. Just go to 10:32 in the video and watch until about 10:57.
No offense to anyone from Venice, of course. And clearly, Jaden either hasn't seen The Human Centipede (I haven't, but I saw the trailers, and...ugh) or opened a textbook.
Anyway, Jaden is trying to evade the attacks as best as he can, before the masked guy basically tells him to "perish." And no, that's not a joke. They actually used the word perish in a 4Kids movie. Um...is 4Kids upping their game or something? Granted, I haven't seen any Yu-Gi-Oh! spin-offs past 5Ds, so I have no idea. But in a kids movie, especially one produced by 4Kids...wow. Just wow.
Back to the point. As the masked guy prepares to kill Jaden, Jaden is saved by Yusei and the Crimson Dragon. After saving Jaden, the guy taunts Yusei and Jaden before disappearing...again. Is he Houdini or something? This guy has all kinds of escape tricks.
So Jaden and Yusei finally have their proper introductions, and Jaden finds out that not only is Jaden from the future, but that Yusei has a gift that, like Jaden, connects him to the world of duel monster spirits. Yusei learns that Jaden was pursuing the guy because some of his classmates at Duel Academy (yes, a school that teaches kids how to play card games...exactly as it sounds) had reported that some of their cards had gone missing. Yusei and Jaden realize that history is being changed, as the city of Venice (or what's left of it) disintegrates around them.
We then go even further back in time to the King of Games himself, Yugi Muto's era. Yugi is with his grandpa and he's wearing the Millennium Puzzle (so...I have no idea where this takes place in terms of continuity, but it would have to be before the second half of Season 5) at a tournament where Pegasus is supposed to make an appearance. However, Pegasus's grand entrance is cut short when monsters start attacking Domino City. A building falls on top of Pegasus, killing him. Yugi's grandpa is also killed (well, we're kinda left to assume that one), as well as several people.
Yugi survived, however, and just as he's about to confront the masked guy, he's picked up (literally) by Jaden, Yusei, and the Crimson Dragon. They're all taken back thirty minutes before Pegasus was killed. Yusei and Jaden explain that they're from the future and manage to get Yugi on their side to fight against the masked guy.
And it's here where we get a slight (well, more than slight) continuity problem. See, the fourth season of GX never got dubbed, so fans of the series who wanted to continue watching had to watch the original Japanese. Those who didn't continue were left with...basically nothing after the third season, and there were quite a few plot holes as a result, since the fourth season in the US and other English-speaking countries was replaced with the airing of 5Ds. So you never got any information about how Jaden merged with Yubel, or what their connection really was, unless you saw Season 4 in the original Japanese.
Yubel creates a distraction to get people to run away and (hopefully) avert the disaster about to occur. Yusei, Jaden, and Yugi could only be so lucky. The masked man appears and after a bit of trash talking, the masked man introduces himself as Paradox as he takes off his mask. He says that the world would be a better place without duel monsters, as it apparently led to a world where the planet became ravaged and lifeless. Paradox couldn't bear to look at it through his own eyes, so he took to wearing a mask.
And before you ask, yes, it is hypocritical that he's using duel monsters to wipe out the game. And yes, he is aware that what he's doing is not only destroying duel monsters, but people, too.
So we get the signature catchphrases, and the last half hour of the movie is basically the three of them dueling against Paradox. And, since this is a 4Kids movie, the good guys win. History is restored to the way it should be, all the cities are restored, and everyone who died came back to life as if nothing happened. Yusei vows to protect the future in the hope that he will meet Yugi and Jaden again.
So...rating:
9 out of 10.
Why: First off, as far as anniversary movies go, this was AMAZING. You had the three protagonists of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, and Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds all teaming up for an epic fight. You even had TEN WHOLE MINUTES of background explaining who the protagonists were. The interesting part is that those ten minutes WERE NOT in the original Japanese. That bit was 100% 4Kids.
The voice acting is amazing, the animation is pretty cool, and from what I heard, the 3-D was pretty cool in the scenes with the duel runners and when the monsters appeared. However, in the words of LittleKuriboh:
"We at Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged would like to apologize for the lack of 3-D content in this movie. However, we would like to think that this is totally justified since 3-D is bulls**t and adds absolutely nothing to the cinema experience. So please, enjoy your 2-D movie, because it's cheaper and much less obnoxious."
The writing is good, except for one aspect: WHERE THE FLYING FRICK DID THE CRIMSON DRAGON GET THE POWER TO TRAVEL THROUGH TIME? This is NEVER explained. And even if it was, why couldn't it take Yusei back in time to see his parents? For the love of crap, even the Abridged movie referenced this! It was never explained or talked about again. I feel they could have gone into much more detail.
Not only that, but...Paradox kind of came out of nowhere. For those of you who saw Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie, remember Anubis? We at least had some exposition and some foreshadowing. Here? We had none of that. Paradox just kinda came out of left field. We didn't have exposition or foreshadowing.
Also, why wasn't Kaiba in this movie? We didn't get so much as a CAMEO from the guy. I mean, come on. We couldn't have 30 seconds of Kaiba, and you gave us about a minute and a half of PEGASUS? I just don't get it! I mean, it would have been kinda funny if Jaden bumped into Kaiba and mentioned Duel Academy. Or if Yusei nearly ran over Kaiba with his motorcycle while playing card...crap, not again...
Thank you, Jack.
This next part isn't so much a complaint as it is an observation. While some critics have said that the film was good, even possibly better than the original Japanese, the general consensus was that if you weren't a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh! growing up, or weren't currently a fan, then you were going to have a hard time appreciating the movie.
And...I have to agree. I grew up with Yu-Gi-Oh!. I still have my cards and have friends who I play the game with. I even used to have an Orichalcos duel disk (no idea what happened to it after all these years, I think I may have given it away, because at the time, I didn't have friends to play the game with). And while I like to pretend most of GX never happened (let's just say it's not my favorite spin-off), I will say that I am, to this day, still a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh!. I wouldn't be re-watching the fourth season if I wasn't. Do I think the film is a masterpiece? Not necessarily. Do I think it's good as far as nostalgia goes? Oh, G-d, yes.
Now, with the new film to celebrate the franchise's 20th anniversary coming out this April in Japan and getting an international release, I think fans who grew up with Yu-Gi-Oh! are going to have an easier time enjoying the film. The nostalgia factor is definitely going to be there, we just have to wait for it.
And it might be a bit redundant from Pyramid of Light, what with Yugi facing off against Kaiba (again), but there's a new villain in the picture, and instead of Yami Yugi vs. Kaiba, it's Yugi vs. Kaiba. And I think that is going to be very interesting to see. Plus, the film is set five years after the main storyline, so Yami Yugi won't really be in the picture much, if at all. I'm looking forward to The Dark Side of Dimensions, and hope you all are, too!
Well, that's it for this week's Anime Monday! Stay tuned for...I'm not sure yet, but stay tuned for it! ~k
Boy, oh boy, has it been a while. I've had a lot going on, some of which included not knowing which anime to review after giving Attack on Titan Part 2: End of the World the trashing it deserved. I needed something that could restore my sanity, and that of my readers. Because both parts of the live action Attack on Titan were AWFUL.
Then, who else but Whalley commented on my Facebook saying I should review Bonds Beyond Time, the tenth anniversary movie for Yu-Gi-Oh!. It later occurred to me: there's a new Yu-Gi-Oh! movie coming out in Japan in about two months to celebrate the franchise's 20th anniversary. That movie being simply known as Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions. Not much is known about this movie, but if you want to see a subtitled trailer, feel free to watch it:
Anyway, I recently started re-watching Yu-Gi-Oh!, and I'm at my all-time favorite season from the original series, "Waking the Dragons" (aka Season 4). Dartz is such a badass villain with badass henchpeople and he's quite possibly the best written villain in the entire series...next to Yami Bakura, at any rate (although...Yami Marik was pretty terrifying in Season 2, and I had trouble keeping up with three Bakuras running around). But that's not until the second half of Season 5, and I'm getting ahead of myself.
So, because I started re-watching Yu-Gi-Oh! (and yes, that's really how the title is stylized...go sue the people who put an exclamation mark at the end of the title if you have a problem) and Whalley suggested I review Bonds Beyond Time, here we go!
So, as you probably guessed, this movie had a different title in Japan. That title was actually a little better than the English one, but the English title is still pretty good. In Japan, the film was called 10th Anniversary Yu-Gi-Oh! Movie: Super Fusion! Bonds that Transcended Time. Yeah...you could say they were a little exclamation-point-happy. It's like being trigger-happy, but with exclamation points.
The movie was first announced in Shueisha's magazine as a short film that would be screened at the Jump Super Anime Tour to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series. It was later revealed in the November issue of V-Jump magazine that the movie would be released in 3-D. The interesting thing, however, was that the film's imagery was originally produced in 2-D, and later converted to 3-D by a company called Qtec. I haven't seen the film in 3-D (I missed the theatrical release), but from what I've been told, the 3-D was really emphasized in a couple of scenes.
Here's another fun fact: all the voice actors from 5Ds, GX, and the original series all returned to reprise their roles. So we had Greg Abbey as Yusei Fudo, Dan Green as Yugi Muto/Yami Yugi (yes, he voiced both of them for those who didn't know), and Matthew Charles as Jaden Yuki. There were other returning cast members, but their characters only appear for a couple minutes throughout the film (seriously, I think we saw about a minute and a half of Pegasus, and maybe about two or three minutes of some of the other characters from 5Ds, save for Jack and Crow). This is interesting, because for those of you who don't know, most of us thought that Dan Green had retired after the death of his wife, who died from complications of childbirth (RIP Michal Friedman). But now it looks like he's back to his career.
And before you ask, I'll be reviewing the dubbed version of this. While the subbed version was great and everything, most of us grew up watching Yu-Gi-Oh! in English. The subbed version was great, and the voice actors did a terrific job with their roles, but for the sake of nostalgia, I'm reviewing the English dubbed version. I might make a few references to the abridged version of this (thank you LittleKuriboh, ShadyVox, and TheAzureCrow for such a hilarious version of this movie), but we'll have to see as the review goes on. It's time to duel, so get your game on and let's rev it up!
Our movie opens up in Yusei's era, in New Domino City. Yusei is pondering the state of the city when Crow and Jack show up and decide that they should all go for a ride on their duel runners. For those who don't know what a duel runner is, it's a fancy motorcycle that you play card games on. You know, card games on motor--oh, crap...
Thank you, Jack.
Anyway, they're just riding along on their duel runners when this guy in a mask shows up on a rather strange looking duel runner and challenges them to a duel. One thing to note about this guy is his hair. Honestly, look at it! You could swear he was related to Dartz in some way if you saw Season 4 of the original Yu-Gi-Oh!! Maybe Dartz is his great-great-great grandfather or something? I mean, here's a picture of Dartz:
 |
| Dartz |
 |
| Masked guy |
Back to the review.
Yusei summons his signature monster, Stardust Dragon, but the masked guy manages to use some sort of weird method to seal the card in a blank one that he has. And then he just...disappears. Back at an old clock shop. Yusei, Crow, and Jack read an article that says that Pegasus is dead and dragons appeared and were destroying a good part of Europe.
To make matters worse, the three of them also discover that New Domino City is vanishing because of the change in history. The Crimson Dragon appears and gives Yusei's duel runner the ability to travel through time. So, off he goes, staying within the speed limit of 88 MPH (see what I did there?), into the past to save the future.
We then cut to Jaden's era, where we see Jaden evading attacks from a bunch of stolen monsters somewhere in Venice, Italy. Stardust Dragon is among the monsters attacking Venice, and it's here where we get my favorite line from the Abridged movie. Just go to 10:32 in the video and watch until about 10:57.
No offense to anyone from Venice, of course. And clearly, Jaden either hasn't seen The Human Centipede (I haven't, but I saw the trailers, and...ugh) or opened a textbook.
Anyway, Jaden is trying to evade the attacks as best as he can, before the masked guy basically tells him to "perish." And no, that's not a joke. They actually used the word perish in a 4Kids movie. Um...is 4Kids upping their game or something? Granted, I haven't seen any Yu-Gi-Oh! spin-offs past 5Ds, so I have no idea. But in a kids movie, especially one produced by 4Kids...wow. Just wow.
Back to the point. As the masked guy prepares to kill Jaden, Jaden is saved by Yusei and the Crimson Dragon. After saving Jaden, the guy taunts Yusei and Jaden before disappearing...again. Is he Houdini or something? This guy has all kinds of escape tricks.
So Jaden and Yusei finally have their proper introductions, and Jaden finds out that not only is Jaden from the future, but that Yusei has a gift that, like Jaden, connects him to the world of duel monster spirits. Yusei learns that Jaden was pursuing the guy because some of his classmates at Duel Academy (yes, a school that teaches kids how to play card games...exactly as it sounds) had reported that some of their cards had gone missing. Yusei and Jaden realize that history is being changed, as the city of Venice (or what's left of it) disintegrates around them.
We then go even further back in time to the King of Games himself, Yugi Muto's era. Yugi is with his grandpa and he's wearing the Millennium Puzzle (so...I have no idea where this takes place in terms of continuity, but it would have to be before the second half of Season 5) at a tournament where Pegasus is supposed to make an appearance. However, Pegasus's grand entrance is cut short when monsters start attacking Domino City. A building falls on top of Pegasus, killing him. Yugi's grandpa is also killed (well, we're kinda left to assume that one), as well as several people.
Yugi survived, however, and just as he's about to confront the masked guy, he's picked up (literally) by Jaden, Yusei, and the Crimson Dragon. They're all taken back thirty minutes before Pegasus was killed. Yusei and Jaden explain that they're from the future and manage to get Yugi on their side to fight against the masked guy.
And it's here where we get a slight (well, more than slight) continuity problem. See, the fourth season of GX never got dubbed, so fans of the series who wanted to continue watching had to watch the original Japanese. Those who didn't continue were left with...basically nothing after the third season, and there were quite a few plot holes as a result, since the fourth season in the US and other English-speaking countries was replaced with the airing of 5Ds. So you never got any information about how Jaden merged with Yubel, or what their connection really was, unless you saw Season 4 in the original Japanese.
Yubel creates a distraction to get people to run away and (hopefully) avert the disaster about to occur. Yusei, Jaden, and Yugi could only be so lucky. The masked man appears and after a bit of trash talking, the masked man introduces himself as Paradox as he takes off his mask. He says that the world would be a better place without duel monsters, as it apparently led to a world where the planet became ravaged and lifeless. Paradox couldn't bear to look at it through his own eyes, so he took to wearing a mask.
And before you ask, yes, it is hypocritical that he's using duel monsters to wipe out the game. And yes, he is aware that what he's doing is not only destroying duel monsters, but people, too.
So we get the signature catchphrases, and the last half hour of the movie is basically the three of them dueling against Paradox. And, since this is a 4Kids movie, the good guys win. History is restored to the way it should be, all the cities are restored, and everyone who died came back to life as if nothing happened. Yusei vows to protect the future in the hope that he will meet Yugi and Jaden again.
So...rating:
9 out of 10.
Why: First off, as far as anniversary movies go, this was AMAZING. You had the three protagonists of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, and Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds all teaming up for an epic fight. You even had TEN WHOLE MINUTES of background explaining who the protagonists were. The interesting part is that those ten minutes WERE NOT in the original Japanese. That bit was 100% 4Kids.
The voice acting is amazing, the animation is pretty cool, and from what I heard, the 3-D was pretty cool in the scenes with the duel runners and when the monsters appeared. However, in the words of LittleKuriboh:
"We at Yu-Gi-Oh! Abridged would like to apologize for the lack of 3-D content in this movie. However, we would like to think that this is totally justified since 3-D is bulls**t and adds absolutely nothing to the cinema experience. So please, enjoy your 2-D movie, because it's cheaper and much less obnoxious."
The writing is good, except for one aspect: WHERE THE FLYING FRICK DID THE CRIMSON DRAGON GET THE POWER TO TRAVEL THROUGH TIME? This is NEVER explained. And even if it was, why couldn't it take Yusei back in time to see his parents? For the love of crap, even the Abridged movie referenced this! It was never explained or talked about again. I feel they could have gone into much more detail.
Not only that, but...Paradox kind of came out of nowhere. For those of you who saw Yu-Gi-Oh: The Movie, remember Anubis? We at least had some exposition and some foreshadowing. Here? We had none of that. Paradox just kinda came out of left field. We didn't have exposition or foreshadowing.
Also, why wasn't Kaiba in this movie? We didn't get so much as a CAMEO from the guy. I mean, come on. We couldn't have 30 seconds of Kaiba, and you gave us about a minute and a half of PEGASUS? I just don't get it! I mean, it would have been kinda funny if Jaden bumped into Kaiba and mentioned Duel Academy. Or if Yusei nearly ran over Kaiba with his motorcycle while playing card...crap, not again...
Thank you, Jack.
This next part isn't so much a complaint as it is an observation. While some critics have said that the film was good, even possibly better than the original Japanese, the general consensus was that if you weren't a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh! growing up, or weren't currently a fan, then you were going to have a hard time appreciating the movie.
And...I have to agree. I grew up with Yu-Gi-Oh!. I still have my cards and have friends who I play the game with. I even used to have an Orichalcos duel disk (no idea what happened to it after all these years, I think I may have given it away, because at the time, I didn't have friends to play the game with). And while I like to pretend most of GX never happened (let's just say it's not my favorite spin-off), I will say that I am, to this day, still a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh!. I wouldn't be re-watching the fourth season if I wasn't. Do I think the film is a masterpiece? Not necessarily. Do I think it's good as far as nostalgia goes? Oh, G-d, yes.
Now, with the new film to celebrate the franchise's 20th anniversary coming out this April in Japan and getting an international release, I think fans who grew up with Yu-Gi-Oh! are going to have an easier time enjoying the film. The nostalgia factor is definitely going to be there, we just have to wait for it.
And it might be a bit redundant from Pyramid of Light, what with Yugi facing off against Kaiba (again), but there's a new villain in the picture, and instead of Yami Yugi vs. Kaiba, it's Yugi vs. Kaiba. And I think that is going to be very interesting to see. Plus, the film is set five years after the main storyline, so Yami Yugi won't really be in the picture much, if at all. I'm looking forward to The Dark Side of Dimensions, and hope you all are, too!
Well, that's it for this week's Anime Monday! Stay tuned for...I'm not sure yet, but stay tuned for it! ~k
Hey guys, kanna here with your spoiler-free review of Attack on Titan Part 2 - End of the World. Sit back, grab a coffee, tea, hot chocolate, whatever, and enjoy.
After we saved our sanity with last week's Anime Monday, One Punch Man, it's time to lose our sanity again with Attack on Titan Part 2 - End of the World. Or in Japanese, 進撃の巨人エンドオブザブザワールド.
Before we get started, I thought it was interesting that they transliterated the words "End of the World" instead of using the words 世界の終わり, which literally means "End of the World." Maybe it's because the band doing the theme songs for both parts has the same name, Sekai no Owari? Who knows?
Now I had hoped and prayed that this would be better than the abomination that was Attack on Titan: Part 1.
I could only be so lucky.
Where do I even begin? Well, for starters, let's talk box office. This isn't something I would talk about, as I don't typically follow box office numbers. But boy oh boy, did this movie do poorly. And I'm not surprised. Everyone went into Part 1 thinking it was going to be some epic masterpiece, and as a result of that thinking, it made 3.3 billion yen (27.5 million USD).
Little did they know that what they thought was going to be an epic masterpiece was going to be HORRIBLE.
Still, it did make a ton of money and managed to outperform its sequel, Part 2, by a considerably large margin. How much, you ask? 17.54 million USD (2.1 million yen). See, while Part 1 made 3.3 billion yen, Part 2 only managed to rake in 1.2 billion yen (9.96 million USD). That's pretty bad.
Anyway, we have the same people returning to their writing, directing, and acting duties for this movie. So the crappy writing team that worked on Part 1 has returned. And somehow, they managed to do even worse with this one.
I honestly didn't think it was possible for this to be worse than Part 1. But it happened. So, thank you, Hajime Isayama, for proving the impossible. I say this with the utmost sincerity: thank you for gracing us with not one, but two disgraces to Attack on Titan.
I mean...wow.
This movie had no plot, the acting (what I could judge of it, given the only subbed movie I could find had Russian audio) was pretty bad, and there was little to no direction. I couldn't feel any emotion for any of the characters. I nearly fell asleep within the first twenty minutes.
Let me spell this out for you. The first ten minutes consisted of a recap of Part 1, complete with stock footage, narration, the works. That's enough to put anyone to sleep if they saw Part 1. We then get a flashback that's about two minutes long, and then about ten minutes or so of Kubal interrogating Eren. Then again, I can hardly say how much time they spent on that scene, as I was practically half asleep during that scene. I had to hold my head up just so I could stay focused on the movie.
It was like watching a Shyamalan movie, only one that somehow managed to be WORSE than the worst of Shyamalan's films. And that's saying a lot.
The CGI somehow managed to be worse than the last movie's. Again, that's saying a lot. Remember the cruddy CGI from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation? Think that, imagine it evolving and changing over the years, and STILL managing to be worse than that.
Hajime Isayama...I don't even know what to say to you anymore. You aren't a bad writer, but the fact that you asked to make the characters "more relatable" in a way that people could empathize with them actually made it harder to relate to them. You turned Eren into a wimp, Mikasa into Little Miss Pouty, made them boyfriend and girlfriend (I'm never going to understand that angle, am I?), and just made so many changes that the plot completely disappeared.
The characters were no longer the characters we knew and loved, regardless of the name change. The two characters that stayed the same were Sasha and Hanji Zoe. I'm not even talking name change; they actually managed to keep their personalities intact. Heck, even Armin's personality was kept intact (more or less). But they changed so much that it was just...not even Attack on Titan anymore.
Look, I'm still going to read the Attack on Titan manga and watch the anime as soon as the second season premieres. But Hajime Isayama needed to stick to what he was good at: NOT SCREENWRITING. While Part 1 felt like a slap in the face to the fans, Part 2 felt like a punch in the gut.
Well, I'm off to go and recover from this. This ranting gave me a pretty bad headache.
Til next time! ~k
After we saved our sanity with last week's Anime Monday, One Punch Man, it's time to lose our sanity again with Attack on Titan Part 2 - End of the World. Or in Japanese, 進撃の巨人エンドオブザブザワールド.
Before we get started, I thought it was interesting that they transliterated the words "End of the World" instead of using the words 世界の終わり, which literally means "End of the World." Maybe it's because the band doing the theme songs for both parts has the same name, Sekai no Owari? Who knows?
Now I had hoped and prayed that this would be better than the abomination that was Attack on Titan: Part 1.
I could only be so lucky.
Where do I even begin? Well, for starters, let's talk box office. This isn't something I would talk about, as I don't typically follow box office numbers. But boy oh boy, did this movie do poorly. And I'm not surprised. Everyone went into Part 1 thinking it was going to be some epic masterpiece, and as a result of that thinking, it made 3.3 billion yen (27.5 million USD).
Little did they know that what they thought was going to be an epic masterpiece was going to be HORRIBLE.
Still, it did make a ton of money and managed to outperform its sequel, Part 2, by a considerably large margin. How much, you ask? 17.54 million USD (2.1 million yen). See, while Part 1 made 3.3 billion yen, Part 2 only managed to rake in 1.2 billion yen (9.96 million USD). That's pretty bad.
Anyway, we have the same people returning to their writing, directing, and acting duties for this movie. So the crappy writing team that worked on Part 1 has returned. And somehow, they managed to do even worse with this one.
I honestly didn't think it was possible for this to be worse than Part 1. But it happened. So, thank you, Hajime Isayama, for proving the impossible. I say this with the utmost sincerity: thank you for gracing us with not one, but two disgraces to Attack on Titan.
I mean...wow.
This movie had no plot, the acting (what I could judge of it, given the only subbed movie I could find had Russian audio) was pretty bad, and there was little to no direction. I couldn't feel any emotion for any of the characters. I nearly fell asleep within the first twenty minutes.
Let me spell this out for you. The first ten minutes consisted of a recap of Part 1, complete with stock footage, narration, the works. That's enough to put anyone to sleep if they saw Part 1. We then get a flashback that's about two minutes long, and then about ten minutes or so of Kubal interrogating Eren. Then again, I can hardly say how much time they spent on that scene, as I was practically half asleep during that scene. I had to hold my head up just so I could stay focused on the movie.
It was like watching a Shyamalan movie, only one that somehow managed to be WORSE than the worst of Shyamalan's films. And that's saying a lot.
The CGI somehow managed to be worse than the last movie's. Again, that's saying a lot. Remember the cruddy CGI from Mortal Kombat: Annihilation? Think that, imagine it evolving and changing over the years, and STILL managing to be worse than that.
Hajime Isayama...I don't even know what to say to you anymore. You aren't a bad writer, but the fact that you asked to make the characters "more relatable" in a way that people could empathize with them actually made it harder to relate to them. You turned Eren into a wimp, Mikasa into Little Miss Pouty, made them boyfriend and girlfriend (I'm never going to understand that angle, am I?), and just made so many changes that the plot completely disappeared.
The characters were no longer the characters we knew and loved, regardless of the name change. The two characters that stayed the same were Sasha and Hanji Zoe. I'm not even talking name change; they actually managed to keep their personalities intact. Heck, even Armin's personality was kept intact (more or less). But they changed so much that it was just...not even Attack on Titan anymore.
Look, I'm still going to read the Attack on Titan manga and watch the anime as soon as the second season premieres. But Hajime Isayama needed to stick to what he was good at: NOT SCREENWRITING. While Part 1 felt like a slap in the face to the fans, Part 2 felt like a punch in the gut.
Well, I'm off to go and recover from this. This ranting gave me a pretty bad headache.
Til next time! ~k
Hey guys, kanna here!
So now that we've saved our sanity thanks to One Punch Man, it's time to get ready to lose it again. I promised this review for a while, and here it is: Attack on Titan Part 2 - End of the World.
I'm not going to waste any time with this, so if you haven't read my review of Part 1, I STRONGLY suggest you read it, as from this point on, it's full spoilers ahead.
The movie opens up with a recap of Part 1. Same animation, same footage, same...pretty much everything for about ten minutes. Which would have been a great idea if it didn't feel like one of those "Previously on..." things you see in TV shows. And even those aren't that long; they're usually anywhere from thirty seconds to one or two minutes. Not to mention that there really wasn't anything worth remembering about the first film, so that whole ten minutes or so was entirely POINTLESS.
And I normally wouldn't be this uptight about it, if it wasn't for the fact that Part 1 was an abomination of a film and a disgrace to Attack on Titan, and we had to relive that movie for the first ten minutes of Part 2.
OK, enough of that. I complained about Part 1 already. Let's keep this on track.
Oh, and there's a flashback that actually ties in with the anime. It's Eren as a young child and his father injecting him with a serum before his mother intervenes, then the police come and chaos ensues. And...that's basically it. To be fair, that's all the anime gave us, too, so I guess it's not that bad.
So our movie really starts shortly after the first one ended, and we see that Eren has been captured by Commander Kubal and his squadron and has been put in a straightjacket. At least, I think it's a straightjacket. It looks like a cross between what people in psych wards wear and those jackets magicians use for escape tricks.
Anyway, Kubal and co. believe that Eren is a threat to humanity, as he can turn into a Titan. So they ask him the big question: Titan or human? Guns are pointed at Eren and everything; he is about to be executed.
Eren, however, tries to convince everyone that he's human. And even though his comrades witnessed him wipe out A BUNCH of Titans and had caused NO HUMAN CASUALTIES WHATSOEVER as a Titan, one person, Souda, jumps to his defense. Unfortunately, in the midst of explaining stuff about the Titans and even revealing Eren had a brother at one point, one of Kubal's soldiers shoots and kills him before he can say anymore.
First off, WHY did Souda defend Eren? I mean, I'm sure Eren much appreciated it and everything, but even Mikasa, who was supposed to be Eren's girlfriend (seriously, Mr. Isayama? You went with this angle?), didn't defend him. Armin defended him, but Kubal and co. were all, "Eren turned into a Titan, we believe you can turn on us, so you deserve to croak." And that doesn't really make much sense, but I'll address why later with my other complaints.
Next thing we know, this other Titan, the Armored Titan, busts through the roof of the building that they're all in, destroys the top of the building, and causes a bunch of deaths. Kubal is killed (RIP character we didn't really know or care much about) along with a few other people, as this Titan that seems to be intelligent takes Eren out and walks away after receiving a "death glare" from Mikasa. And I put quotes around death glare because it looks like a cross between a pout and a death glare. Not to mention that that was pretty wimpy on the Titan's part. But we'll get to all my complaining later. Because there is A LOT of it.
So Eren wakes up in this bunker (which looks more like a psych ward) and finds Shikishima (the movie's version of Captain Levi FREAKING Ackerman) is there. Shikishima explains the origin of the Titans through Apple TV (I swear, this is product placement for Apple TV; the remote is right there in the shot. I'm also pretty sure I saw footage from Super 8 in this scene). This wasn't addressed in the anime, but was somewhat revealed in the manga. And because this hasn't been addressed in the anime yet, this is a blog about anime and not manga, and this review is full spoilers ahead, I can tell you all about it! Yay!
Origins: The Titans were actually human beings who were used as test subjects in military experiments. Unfortunately for the scientists conducting the experiment, something went wrong, and the humans turned into these massive Titans. And because the definition of insanity (you know, keep trying the same way on something that clearly doesn't work and hope for a different outcome) is something that is clearly unknown to these scientists, these experiments continued for decades. It turned into a disaster for mankind as what was apparently a virus that could rapidly multiply turned humans into mindless Titans.
Anyway, after the origins are explained via Apple TV and what I'm convinced is footage from Super 8 (really?), they're somehow sitting on beach chairs in another place. No, I don't get how that happened.
Shikishima then asks Eren to reflect on one question: how to destroy the Titans. Shikishima continues to explain that the virus made the Titans immortal and able to adapt to temperature and weather. Since they have no need to eat or drink, the Titans are near invincible. The virus never stopped developing, so it also made the Titans ageless and immortal.
Eren realizes that the one person who knows how to destroy the Titans is his father, who's dead (well, we think he is at any rate; the flashback left things pretty unclear when it ended), but the interesting thing here is that Shikishima refers to Eren's father as his own father, too, revealing that he and Eren are brothers (hello, plot twist...I think. There were a few typos in the subtitles, so whether the subbers meant "your" or "our" is unknown, especially considering the audio was in Russian and not the original Japanese). Not only that, but Eren's father was the one who created the Titan experiment.
So a while later, Shikishima and Eren meet up with the rest of the Scouting Regiment, who picked up a bomb from a district that they're planning to use to blow up parts of the walls so the Titans can't get in (which worked so well before, right?). We then get Shikishima's real sinister plan: he wants to launch a coup (is that the right spelling? French words like that always get me, so I'm not sure) against the government, who wanted to keep the people in the walls and used the Titans as a way to instill fear in the people. Eren isn't having any of that, so we get to watch Eren get his ass handed to him on a silver platter by Shikishima, before Shikishima reveals that he is...the Armored Titan.
Granted, the transformation scenes don't look that great, but they lead to THE BEST PART OF BOTH PARTS OF THE MOVIE. Full Titan vs. Titan action. This fight scene was freaking AMAZING, even though it was only about two minutes, and as much as I want to go on about it...the bad parts of the film do outweigh the good.
After Eren kills Shikishima, he stays in Titan form and decides to go along with the plan as he carries the bomb up the wall with a little difficulty, but manages to do it with encouragement from Mikasa. After he's taken out of the Titan and returned to human form, we see that Kubal has, in fact, SURVIVED about a thousand tons of rock falling on him. That would have turned anyone into a pancake. ANYONE. But apparently, this leads us to another realization: Kubal is a Titan-shifter as well. And he can't just become any Titan, but he can become...the Colossal Titan.
Yeah, that crappy as heck CGI abomination from the first part? That was Kubal. And because the rest of this basically makes no sense, the short version is that Shikishima somehow survived and decides to go back into Titan form and sacrifice himself by blowing up the wall, himself, and Kubal as the Colossal Titan. Our "heroes" look over and see the outside of the walls, and the credits roll.
So...was this as bad as the first movie? No. Was it worse than the first movie? Yes. Rating of Part 2: 0 out of 5. Rating of both films as a whole: 0 out of 10.
Why: Holy frick, I felt like I was watching Mortal Kombat: Annihilation when I was watching this because of the horrible CGI. There was almost no plot, I couldn't really care about any of the characters, and the story just seemed like it was going nowhere. So many characters died, and you couldn't really feel bad about it, because they were either given little to no screen time, or they had little character development.
It was hard to judge the acting with this, because the only subbed version of this I could find had Russian audio and not Japanese (seriously, I was so desperate I would have settled for a version without subtitles as long as it had Japanese audio). But out of all the actors in this, I'd say Satomi Ishihara was the best, and Kiko Mizuhara was the worst. Satomi Ishihara had Hanji Zoe's character spot-on in this, and was actually pretty funny. But Kiko Mizuhara did NOTHING in either movie. I felt like I was watching Kristen Stewart act. She just pouted the whole time.
The one character I actually really wanted to enjoy in this was Armin, played by Kanata Hongo. But even HE did next to nothing. Actually, that's not entirely true. He did have the guts to stand up to Shikishima and threaten to detonate the bomb, which would kill himself, his comrades, and Shikishima. He was also a brilliant strategist and I felt like Kanata Hongo actually played the part pretty well, despite the bad writing.
But the bad writing, directing, and CGI are what totally drag this movie down. Sure, you can blame it on the acting all you want, but when you have a script that's bad with no direction, no plot, and no organization whatsoever, your movie is basically screwed. You can't even say it's one of those movies that's so bad it's good. These movies are so bad that they're AWFUL. They are a disgrace to Attack on Titan.
You know the Star Wars Holiday Special? The project that George Lucas was personally ashamed of? I'm surprised that the writers and directors don't feel that way about these movies. Especially when you consider that the second film did even WORSE in the box office than the first one did. The special effects director, Yoshihiro Nishimura, and the director of both films, Shinji Higuchi, did not respond well to their critics.
According to a translation, Nishimura responded to a comparison of the film's special effects with Hollywood's standards, "I'm sorry, but deciding what movies to see based on their budget and comparing everything to Hollywood, that's like how some people feel secure when buying Okame natto when they go to the supermarket." For the record, natto are fermented soybeans, and Okame...I have no idea. If any of my Japanese viewers want to explain what that is, let me know so I can correct my explanation. But apparently, people are very peculiar about it for some reason. I'm not that familiar with Japanese food, so I can't explain why.
However, the real criticism came from the hardcore fans of the original source material with complaints of all the characters they got rid of or replaced, as well as other major changes that were made to the movie.
You should NOT watch these films as your intro to Attack on Titan. Watch the anime or read the manga first. If you really want to watch these movies, do it AFTER you do one or both of those two things. These movies are a disgrace to Attack on Titan, and while Part 1 felt like a slap in the face to hardcore fans, Part 2 felt like a punch in the gut.
Well, that's my review! Stay tuned for next week where I review...Supernatural: The Animated Series.
So now that we've saved our sanity thanks to One Punch Man, it's time to get ready to lose it again. I promised this review for a while, and here it is: Attack on Titan Part 2 - End of the World.
I'm not going to waste any time with this, so if you haven't read my review of Part 1, I STRONGLY suggest you read it, as from this point on, it's full spoilers ahead.
The movie opens up with a recap of Part 1. Same animation, same footage, same...pretty much everything for about ten minutes. Which would have been a great idea if it didn't feel like one of those "Previously on..." things you see in TV shows. And even those aren't that long; they're usually anywhere from thirty seconds to one or two minutes. Not to mention that there really wasn't anything worth remembering about the first film, so that whole ten minutes or so was entirely POINTLESS.
And I normally wouldn't be this uptight about it, if it wasn't for the fact that Part 1 was an abomination of a film and a disgrace to Attack on Titan, and we had to relive that movie for the first ten minutes of Part 2.
OK, enough of that. I complained about Part 1 already. Let's keep this on track.
Oh, and there's a flashback that actually ties in with the anime. It's Eren as a young child and his father injecting him with a serum before his mother intervenes, then the police come and chaos ensues. And...that's basically it. To be fair, that's all the anime gave us, too, so I guess it's not that bad.
So our movie really starts shortly after the first one ended, and we see that Eren has been captured by Commander Kubal and his squadron and has been put in a straightjacket. At least, I think it's a straightjacket. It looks like a cross between what people in psych wards wear and those jackets magicians use for escape tricks.
Anyway, Kubal and co. believe that Eren is a threat to humanity, as he can turn into a Titan. So they ask him the big question: Titan or human? Guns are pointed at Eren and everything; he is about to be executed.
Eren, however, tries to convince everyone that he's human. And even though his comrades witnessed him wipe out A BUNCH of Titans and had caused NO HUMAN CASUALTIES WHATSOEVER as a Titan, one person, Souda, jumps to his defense. Unfortunately, in the midst of explaining stuff about the Titans and even revealing Eren had a brother at one point, one of Kubal's soldiers shoots and kills him before he can say anymore.
First off, WHY did Souda defend Eren? I mean, I'm sure Eren much appreciated it and everything, but even Mikasa, who was supposed to be Eren's girlfriend (seriously, Mr. Isayama? You went with this angle?), didn't defend him. Armin defended him, but Kubal and co. were all, "Eren turned into a Titan, we believe you can turn on us, so you deserve to croak." And that doesn't really make much sense, but I'll address why later with my other complaints.
Next thing we know, this other Titan, the Armored Titan, busts through the roof of the building that they're all in, destroys the top of the building, and causes a bunch of deaths. Kubal is killed (RIP character we didn't really know or care much about) along with a few other people, as this Titan that seems to be intelligent takes Eren out and walks away after receiving a "death glare" from Mikasa. And I put quotes around death glare because it looks like a cross between a pout and a death glare. Not to mention that that was pretty wimpy on the Titan's part. But we'll get to all my complaining later. Because there is A LOT of it.
So Eren wakes up in this bunker (which looks more like a psych ward) and finds Shikishima (the movie's version of Captain Levi FREAKING Ackerman) is there. Shikishima explains the origin of the Titans through Apple TV (I swear, this is product placement for Apple TV; the remote is right there in the shot. I'm also pretty sure I saw footage from Super 8 in this scene). This wasn't addressed in the anime, but was somewhat revealed in the manga. And because this hasn't been addressed in the anime yet, this is a blog about anime and not manga, and this review is full spoilers ahead, I can tell you all about it! Yay!
Origins: The Titans were actually human beings who were used as test subjects in military experiments. Unfortunately for the scientists conducting the experiment, something went wrong, and the humans turned into these massive Titans. And because the definition of insanity (you know, keep trying the same way on something that clearly doesn't work and hope for a different outcome) is something that is clearly unknown to these scientists, these experiments continued for decades. It turned into a disaster for mankind as what was apparently a virus that could rapidly multiply turned humans into mindless Titans.
Anyway, after the origins are explained via Apple TV and what I'm convinced is footage from Super 8 (really?), they're somehow sitting on beach chairs in another place. No, I don't get how that happened.
Shikishima then asks Eren to reflect on one question: how to destroy the Titans. Shikishima continues to explain that the virus made the Titans immortal and able to adapt to temperature and weather. Since they have no need to eat or drink, the Titans are near invincible. The virus never stopped developing, so it also made the Titans ageless and immortal.
Eren realizes that the one person who knows how to destroy the Titans is his father, who's dead (well, we think he is at any rate; the flashback left things pretty unclear when it ended), but the interesting thing here is that Shikishima refers to Eren's father as his own father, too, revealing that he and Eren are brothers (hello, plot twist...I think. There were a few typos in the subtitles, so whether the subbers meant "your" or "our" is unknown, especially considering the audio was in Russian and not the original Japanese). Not only that, but Eren's father was the one who created the Titan experiment.
So a while later, Shikishima and Eren meet up with the rest of the Scouting Regiment, who picked up a bomb from a district that they're planning to use to blow up parts of the walls so the Titans can't get in (which worked so well before, right?). We then get Shikishima's real sinister plan: he wants to launch a coup (is that the right spelling? French words like that always get me, so I'm not sure) against the government, who wanted to keep the people in the walls and used the Titans as a way to instill fear in the people. Eren isn't having any of that, so we get to watch Eren get his ass handed to him on a silver platter by Shikishima, before Shikishima reveals that he is...the Armored Titan.
Granted, the transformation scenes don't look that great, but they lead to THE BEST PART OF BOTH PARTS OF THE MOVIE. Full Titan vs. Titan action. This fight scene was freaking AMAZING, even though it was only about two minutes, and as much as I want to go on about it...the bad parts of the film do outweigh the good.
After Eren kills Shikishima, he stays in Titan form and decides to go along with the plan as he carries the bomb up the wall with a little difficulty, but manages to do it with encouragement from Mikasa. After he's taken out of the Titan and returned to human form, we see that Kubal has, in fact, SURVIVED about a thousand tons of rock falling on him. That would have turned anyone into a pancake. ANYONE. But apparently, this leads us to another realization: Kubal is a Titan-shifter as well. And he can't just become any Titan, but he can become...the Colossal Titan.
Yeah, that crappy as heck CGI abomination from the first part? That was Kubal. And because the rest of this basically makes no sense, the short version is that Shikishima somehow survived and decides to go back into Titan form and sacrifice himself by blowing up the wall, himself, and Kubal as the Colossal Titan. Our "heroes" look over and see the outside of the walls, and the credits roll.
So...was this as bad as the first movie? No. Was it worse than the first movie? Yes. Rating of Part 2: 0 out of 5. Rating of both films as a whole: 0 out of 10.
Why: Holy frick, I felt like I was watching Mortal Kombat: Annihilation when I was watching this because of the horrible CGI. There was almost no plot, I couldn't really care about any of the characters, and the story just seemed like it was going nowhere. So many characters died, and you couldn't really feel bad about it, because they were either given little to no screen time, or they had little character development.
It was hard to judge the acting with this, because the only subbed version of this I could find had Russian audio and not Japanese (seriously, I was so desperate I would have settled for a version without subtitles as long as it had Japanese audio). But out of all the actors in this, I'd say Satomi Ishihara was the best, and Kiko Mizuhara was the worst. Satomi Ishihara had Hanji Zoe's character spot-on in this, and was actually pretty funny. But Kiko Mizuhara did NOTHING in either movie. I felt like I was watching Kristen Stewart act. She just pouted the whole time.
The one character I actually really wanted to enjoy in this was Armin, played by Kanata Hongo. But even HE did next to nothing. Actually, that's not entirely true. He did have the guts to stand up to Shikishima and threaten to detonate the bomb, which would kill himself, his comrades, and Shikishima. He was also a brilliant strategist and I felt like Kanata Hongo actually played the part pretty well, despite the bad writing.
But the bad writing, directing, and CGI are what totally drag this movie down. Sure, you can blame it on the acting all you want, but when you have a script that's bad with no direction, no plot, and no organization whatsoever, your movie is basically screwed. You can't even say it's one of those movies that's so bad it's good. These movies are so bad that they're AWFUL. They are a disgrace to Attack on Titan.
You know the Star Wars Holiday Special? The project that George Lucas was personally ashamed of? I'm surprised that the writers and directors don't feel that way about these movies. Especially when you consider that the second film did even WORSE in the box office than the first one did. The special effects director, Yoshihiro Nishimura, and the director of both films, Shinji Higuchi, did not respond well to their critics.
According to a translation, Nishimura responded to a comparison of the film's special effects with Hollywood's standards, "I'm sorry, but deciding what movies to see based on their budget and comparing everything to Hollywood, that's like how some people feel secure when buying Okame natto when they go to the supermarket." For the record, natto are fermented soybeans, and Okame...I have no idea. If any of my Japanese viewers want to explain what that is, let me know so I can correct my explanation. But apparently, people are very peculiar about it for some reason. I'm not that familiar with Japanese food, so I can't explain why.
However, the real criticism came from the hardcore fans of the original source material with complaints of all the characters they got rid of or replaced, as well as other major changes that were made to the movie.
You should NOT watch these films as your intro to Attack on Titan. Watch the anime or read the manga first. If you really want to watch these movies, do it AFTER you do one or both of those two things. These movies are a disgrace to Attack on Titan, and while Part 1 felt like a slap in the face to hardcore fans, Part 2 felt like a punch in the gut.
Well, that's my review! Stay tuned for next week where I review...Supernatural: The Animated Series.
Hey guys, kanna here! Well, my exams are done, I aced my classes, I'm now 21 years old (happy birthday to me~), and life is good! Here's the first Anime Monday of 2016!
So, this was originally going to be a review of Ghost in the Shell. And while I have reviewed anime that were primarily geared towards guys in the past, this was one that...well, for lack of better phrasing, did not have a large feminine audience (there was one, it was just...well, not that big).
Not only that, but it originally started out as a manga...for mature audiences. And I don't know about you guys, but unless I get a request to review an anime based off of a manga for mature audiences, I'm not reviewing it. I couldn't even post a picture of the POSTER without photoshopping a freaking censor on there.
Aside from that, I felt that the majority of that review just would have been me ranting about Hollywood's constant whitewashing in that they cast Scarlett Johansson to play the Japanese lead, as well as ranting about the rest of the whitewashing that was more than likely to occur. I'm just thankful that M. Night Shyamalan isn't directing this, although all this whitewashing is really making me think of his movie, The Last Airbender, where there was whitewashing galore. *shudders*
So then I thought to myself, "Kanna, what can you review that won't piss off your readers and isn't meant for mature audiences?"
Note: While I do have a super rough idea of the age range of who reads my blog, and am aware that an anime meant for mature audiences would probably be okay, I also want my blog to be safe for younger readers. If I ever venture into the MA (mature audience) realm of anime, I'll make sure to put MA before the title of the post so that people who want to avoid it know that they can.
So I put up a post on my Facebook and asked for suggestions, and sure enough, who else but Whalley suggested...One-Punch Man!
So, let's get started with development, as this wasn't...shall we say, traditional for most anime adaptations, and certainly something I haven't heard of with regards to an anime.
One-Punch Man started out as a webcomic created by a mangaka named ONE (yes, it's a pseudonym and no, I don't know his real name). This is interesting in that most manga get serialized in different magazines like Shonen Jump or published into tankobon volumes right away. I hadn't heard of a webmanga before. Anyway, the webmanga was published online in 2009 and received 7.9 million hits by November 2012.
Due to the INSANE popularity this webmanga was getting, a mangaka named Yusuke Murata contacted ONE with a proposal to redraw the comic for digital publication on Weekly Young Jump's spin-off manga website, Young Jump Web Comics. The first chapter of the manga was published June 14, 2012, and has 104 chapters as of November 2015. Note that I have NOT been reading the manga, so I don't know how many chapters it has as of the time I'm writing this.
With the manga having such an insane popularity, you can bet that an anime adaptation was in the works. And sure enough, it was. With animation from animation studio Madhouse (you might recognize them from anime like Cardcaptor Sakura, Claymore, Chobits, and Parasyte, among many others), direction from Shingo Natsume, and writing from Tomohiro Suzuki, the series premiered in Japan on October 5, 2015.
So, going into this, I wasn't sure about the animation. I mean, Madhouse is great, and they've done the animation for a lot of anime that I really like. But, as much as I hate to say this, I feel that some of the shows that they did animation for were hit or miss, like Claymore. Now, with regards to Cardcaptor Sakura, you could argue that it was the late '90s and animation wasn't what it is today. And that is a valid argument.
But when you have series like Claymore and Parasyte that came out a few years later--Parasyte in particular--that argument is no longer valid. Animation has evolved, and the fight scenes just grew increasingly hard to follow. And because of that, you can clearly spot the weakness that Madhouse has. And that is animating fight scenes so that people can follow them. So, with an action anime like One-Punch Man, I was a little nervous going into it, because I thought the fight scenes would be hard to follow. But we'll get to that later.
The series is set in Japan, in a fictional city known as City Z (don't ask; I didn't write it). In this world, there are strange monsters that mysteriously appear and cause disasters. However, they are taken down by our hero, Saitama, a hero who can defeat the monsters with a single punch (hence the title). But Saitama gets bored of his powers because of his overwhelming strength. So he goes out to find opponents who are much stronger than he is.
On Saitama's adventures, he meets friends, enemies, and even gains a disciple. He even joins an organization to gain fame for fighting evil, known as the Heroes Association. However, Saitama struggles to gain respect due to his plain appearance and is even accused of being a counterfeit hero. So the series basically shows how he grows in personality.
So, now that that's done, let's talk characters!
Saitama: The hero of the story. He kind of reminds me of one of those heroes from Greek mythology in how he's strong, but gets bored of his super strength. I figured that would be a plus, but it wasn't. He's humanized, which is great. He experiences human thoughts and feelings, and while he's built up as this tough guy who is bored of his super strength, he still experiences a lot of the emotions that humans go through. And you could argue that he is human...to an extent. It kind of depends on what this series' definition of a human being is, and that's a little unclear. So...is he a mutant? No idea. But I like that they humanized him.
Because the story mainly revolves around Saitama and there are too many other characters to talk about, I'll just get to the rating part of it.
Rating: 9.5/10
Why: Look, this really is a great series, and as nervous about it as I was going into it, I was surprised that I actually enjoyed it and am hopeful for a second season, which it will hopefully get, assuming Madhouse makes enough money off of it. Madhouse has had a few bombs over the years, but I'm hopeful for this series. I really am.
The voice acting was pretty good, and I was surprised to see that Kousuke Toriumi, Mamoru Miyano, and Yuki Kaji were among the cast. Of course, they were the only three I'd heard of and recognized before I looked up the voice cast for this anime. But, as per usual, they did not disappoint.
The interesting thing is, the title is actually a play on words. In Japan, there is a children's character known as Anpanman, and the title is actually a play on words of that character's name. The word for punch in Japanese is literally translated to panchi and is sometimes shortened to pan. Pretty clever, and good for marketing. Anpanman is a long-running children's character in Japan, so I'm sure that it definitely brought the nostalgia factor in for adults who caught on to the wordplay. Talk about good marketing! The word "one" when transliterated becomes "wan," so the title in Japanese is literally Wanpanman.
The music is pretty great, too. The opening for the series is THE HERO！！〜怒れる拳に火をつけろ〜 ("THE HERO!!~Set Fire to the Furious Fist~") by JAM Project, and the ending is 星より先に見つけてあげる ("I'll Find It Before the Stars for You") by Hiroko Moriguchi. While I'm not so sure if you've heard of JAM Project (they did a lot of music for anime, but none that I've seen), You may have heard of Hiroko Moriguchi if you saw the movie, Mobile Suit Gundam F91, as she performed both the opening and ending songs for it.
There were a few elements of the anime I wasn't a particular fan of, however, like the story itself. The story reminded me a little too much of Greek mythology, and I was really hoping for something with a little more originality. While it's okay if you want to base something off of something else, you also want to have some creativity in there. And I feel like that was slightly lacking. Then again, this was meant to be a parody of the shonen genre, so it's possible I'm overthinking this.
Well, although it was short, that was One-Punch Man! Next time on Anime Mondays (which, now that I have better lighting, will hopefully be a video): either Attack on Titan Part II: End of the World or Akatsuki no Yona!
Til next time! ~k
Fun fact: This manga got nominated for an EISNER AWARD for the category BEST US EDITION OF INTERNATIONAL MATERIAL -- ASIA. That is huge for a manga. While it might not have won, it definitely made the manga HUGE in the USA.
So, this was originally going to be a review of Ghost in the Shell. And while I have reviewed anime that were primarily geared towards guys in the past, this was one that...well, for lack of better phrasing, did not have a large feminine audience (there was one, it was just...well, not that big).
Not only that, but it originally started out as a manga...for mature audiences. And I don't know about you guys, but unless I get a request to review an anime based off of a manga for mature audiences, I'm not reviewing it. I couldn't even post a picture of the POSTER without photoshopping a freaking censor on there.
Aside from that, I felt that the majority of that review just would have been me ranting about Hollywood's constant whitewashing in that they cast Scarlett Johansson to play the Japanese lead, as well as ranting about the rest of the whitewashing that was more than likely to occur. I'm just thankful that M. Night Shyamalan isn't directing this, although all this whitewashing is really making me think of his movie, The Last Airbender, where there was whitewashing galore. *shudders*
So then I thought to myself, "Kanna, what can you review that won't piss off your readers and isn't meant for mature audiences?"
Note: While I do have a super rough idea of the age range of who reads my blog, and am aware that an anime meant for mature audiences would probably be okay, I also want my blog to be safe for younger readers. If I ever venture into the MA (mature audience) realm of anime, I'll make sure to put MA before the title of the post so that people who want to avoid it know that they can.
So I put up a post on my Facebook and asked for suggestions, and sure enough, who else but Whalley suggested...One-Punch Man!
So, let's get started with development, as this wasn't...shall we say, traditional for most anime adaptations, and certainly something I haven't heard of with regards to an anime.
One-Punch Man started out as a webcomic created by a mangaka named ONE (yes, it's a pseudonym and no, I don't know his real name). This is interesting in that most manga get serialized in different magazines like Shonen Jump or published into tankobon volumes right away. I hadn't heard of a webmanga before. Anyway, the webmanga was published online in 2009 and received 7.9 million hits by November 2012.
Due to the INSANE popularity this webmanga was getting, a mangaka named Yusuke Murata contacted ONE with a proposal to redraw the comic for digital publication on Weekly Young Jump's spin-off manga website, Young Jump Web Comics. The first chapter of the manga was published June 14, 2012, and has 104 chapters as of November 2015. Note that I have NOT been reading the manga, so I don't know how many chapters it has as of the time I'm writing this.
With the manga having such an insane popularity, you can bet that an anime adaptation was in the works. And sure enough, it was. With animation from animation studio Madhouse (you might recognize them from anime like Cardcaptor Sakura, Claymore, Chobits, and Parasyte, among many others), direction from Shingo Natsume, and writing from Tomohiro Suzuki, the series premiered in Japan on October 5, 2015.
So, going into this, I wasn't sure about the animation. I mean, Madhouse is great, and they've done the animation for a lot of anime that I really like. But, as much as I hate to say this, I feel that some of the shows that they did animation for were hit or miss, like Claymore. Now, with regards to Cardcaptor Sakura, you could argue that it was the late '90s and animation wasn't what it is today. And that is a valid argument.
But when you have series like Claymore and Parasyte that came out a few years later--Parasyte in particular--that argument is no longer valid. Animation has evolved, and the fight scenes just grew increasingly hard to follow. And because of that, you can clearly spot the weakness that Madhouse has. And that is animating fight scenes so that people can follow them. So, with an action anime like One-Punch Man, I was a little nervous going into it, because I thought the fight scenes would be hard to follow. But we'll get to that later.
The series is set in Japan, in a fictional city known as City Z (don't ask; I didn't write it). In this world, there are strange monsters that mysteriously appear and cause disasters. However, they are taken down by our hero, Saitama, a hero who can defeat the monsters with a single punch (hence the title). But Saitama gets bored of his powers because of his overwhelming strength. So he goes out to find opponents who are much stronger than he is.
On Saitama's adventures, he meets friends, enemies, and even gains a disciple. He even joins an organization to gain fame for fighting evil, known as the Heroes Association. However, Saitama struggles to gain respect due to his plain appearance and is even accused of being a counterfeit hero. So the series basically shows how he grows in personality.
So, now that that's done, let's talk characters!
Saitama: The hero of the story. He kind of reminds me of one of those heroes from Greek mythology in how he's strong, but gets bored of his super strength. I figured that would be a plus, but it wasn't. He's humanized, which is great. He experiences human thoughts and feelings, and while he's built up as this tough guy who is bored of his super strength, he still experiences a lot of the emotions that humans go through. And you could argue that he is human...to an extent. It kind of depends on what this series' definition of a human being is, and that's a little unclear. So...is he a mutant? No idea. But I like that they humanized him.
Because the story mainly revolves around Saitama and there are too many other characters to talk about, I'll just get to the rating part of it.
Rating: 9.5/10
Why: Look, this really is a great series, and as nervous about it as I was going into it, I was surprised that I actually enjoyed it and am hopeful for a second season, which it will hopefully get, assuming Madhouse makes enough money off of it. Madhouse has had a few bombs over the years, but I'm hopeful for this series. I really am.
The voice acting was pretty good, and I was surprised to see that Kousuke Toriumi, Mamoru Miyano, and Yuki Kaji were among the cast. Of course, they were the only three I'd heard of and recognized before I looked up the voice cast for this anime. But, as per usual, they did not disappoint.
The interesting thing is, the title is actually a play on words. In Japan, there is a children's character known as Anpanman, and the title is actually a play on words of that character's name. The word for punch in Japanese is literally translated to panchi and is sometimes shortened to pan. Pretty clever, and good for marketing. Anpanman is a long-running children's character in Japan, so I'm sure that it definitely brought the nostalgia factor in for adults who caught on to the wordplay. Talk about good marketing! The word "one" when transliterated becomes "wan," so the title in Japanese is literally Wanpanman.
The music is pretty great, too. The opening for the series is THE HERO！！〜怒れる拳に火をつけろ〜 ("THE HERO!!~Set Fire to the Furious Fist~") by JAM Project, and the ending is 星より先に見つけてあげる ("I'll Find It Before the Stars for You") by Hiroko Moriguchi. While I'm not so sure if you've heard of JAM Project (they did a lot of music for anime, but none that I've seen), You may have heard of Hiroko Moriguchi if you saw the movie, Mobile Suit Gundam F91, as she performed both the opening and ending songs for it.
There were a few elements of the anime I wasn't a particular fan of, however, like the story itself. The story reminded me a little too much of Greek mythology, and I was really hoping for something with a little more originality. While it's okay if you want to base something off of something else, you also want to have some creativity in there. And I feel like that was slightly lacking. Then again, this was meant to be a parody of the shonen genre, so it's possible I'm overthinking this.
Well, although it was short, that was One-Punch Man! Next time on Anime Mondays (which, now that I have better lighting, will hopefully be a video): either Attack on Titan Part II: End of the World or Akatsuki no Yona!
Til next time! ~k
Fun fact: This manga got nominated for an EISNER AWARD for the category BEST US EDITION OF INTERNATIONAL MATERIAL -- ASIA. That is huge for a manga. While it might not have won, it definitely made the manga HUGE in the USA.
Hey guys, kanna here! I can't believe it...not only is this blog almost a year old, but we reached double digits for Anime Mondays in that one year! Here's to the next ten!
So, to make up for the sucky review I gave for my double-digits special, I've decided to...ask you guys a few questions! Haha! I can be evil sometimes, can't I?
*crickets*
OK. Anyway, onto the questions!
1. Are you a bored, top of the class student?
2. Do you hate all things evil?
3. Have you found a strange black notebook recently?
4. If you said yes to question 3, did you write someone's name in the book?
5. If you said yes to question 4, was the person's name someone you utterly despised?
6. If you said yes to question 5, did you imagine this person's death? Things like date, time, cause, location, etc.?
7. If you said yes to question 6, did you write all that information in the book?
8. If you said yes to question 7, did that person turn up dead in the exact way you wrote it in the notebook?
If you said yes to all of these questions, you:
a) are a coldblooded killer
b) are a psychopath
c) both a and b
or
d) figured out what anime I'm getting at
If you chose d, and you figured out what anime I was getting at, then congratulations! You get bragging rights! And cookies (tee hee...cookies...and it's the internet...get it?)!
The anime for Anime Monday #11 is...Death Note.
Anyway, a little background.
Death Note (and yes, that's also the Japanese title, it's just pronounced differently, because the 'th' sound doesn't exist in Japanese, so it's pronounced as Desu Notō in Japanese) was originally a manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The manga had 108 chapters, which were collected into twelve volumes, and ran from December 2003 to May 2006 in Weekly Shonen Jump.
On October 3, 2006, an anime adaptation premiered in Japan and ran for 37 episodes, until June 26, 2007. It aired every Tuesday at (I swear, I couldn't make this up if I tried) 22:34 (Japanese Standard Time; the equivalent of which is 10:34 PM).
Why so peculiar about the time? No idea. I mean it. I looked up the significance of the time and everything. I even thought it was a date, like 2/23/04. But I couldn't find anything. I guess because all the episodes were a little over twenty minutes each, but that would have to mean the show before it ran for a little over thirty minutes, with commercials and credits...I'm overthinking this. For any of my readers who live or lived in Japan during the time of the anime, or during the year 2004, if anyone knows ANYTHING about the significance of 22:34 or 22304 or any form of those numbers, PLEASE tell me so I can edit this!
Apparently, this anime was so popular that it got THREE live action movies, multiple video games, a light novel, a drama series, AND TWO musicals (no, I don't get it, either, but I listened to some of the songs, and they're pretty good). One in Japan and another in South Korea.
So, plot.
The story revolves around Light Yagami, a bored, young genius who despises anything and everything evil. He finds a black notebook with the words "DEATH NOTE" written on the cover, and some...pretty detailed instructions inside.
I'm not exaggerating. There are NINETY-ONE RULES ON HOW TO USE THIS NOTEBOOK. Forget the fact that it has all these powers and stuff; WHY THE FRICK DO YOU NEED NINETY-ONE RULES ON HOW TO USE A NOTEBOOK?! IT'S LIKE WRITING SUPER DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO MAKE INSTANT RAMEN! UNNECESSARY!
Anyway, Light thinks that this is a pretty bad prank and abandons the book, before thinking about what sick mind he must have and going back for the book. He takes the book back to his house and decides to take a look at it. We learn the first FIVE of our NINETY-ONE RULES. It's going to get overwhelming later on, but here we go with the first five:
1. The human whose name is written in this note shall die.
2. This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
3. If the cause of death is written within the next 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen.
4. If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.
5. After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
OK...a little detailed, but keep in mind that this book has NINETY-ONE FREAKING RULES.
Anyway, Light has the news on the TV in his room when he decides to test the book out. Apparently, there was a kidnapping, and the news released a name and face of the kidnapper. So Light wrote the name down and waited for 40 seconds. At first, nothing happened. But then, the people who were kidnapped ran outside, and it was revealed that the kidnapper seemed to have died from a heart attack.
Light thinks it's a coincidence. After all, there's no way in the world a notebook could have magical powers, right? RIGHT? So he decides to test it out again and picks someone else. He picks a criminal, on the off chance that the notebook is, in fact, legit. Although he does consider killing someone who has been nothing but a bully, but he rethinks killing someone he knows and decides against it. Not that it makes a difference to him. Kinda hypocritical for a guy who hates everything evil, but whatever.
On the way back from his prep course, he sees a motorcycle gang getting ready to do some...pretty nasty things to a young lady. He overhears the name of the leader of the gang and writes the gang leader's name and a cause of death (a traffic accident) to further test the notebook. Sure enough, the guy gets hit by a truck, causing Light to gasp in realization that the Death Note isn't a prank. It's the real thing.
As all of this is happening, we meet the Shinigami (死神; literally translates to god of death or death god), Ryuk. Ryuk is...interesting, to say the least. Like Light, he's bored. He drops a Death Note into the human world from the Shinigami world. Ryuk meets Light and follows him around as Light learns more about the Death Note and the powers of Shinigami. We later find out a few more of the NINETY-ONE FREAKING RULES (I'm sorry, I just...ninety-one rules? Really?), which have a lot to do with the Shinigami.
Now, these are going to be a little out of order. Just letting you know, as the numbers for the rules always start back at one, and I'll only be including the rules relevant to the Shinigami's connection with a human. These are from sections (yeah...I should have mentioned that they had to split NINETY-ONE FREAKING RULES into sections) III (three), IV (four), and V (five).
III (Three)
2. The human who touches the Death Note can recognize the image and voice of its original owner, a god of death, even if the human is not the owner of the note.
IV (Four)
1. The person in possession of the Death Note is possessed by a god of death, its original owner, until they die.
2. If a human uses the note, a god of death usually appears in front of him/her within 39 days after he/she uses the note.
3. Gods of death, the original owners of the Death Note, do not do, in principle, anything which will help or prevent the deaths in the note.
4. A god of death has no obligation to completely explain how to use the note or rules which will apply to the human who owns it unless asked.
V (Five)
1. A god of death can extend their own life by putting a name on their own note, but humans cannot.
3. The human who becomes the owner of the Death Note can, in exchange of half his/her remaining life, get the eyeballs of the god of death which will enable him/her to see a human's name and remaining life span when looking through them.
4. A god of death cannot be killed even if stabbed in his heart with a knife or shot in the head with a gun. However, there are ways to kill a god of death, which are not generally known to the god of death.
G-D WHY ARE THERE NINETY-ONE FREAKING RULES IN THIS STUPID NOTEBOOK? JUST SOMEONE EXPLAIN THAT! IT'S LIKE-
OK, kanna...calm down. Just calm down...deep breaths...rule #1 of anime is to never bring logic into it.
OK, I'm good. Let's just keep going.
This series wouldn't be that interesting if we didn't have an antagonist, and sure enough, we do. And his name is...L.
L is a world-famous detective working for Interpol, and he comes into the picture when the unexplained deaths of so many criminals gets Interpol's attention. It's also here where we get a pretty clever Japanese/English wordplay. L deduces that the killer is known as "Kira" (similar in pronunciation to the English word, killer, except in Japanese, it's pronounced kee-rah, and you don't really pronounce the r as an r, but it's more like a Spanish r) and that Kira is able to kill people through supernatural means. But when Light realizes that L is on to what's going on, Light quickly begins a game of cat-and-mouse, and our series is in full swing.
So...let's talk characters.
Light Yagami: He's interesting. Normally, his type of character wouldn't be that interesting to me, as he is, in a sense, becoming a "god of a new world." That isn't a type of character I tend to like, as most writers have a tendency to either give this type of character too much power, or not enough. But I actually like his character. The writers didn't give him too much power or not enough power. They gave him flaws, too. These flaws help balance out the power, and we have a nice 50/50 ratio of power and flaws. It's perfect. Granted, he's not my favorite character in the series, but he is an interesting character.
Ryuk: Appearance-wise, I initially FREAKED. I mean...I'm not sure what I was expecting, but when you've seen anime with a Shinigami in it where the Shinigami look more...humanized and less...well...
How would you NOT freak out? Granted, I saw Death Note about a year or two before I saw Bleach, so when I saw Bleach, I didn't freak when I saw the Hollows (if I review Bleach, which probably won't happen, I'll explain what those are). But Ryuk...wow. Just wow.
Anyway, characterization. Ryuk was a lot different from a lot of the other Shinigami in other anime I've seen. Like I said, this was before I saw Bleach, and the other Shinigami that were in different series had personalities that were more...humanized (like their appearances). But this was a different story entirely. They mixed characteristics of a demon-like character and combined it with characteristics of a more human character, and had those characteristics mirror Light's personality. He also wants to cleanse the world of evil and become the "god of a new world." He didn't take Light's side, but he didn't necessarily take the side of the police, either. He was basically a neutral party in everything.
L: Ah, L. Everyone's favorite Interpol detective. He's actually called L Lawliet, but you'd have to read the manga in order to know that, because they don't reveal it in the anime. He's the character that we know so much about, and yet, so little at the same time. And I guess that's why so many people like him. This guy is a freaking GENIUS. He never shows his face in public and even uses a machine to disguise his voice, so hardly anyone knows what he really sounds or looks like. Not only that, but only ONE PERSON in ALL OF INTERPOL is able to get in contact with him.
The music in Death Note is amazing, as well. We have an anime with awesome characters and music. Let's see...the opening is pretty awesome, the ending is pretty awesome, and even the freaking BACKGROUND MUSIC is awesome. Everything just fits perfectly.
The anime actually had two openings and three endings. The first opening was for episodes 1-19, titled, "The WORLD," and performed by a Japanese rock band called Nightmare. The second opening was for episodes 20-36, titled, "What's up, people?!" and it's performed by another Japanese rock band, MAXIMUM THE HORMONE.
The first ending was performed by the same group that performed the first opening, Nightmare, and lasted for the same number of episodes (1-19). This song was called "Alumina." The second song was performed by the same group that performed the second opening and, MAXIMUM THE HORMONE, and lasted for the same number of episodes (20-36). This song was called "Zetsubou Billy." The third ending was performed by someone else entirely AND was only for the last episode of the series. The third ending was performed by Yoshihisa Hirano, and it was called "Coda~Death Note."
So...overall rating?
TEN OUT OF FREAKING TEN
Why: First off, the animation is pretty good. It's not great, but it's definitely pretty good. The character designs are on point, as it's easy to see who's who. Unlike in Claymore where everyone looked basically the same and there's this weird color filter, or UtaPri where there are too many characters to tell apart.
So, to make up for the sucky review I gave for my double-digits special, I've decided to...ask you guys a few questions! Haha! I can be evil sometimes, can't I?
*crickets*
OK. Anyway, onto the questions!
1. Are you a bored, top of the class student?
2. Do you hate all things evil?
3. Have you found a strange black notebook recently?
4. If you said yes to question 3, did you write someone's name in the book?
5. If you said yes to question 4, was the person's name someone you utterly despised?
6. If you said yes to question 5, did you imagine this person's death? Things like date, time, cause, location, etc.?
7. If you said yes to question 6, did you write all that information in the book?
8. If you said yes to question 7, did that person turn up dead in the exact way you wrote it in the notebook?
If you said yes to all of these questions, you:
a) are a coldblooded killer
b) are a psychopath
c) both a and b
or
d) figured out what anime I'm getting at
If you chose d, and you figured out what anime I was getting at, then congratulations! You get bragging rights! And cookies (tee hee...cookies...and it's the internet...get it?)!
The anime for Anime Monday #11 is...Death Note.
Oh, I probably should have mentioned this in advance. Because it's October and it's close to Halloween, we'll mainly be focusing on horror/supernatural anime. I'll try not to pick anything too gory for my squeamish readers, but I can't promise anything.
Anyway, a little background.
Death Note (and yes, that's also the Japanese title, it's just pronounced differently, because the 'th' sound doesn't exist in Japanese, so it's pronounced as Desu Notō in Japanese) was originally a manga written by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata. The manga had 108 chapters, which were collected into twelve volumes, and ran from December 2003 to May 2006 in Weekly Shonen Jump.
On October 3, 2006, an anime adaptation premiered in Japan and ran for 37 episodes, until June 26, 2007. It aired every Tuesday at (I swear, I couldn't make this up if I tried) 22:34 (Japanese Standard Time; the equivalent of which is 10:34 PM).
Why so peculiar about the time? No idea. I mean it. I looked up the significance of the time and everything. I even thought it was a date, like 2/23/04. But I couldn't find anything. I guess because all the episodes were a little over twenty minutes each, but that would have to mean the show before it ran for a little over thirty minutes, with commercials and credits...I'm overthinking this. For any of my readers who live or lived in Japan during the time of the anime, or during the year 2004, if anyone knows ANYTHING about the significance of 22:34 or 22304 or any form of those numbers, PLEASE tell me so I can edit this!
Apparently, this anime was so popular that it got THREE live action movies, multiple video games, a light novel, a drama series, AND TWO musicals (no, I don't get it, either, but I listened to some of the songs, and they're pretty good). One in Japan and another in South Korea.
So, plot.
The story revolves around Light Yagami, a bored, young genius who despises anything and everything evil. He finds a black notebook with the words "DEATH NOTE" written on the cover, and some...pretty detailed instructions inside.
I'm not exaggerating. There are NINETY-ONE RULES ON HOW TO USE THIS NOTEBOOK. Forget the fact that it has all these powers and stuff; WHY THE FRICK DO YOU NEED NINETY-ONE RULES ON HOW TO USE A NOTEBOOK?! IT'S LIKE WRITING SUPER DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO MAKE INSTANT RAMEN! UNNECESSARY!
Anyway, Light thinks that this is a pretty bad prank and abandons the book, before thinking about what sick mind he must have and going back for the book. He takes the book back to his house and decides to take a look at it. We learn the first FIVE of our NINETY-ONE RULES. It's going to get overwhelming later on, but here we go with the first five:
1. The human whose name is written in this note shall die.
2. This note will not take effect unless the writer has the person's face in their mind when writing his/her name. Therefore, people sharing the same name will not be affected.
3. If the cause of death is written within the next 40 seconds of writing the person's name, it will happen.
4. If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.
5. After writing the cause of death, details of the death should be written in the next 6 minutes and 40 seconds.
OK...a little detailed, but keep in mind that this book has NINETY-ONE FREAKING RULES.
Anyway, Light has the news on the TV in his room when he decides to test the book out. Apparently, there was a kidnapping, and the news released a name and face of the kidnapper. So Light wrote the name down and waited for 40 seconds. At first, nothing happened. But then, the people who were kidnapped ran outside, and it was revealed that the kidnapper seemed to have died from a heart attack.
Light thinks it's a coincidence. After all, there's no way in the world a notebook could have magical powers, right? RIGHT? So he decides to test it out again and picks someone else. He picks a criminal, on the off chance that the notebook is, in fact, legit. Although he does consider killing someone who has been nothing but a bully, but he rethinks killing someone he knows and decides against it. Not that it makes a difference to him. Kinda hypocritical for a guy who hates everything evil, but whatever.
On the way back from his prep course, he sees a motorcycle gang getting ready to do some...pretty nasty things to a young lady. He overhears the name of the leader of the gang and writes the gang leader's name and a cause of death (a traffic accident) to further test the notebook. Sure enough, the guy gets hit by a truck, causing Light to gasp in realization that the Death Note isn't a prank. It's the real thing.
As all of this is happening, we meet the Shinigami (死神; literally translates to god of death or death god), Ryuk. Ryuk is...interesting, to say the least. Like Light, he's bored. He drops a Death Note into the human world from the Shinigami world. Ryuk meets Light and follows him around as Light learns more about the Death Note and the powers of Shinigami. We later find out a few more of the NINETY-ONE FREAKING RULES (I'm sorry, I just...ninety-one rules? Really?), which have a lot to do with the Shinigami.
Now, these are going to be a little out of order. Just letting you know, as the numbers for the rules always start back at one, and I'll only be including the rules relevant to the Shinigami's connection with a human. These are from sections (yeah...I should have mentioned that they had to split NINETY-ONE FREAKING RULES into sections) III (three), IV (four), and V (five).
III (Three)
2. The human who touches the Death Note can recognize the image and voice of its original owner, a god of death, even if the human is not the owner of the note.
IV (Four)
1. The person in possession of the Death Note is possessed by a god of death, its original owner, until they die.
2. If a human uses the note, a god of death usually appears in front of him/her within 39 days after he/she uses the note.
3. Gods of death, the original owners of the Death Note, do not do, in principle, anything which will help or prevent the deaths in the note.
4. A god of death has no obligation to completely explain how to use the note or rules which will apply to the human who owns it unless asked.
V (Five)
1. A god of death can extend their own life by putting a name on their own note, but humans cannot.
3. The human who becomes the owner of the Death Note can, in exchange of half his/her remaining life, get the eyeballs of the god of death which will enable him/her to see a human's name and remaining life span when looking through them.
4. A god of death cannot be killed even if stabbed in his heart with a knife or shot in the head with a gun. However, there are ways to kill a god of death, which are not generally known to the god of death.
G-D WHY ARE THERE NINETY-ONE FREAKING RULES IN THIS STUPID NOTEBOOK? JUST SOMEONE EXPLAIN THAT! IT'S LIKE-
OK, kanna...calm down. Just calm down...deep breaths...rule #1 of anime is to never bring logic into it.
OK, I'm good. Let's just keep going.
This series wouldn't be that interesting if we didn't have an antagonist, and sure enough, we do. And his name is...L.
L is a world-famous detective working for Interpol, and he comes into the picture when the unexplained deaths of so many criminals gets Interpol's attention. It's also here where we get a pretty clever Japanese/English wordplay. L deduces that the killer is known as "Kira" (similar in pronunciation to the English word, killer, except in Japanese, it's pronounced kee-rah, and you don't really pronounce the r as an r, but it's more like a Spanish r) and that Kira is able to kill people through supernatural means. But when Light realizes that L is on to what's going on, Light quickly begins a game of cat-and-mouse, and our series is in full swing.
So...let's talk characters.
Light Yagami: He's interesting. Normally, his type of character wouldn't be that interesting to me, as he is, in a sense, becoming a "god of a new world." That isn't a type of character I tend to like, as most writers have a tendency to either give this type of character too much power, or not enough. But I actually like his character. The writers didn't give him too much power or not enough power. They gave him flaws, too. These flaws help balance out the power, and we have a nice 50/50 ratio of power and flaws. It's perfect. Granted, he's not my favorite character in the series, but he is an interesting character.
Ryuk: Appearance-wise, I initially FREAKED. I mean...I'm not sure what I was expecting, but when you've seen anime with a Shinigami in it where the Shinigami look more...humanized and less...well...
How would you NOT freak out? Granted, I saw Death Note about a year or two before I saw Bleach, so when I saw Bleach, I didn't freak when I saw the Hollows (if I review Bleach, which probably won't happen, I'll explain what those are). But Ryuk...wow. Just wow.
Anyway, characterization. Ryuk was a lot different from a lot of the other Shinigami in other anime I've seen. Like I said, this was before I saw Bleach, and the other Shinigami that were in different series had personalities that were more...humanized (like their appearances). But this was a different story entirely. They mixed characteristics of a demon-like character and combined it with characteristics of a more human character, and had those characteristics mirror Light's personality. He also wants to cleanse the world of evil and become the "god of a new world." He didn't take Light's side, but he didn't necessarily take the side of the police, either. He was basically a neutral party in everything.
L: Ah, L. Everyone's favorite Interpol detective. He's actually called L Lawliet, but you'd have to read the manga in order to know that, because they don't reveal it in the anime. He's the character that we know so much about, and yet, so little at the same time. And I guess that's why so many people like him. This guy is a freaking GENIUS. He never shows his face in public and even uses a machine to disguise his voice, so hardly anyone knows what he really sounds or looks like. Not only that, but only ONE PERSON in ALL OF INTERPOL is able to get in contact with him.
The music in Death Note is amazing, as well. We have an anime with awesome characters and music. Let's see...the opening is pretty awesome, the ending is pretty awesome, and even the freaking BACKGROUND MUSIC is awesome. Everything just fits perfectly.
The anime actually had two openings and three endings. The first opening was for episodes 1-19, titled, "The WORLD," and performed by a Japanese rock band called Nightmare. The second opening was for episodes 20-36, titled, "What's up, people?!" and it's performed by another Japanese rock band, MAXIMUM THE HORMONE.
The first ending was performed by the same group that performed the first opening, Nightmare, and lasted for the same number of episodes (1-19). This song was called "Alumina." The second song was performed by the same group that performed the second opening and, MAXIMUM THE HORMONE, and lasted for the same number of episodes (20-36). This song was called "Zetsubou Billy." The third ending was performed by someone else entirely AND was only for the last episode of the series. The third ending was performed by Yoshihisa Hirano, and it was called "Coda~Death Note."
So...overall rating?
TEN OUT OF FREAKING TEN
Why: First off, the animation is pretty good. It's not great, but it's definitely pretty good. The character designs are on point, as it's easy to see who's who. Unlike in Claymore where everyone looked basically the same and there's this weird color filter, or UtaPri where there are too many characters to tell apart.
We get a lot of insight into the characters and their motives. Sure, Light and Ryuk don't initially have motives until the Death Note is brought into the picture, but you can still understand them as characters and develop a connection to them. L is amazing; a genius. Just watch the second episode and you'll see what I mean.
For a series as dark as this, they actually did manage to fit some comedy in there. Don't get me wrong, it's pretty hard to find because of how subtle it is. But it's there.
Lastly, I wouldn't normally bring this up, but the ENGLISH DUB is actually pretty awesome. The voices are all on point...except for L's. But that's hardly worth taking points off for. It's just that it's been mentioned that L is English, and not once, voice disguised or not, do we hear any kind of accent.
This anime is FILLED with twists and turns, and there's plenty to keep you guessing as to what the characters will do next. I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys a supernatural mystery thriller. There's a little bit of gore, but it's not too bad. Even so, if you're squeamish, don't watch it. Most of the death scenes are more implied, but there are a few that they show, and it's not pretty.
Well, that's it for now!
Next Anime Monday (which WILL BE A MONDAY; I AM DETERMINED): Ghost in the Shell
Next Anime Monday (which WILL BE A MONDAY; I AM DETERMINED): Ghost in the Shell
See you next time! ~k
Well, I've kept you waiting long enough. I am SO SORRY about that, and I feel awful about it. I really do. But, here's your review! It's a special one, because it's double digits! It's...
ATTACK ON TITAN: PART 1
ATTACK ON TITAN: PART 1
OK, for those of you who can't read Japanese, haven't seen the poster, or are just too lazy to look up translations for yourselves (any of those options are fine), I'll give you a quick walkthrough of the translation. The top part lists Hajime Isayama as the creator of the source material, Shinji Higuchi as the director, and Yusuke Watanabe as the writer (although there were technically two writers, the other being Tomohiro Machiyama. I don't know why he isn't listed on the poster).
The part in red that says この世界は、残酷か means "The world is cruel" or "The world is merciless."
Then we have the title of the film, 進撃の巨人, which literally means "advancing giants." However, because that just doesn't sound badass, they changed the translation of it to something similar enough. Something we now know and love as...Attack on Titan.
Now, I know what you're thinking. I bet it's probably something along the lines of, "Kanna, you already did a review of Attack on Titan. Why are you doing it again?" Well, because...the first part of the live action movie came out. And I was super excited for it. I mean REALLY excited. It was all I'd ever talk about with my friends, regardless of whether they watched the anime or not (needless to say, they got tired of it pretty quickly). The trailer was AMAZING. For those of you who want to see the epic-ness WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES, here you go.
Note that this is the trailer that they used for the U.S. release of the movie. I saw the other trailers for Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, but thought this would be more appropriate since I live in the U.S.
With an AMAZING trailer, AMAZING looking special effects, and having the creator of the original source material work on the writing team, those of us who were eagerly anticipating the movie were super, seriously excited. Not to mention having an amazing cast with actors like Haruma Miura, Kiko Mizuhara, and Kanata Hongo leading the cast.
I can't wait to see how well this movie was adapted! I mean, they had HAJIME FREAKING ISAYAMA on the writing team. There's NO WAY POSSIBLE they could screw this up, right? Right? RIGHT?!
RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
ONE SCREENING LATER
Good G-d...where did they go wrong? I mean...wow. Just...wow. I'm actually at a loss for words. I mean...how much could they POSSIBLY screw up before utterly DESTROYING everything that is Attack on Titan? I just...well, let's start with the first of the movie's problems. And I will TRY to keep this brief, but this movie just seemed to go on FOREVER, so I make no promises.
1. The characters
GOOD FREAKING G-D, the characters. Nothing wrong with the actors (although I could be biased saying that, because I am a fan of Haruma Miura and Kanata Hongo) or the performances they gave (okay, some of the scenes do have pretty bad acting), but...could they be anymore OUT OF CHARACTER? I get it's an adaptation and you have to make some changes, but let's go over what really makes me angry about this.
GOOD FREAKING G-D, the characters. Nothing wrong with the actors (although I could be biased saying that, because I am a fan of Haruma Miura and Kanata Hongo) or the performances they gave (okay, some of the scenes do have pretty bad acting), but...could they be anymore OUT OF CHARACTER? I get it's an adaptation and you have to make some changes, but let's go over what really makes me angry about this.
In the anime and manga, Mikasa was Eren's foster sister, and they looked out for each other. Mikasa was there for Eren when he struggled to understand the fact that he could turn into a Titan, the very thing he hated. But in the movie, Mikasa and Eren weren't brother and sister. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. Why? No reason. They just were.
Another change: Personalities. Good G-D, this was where they REALLY went wrong. Apparently, Eren's fearless attitude when standing against the Titans made him "difficult to relate to" according to Isayama. So, they threw away Eren's fearlessness and backstory of someone, who, as a BOY, killed someone to protect Mikasa. They basically turned Eren into a WIMP. A really big wimp.
2. Who's missing?
Let me show you something, and then we'll talk a little about it.
Notice someone missing? Or, someones? Say...Levi? Annie? Bertholdt? Reiner? LEVI FREAKING ACKERMAN? THE MOST POPULAR CHARACTER IN ALL OF ATTACK ON TITAN? And that's just A FEW of the missing characters!
Well, as luck would conveniently have it, they're not ACTUALLY missing (well...some of them, at any rate). Nope. Their names have been changed. I think. It's a little hard to say, as I'm not sure who was supposed to be playing the movie's version of Annie, if she was even in this movie, or if we'll even see her in Attack on Titan Part 2: End of the World. But they did leave a lot of characters out.
Notice something else? Say...how all the names aside from Eren's and Armin's are all Japanese? To be fair, Mikasa's name is Japanese already, so it's not like they could change that. But yeah. Captain Levi FREAKING Ackerman (sorry, but he's my favorite character) became Shikishima, Commander Shadis became Kubal, Hannes became Souda, and Zoë Hange became Hans.
There are a lot of movie exclusive characters, which is risky enough. There are movies that do this fairly well, like The Hobbit trilogy. But to change the names of fan favorite characters? You need to have some serious NERVE to do that and be successful. This movie FAILED.
So, why change the names of fan favorite characters like Levi (sorry...he's kinda my favorite character)? Well, there's a reason for that, and it's a pretty stupid one at that. It's because the names DIDN'T TRANSLATE.
Now, I know what you're thinking. Probably something along the lines of, "Kanna, they had to; they don't have the letter 'l' in Japanese, and the 'v' sound isn't that common..." Look, I'm totally aware of that. But when you can pronounce names like Levi FREAKING Ackerman pretty decently in the anime and have it translate well enough into the manga, there's really no excuse. Besides, Lil and Kubal have the letter 'l' in their names. How did they get a free pass? It's RIDICULOUS.
3. The Titans
These things were the CORE PART of the movie. Even if you HATED the characters, you probably wanted to see the movie so you could watch these giant monstrosities rip up the village the characters lived in and then eat the people living there, leaving little to no survivors.
Well...how do I put this lightly? THE CGI SUCKED. I mean, how could you SCREW UP the things in the movie that people were actually looking forward to seeing? How do you go from a Colossal Titan that looks like this
to a Colossal Titan that looks like this?
Heck, even the Titan ARMY looks ridiculous! I mean...wow, the CGI is TERRIBLE. I understand that this sort of animation takes time (and lots of it), but the people in charge of the CGI had LOADS of time. THIS IS THE BEST THEY COULD DO?
Oh, but since we're on the subject of stuff that clearly defies expectations, how about stuff that defies logic?
As I addressed in my review of the anime, Titans can't reproduce. They have no reproductive organs (which doesn't explain why the female Titans in the movie have fairly large chests, but that's beside the point).
In one scene of the movie, Eren and one of the movie-exclusive characters (I honestly don't care about her enough to remember her name) are in a destroyed house when they hear a baby crying. They wonder if the baby they hear was a survivor of the attack and go out to investigate before the crying gets louder. And louder. AND LOUDER. And when Eren and insert-movie-exclusive-character-here go to investigate, we get our first look at the baby. We see an eye. And it's a pretty big one at that.
Turns out, it's a Titan BABY.
Yeah.
Because, apparently, Titans can reproduce in this abomination of a movie's universe. This fact TOTALLY contradicts itself, as it was stated in the anime, manga, and earlier in the movie that Titans CAN'T reproduce. SO HOW DID THIS TITAN BABY COME INTO BEING? Did lightning just strike and it appeared? Was it like how the Orcs were created in Lord of the Rings? I mean...HOW THE FLYING FRICK DID THIS BABY COME INTO BEING? TITANS DO NOT HAVE REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS! THIS MAKES NO SENSE! I mean...LOOK AT THIS THING! THIS! IS! NOT! NORMAL!
 |
| OK, in all fairness, Titans aren't normal, but...since when was a Titan BABY considered normal? |
Well, that's going to haunt my nightmares. Keep in mind I'm doing this for YOU GUYS.
Meaning: I'M LOSING MY FREAKING SANITY OVER HERE! SOMEONE HELP!
Actually, you know what? Don't answer my question about when a Titan BABY was considered normal. I don't think I want to know. Let's just move on.
4. Pacing
I watch a few horror movies here and there. It's not my favorite genre (that's not to say I hate horror movies, but I don't necessarily love them, either), but M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense is one of my all time FAVORITE horror movies. However, for those of you who are more familiar with M. Night Shyamalan's more modern day works, like Signs, The Last Airbender, Devil, and After Earth (you know, the movies that no one really likes to talk about), those are the works where the acting is AWFUL and the pacing is just downright SLOW.
This movie made me feel like I was watching a Shyamalan film. And if this movie made me feel like I was watching The Sixth Sense, I wouldn't be making this complaint. The Sixth Sense was an AMAZING movie that I've seen quite a few times (might be watching it this Halloween, but that's beside the point). But this movie was just so unbelievably slow. I mean, I shouldn't end up bored out of my mind within the first TEN MINUTES of the movie. But it takes the Colossal Titan FOREVER to make its grand entrance. I felt like I was just staring at the screen for anywhere from twenty to forty-five minutes before it FINALLY showed. And who knows? Maybe it really was forty-five minutes.
Not only that, but because of the UNBELIEVABLY SLOW pacing in this movie, by the time a fight scene comes up, you're probably already about to fall asleep if you haven't already due to these unnecessary plot points that come up because of the movie-exclusive-characters, and the changes that were made to the not-movie-exclusive-characters make the movie even more slow. I mean...I think I was about to fall asleep (and probably would have) if my friends didn't tell me about the Colossal Titan's grand entrance coming up. And the points I made about pacing lead me into my next problem with the movie.
5. Writing
Before I say anything else, let me say that this wouldn't be as big of a problem for me if it wasn't for one really big reason. And I mean BIG. Why is this a BIG problem? Well...because...
THE IDIOTS WRITING THE MOVIE HAD THE CREATOR OF THE ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL, HAJIME ISAYAMA, ON THEIR TEAM! HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY SCREW THIS UP?
Not only that, but Isayama apparently ASKED for some of the changes to the setting and characters to be made. WHY? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO US? YOU TURNED EREN INTO A WIMP, DECIDED TO REPLACE LEVI FREAKING ACKERMAN WITH THIS SHIKISHIMA GUY (I really couldn't care less about Shikishima, but...Levi...), AND JUST RUINED EVERYTHING! YOU CREATED THE SOURCE MATERIAL, WORKED ON THE WRITING, FANS PAID BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO COLLECT ALL THE VOLUMES OF THE MANGA AS WELL AS VARIOUS MERCHANDISE, AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY US?
And if you've seen the movie, you'll notice that it's not set in what looks like a post-apocalyptic Germany (note that the apocalypse has not happened and I've never been to Germany), but in Japan. Specifically, a deserted island off the coast of Nagasaki called Hashima, but it has the nickname "Gunkanjima" which literally means "Battleship Island" because the island looks like a ship in the water. As cool as that is...would it really have been that hard to film in Germany? I mean, I've never been, but I'm sure they could find SOMEWHERE in Germany to film it.
Not only that, but the characters say lots of things that you would NEVER BE ABLE TO IMAGINE them saying in the anime or manga. Forgetting the movie-exclusive characters, Eren acts like a total wimp, Mikasa...I can't even talk about her. But the dialog is off. It's possible some things were lost in translation and didn't quite carry over well, but unlikely.
6. Music
I LOVE a good soundtrack. So, when you have awesome songs like 紅蓮の弓矢 (Crimson Bow and Arrow) and 自由の翼 (Wings of Freedom) featured in the TV anime, and more awesome songs like 紅蓮の座標 (I couldn't find a good translation; when I do, I'll edit it in) and 自由の代償 (The Price of Freedom), along with pretty awesome ending songs for the anime, you would think that the music for this movie would be FREAKING AWESOME. Especially when you consider the fact that the guys doing the music for the movie, Shiro Sagisu, got the hit Japanese group, Sekai no Owari (literally: End of the World) to perform the theme songs for the movie.
The theme songs were called "ANTI-HERO" and "SOS." You'd think with titles like that, we'd be bound to get some form of hard rock or something that SOMEWHAT resembled Linked Horizon's sound (they're the group that did the music for the anime).
And...you'd be very wrong, indeed.
First of all, listen to "ANTI-HERO" and tell me if you think for so much as a second that the song belongs in the movie.
Now, listen to "SOS" and tell me if you think that THIS belongs in the movie.
Do these songs fit? AT ALL? Even remotely? I mean...WHY THE FRICK COULDN'T THEY GET LINKED HORIZON?!
I understand that these were Sekai no Owari's first songs that were ENTIRELY in English, so my complaint has nothing to do with that. I like that they're trying and applaud the effort. However, these songs SUCK. I mean...they just don't fit at all. It's pretty bad. I'm hopeful the songs in Part 2 will be better, but on the other hand, I don't want to get my hopes up.
Good G-d I could go on and on, but I think I'll stop there.
So...what do I think of this movie?
0 OUT OF 5
First, I'm rating this out of 5 because there's a second part coming out called Attack on Titan Part 2: End of the World. When I review that one, I'll take both of the ratings and look at the two movies as one whole movie while rating it out of ten.
Why: Well...you can clearly see why this movie sucks from the reasons listed above. There's a lot wrong with it. And while the movie does advertise itself as something that those new to Attack on Titan could watch, it wouldn't leave a good impression with those who were new to it. The writing seems lazy, the CGI is crap, and the fact that they got rid of LEVI FREAKING ACKERMAN, THE MOST POPULAR CHARACTER IN ALL OF ATTACK ON TITAN, AND REPLACED HIM WITH THIS SHIKISHIMA GUY would be enough to make anyone angry.
Look, it's one thing when you have to make adaptations. I get it. Changes have to be made. But...why change the names of so many of our favorite characters? You know, like LEVI FREAKING ACKERMAN?
And before you ask, I'm not going to stop calling him LEVI FREAKING ACKERMAN. He's that badass. He deserves it. Plus, I'm really ticked at how this movie sucks.
Anyway, why change the location? Why change all these names? Why change everything we KNOW AND LOVE ABOUT THE CHARACTERS OF ATTACK ON TITAN? Why change the Titans into some of the most horrible-looking and yet somehow laughable things on the planet? These things are supposed to be SCARY! We're supposed to jump or something when they're on screen; NOT BE WOKEN UP FROM ALMOST FALLING ASLEEP!
OK...there...I'm done. And out of breath. This movie sucks. The only reason I'm planning on watching Part 2 is to see if it will be any better and if it will include my favorite arc in the entire series.
Well, now I have a headache. I'm going to find something to do so I can get rid of my headache and have some more positive thoughts in my head. I'm getting back to loving life, and so should you! See you soon with Anime Monday #11! ~k
Meaning: I'M LOSING MY FREAKING SANITY OVER HERE! SOMEONE HELP!
Actually, you know what? Don't answer my question about when a Titan BABY was considered normal. I don't think I want to know. Let's just move on.
4. Pacing
I watch a few horror movies here and there. It's not my favorite genre (that's not to say I hate horror movies, but I don't necessarily love them, either), but M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense is one of my all time FAVORITE horror movies. However, for those of you who are more familiar with M. Night Shyamalan's more modern day works, like Signs, The Last Airbender, Devil, and After Earth (you know, the movies that no one really likes to talk about), those are the works where the acting is AWFUL and the pacing is just downright SLOW.
This movie made me feel like I was watching a Shyamalan film. And if this movie made me feel like I was watching The Sixth Sense, I wouldn't be making this complaint. The Sixth Sense was an AMAZING movie that I've seen quite a few times (might be watching it this Halloween, but that's beside the point). But this movie was just so unbelievably slow. I mean, I shouldn't end up bored out of my mind within the first TEN MINUTES of the movie. But it takes the Colossal Titan FOREVER to make its grand entrance. I felt like I was just staring at the screen for anywhere from twenty to forty-five minutes before it FINALLY showed. And who knows? Maybe it really was forty-five minutes.
Not only that, but because of the UNBELIEVABLY SLOW pacing in this movie, by the time a fight scene comes up, you're probably already about to fall asleep if you haven't already due to these unnecessary plot points that come up because of the movie-exclusive-characters, and the changes that were made to the not-movie-exclusive-characters make the movie even more slow. I mean...I think I was about to fall asleep (and probably would have) if my friends didn't tell me about the Colossal Titan's grand entrance coming up. And the points I made about pacing lead me into my next problem with the movie.
5. Writing
Before I say anything else, let me say that this wouldn't be as big of a problem for me if it wasn't for one really big reason. And I mean BIG. Why is this a BIG problem? Well...because...
THE IDIOTS WRITING THE MOVIE HAD THE CREATOR OF THE ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL, HAJIME ISAYAMA, ON THEIR TEAM! HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY SCREW THIS UP?
Not only that, but Isayama apparently ASKED for some of the changes to the setting and characters to be made. WHY? WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO US? YOU TURNED EREN INTO A WIMP, DECIDED TO REPLACE LEVI FREAKING ACKERMAN WITH THIS SHIKISHIMA GUY (I really couldn't care less about Shikishima, but...Levi...), AND JUST RUINED EVERYTHING! YOU CREATED THE SOURCE MATERIAL, WORKED ON THE WRITING, FANS PAID BILLIONS OF DOLLARS TO COLLECT ALL THE VOLUMES OF THE MANGA AS WELL AS VARIOUS MERCHANDISE, AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY US?
And if you've seen the movie, you'll notice that it's not set in what looks like a post-apocalyptic Germany (note that the apocalypse has not happened and I've never been to Germany), but in Japan. Specifically, a deserted island off the coast of Nagasaki called Hashima, but it has the nickname "Gunkanjima" which literally means "Battleship Island" because the island looks like a ship in the water. As cool as that is...would it really have been that hard to film in Germany? I mean, I've never been, but I'm sure they could find SOMEWHERE in Germany to film it.
Not only that, but the characters say lots of things that you would NEVER BE ABLE TO IMAGINE them saying in the anime or manga. Forgetting the movie-exclusive characters, Eren acts like a total wimp, Mikasa...I can't even talk about her. But the dialog is off. It's possible some things were lost in translation and didn't quite carry over well, but unlikely.
6. Music
I LOVE a good soundtrack. So, when you have awesome songs like 紅蓮の弓矢 (Crimson Bow and Arrow) and 自由の翼 (Wings of Freedom) featured in the TV anime, and more awesome songs like 紅蓮の座標 (I couldn't find a good translation; when I do, I'll edit it in) and 自由の代償 (The Price of Freedom), along with pretty awesome ending songs for the anime, you would think that the music for this movie would be FREAKING AWESOME. Especially when you consider the fact that the guys doing the music for the movie, Shiro Sagisu, got the hit Japanese group, Sekai no Owari (literally: End of the World) to perform the theme songs for the movie.
The theme songs were called "ANTI-HERO" and "SOS." You'd think with titles like that, we'd be bound to get some form of hard rock or something that SOMEWHAT resembled Linked Horizon's sound (they're the group that did the music for the anime).
And...you'd be very wrong, indeed.
First of all, listen to "ANTI-HERO" and tell me if you think for so much as a second that the song belongs in the movie.
Now, listen to "SOS" and tell me if you think that THIS belongs in the movie.
Do these songs fit? AT ALL? Even remotely? I mean...WHY THE FRICK COULDN'T THEY GET LINKED HORIZON?!
I understand that these were Sekai no Owari's first songs that were ENTIRELY in English, so my complaint has nothing to do with that. I like that they're trying and applaud the effort. However, these songs SUCK. I mean...they just don't fit at all. It's pretty bad. I'm hopeful the songs in Part 2 will be better, but on the other hand, I don't want to get my hopes up.
Good G-d I could go on and on, but I think I'll stop there.
So...what do I think of this movie?
0 OUT OF 5
First, I'm rating this out of 5 because there's a second part coming out called Attack on Titan Part 2: End of the World. When I review that one, I'll take both of the ratings and look at the two movies as one whole movie while rating it out of ten.
Why: Well...you can clearly see why this movie sucks from the reasons listed above. There's a lot wrong with it. And while the movie does advertise itself as something that those new to Attack on Titan could watch, it wouldn't leave a good impression with those who were new to it. The writing seems lazy, the CGI is crap, and the fact that they got rid of LEVI FREAKING ACKERMAN, THE MOST POPULAR CHARACTER IN ALL OF ATTACK ON TITAN, AND REPLACED HIM WITH THIS SHIKISHIMA GUY would be enough to make anyone angry.
Look, it's one thing when you have to make adaptations. I get it. Changes have to be made. But...why change the names of so many of our favorite characters? You know, like LEVI FREAKING ACKERMAN?
And before you ask, I'm not going to stop calling him LEVI FREAKING ACKERMAN. He's that badass. He deserves it. Plus, I'm really ticked at how this movie sucks.
Anyway, why change the location? Why change all these names? Why change everything we KNOW AND LOVE ABOUT THE CHARACTERS OF ATTACK ON TITAN? Why change the Titans into some of the most horrible-looking and yet somehow laughable things on the planet? These things are supposed to be SCARY! We're supposed to jump or something when they're on screen; NOT BE WOKEN UP FROM ALMOST FALLING ASLEEP!
OK...there...I'm done. And out of breath. This movie sucks. The only reason I'm planning on watching Part 2 is to see if it will be any better and if it will include my favorite arc in the entire series.
Well, now I have a headache. I'm going to find something to do so I can get rid of my headache and have some more positive thoughts in my head. I'm getting back to loving life, and so should you! See you soon with Anime Monday #11! ~k
Hey guys, kanna here. There are no excuses for why this is late...is what I want to say. Unfortunately, due to packing, my summer job, and a few other things, I wasn't able to write much. Also, writers block.
But, never fear! I slapped myself this morning for what an idiot I was being when I had perfect comedic gold right in front of me. It's...
UTA NO PRINCE-SAMA: MAJI LOVE REVOLUTIONS
But, never fear! I slapped myself this morning for what an idiot I was being when I had perfect comedic gold right in front of me. It's...
UTA NO PRINCE-SAMA: MAJI LOVE REVOLUTIONS
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| Note that the word "revolutions" is in katakana, the Japanese alphabet used for most English words. I'm sure that there is an actual translation, and the most unreliable translator in the world (Google translate) gave me the word 反乱 (hanran), which technically means rebellion. I guess the words rebellion and revolution are close enough, but... |
OK. Where do I begin with this? Well, in order for you to understand this review, I would suggest that you go and read my review of Uta no Prince-sama: Maji Love 1000% and 2000%. But that's a suggestion.
If you feel like being lazy (nothing wrong with that), here's a run down of the show in the form of bullet points:
So...yeah. That's basically the general gist of it. If you want info on the characters, I suggest (again) reading my UtaPri Maji Love 1000% and 2000% review. You don't have to, but at this point, I highly recommend it.
I guess I should give some visuals, given that hardly anyone can keep the names straight (myself and my friends included). So, let's get to it!
If you feel like being lazy (nothing wrong with that), here's a run down of the show in the form of bullet points:
- MAJI LOVE 1000%
- MEET COMPOSER HARUKA NANAMI
- STARISH IS FORMED; HARUKA NANAMI IS THEIR COMPOSER
- Members
- Otoya Ittoki
- Natsuki Shinomiya
- Masato Hijirikawa
- Ren Jinguji
- Tokiya Ichinose
- Syo Kurusu
- STARISH DEBUT
- note: They're called STARISH because different parts of their names make up the word. So we have Shinomiya Natsuki, Tokiya Ichinose, * instead of 'A' (stay tuned for next season), Ren Jinguji, Ittoki Otoya, Syo Kurusu, and Hijirikawa Masato
- MAJI LOVE 2000%
- QUARTET NIGHT INTRODUCED
- Members
- Reiji Kotobuki
- Ranmaru Kurosaki
- Ai Mikaze
- Camus (pronounced ka-myu)
- NEW MEMBER CECIL AIJIMA JOINS STARISH
- Becomes the 'A' in STARISH
- STARISH WINS UTAPRI AWARD AGAINST HEAVENS (another group; basically side characters)
Haruka Nanami is pretty much irrelevant, as nearly EVERYTHING in this show has to do with the guys. I mean...there's really not much to say about her. At all. It's just...the only defining characteristic she has is that she falls. A lot. Oh, and she's pretty clueless about a lot of things. Including when the guys are trying to confess their feelings to her, which happens quite a bit. She works with both Quartet Night and STARISH this season.
I guess I should give some visuals, given that hardly anyone can keep the names straight (myself and my friends included). So, let's get to it!
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| Natsuki Shinomiya |
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| Tokiya Ichinose |
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| Cecil Aijima |
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| Ren Jinguji |
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| Otoya Ittoki |
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| Syo Kurusu |
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| Masato Hijirikawa |
And the members of Quartet Night:
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| Reiji Kotobuki |
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| Ranmaru Kurosaki |
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| Ai Mikaze (note: surprisingly, I couldn't find pictures like the ones above for him. odd, considering his popularity.) |
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| Camus (no last name) |
OK. Now that that's settled, let's get to the plot.
To be honest, there really isn't that much of a plot this season. Hardly any new characters are introduced, but we do get some development on the members Quartet Night. Reiji and Camus are basically the only ones we don't get development on, which is a bit of a letdown. But we do get some interesting development with regards to Ai and Ranmaru.
Ai is actually...an idol robot. Yeah. Apparently, the writers thought Ai=A.I.=Artificial Intelligence.
Huh.
Then again, that's character development you wouldn't have known about unless you had played the games. The other members had their characters...more or less developed. We learned in 2000% that Ranmaru used to be a bassist in some rock band that disbanded for some reason, and Camus is the count of some foreign country called Permafrost. We got to see a little more of Ranmaru's past in this season and how he sometimes struggled keeping his rock side and idol side together. And Reiji...well...
Let's be perfectly honest; he didn't really get any development. At all. And that kinda pissed me off. Sure, in 2000%, Quartet Night was just introduced and all we basically got were just personalities. But while Ranmaru, Ai, and Camus got a lot of character development this season and a bit of last season, Reiji didn't get any.
And I know I said I wouldn't bring up the games in my reviews of adaptations of otome games (and if I didn't say that, I'm saying it now), given that the games are only released in Japan and everything is coming from research, but...THE GAMES GAVE REIJI SO MUCH MORE DEVELOPMENT!
How can I do this without spoiling anything? Okay, the long-ish short version of this is that before Quartet Night debuted, Reiji was a part of another idol group that disbanded due to the attempted suicide of one of the members who wound up in a coma (note that this is never brought up in the series. Whether it will be next season or not, I have no idea). This semi-links to Ai's story which wasn't 100% developed (I'd say somewhere between 10% and 30% developed), but you'd have to play the games in order to understand how, and given I don't want to spoil anymore, I'm just going to stop there.
Anyway, where the last seasons were more...expository, this one got right down to things. The main plot was that there was this Olympics-type event known as Super Star Sports (Triple S for short) and how the host country got to have one of its many artists sing the opening song. So President Shining decided to be a jerk and call STARISH and Quartet Night in and say that they're entering Quartet Night--NOT STARISH--into the competition to pick who sings at the Triple S. And I call this grounds for being a jerk because...well, would you call a bunch of people into a room, tell them about an amazing opportunity, and then says "It's not you"? NO!
So at first, STARISH is just nonchalant about the whole thing, until Cecil points out that this is their chance to debut worldwide and that another opportunity like this won't come again for a while, if at all. So STARISH say "REVOLUTION!" and run into Saotome's office after saying.
Saotome listens to their nearly identical arguments and asks if that's everything they have to say before he says he can't enter them. STARISH asks why and Saotome goes Super Saiyan and screams "REVOLUTION" (take three shots). Then the STARISH members (and Haruka) all say "revolution" one after the other in confusion, and this...really isn't explored in the next episode.
Huh.
Then again, that's character development you wouldn't have known about unless you had played the games. The other members had their characters...more or less developed. We learned in 2000% that Ranmaru used to be a bassist in some rock band that disbanded for some reason, and Camus is the count of some foreign country called Permafrost. We got to see a little more of Ranmaru's past in this season and how he sometimes struggled keeping his rock side and idol side together. And Reiji...well...
Let's be perfectly honest; he didn't really get any development. At all. And that kinda pissed me off. Sure, in 2000%, Quartet Night was just introduced and all we basically got were just personalities. But while Ranmaru, Ai, and Camus got a lot of character development this season and a bit of last season, Reiji didn't get any.
And I know I said I wouldn't bring up the games in my reviews of adaptations of otome games (and if I didn't say that, I'm saying it now), given that the games are only released in Japan and everything is coming from research, but...THE GAMES GAVE REIJI SO MUCH MORE DEVELOPMENT!
How can I do this without spoiling anything? Okay, the long-ish short version of this is that before Quartet Night debuted, Reiji was a part of another idol group that disbanded due to the attempted suicide of one of the members who wound up in a coma (note that this is never brought up in the series. Whether it will be next season or not, I have no idea). This semi-links to Ai's story which wasn't 100% developed (I'd say somewhere between 10% and 30% developed), but you'd have to play the games in order to understand how, and given I don't want to spoil anymore, I'm just going to stop there.
Anyway, where the last seasons were more...expository, this one got right down to things. The main plot was that there was this Olympics-type event known as Super Star Sports (Triple S for short) and how the host country got to have one of its many artists sing the opening song. So President Shining decided to be a jerk and call STARISH and Quartet Night in and say that they're entering Quartet Night--NOT STARISH--into the competition to pick who sings at the Triple S. And I call this grounds for being a jerk because...well, would you call a bunch of people into a room, tell them about an amazing opportunity, and then says "It's not you"? NO!
So at first, STARISH is just nonchalant about the whole thing, until Cecil points out that this is their chance to debut worldwide and that another opportunity like this won't come again for a while, if at all. So STARISH say "REVOLUTION!" and run into Saotome's office after saying.
Saotome listens to their nearly identical arguments and asks if that's everything they have to say before he says he can't enter them. STARISH asks why and Saotome goes Super Saiyan and screams "REVOLUTION" (take three shots). Then the STARISH members (and Haruka) all say "revolution" one after the other in confusion, and this...really isn't explored in the next episode.
So now that that's all been said and done, Shining decides to plan out...cross-units! According to the show, this basically means that members of STARISH would sing with other members that they wouldn't normally sing with.
So Otoya is paired up with Natsuki, Tokiya and Masato are paired up together, and Ren, Syo, and Cecil are all grouped together. The idea here is to give STARISH more publicity through various projects (a rock musical, a cell phone commercial, and singing at some concert), but the members want to use this as a chance to show Shining that they feel they are good enough to enter into the Triple S. So between mediocre songs by STARISH and somewhat decent songs from the members of Quartet Night, even the FREAKING MUSIC, THE THING THAT THIS SERIES IS ABOUT, can't save it.
All right, I'm not being entirely fair. The songs that the members of STARISH sing are actually decent songs. I just think they paired up the wrong people for them. Quartet Night's songs, on the other hand...I give a 50% rating. Why? Because there are four members, and only two of them got good songs that I could listen to over and over again. So let's just go through a brief review of each of the songs that WERE NOT the group songs. If the title is in ALL CAPS, the title was originally in English and not translated. If the title is Japanese, I'll put the Japanese title and the English title.
EMOTIONAL LIFE (Otoya and Natsuki): This was from the third episode of the series. Both have great voices, and the song is great. I love the violin intro before it gets into the electric guitar. It really gives it that classical music and rock music feel. However, these two SHOULD NOT have been paired up.
INNOCENT WIND (Ai Mikaze): This was from the fourth episode of the series and was the first of Quartet Night's solo songs to make its debut into anime. Ai's voice actor, Shouta Aoi, is an AMAZING singer, and I think they released Ai's song first because he's one of the most popular characters from the show. This is a REALLY addicting song and definitely suits Ai's character. And that high note at the end... -sigh- Well, you had to find the full version of the song to truly appreciate his voice. Or just listen to him sing any of his other songs, regardless of if it's from UtaPri or not.
CODE T.V.U (Ren, Syo, Cecil): This was from the fifth episode of the series and...well, as an episode for a music series about a group, it was pretty formulaic. But as for the song...it's an okay song. It's not good, it's not bad. It's just okay. Ren and Syo actually do sound pretty good together. But Cecil...I just can't. I mean, Cecil's voice actor, Kosuke Toriumi, sang the theme in Diabolik Lovers, and while his voice is naturally high-pitched and a little on the nasal side, he can go lower. Which would have sounded SO MUCH BETTER and really harmonized with Ren and Syo. All in all, good song, but Cecil should have been with someone else.
SAINTLY TERRITORY (Camus): This was from the sixth episode. And...as much as I can't stand Camus, I will admit he has a good voice. The song isn't that great in my opinion, but it does fit his character.
ONLY ONE (Ranmaru Kurosaki): This was from the seventh episode where we REALLY dove into Ranmaru's character and backstory. I'll admit, I couldn't stand him in 2000%. There was just something about him I didn't like at all. But after this episode, I started to really enjoy Ranmaru as a character and thought he was pretty awesome. The song is catchy, too, as it combines both elements of the world of a rock band and the world of an idol. The bass is ADDICTING. And Ranmaru's voice is pretty awesome. You can definitely tell that they did a good job of combining rock band music with idol music.
ORIGINAL RESONANCE (Tokiya and Masato): This was from the eighth episode, and HOLY FREAKING CRAP this song was perfect in every single way imaginable. First of all, the intro just hooks you right in. And then when they start singing, it's just ultimate perfection. This is the one pairing that I wouldn't change AT ALL. I just...this song is so amazing, I can't find the words to describe it.
NEVER... (Reiji Kotobuki): This was from the ninth episode, and what else can I say, other than IT SUCKED. I already didn't like Reiji (just too peppy for me and a little...um...I can't really find the word), and not only did the song suck, but the lead-in to the song was pretty bad, too. I mean...it fits what little we know of his character (almost nothing), but it just sounds AWFUL. Not on the level of nails on a chalkboard, but still awful.
We also get a lot of group songs. Most of which are...meh, at best. I mean, for a series that's ABOUT music, the music in this season of UtaPri is pretty lacking compared to the last two. I feel like the people who made the songs for UtaPri, Elements Garden, just decided to ride the popularity from last season and be lazy. I mean, STARISH's group song just SUCKED, whereas Quartet Night's was FREAKING AMAZING.
There was also a plot twist in the last episode of the season, but what really pissed me off about it was how they said "See you next season" at the end of the episode, before a fourth season was even announced. What can they possibly make a fourth season out of, anyway?
So, how do I rate this season? Um...well, it's too difficult for me to rate by number, so I'll just say it was...half-decent.
Why: The music isn't that great. I mean, it's hard to be proud of a series ABOUT music when you only have THREE good songs in the entire series.
The animation has slip-ups, especially during the ending credits, so the animation isn't great, either. I mean, watch these credits. REALLY watch them. Because...well...just watch.
Now TO BE FAIR, the song is actually a pretty decent song. It doesn't suck. They say "REVOLUTIONS" so many times that you could be drunk by the end of the song (and that's if you listen to the full version). But the animation is AWFUL. I mean, there are some parts where STARISH's dance movements look almost robotic; as if they're from a video game. Which, if video-game style animation was what they were going for, would be great. But it's not.
What's interesting, though, is that the song used for the opening theme of the first episode isn't sung by Tokiya's voice actor, Mamoru Miyano, the guy who sang the opening themes for the previous seasons. Nope, it's by the amazing members of Quartet Night, and it's called (and the style of the title is really weird, so I'm just going to put it in quotes) "The dice are cast." While I didn't like it at first, it started to grow on me after a couple listens. The animation isn't that great during it, and their dancing does seem pretty robotic, but then I discovered why the animation SUCKED in SO MANY SCENES. It's because the animators blew ALL THEIR MONEY on...this:
That's right. The animators blew ALL THEIR MONEY on the video for Camus's song, SAINTLY TERRITORY. While the video isn't that great (actually, that's an understatement; it's pretty bad), the animation is the best animation you're going to get throughout...basically the whole season.
STARISH and Quartet Night actually do have a song that they sing together, called GOLDEN☆STAR. And, guess what? It's not that great, either. Which is a shame, because you have some AMAZING voices singing together for the first (and quite possibly only, unless you go to the live shows or play the games) time in the anime, and it just doesn't sound that great. I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but this definitely wasn't it.
So Otoya is paired up with Natsuki, Tokiya and Masato are paired up together, and Ren, Syo, and Cecil are all grouped together. The idea here is to give STARISH more publicity through various projects (a rock musical, a cell phone commercial, and singing at some concert), but the members want to use this as a chance to show Shining that they feel they are good enough to enter into the Triple S. So between mediocre songs by STARISH and somewhat decent songs from the members of Quartet Night, even the FREAKING MUSIC, THE THING THAT THIS SERIES IS ABOUT, can't save it.
All right, I'm not being entirely fair. The songs that the members of STARISH sing are actually decent songs. I just think they paired up the wrong people for them. Quartet Night's songs, on the other hand...I give a 50% rating. Why? Because there are four members, and only two of them got good songs that I could listen to over and over again. So let's just go through a brief review of each of the songs that WERE NOT the group songs. If the title is in ALL CAPS, the title was originally in English and not translated. If the title is Japanese, I'll put the Japanese title and the English title.
EMOTIONAL LIFE (Otoya and Natsuki): This was from the third episode of the series. Both have great voices, and the song is great. I love the violin intro before it gets into the electric guitar. It really gives it that classical music and rock music feel. However, these two SHOULD NOT have been paired up.
INNOCENT WIND (Ai Mikaze): This was from the fourth episode of the series and was the first of Quartet Night's solo songs to make its debut into anime. Ai's voice actor, Shouta Aoi, is an AMAZING singer, and I think they released Ai's song first because he's one of the most popular characters from the show. This is a REALLY addicting song and definitely suits Ai's character. And that high note at the end... -sigh- Well, you had to find the full version of the song to truly appreciate his voice. Or just listen to him sing any of his other songs, regardless of if it's from UtaPri or not.
CODE T.V.U (Ren, Syo, Cecil): This was from the fifth episode of the series and...well, as an episode for a music series about a group, it was pretty formulaic. But as for the song...it's an okay song. It's not good, it's not bad. It's just okay. Ren and Syo actually do sound pretty good together. But Cecil...I just can't. I mean, Cecil's voice actor, Kosuke Toriumi, sang the theme in Diabolik Lovers, and while his voice is naturally high-pitched and a little on the nasal side, he can go lower. Which would have sounded SO MUCH BETTER and really harmonized with Ren and Syo. All in all, good song, but Cecil should have been with someone else.
SAINTLY TERRITORY (Camus): This was from the sixth episode. And...as much as I can't stand Camus, I will admit he has a good voice. The song isn't that great in my opinion, but it does fit his character.
ONLY ONE (Ranmaru Kurosaki): This was from the seventh episode where we REALLY dove into Ranmaru's character and backstory. I'll admit, I couldn't stand him in 2000%. There was just something about him I didn't like at all. But after this episode, I started to really enjoy Ranmaru as a character and thought he was pretty awesome. The song is catchy, too, as it combines both elements of the world of a rock band and the world of an idol. The bass is ADDICTING. And Ranmaru's voice is pretty awesome. You can definitely tell that they did a good job of combining rock band music with idol music.
ORIGINAL RESONANCE (Tokiya and Masato): This was from the eighth episode, and HOLY FREAKING CRAP this song was perfect in every single way imaginable. First of all, the intro just hooks you right in. And then when they start singing, it's just ultimate perfection. This is the one pairing that I wouldn't change AT ALL. I just...this song is so amazing, I can't find the words to describe it.
NEVER... (Reiji Kotobuki): This was from the ninth episode, and what else can I say, other than IT SUCKED. I already didn't like Reiji (just too peppy for me and a little...um...I can't really find the word), and not only did the song suck, but the lead-in to the song was pretty bad, too. I mean...it fits what little we know of his character (almost nothing), but it just sounds AWFUL. Not on the level of nails on a chalkboard, but still awful.
We also get a lot of group songs. Most of which are...meh, at best. I mean, for a series that's ABOUT music, the music in this season of UtaPri is pretty lacking compared to the last two. I feel like the people who made the songs for UtaPri, Elements Garden, just decided to ride the popularity from last season and be lazy. I mean, STARISH's group song just SUCKED, whereas Quartet Night's was FREAKING AMAZING.
There was also a plot twist in the last episode of the season, but what really pissed me off about it was how they said "See you next season" at the end of the episode, before a fourth season was even announced. What can they possibly make a fourth season out of, anyway?
So, how do I rate this season? Um...well, it's too difficult for me to rate by number, so I'll just say it was...half-decent.
Why: The music isn't that great. I mean, it's hard to be proud of a series ABOUT music when you only have THREE good songs in the entire series.
The animation has slip-ups, especially during the ending credits, so the animation isn't great, either. I mean, watch these credits. REALLY watch them. Because...well...just watch.
Now TO BE FAIR, the song is actually a pretty decent song. It doesn't suck. They say "REVOLUTIONS" so many times that you could be drunk by the end of the song (and that's if you listen to the full version). But the animation is AWFUL. I mean, there are some parts where STARISH's dance movements look almost robotic; as if they're from a video game. Which, if video-game style animation was what they were going for, would be great. But it's not.
What's interesting, though, is that the song used for the opening theme of the first episode isn't sung by Tokiya's voice actor, Mamoru Miyano, the guy who sang the opening themes for the previous seasons. Nope, it's by the amazing members of Quartet Night, and it's called (and the style of the title is really weird, so I'm just going to put it in quotes) "The dice are cast." While I didn't like it at first, it started to grow on me after a couple listens. The animation isn't that great during it, and their dancing does seem pretty robotic, but then I discovered why the animation SUCKED in SO MANY SCENES. It's because the animators blew ALL THEIR MONEY on...this:
That's right. The animators blew ALL THEIR MONEY on the video for Camus's song, SAINTLY TERRITORY. While the video isn't that great (actually, that's an understatement; it's pretty bad), the animation is the best animation you're going to get throughout...basically the whole season.
STARISH and Quartet Night actually do have a song that they sing together, called GOLDEN☆STAR. And, guess what? It's not that great, either. Which is a shame, because you have some AMAZING voices singing together for the first (and quite possibly only, unless you go to the live shows or play the games) time in the anime, and it just doesn't sound that great. I'm not really sure what I was expecting, but this definitely wasn't it.
Quartet Night did, however, get a group song. While it's not as good as ポワゾンKISS (Poison KISS) from 2000%, it is a pretty good song and I like it almost as much as ポワゾンKISS (Poison KISS). They start out a capella, before the music comes in, and the song just sucks you right in. I actually like this better than STARISH's group song, マジLOVEレボリュウションズ (Maji Love REVOLUTIONS).
This season may have revolved more around Quartet Night than STARISH, but I still felt as if more time and effort could have been spent on STARISH's songs, and the animation. Haruka also managed to become more annoying this season, something I honestly didn't think was possible.
I'd love to say that the music makes up for the somewhat sloppy animation, but it doesn't. When you like only three or four songs from the entire series, it's a little hard to say that the music makes up for the crappy animation. I just hope the writers and animators don't ride that popularity high for too long. It's making them lazy and making the show become more and more formulaic.
Well...that's it. In the meantime, I'm off to get ready for Anime Mondays #10. What is it? Well, I'll give you two hints:
1. "angriff auf die Titanen"
2.
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| OK, if this picture doesn't give anything away, I don't know what will. |
And that's all you're going to get from me! I'll do my best to make this one a video, but given that footage is pretty hard to find, it will either be me just talking on camera the whole time with bits of the anime edited in, or a written review. Look forward to it!
Loving life :)
~k
