Before we get into the meat of it, a few things first: I’m not going to review this show itself, largely because there’s no point: It’s nearly flawless. Easily one of the best series I’ve ever seen, and definitely going to be sitting in my top 5 (#2, FYI) for a very long time. And while there’s plenty I could say about it in terms of themes, rhetoric, and symbolism, doing so requires the unveiling of pretty much every single spoiler in the show, and even if most of you have already seen the show, I’d rather avoid doing that, if possible.

Rather, my goal here will be to attempt to review the English dub of this show, which does have some many identifiable faults, and actually might be one of the most frustrating English dubs I’ve ever heard, even if none of it is ever worse than mediocre.

One more thing: I’ll be avoiding most spoilers for this show, especially plot related spoilers, but some discussion of both the dub’s strengths and weaknesses involves alluding to some important character developments, so if you haven’t seen this show yet, there is a possibility of minor spoilage.

Read More

Somehow, I can’t help but think that that was the most fitting way to play the game. Constantly getting up to have to blow my nose, or cough up more of that thick, yellow-ish fluid that was building in my throat, or checking myself in the mirror and noticing that white fur was apparently growing on my tongue.

Sorry, is this digression too disturbing for you? Then my advice is that you not play Spec Ops: The Line. Because if an extended description of my body fluids isn’t your taste, then you don’t have nearly the guts to play this game.

Read More

EDIT: So it would be nice if I hadn’t just let this sit in my queue for two weeks. Wouldn’t you say so?

Part 1 of this writeup can be found here, and contains a more objective, detached assessment of the movie (short version: It’s really good), and is also written without huge plot spoilers. Well, this one abandons the latter aspect so I can delve into the most important themes. So unless you’ve seen this movie, or else don’t mind spoilers, then you should go back to that piece, and wait until you’ve seen it to come here.

Anyways, that having been said….

Let’s….

Do…..

This….

Read More

The toughest thing about trying to review a movie like ParaNorman (which, by the way, is REALLY REALLY GOOD AND YOU NEED TO GO SEE THIS MOVIE THREE WEEKS AGO) is that the things that make it such a great film are impossible to discuss without revealing several rather substantial plot twists that take place at the beginning of the last third of the film, that not only completely change the tone of the movie, but also upset and deconstruct the films entire thesis.

So I’m left with two basic options: I either try to write a review while avoiding any and all spoilers (the same decision I made when reviewing Steins;Gate, which I’m somewhat regretting at this point, as it severely limited the quality of my review) or I write a review that openly discusses the spoilers and hope that the review is read exclusively by people who already saw it.

Instead, I’m going to split the difference. This first post is going to be a “You need to go see this movie” rundown of the technical proficiency’s of this movie, and later this week, I’ll have a follow-up for a more in-depth discussion.

Without spoiling anything: Paranorman focuses on the tribulations of an eleven year old boy named Norman Babcock living in a town that is a very affectionate (and very accurate) parody of Salem Massachusetts, where the local tourism industry (and indeed, the town itself) is built around the legend of a witch’s curse that supposedly took place nearly 300 years ago. History buffs well acquainted with the history of towns like Salem will be readily pleased by the attention to detail on that subject (and that’s all I’m saying on the subject for now).

Norman would be a social outcast in any town, owing to his horror movie fixations, and his loner streak, but there’s one aspect that makes his social stigmatization worse: He has the capacity to see and converse with ghosts. Naturally, he’s labelled as the town freak for this fixation, because not a single person believes him.

But pretty quickly, it is revealed that the witch’s curse is real, and when Norman’s attempts to stop it run sour, the town quickly becomes overrun by the living dead.

I noticed very quickly that Norman’s talent is treated with far more metaphorical interpretation than literal interpretation: Norman is channeling the spirit of every bullied kid who was ever ostracized for being different from everyone else, in a town that is, quite literally, a hiveminded swath of conformity and anti-intellectualism (seriously, go back through the movie, and note that Norman and Neil are pretty much the only characters who display any intellect). I have no doubt that some people (you know EXACTLY who I’m talking about) are going to take offense to that message, but I loved the hell out of it.

If there’s any major negative criticism I could levy at this film, it’s in the first 30 minutes, where it seemed like the Director/Animation Studio were trying to show off their technology: Grand, sweeping shots of the town, showing off every single character model they could squeeze into a single shot; Lots of small “art geeky” details that LAIKA were really eager to showcase, proving they can handle fine details the same as Pixar or Dreamworks…. It’s all well placed, but it felt to me like there was just too much happening at once. To some degree, this is the same problem that Legend of Korra had in its first few episodes, where you get the impression that the runtime had to be trimmed last-minute to fit the allotted runtime, and the stuff that usually gets lost first is the transition periods between scenes.

After that hurdle, the film is perfectly fine. The biggest overriding theme is fear, and how fear itself is a far more dangerous force than the looming threat of the undead; the movie does an excellent job conveying this message without having to get overly preachy, and there’s plenty of humor covering up seams in the story structure.

Divulging any further would be inappropriate without dropping the spoiler warning, so here’s the wrap-up before my follow-up post: The movie is excellent, barring some first act issues, and you should absolutely make a point of seeing it before it stops playing in theaters (or, failing that, hopefully it won’t take long for the movie to come out on DVD).

EDIT: After some delay shenanigans, I have part 2 up.

Steins;Gate is a 2011 Anime that aired during the spring-summer seasons, and ran for 24 episodes. A Sci-fi Anime, it focuses on Okabe Rintarou HOUOUIN KYOUMA, a self proclaimed mad scientist who endeavors to invent time travel while persistently warning all those around him about secret sinister organizations, and his friends, as they attempt (and eventually succeed) at developing a working time machine. How, you ask? By strapping a cell-phone to a microwave. No, really.

Trying to describe exactly what this Anime is is tricky. Up front, it’s a kind of silly, Slice of Life show that features (very limited) time travel as a plot device. There’s several interesting characters (and a few not-so-interesting), and most of them grow in significant ways as the story progresses. But all the while, the show is kept very light-hearted, with much of the shows humor just being characters bouncing verbal barbs against each other. I especially liked Okabe as a character, as he demonstrates some of the widest range, as a character, across the entire series.

The plot is pretty basic. After screwing around with the “Phone Microwave”, Okabe learns that they have developed a means to send text messages to phones in the past. He and his friends uncover the limitations and breadths of the Time Machine’s capabilities, and eventually, begin to make changes to the past for the sake of studying the effect that doing so has on the present. Okabe quickly realizes that he possesses a unique ability (referred to in-show as “Reading Steiner”) that changes how time travel works for him: when alterations are made to the past, instead of having his memories altered to match the new timeline, he still retains memories of the old timeline. This proves to be a curse very early on, but also as a blessing, as while the effects of time travel prove unpredictable, and leave him “out of sync” with his companions, he ends up being the only person who can even determine that changes have been made.

People who have watched this show (or else have read the VN it was based on) might be confused by my explanation of the plot. Well, to those of you out there, just so we’re clear: YES, I am leaving out a rather crucial plot development. You and I both know what it is, and it shouldn’t be difficult for you to figure out WHY I’m omitting those details.

What I WILL say, however, is that the plot is easily the biggest strength of this show, and once the plot takes over the story, you’ll probably find this to be one of the most engaging Sci-Fi stories told in this Genre.

Steins;Gate’s strengths are in the plot, characterization, and in the unique and fascinating version of Time Travel presented in this story. There’s also a very real emotional torque that gets wheeled out in the later few episodes, and while I doubt it (or anything else for that matter) will come close to rivaling Clannad, it was very affecting, in a way that is typically far less compelling than it was here. But it isn’t without its flaws, and those flaws are not insignificant.

For starters, the first half of the show is simply too slow. This isn’t to say that it isn’t entertaining in its own right, but nothing from the first half of the show really left an impression on me. In all fairness, this is before they’ve really developed the time machine, which means the bulk of the time travel doesn’t happen until afterwards. That the show eventually picks up the pace is great, but it might be tempting for viewers not expecting such a development to stop watching before then, if they didn’t find the characters as much fun as I did.

Secondly, there’s a series of episodes towards the end of the second act that make it rather painfully obvious that this show was based on a Visual Novel. The series takes a rather jarring shift of tone for several episodes to allow a group of minor female characters to each get an episode to hash out their personal issues with Okabe as a mediator, the goal being that if Okabe can help them with their issues, then the plot will be able to advance. I’ll concede that this is seminal to the medium, and that a lot of fans would probably have been disappointed if it were omitted, but me personally, I didn’t really care about the three girls involved, as they had gotten little screen-time up to that point. Consequently, it breaks up what was, up to that point a very engaging plot, for several episodes that just feel very lackluster.

Having said all that though, this is an extremely good show. My advice for any potential fans of this show is to avoid learning too much about the show: There’s a lot of reviews/synopsis that inadvertently reveal large amounts of plot information, and to me at least, the best way to go into this show is to know nothing, and to be engrossed in the developments as they happen. And, on a subjective level, while I can criticize this show for its issues with pacing, when the show needs to “deliver”, it really does. Check this out. You won’t be disappointed.

Score: 9/10

Given that the show ran for at least a hundred and a half episodes, I’m not sure I’ll attempt to archive trawl through the series just for the novelty of giving the show a proper review, so instead, I’m going to endeavor to just spill my feelings on what I’ve seen thus-far.

The first thing I’m noticing is that the show feels very dated. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does make the show more difficult to take seriously. Also, I’m not seeing much of the show’s “legendary” good writing, with most of these early episodes relying on trite, overdone cliches. And I gotta say, I’m pretty sure Joss Whedon could sue Stephanie Meyer, whose plot of Twilight seems to have been lifted from the seventh episode of Buffy (seriously, go back and compare the plots of those two works side-by-side, and tell me for one second that they aren’t telling basically the same story).

But, oddly enough, there’s something compellingly endearing to the show. Willow is a fun character, able to spout non-sequitur to help keep the dialogue fun, Buffy is of course a very strong female character, as is characteristic of Whedon’s writing, and Xander is…. Kind of unmemorable, actually, but two for three isn’t bad. Giles is a lot of fun though.

Something tells me that if this show aired today it probably wouldn’t do nearly as well, but even today, it’s not hard to see what a lot of fans have found so compelling: A story about a hero rising to the challenge set before her, set in the context of a high school coming-of-age story. Not bad at all.

So this show is reminding me pretty considerably of Fullmetal Alchemist.

I know people have made that comparison before with the original series, but this episode particularly drove that point home, since there wasn’t much in TLA that drove the same “anti-special” theme that FMA had, or more contextually, X-men. Whatever the case, I find it impressive that I could figure out before the episode even aired what exactly the “revelation” was, but still be unnerved when the reveal actually came.

There’s still a little bit of an uncanny valley effect taking place in this series, where it’s jarring to see how much the world has changed since the original series, but I’m still confident that will pass as time goes on. The writers seem to have internalized that KorraxMako will be the big “Will they or won’t they” of this series, but hopefully, they won’t settle for that too quickly. Not necessarily for my sake, just that shipping is half of fuels these fan bases these days. =D

From a narrative perspective, the show is ramping up the tension pretty quickly; definitely much faster than TLA did. I’m thinking this is partially because there’s no guarantee that LoK will run as long as TLA, or perhaps the writers are trying to make this a one-season arc? Either way, it’s making the wait for each episode unbearable.

Not much else to say, really. Particularly liked this episode.

Score: 8/10

Clannad and Clannad: After Story are, ostensibly, separate works, but they aired off the backs of each other, using the same art styles, and as a direct continuation of the previous series, so I feel like I should review them as the same series.

Clannad is a bit of a weird specimen. At times it appears to be following the same basic structure of a Harem Comedy series, but then it takes abrupt turns for the dramatic. The main character is Tomoya, who is a despondent High School student with a bad relationship with his father. When he meets a frail, but kind girl named Nagisa, he ends up striking up a friendship, and eventual romance with her. Interspersed with their budding relationship, however, are various stories, many of which have vaguely supernatural subtexts, that run in parallel.

I’ve already ranted about how Tomoya and Nagisa’s relationship interactions felt artificial, so I won’t repeat myself here, except to clarify that when I say that their interactions felt artificial, I mean exactly that: Tomoya and Nagisa are a good pair, they have great chemistry, and it makes sense, both in a narrative-sense and in terms of their character for them to get together; they just don’t *act* like two people in love, even well after they get married. Kind of a failure of “Show, don’t tell”, I suppose.

The series has great humorous moments, and great dramatic moments. Indeed, the main reason this series has had so much staying power in the collective psyche probably has to do with the gut-punch that occurs late in After Story. I’ll endeavor not to spoil any big plot details here, except to point out that I was crying heavily when it came about, and I had already had it spoiled myself (too much wandering on TVTropes, FYI) when I got there, so suffice to say, it’s NOT hyperbole to say that this show strikes with one of the hardest emotional blows I’ve seen a series manage.

About six episodes before the end, actually. The unfortunate part being that the show never really manages to get back up to that level again before the end, so the show ends less powerful than it started, but I guess that’s alright.

As I said, when the show was trying to be funny, it usually succeeded very well, with many of the character interactions being very charming, especially in the first half of the series. Having said that though, it needed to strike a much better balance between the drama and the humor. Yes, the dramatic scenes were suitably dramatic, and the comedy scenes were suitably hilarious, but either—especially the drama— had a tendency to run on far too long, and ended up souring the effect considerably. I’m willing to excuse it in the later, heavily charged episodes of After Story, but it was frustrating in the early stages of the Anime.

At the end of the day, I have difficulty recommending this series. Not because it’s objectively bad; it’s actually really, really good. And I mean that. This series was a lot of fun to watch. But it takes too long to get to the important stories, and at 45 episodes from the start of Clannad to the end of After Story, it might be too much for some people. Still, if you’re willing to invest the time, this is definitely one of the better ones.

Score: 8.5

Spoiler Warning for anyone who wants to watch Clannad without plot details being revealed.

Read More

When I finished watching this movie, the first thing I did was go to a local diner to quickly get something to eat. Mentioning offhandedly while the waiter cleaned up a table for me, I told him that I’d just seen Hunger Games, and he asked me how it was. My response?

“This movie is a textbook definition of Good Intentions Gone Astray.”

The plot follows Kattniss Everdeen (I’m NOT spellchecking this), a young teenager who volunteers to participate in a Battle Royale-styled tournament hosted by the obligatory fascist/totalitarian government, where 24 teens are brought in to fight to the death, and only one is allowed to live. The execution of this tournament is then marketed as a reality TV show that placates the masses. Kat’s decision is motivated by the fact that, by lottery, her little sister was picked, and unable to stomach the thought of letting a 12-year-old girl participate in such a blood bath, she offers herself up as replacement.

So the movie is then split into 2 parts: The first is the sweeping digression involving how the games are presented to the public, and how the players are told to try to “play up” their characters to score points with sponsors. The second is the actual tournament itself, which is basically just one long scene where Kat barely survives against the odds.

There’s two things which are good in this movie: The Acting, and the overarching narrative. That last one is important, because if that were bad, I’d be ready to condemn the entire project. I’m not gonna speak too much about the acting, since there’s nothing spectacular about it; It’s good, the actors are all doing a good job.

The narrative is riddled with Cliche, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. If nothing else, the (very few) twists and turns are interesting, if very predictable. There’s a running side-plot that eventually spills over into the main plot involving the fact that Kat and the boy brought with her to the games (Peeta. Yeah. Seriously. Not Peter. Peeta.) are playing up that they might/are romantically involved, which is supposed to make the sponsors empathize. No prizes for guessing that their “fake” romance eventually morphs into “real” romance.

So that’s the good stuff. Acting is good, and Narrative is interesting, if maybe Cliche. And while we’re at it, I’m going to make one more praise for Kat being a genuinely strong female character, the likes of which has been absent from the societal sphere of influence ever since the Harry Potter series concluded.

And guess what? If all that stuff is present in the book, then consider me interested. I’ll probably check out the books once I have some spare time. And chances are, I’ll probably like them/consider them respectable material.

But none of that is enough to salvage this movie, and here’s why.

=============================================================

The movie has several critical flaws, which I’ll address one at a time. The first is the cinematography. I don’t know who they put in charge of filming this movie, but he needs to be fired immediately. The camera shakes as though the guy filming was being molested by Michael Bay. And it’s not just during action scenes either, where it might be excusable; Some of the most poignant moments of this movie are ruined because the camera can’t seem to figure out whether the mildly attractive actress is Kat, or if it’s a nearby wall ornament that we’re supposed to be paying attention to. Just simple scenes, where we see Kat talking to someone else, and the camera is busy looking everywhere BUT at the characters.

And the action scenes only compound the problem. I remember the first scene from when the games themselves began, and we see kid after kid getting killed off within a minute of the game beginning. Except we DON’T see it, because the camera is so blurry, and swerving all over the place.

I’m well aware WHY they did it, where they wanted to try to capture the brutality of the games. It doesn’t change the fact that if you really want to capture the brutality of these games, the best thing you can do is show us, the audience, exactly what is happening in excruciating detail. Their inability to rein in the cameraman meant that my immersion was shattered, because instead of paying attention to the story, I was paying attention to how much my eyes hurt from trying to follow Kat during even the quietest and most low-key moments of the movie.

The next big problem with this story is that it doesn’t even really feel like it has proper closure for the events that take place. We’re given glimpses into possible rebellions that take place as a result of Kat’s decisions (she takes care of a young girl that gets mortally wounded halfway through the games, and her act of kindness spurs on the people from that district to rain open contempt upon their oppressors), but nothing more than that. And for me, this is particularly bothersome because the movie already runs on pretty long, for all the stuff that happens, that it shouldn’t have been hard to have a proper send off for all the themes involving class struggles, and especially the dichotomy between the flamboyant rich upper class, and the lower class that are made to participate in these tournaments in the first place.

I mean, isn’t that supposed to be the main *point* of all this? Certainly there’s fun watching teenagers kill each other, but isn’t the real overarching theme supposed to be about how callous the audience is to the plights of these kids when presented as a reality TV show? Why does this theme basically get ignored once we reach the last act of the movie? I know it gets picked up again in later books, but it doesn’t change the fact that the story has concluded without really addressing these long-standing issues.

At the end of the day, though, the real point of this kind of story is supposed to be the characters. So here we have Kat, and Peeta, since he actually becomes pretty important by the end. So what have they learned? How has this experience changed them? Well, I can’t figure out what it is that they’ve learned. Is it that the Hunger Games are cruel and inhumane? Well, they kind of already knew that when the movie started. That was the whole reason Kat volunteered, because she would have rather died herself than let her sister die. Was Kat forced to grow and mature as a person? No, not really. She was already pretty tough and capable when the movie started.

And again, while I can appreciate that we don’t have enough female characters like her, it doesn’t help when you’re reminded that Kat already being pretty tough when the movie starts means the drama is sucked out of her struggles; Of COURSE she’s going to succeed. She’s motherfucking Katniss Everdeen!

What of the supporting cast? What supporting cast? You mean that nameless blob of rival tributes? We learn the name of maybe one of them, and she’s just a young girl we meet for all of 10 minutes before she gets killed off. We later see Kat crying over her death, but the audience hasn’t known her long enough to have any genuine engagement of pathos for her passing.

==========================================================

If it seems like I’m down on this movie, it’s only because there’s so many areas where this movie *could* have been much better, if made by smarter/more talented filmmakers. And it’s frustrating for me, because this is a franchise that could have actually had some modern-day relevance, and with some actual talent poured into the movie, it could have been a pop-culture classic. Instead, well…….. It just feels like a shadow of what could have been.

Score: 3.5/10