There’s been quite a few shows/movies I’ve taken the time to watch and enjoy, but ended up finding very little to praise/criticize about, which meant they didn’t really justify a full review. So here, I’ll run through the list of stuff that’s been backlogged and briefly describe them and sum them up. So yeah. This is a thing.
Brave
Overall, a good movie that feels underwhelming because of its pedigree. It’s waaaaaay too short and much of the movie blazes past without enough time to build up pacing or interest in the actual events happening. This feels like a movie that could have had so much more going for it, but then didn’t, because Pixar apparently spent more money on the graphics (which, admittedly, look terrific) than on, well, anything else. The vocalized music was also a very bizarre choice, and I never ever felt like it really fit with the events taking place, or even the mood of the movie overall.
Score: 7.5/10
Angel Beats
An Anime I watched about a year ago and decided to come back to for a retrospective, only to discover pretty quickly why I forgot about it so quickly. Angel Beats isn’t a bad Anime, and it has some great individual moments scattered throughout, but the ending is terribly written (although it’s not the soul-crushing “makes you retroactively hate the franchise as a result” ending that End of Evangelion was), and there’s quite a few moments involving many characters’ back-stories that I’m pretty sure were supposed to be poignant and moving, but just come off as laughably cliche. Still, there’s no denying that when it’s in action-comedy mode, it works really well, and if you’re willing to ignore the pretty terrible ending, then you’ll probably still enjoy this Anime.
Score: 6/10
K-On!
A few months back I posted Gigguk’s video review (that he collaborated on with Klaus of PSOHB) and pointing out that they did a better review than I ever could. Well, their review is still better than anything I could do, but I don’t really like relying on others’ opinions to buffer my own. K-On! is a bad show. I didn’t make the mistake of thinking it was a music Anime, but even on its merits as a Slice of Life, it’s still pretty bad. The characters aren’t interesting, the comedy is never better than a forced chuckle, and the jokes get reused and repeated until they have been completely run into the ground. And there’s a vaguely creepy sexualization of the characters that I don’t remember being so prevalent in its predecessors like Azumanga Daioh or even Lucky Star (at least when Lucky Star was being perverted, it was in a comedic or parody style, you know?). Better has been done before, and after, this show and the only points I could possibly award it are for some above-average artwork and animation.
Score: 2.5/10
