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.

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So I’m writing a novel called “Homecoming”. I’d rather not discuss too much about what it is or what it’s about, but as one of a few many “Author’s Tracts” getting inserted into the novel as my way of complaining about anything in society that really bothers me, I ended up writing this entire scene, largely inspired by ViHart’s rant on the “wrongness of PI” (found here!). I present it to you now, in all of its insane glory.

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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.

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I have no overarching qualm with organized religion, as an institution. Though I personally identify as agnostic/leaning towards atheism, it’s always been my contention that, in the course of human history, religions as a whole have done more good than harm to the world, and that anyone who would say otherwise is really saying so at odds with historical precedent.

This makes the most logical sense to me, especially since there are very few world-recognized religions whose central tenants don’t include, in some form or another, “Don’t be a dick to people.” But this simply being true doesn’t negate the capacity or need for me to be critical of modern organized religious institutions, and this is especially true for several institutions that haven’t behaved themselves as well as they ought to.

So, let’s boil down a few “Dos and Don’ts” of Religion.

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Just some random thoughts that have sprung to me recently. Some might be profound, but most (if not all) will just be random shit. So here we go.

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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….

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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.

A: “If anyone [on our team] tries to rush Banshees, I’m killing the Starport.”

A: “I’m just saying.”

B: <zerg player> “I’m rushing Banshees.”

A: “FUCK YOU!”

B: “What?”

B: “What did you say you’ll do to me?”

A: “I said I want to do sex to you.”

B: “Ewww.”

B: “How much will you pay me?”

A: “Okay, hear me out.”

A: “I’ll pay you….”

A: “Five…..”

B: “Nope.”

A: “TRILLION…”

B: “Alright.”

A: “Oysters.”

B: “Oh. Keep your money, I’m not worth that much.”

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

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