Review Thread

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DSY
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Review Thread

Post by DSY »

A thread for reviews. Ever seen a movie or TV show and wanted to tell people what you thought? Warn them to never see it or tell them how great it was? Probably the former. Well now you can. I sound like one of those guys trying to sell you things on TV. Anyway. I'm opening up a review thread for anyone to use. You are free to post your reviews of things that you wish to review, in whatever style you want, be it actually reviewing something, or doing it to be funny, or both, and however you review it is up to you. like notes or a recap or something. Of course there are some rules. like don't break any of the rules on AAO and... no, that's really it. Anyway, have fun telling people your opinion on things. And if you want to, you may also suggest things to be reviewed by saying so. Though if anyone does so is up to them.

Review List:
Killer Queen review by NihilisticNinja on page 1
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Vento Aureo review by Lind on page 1
Toradora! Review-Spoiler free, more or less reviewed by NihilisticNinja on page 1
Puella Magi Madoka Magica Review (SPOILERS) Steins;Gate Review (SPOILERS) Nanoha A's Review (SPOILERS) all reviewed by Kwando1313 on page 1
Toradora Review (SPOILERS) by Kwando1313 on page 1
Absolute Duo Review by ~Dataman~ on page 1
Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero (Spoiler Free, More or Less) Review by NihilisticNinja on page 1
Gakkou Gurashi, AKA School-Live!. Let's do this Review by Kwando1313 on page 1
Who is Kei Review by SS Sleuth on page 1
Sword Art Online 2 Review by Lind on page 1
Fire Emblem Gaiden Review by GuardianDreamer on page 1
Kaiba review by Lind on page 1
Whisper of the Heart review by Lind on Page 1
Zootopia/Zootropolis review (spoilers) by energizerspark
Steins;Gate movie, copy and pasted from my review on another site by NihilisticNinja on page 2
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets by Calvinball on Page 2
Last edited by DSY on Fri Aug 11, 2017 10:57 pm, edited 16 times in total.
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Re: Review Thread

Post by NihilisticNinja »

Okay, second time's the charm. Reviewing Killer Queen. Let's do this.
Spoiler : Killer Queen review- Spoilers ahoy! :
NAME: Killer Queen.
TYPE OF FICTION: Visual novel.
RATING: 4/10
TL;DR: Ignoring Killer Queen's incredibly questionable (At best) morals, the plot is full of holes and the characterization is incredibly inconsistent and weak at the best of times, ruining a story that had some degree of potential.

FULL REVIEW:

Okay, I suppose here is where I should provide a synopsis of Killer Queen's plot. So here you go:
Imagine if Battle Royale happened, but in an abandoned building! Oh, and they also have PDAs.

But in all seriousness, there are two "episodes" to this visual novel, each working as their own separate individual story. But the main general plot of Killer Queen is the story of 13 strangers waking up in a large, abandoned building. They have no clue how they got there, and their only hope of getting out is to remove collars they have attached to their necks. Otherwise a bomb will activate, killing them. They each have a PDA that has a separate condition that will allow them to remove the collars (hereafter referred to as a "win condition"). And these win conditions often implicitly (and in a couple cases explicitly) require the murder of other people in the building in order to fulfill. And hence the questions are raised: Who will live? Who will die? And by the end of the story, will you care at all? (My answer to the third may surprise you! Or, well... probably not. You saw the rating this game got.)

So let's get the complimentary stuff out of the way so I can go into detail about what KQ screws up. The premise, though used before, has potential. There's some neat ideas here about conflicting win conditions (That aren't really explored that much), and a neat concept of the players not knowing the rules until at least four of them have gathered, which opens up some delicious possibilities, such as players not knowing the rules and unknowingly breaking them, or not quite grasping the game and other people getting murdered as a result. (This aspect goes absolutely nowhere and I am completely clueless as to why it was included in the first place.)

Some of the character arcs could work, if they were written by a better author and didn't suffer from major pacing problems. The second episode is pretty solidly written all told and tells the story in an adequate way. In fact, I enjoyed a good chunk of the second episode, a bit of funky pacing at the beginning aside. And Yuuki was an interesting companion with some decent interplay with Soichi, before the twist wrecks her.

Alright, think that's about it for compliments. Let's get to all the other stuff. We'll start out with characterization.

One problem that immediately springs to mind is how ridiculously inconsistent the characterization is. Many of the characters get little to no development and simply exist as horrible people. It's honestly a miracle that I can remember most of their names given how many of them have pretty much no depth to them and are honestly somewhat interchangeable. And it's not like the characters are particularly consistent- characters will have basically little to no reason for actions and will contradict their stated intent mere seconds later. But let's take a bit and discuss the characters that do get some degree of development, and discuss all my problems with them.

We'll start with Soichi, the protagonist. Soichi basically lives a meaningless life now that his girlfriend has died- due to being run over (if I recall correctly) merely a few weeks prior. In a way this game is the perfect excuse- he can die and at the same time help people, thereby allowing his girlfriend to be proud of him and to be able to die with dignity. Then, later on in the first episode, he discovers that there can still be meaning to his life and that he should keep on living; both for the sake of people that care about him and his own. This could be really interesting. The issue with Soichi is that the actual development to his character comes way too late; it's not a gradual thing and he goes through more a "character swerve" than a "character arc".

We get told about this motivation of his (again and again and again...) and aside from that he more or less acts like a generic VN protagonist. But before getting slapped around by Sakumi at the end of the episode, he doesn't really change his views at all. It just comes as a sudden epiphany and it's really weak at best. It honestly half feels like something the author slapped on because they realized that there was no real meat to Soichi's character and wanted to change that. In the second episode we don't even get the stuff we got in the first- we get vague handwaving of how he wants to live for Yuuki's sake now, but not much more than that.

Okay, next we talk about Sakumi. When I use "character development" when talking about Sakumi I am almost making the word meaningless. I mean, she changes in that she starts to love Soichi. For no apparent reason, really. She just kind of does, after knowing him for a couple hours. I think it's explained that it's because of his caring nature or something along those lines, but falling in love with somebody based on that within a couple hours- like, it's 6-7 at most- is a massive stretch. Then she basically stops developing and that becomes the sum of her character. And she dies right at the beginning of episode 2, so no character development there either.

Next up there's Karin. Karin actually does have an arc! Basically, she is invested in this game because she wants to help her deathly ill sister. She's gotten burned by people in the past and therefore doesn't trust them much, preferring to work on her own. Then she meets up with Soichi and his group, and due to Soichi's optimistic nature and refusal to give up on people, she learns to trust people again. This is genuinely interesting stuff. The issue is that it's all stuffed into the first half of the game.

It's so rushed that it's ridiculous, we more or less get exposited her development instead of actually seeing it. And it's not like it's rushed in order to fit in other stuff about her- that is the entirety of the development of her character. And she apparently gets attracted to Soichi for some reason that's never explained (I mean she denies it but it is so blatantly obvious). She also has one of the most bewildering lines of the game, where she explains that if Soichi betrays her (A person, I would like to note, she met a matter of hours ago), then it isn't a world she wants her sister to live in anyway. Because apparently trust can not exist. Even though she didn't really believe in trusting people earlier, and she still had a drive to save her sister. But who cares at this point, we have more character development to rush through! (Oh, and she, like Sakumi, dies at the beginning of the second episode. So don't expect any further evolution there.)

Speaking of rushed character development, that is a fantastic way to segue into talking about Nagisa! Nagisa is the fourth and final member of Soichi's cadre in episode 1, and although she puts on airs of being a dumb airhead, she is actually a cold and calculating woman. See, she is actually one of the people behind the game, having been behind it several times and probably leading dozens of people to their deaths.And due to an incident where she had to betray her best friend in her first game- where she was a participant- she has become bitter and cynical. However, after spending a couple days with Soichi, her heart warms and she rediscovers the trust in people that she had lost. Which is nice enough. But because the stuff with Nagisa is supposed to be a twist, it's all dumped on us at the end of the game, and there is no gradual evolution. Like with Karin, we are exposited rather than shown Nagisa's character development. So it doesn't really work very well, in all honesty. It just feels artificial. It probably wouldn't bug me as much if all the other instances of character in this game weren't all roughly as equally rushed and lacking.

In episode 2 she appears and survives for a bit, but she never abandons her airhead persona this time. So, basically one of the more interesting characters of the game has a bunch of character development that we aren't shown in episode 1, and in episode 2 remains utterly bland for the entire time she is alive. Fantastic work all around there, Killer Queen.

Now, to wrap up the instances of character development in episode 1, let's go over Reika. Reika starts off as a regular college student, but ends up turning her normal attitude into ruthless pragmatism due to being trapped in the murder game. However, due to Soichi's desperate attempts to get through to her, she eventually is able to recapture her hope in people, and not be corrupted by the game. The problem is that essentially the entirety of her character is dumped on us at the tail-end of the episode, and she develops at pretty much the same time. So there really isn't much time to actually watch her character grow; her entire characterization essentially gets exposited to us, and then the development is more or less exposited to us as well.

It's honestly too little too late to really do much with Reika's character without it feeling really artificial, and it does. I mean, her character basically shifts completely during the course of one fight between her and Soichi. It's, once again, more of a "character swerve" rather than "character development". In episode 2 she remains... more or less the same throughout. Which is kind of odd because she was supposedly a regular college student until the game got to her, but we never really see much of this devolution into cold pragmatism- it just... kind of happens a few hours in. And I can't help but find it interesting that although it's supposed to be the events of the game that make her this way, the events of Game 1 and Game 2 are radically different, yet character-wise she ends up being practically identical both times. It just feels like really sloppy writing.

Finally, there's Yuuki- really the only character in episode 2 to have almost any development at all. The twist with Yuuki is that she's in fact a hardened killer- she's been part of this game several times and has probably murdered over a dozen people in it. She tries to get close to Soichi in order to betray him later, but Soichi's kind-heartedness and perseverance end up causing her to fall in love with him, and realize that maybe all the killing that she done was wrong, and that she really was hurting people. So she decides to turn a new leaf, and try to seek redemption. (Oh hey, do you notice a recurring theme throughout pretty much every single one of these character arcs? An annoying, repetitive theme? You're not the only one!)

Honestly, Yuuki's characterization mostly suffers from similar problems to Nagisa's. Because Yuuki being the killer of episode 2 is supposed to be the twist, it all gets exposited to us at the end rather than really shown. We do see Yuuki getting attached to Soichi, of course, but that's basically it as far as characterization goes for most of the story. Pretty much all the rest we see is just the mask that Yuuki puts on to hide the fact that she's a psychopath.

The funny thing is that without the twist of her being a psycho-killer, Yuuki could have been a very interesting character. She had a somewhat compelling backstory (though we'll talk a bit more about it later on), and her interplay with Soichi was far more interesting than Sakumi's. But it just feels like the twist ruins her and turns her into another Nagisa, only less forgivable because at least Nagisa didn't take joy in what she was doing, while Yuuki explicitly did.

So basically, it was almost impossible for me to care about a single character in Killer Queen. The characters that don't get development are universally horrible people that I can't sympathize with in the slightest, and pretty much all the character development is very sloppily done, which makes it impossible for me to get attached to those characters either.

Let's move onto the plot. The first episode has a good deal of plotholes and many of the choices made during the action require the main characters to act like complete morons. There is some amount of slack that I'm willing to grant them because they're in a stressful situation and probably aren't able to think that clearly, but some of the choices they make are simply inexcusable. ("Hey, when hiding from gunfire, let's hide behind the cart with explosives! Nothing could possibly go wrong!")

Basically nothing about the plot of episode one really felt that satisfying- things were either really boring or really rushed and there didn't appear to be any balance, which really hurt the game. It's worth noting that the first episode also really never has anything resembling a coherent antagonist, which I think hurt it a bit too. The closest we get is when Nagisa and Gouda being the mastermind- more or less- are revealed, but we're just supposed to excuse Nagisa's behavior and we really don't get much of a confrontation with Gouda at all. All that happens is Soichi gets mad and she runs away, then Reika kills her off-screen. That's literally it.

The quality of the writing in episode 1 hurts it a lot as well. There's a good chunk of times when we're seeing things from Soichi's perspective, and we still hear the other characters' thoughts. It really felt awkward and didn't work for me at all. The transitions were just awful at times, and we were continually told things that the game had already told us dozens of times prior, or we could have figured out for ourselves.

Like I said, episode 2 I found a lot better. There was a coherent antagonist, aside from the beginning I didn't feel that it was all that slow, and one of the few things I did like about the ending was that we actually got a confrontation with the antagonist that is more than "Soichi gets mad and she runs away." I had a few problems with it, but they were pretty minor in comparison to episode one. Until we got to the twist.

Yuuki being the killer created dozens of problems for Killer Queen. It required the VN to completely forget how time works, and to basically abandon all logic in order to have their twist make even an iota of sense. And, you know, remember how I said Karin was murdered back at the beginning of episode 2? The game completely forgets about that. It never mentions her death when Yuuki is summing up her crimes, and things she says explicitly contradict her having killed Karin. It just feels like the writer forgot the Karin death even happened, or wanted to sweep it under the rug. It was bizarre. (One suggestion that DWaM had was that the killer was actually intended to be somebody completely different, but they would have been too obvious so the writer slapped together this twist haphazardly. It's honestly a good excuse as any for why so much of it feels incredibly rushed.)

I mentioned Yuuki's motivation earlier, so let's talk about that a bit. Yuuki has certain aspects of her backstory that are both completely unnecessary and not handled well at all. They only exist to establish Yuuki's father as a Bad Person, something we already knew because Yuuki was physically abused. The game just goes blatantly over-the-top with it, and it just becomes actively painful to read. And basically wrecks a scene between Yuuki and the protagonist that was actually somewhat cute and endearing.

Finally, I want to wrap this up by talking about how awful the morals of Killer Queen are. Evidently, if people who set up or gleefully participate in murder games are sorry, we should just let them be free and not actually have them pay for their crimes in the slightest. I mean, they want to repent, but surely they can't do that in a jail cell! No, we need to allow the criminals to go free instead of having any sense of justice. It just makes the end of the stories feel incredibly depressing, and I'm really skeptical that that was what the author was going for.

CONCLUSION (If you tl;dr'd the rest of this, at least read this part!)
: I didn't care for Killer Queen. Not in the slightest. I think there are some good ideas here and there are parts of it I enjoyed, but overall it was not particularly entertaining for me and the bits that are entertaining mostly ended up falling apart anyway. The characterization was weak at best, which is basically a death sentence for a story that is trying to explore psychological themes. The plot was continually full of holes and often required characters to make choices that make no sense. The writing was often quite lackluster, though there was definite improvement between episodes 1 and 2. And the morals presented to me just makes the story end on an incredibly sour note, even though I think it was supposed to be happy/happyish endings in both cases.

So, yeah. Definitely not playing that visual novel ever again. And now that I've finally done a detailed review of it, hopefully I can stop thinking about it forever.
whooo did not mean to write like 2700 words about Killer Queen going in. Well, that's what happens when you get me started, I suppose.
"With good friends by your side, anything is possible. If you really care for each other, it makes everyone stronger! Then you'll have the will to succeed! The world is filled with painful things, it's sad sometimes, and you won't be able to handle it by yourself. But just know: If there's someone that you love, you'll stay on the right path. And you won't ever give in! As long as you keep that person in your heart, you'll keep getting back up. Understand? That's why a Hero never loses!"
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Re: Review Thread

Post by Lind »

My review of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Vento Aureo.
Spoiler : :
Vento Aureo is the most divisive part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, splitting the fanbase down the middle into two camps: those who consider it the worst JoJo part and those who see it as Araki's unsung masterpiece. Clowns to the the left of me, jokers to the right... here I am, stuck in the middle with you. Vento Aureo doesn't really belong to either extreme - the truth is somewhere inbetween.

It's not hard to see why it's such a polarizing arc, though - it has some of the highest highs, and the lowest lows. The main issue that people take with Vento Aureo is the characters. On the receiving end of most of these complaints are this part's JoJo - or in this case, GioGio - Giorno Giovanna, and the primary antagonist, Diavolo. With these two, I will agree. Giorno is considered a bland character, a plot device that exists primarily to heal people and finish off fights, and the main character in name only (Bruno Buccelati took the lead far more often). Diavolo, on the other hand, is barely even shown. In the attempt to make Diavolo into a mysterious character to build him up, any efforts to actually characterize him come too little, too late. In the same vein, people complain that Giorno's teammates were equally boring - the only character who escapes this criticism is Bruno Buccelati.

However, every member of Passione - the gang of Bruno Buccelati and Giorno Giovanna - is very good in concept, each with their own unique character quirk and reason for joining Passione. So why are they so maligned? Well, because this is what happens when you take a Monster of the Week story with 17 battles, and try to flesh out a whopping EIGHT MAIN CHARACTERS in it. To put that in perspective, both of the previous Monster of the Week parts featured LESS main characters, and MORE battles. Quite simply, they tried to fit too much into too small a space. Most characters get a measly two battles to star in, if even that - Abbacchio and Fugo got a mere 1 each. This also leads to some characters being removed from the plot, or unceremoniously killed off for no particular reason, which was a particularly bad choice.

What people often ignore, however, is that where the main cast may have failed, Vento Aureo has the best cast of supporting villains in ANY part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The villains can be broken down into three categories - the treasure hunters, La Squadra da Ezecucione, and Diavolo's assassins. While the treasure hunters are forgettable (and relatively minor), La Squadra are the real winners here, featuring the most ruthless enemies in all of JJBA, spurred on by revenge against Diavolo. Diavolo's assassins, on the other hand, whilst not justified in their actions, make up for it by being UNSPEAKABLY DISTURBING.

The key strength they all have in common, though, is that they are utterly merciless and incredibly intimidating, and this is also a strength of Vento Aureo as a whole. Where the previous Diamond is Unbreakable mostly dealt with everyday events combined with stands, leading to many "friendly" opponents, Vento Aureo is the exact opposite. The battles here are utterly brutal - highlights include a stand that can dissolve flesh right off the bone, and a stand that can turn your blood into metal - literally slitting your throat from the inside out. Sweet Jesus, the body horror in Vento Aureo is immense.

Part 5 is responsible for the best stands of any JoJo part (I mean, come on - they turn a ZIPPER into one of the greatest weapons imaginable), so it's not surprising that the battles are just as good. Not only do the battles feature a tangible threat of death, with most enemies being overpowered enough that Passione never feel at an advantage, but they also run INCREDIBLY LONG. There are numerous battles in Vento Aureo - monster of the week battles, that is - that last around the same length as Dio's World, the final battle of Stardust Crusaders. In particular, there are a lot of stand-using teams this time around, which lead to some of the most ambitious battles the series has ever seen. It's easy to say Vento Aureo is far better than its detractors would have you believe based on the battles alone.

It feels weird to say this about a manga that's 17 volumes long, but I think what Vento Aureo really needed was to be longer. If it had been as long as, say, Part 7, then it would have had the time to make us attached to all the characters, give Diavolo proper buildup and characterisation, tie it in more to the overarching story of JJBA (as it is, it is only tangentially connected to the rest of the series), build more on the origin stories of the arrows, and perhaps even give us an ending that was less underwhelming. But as it stands, Vento Aureo simply bit off more than it could chew.

(And no, the novels aren't canon. So Fugo is still pretty terrible.)



Final Words: Too ambitious for its own good, but still pretty impressive.
Story/Plot: 6/10.
Characters: 5/10.
Art: 9/10.

Overall: 7/10.

For fans of: Medaka Box, Yu Yu Hakusho
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Re: Review Thread

Post by NihilisticNinja »

After my Killer Queen review, it might be nice to sit back, relax, and rave over something I really like. So here's my review of Toradora. (Note: I watched the English dub. While the script appears to have been pretty faithful and therefore I doubt my opinion would be much different if I were watching the sub, it is an important caveat to have none-the-less.)
Spoiler : Toradora! Review-Spoiler free, more or less. :
NAME: Toradora!
TYPE OF FICTION: Anime. (A manga and series of light novels also exist. They cover the same material, though.)
RATING: 9/10
TL;DR: Incredibly intelligent and humorous writing, solid characterization, and solid visuals and audio make Toradora the best romantic comedy anime out there, and really high up on my list of romantic comedies period.

Full Review:

Let's get the basic premise out of the way first. Toradora is a story of two social outcasts- Ryuuji Takasu and Taiga Aisaka. Ryuuji is an incredibly kind person but is tormented by his intimidating appearance, which tends to scare people away, and think him a delinquent. His only friend is Yusaku Kitamura- a polite and kind classmate that is able to see Ryuuji for who he truly is.

Taiga Aisaka (or the "Palm-Top Tiger", as she is often called), is a girl who both tends to snap at others, and get extremely aggressive- often violently so. And as a result, she is feared by most of the school. Her only friend is Minori Kushieda, a bubbly, hyperactive, and cheerful girl.

Eventually, Ryuji learns that Taiga has a crush on Yusaku, and Taiga learns that Ryuji has a crush on Minori. Deciding that it would be in their best interest to work together, the two team up; Ryuji coming up with ways for Taiga to be able to get close to Yusaku, and Taiga coming up with plans to get Ryuji and Minori together.

As the pair hatch their plans and try to help the other, they get closer and closer. And eventually, they realize that sometimes the person you truly love is closer than you expect them to be. In Toradora's case, the story is truly about the journey- the journey of Ryuuji and Taiga actually managing to make friends and get their classmates to truly understand what kind of people they are, and the journey of both of them slowly figuring out what love truly is.

Story/Writing:

One thing that I find really impressive about Toradora is that despite it being almost twice as long as your typical romantic comedy anime, I almost never feel like an episode is wasted. Pretty much every episode accomplishes something: whether it be us learning more about what the main characters of Toradora are truly like, the relationship between Taiga and Ryuji developing, or something entirely different and completely unexpected, but certainly not unwelcome. The show pretty much never really felt like it was dragging.

Another aspect of Toradora that impressed me is that I actually got why Taiga and Ryuji have crushes on Yusaku and Minori. The anime makes sure to actually explain the circumstances that surround their relationships, and why Taiga and Ryuuji care about them so much. And the rationale doesn't feel particularly contrived at all- it's incredibly sensible and believable. What could have been an obvious plot device to force the main couple together is made into an understandable (perhaps even realistic) aspect of their characterization. But this doesn't actually detract from the relationship that the show is actually about- Taiga and Ryuuji actually develop a deep love that the viewer can root for; a love based on mutual understanding and helping each other overcome their weaknesses. One far stronger than their crushes, which in the end are really rather shallow. (Which is part of the point.)

The plot is actually divided into two main sections; you could easily subdivide it further but we'll just focus on the main two. The first section is more comedic slice-of-life, which is primarily used to introduce and establish the characters and their main roles, as well as slowly reveal to us more and more what they're really like as people. The second half is a far more serious exploration of the characters' relationships, where the main cast have to decide exactly what the people they have surrounded themselves with actually mean to them. The weird thing is, the transition didn't feel sudden at all, which really contributed to the relatively smooth pacing the show appears to have.

It helps that both halves manage to be incredibly compelling in different ways, and both absolutely succeed at being entertaining. When the story attempts to be comedic, it typically succeeds. It's odd, because I typically am not a big fan of anime comedy, but here everything just seemed to work. The slapstick was genuinely funny, and the interplay between the characters was genuinely hilarious when it wanted to be. I honestly don't recall the last time I laughed during a comedy anime as much as I laughed during Toradora. And when the story wants to be dramatic, it still manages to be good. It slips into melodrama sometimes, but on a whole the dramatic situations feels genuine and compelling, and genuinely made me empathize with the characters involved and fascinated as to how the situation was going to develop. The writer(s) also clearly knew how to combine dramatic and comedic elements to create a cohesive whole- there are a good deal of episodes that manage to be incredibly serious at points, but still have humorous moments. And yet it never feels particularly jarring.

The show is also excellent at actually being subtle in its writing. There are aren't many exposition dumps in Toradora- the story typically has faith that you can work out what's going on and why it's occurring. The typical tendency of the show, which is very effective, is to show you a scene full of meaning, and then basically explain what was going on via some (often offhand) dialogue a couple minutes later. The story also tends to imply things rather than actually state them, but typically not do so in an obtuse or maddeningly vague way. Even when the story doesn't explicitly tell you what's going on, it's still typically easy to figure out what the show is talking about.

The anime also knows exactly how to add nuance and how to give dialogue (and events within the story) a deeper meaning- there are so many instances where even offhand remarks about a character reveal a colossal amount about themselves, or their relationship with others. A lot of the characterization in Toradora is actually hidden in the little moments: little things that may seem utterly insignificant until you think about them, then realize that they matter a good deal. It makes the characters all the more nuanced and compelling.

The foreshadowing in Toradora is fantastic. Most of the twists are shown to you well in advance- it's just often subtle enough that you simply won't pay it much mind, which is the best kind of foreshadowing. Toradora also very clearly pays attention to its own continuity- little details from previous episodes will continually be called back to or given subtle nods, almost as much as important events and conversations do.

But one of my favorite things about Toradora is that it is a show that can genuinely make you think. There's a lot to be gained from thinking about the things the characters do or say and seeing if there isn't some kind of deeper meaning there, and the more you think about it the more realizations you come to about these characters. I watched the final episode of Toradora a few hours ago, but am still thinking about it and still realizing new things about the cast that I hadn't thought of yet. If a show can inspire that without even a rewatch, I think that's a sign of intelligent writing.

Not every single episode of Toradora is flawless- there is one arc in particular that could have used some heavy revision. But they all manage to tell interesting stories and typically tell them quite well. Which is essentially all that I can ask for.

Characters

One really neat thing about Toradora's main cast is that at first, they might seem to fit into a basic archetype. But as the story goes on, you realize that there's much more to them. And that they aren't really just archetypes- they're written like actual human beings.

Let's start with the protagonist Ryuuji. On the surface, Ryuuji could seem like a "Nice Guy" protagonist. Just an average person who gets sucked into the story's plot, and eventually falls in love with the female lead. But there's so much more to him than that. He has a good deal of idiosyncrasies- his obsession with cleaning being the most obvious one. He really does feel like a human being with his own quirks, flaws, and problems beyond his romantic issues. It helps that for a "Nice Guy" protagonist, he genuinely is a nice guy. He's kind, polite, understanding, and just really wants to help people. It's completely understandable why somebody would fall in love with him- especially if they haven't had too many people like that in their lives before.

Now, it's really easy to dismiss Taiga as a "tsundere". But the funny thing is (as somebody else pointed out in a video I watched), she really isn't one except in the most basic sense.

Typically, the way a tsundere works is that they have an object of affection, but they mask their affection with hostility and (sometimes) violence. But that isn't what Taiga does. She is incredibly polite to people she has feelings for, frequently finding herself at a total loss for words whenever Yusuke turns his attention her way. And by the time that she realizes she has feelings for Ryuuji, she has mellowed out considerably.

She does have a penchant for hostility and aggression at first, it's true, but there's genuine good reasons for that. And on some level, her aggression is a result of it being what people expect of her. People think of her as a sort of delinquent, and so that's the role she plays. I genuinely don't think she'd get actually joy out of causing serious harm to people, and typically she doesn't act with the intention to. (I believe that probably the most extreme example of her violent behavior is in episode one, but even there the worst case scenario was probably that the other person would get knocked out, Taiga's hyperbole aside.)

The issue with Minori is that I can't really explain why she's great without massive spoilers. She is massively entertaining in her role as the energetic Genki Girl, but there is actually a good deal more to her than that, as becomes clear early on and gets more and more clear as the show goes on. I don't really feel comfortable saying much more than that.

Now, let's talk about Ami Kawashima, a model from out-of-town and the final member of the main cast to be introduced. Ami is, I would argue, probably the most under-appreciated character in Toradora. And I get why people don't like her- she seems to be a character archetype that can be incredibly annoying: a "sweet girl" that is hiding a vicious, selfish, snarky side. The thing is, that her being like that is actually totally understandable. After all, when she was a kid she became a part of the modeling world- a place where putting on a false persona and being selfish are far more likely to be rewarded than punished. The arcs that she goes through are absolutely fascinating, and there definitely is a good deal more to her than her introductory episode might make it seem.

Yusaku is the final member of the main cast, and probably has the least amount of depth of them all. He is a genuinely nice and supportive person, somebody who can often be insightful at times, and is quite responsible. He's also decently quirky and consistently entertaining. But aside from that, there really isn't too much to him. I wouldn't say he's two dimensional, really, and he is a fun character. But compared to the rest of the cast, he still does fall a bit short.

The character development of the main cast in Toradora is fantastic. Characters often go through multiple arcs over the course of the show- typically a more obvious one, and ones that are more subtle and it may take some time and thought to pick up on. But it never feels artificial- I completely get why these characters change the way they do, and it makes sense in the context of the story. It also helps that the characters have fantastic chemistry and all play off each other in really interesting and entertaining ways- the Ami-Taiga dynamic alone is absolutely fascinating, as well as often quite humorous.

Now, the minor characters don't really possess that much depth and are often rather 1-note. But that is somewhat understandable- it's not like the show had the amount of episodes FMA:Brotherhood did. And I would argue that though they remain static, on a whole they end up still being relatively entertaining, which is more or less what I typically ask from minor characters.

Okay, that's all the big stuff out of the way. Let's get to the things I'll have less to say about.

Music

The music is decent. There are a couple tracks I disliked, but the show has far more good songs than bad. And the music is typically chosen quite deftly, with the pieces complementing the tone of the scene quite nicely. The dub cast typically hits the ball out of the park- there were only one or two performances that I really didn't care for, and the VAs of the main cast are just great. Cassandra Morris is fantastic as always as Taiga and the male leads both put out great performances, but some massive kudos in particular go out to Christine Cabanos and Erika Harlarcher, who I didn't have a good deal of respect for prior to this, but were fantastic as Minori and Ami respectively.

I haven't listened to much of the show subbed, so I can't say for sure how good the Japanese voice acting is, but given that the seiyuu include Yui Horie, Rie Kugimiya, and Eri Kitamura (with Ai Nonaka in a less prominent role), I'm confident that you'll enjoy the performances regardless of which language you choose to have the lines be spoken in.

Visuals

The visuals for Toradora are somewhat simplistic and of a somewhat minimalistic style a lot of the time, but it fits the show decently well. And in some cases there are some fantastic details put into the art- certain expressions or images can tell you a lot about the situation or characters without the show needing to say a word. I can think of one instance where something that lasted on the screen for a mere second confirmed several key facts about a character. The art definitely has its moments, that's for sure.

CONCLUSION (If you tl;dr'd the rest of this, at least read this part!)
: As you probably gathered from my full review (if you read it), I loved Toradora. I loved the plot, I loved the characters, I loved how much thought was clearly put into the writing. If you're ever interested in an anime about romance, this would automatically be the first one I pointed you to, and is easily the best romantic comedy anime I've ever seen. And like I said in TL;DR, it's pretty up there when it comes to romantic comedies period.
The sad thing about this 2600 word review that is basically entirely praising Toradora, is that I could probably go on for another 1000+ words if I actually included spoilers.
"With good friends by your side, anything is possible. If you really care for each other, it makes everyone stronger! Then you'll have the will to succeed! The world is filled with painful things, it's sad sometimes, and you won't be able to handle it by yourself. But just know: If there's someone that you love, you'll stay on the right path. And you won't ever give in! As long as you keep that person in your heart, you'll keep getting back up. Understand? That's why a Hero never loses!"
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Re: Review Thread

Post by kwando1313 »

imma copy pasta my reviews from the anime thread into here for easier sorting:
Spoiler : Puella Magi Madoka Magica Review (SPOILERS) :
So. Madoka. It's a show. I'll say things I liked about Madoka, things I didn't like about Madoka, some nitpicks, then summarize my thoughts in a nutshell. Let's go on with this review.

Things I Liked

Art Style: One of the things that's really cool about Madoka is the jarring difference in art style between the show itself and the "Witch's Realm" (for the lack of a better term). The vanilla show itself is done in a very standard anime style. Nothing really remarkable there, but... It's serviceable. (Though, it kinda bugs me that the characters' faces are all rather... Boxy. But that's not really anything major.) However, the really cool part for me is how... eerie the shift in art-styles is. It adds this subtle level of creepiness which, to me, is really nicely done. And since the Witches represent the darkness in the world... I find it extremely fitting that the art style reflects that as well. So major props on that front.

Character Roles: To me, it felt that all the characters were used... Effectively. All the characters played the role that they were supposed to be well. Kyuubey is a good creepy... Thing that is more antagonistic in nature. Madoka plays the part of the protagonist well. Homura does a good job being the mysterious student. Mami does a good job being the mentor. All these roles were played out... Effectively.

Soundtrack: I may not be a fan of the actual songs themselves, in the sense that I wouldn't want to go around working, listening to the OST on my iPod... But the soundtrack of Madoka is extremely good. The songs fit really well with their respective scenes, and thematically are very nice. I may not like the songs, but I can definitely appreciate the fact that it is very well composed.

Consistency With Internal Logic: This is kind of a mouthful to say, certainly. But one really good thing about Madoka is that all the important concepts regarding magic, powers, and the universe are all (eventually) explained and are consistent with each other. The origin of witches? Explained. The reason Kyuubeys do this? Explained. The purpose of Soul Gems? Explained. It's really good that this is all explained, as this resulted in another good thing, which was a lack of major plot holes or inconsistencies.

Ending: The ending to me was quite well done: It fits as well as it can in the Madoka setting, with it being bittersweet, but still leaving a relatively "happy" ending for most of the characters involved. (Well. Except Sayaka. She's still screwed.) I found the fact that Homura uses Madoka's bow and arrow and still has her hair ribbon to be quite touching. That was sweet. I liked that.

Things I Disliked

The "zomg so edgey" Syndrome: Yeah... For a series that's trying to be more dark... It honestly didn't do such a good job. To me, it felt like it relied too much on shock, and as a result, the resulting world feels rather phony. Like, to me, a well constructed dark world would be done in one of two ways: The world that the characters are in feels like a world that our world could become, or the world appears to be fine, but in fact has many subtle things wrong with it. And, to me, the Madoka universe just doesn't do either of those. As a result, it feels... quasi dark? But, it also doesn't really feel dark enough, in my opinion. Unfortunately, Madoka goes down the route of "zomg dark and edgey, let's have people die", and to me, it felt really... Forced. This leads, unfortunately, to another problem...

Lack of Sympathy/Empathy: I may sound quite mean and not caring here but... By the time Sayaka and Kyoko died, I was like... Meh. To me, Madoka plays the "death" card way too much. Too many characters died in too few episodes for me to really care about their deaths. Sure, I understand that the deaths are necessary to move the plot forwards, and to make sure that Madoka becomes that supreme being at the end, but... It felt like their deaths were rather cheap, and to me, it lacked any emotional resonance.

Lack of Consistant Character Growth: I may have liked the roles that the characters played in Madoka, but... To me, it felt like most of the characters were extremely weird in their character development. Like... Most of the characters, in terms of personality, changed in a very erratic manner. For example, Sayaka went from a person who is extremely driven to succeed in her goals to "zomg angst angst". Kyoko was a girl who was really brashy and driven to succeed, doesn't really care about others... And all of a sudden she just becomes self-sacrificing against Sayaka's witch? And... Yes, I know that the shock of finding out the truth about Soul Gems would have drastically affected her, but... It still seems like the shift from Personality A to Personality B is too sudden. Homura, luckily, is an exception to that, as we do see her grow and mature as a character throughout. And I liked that we got to see growth in her character in a consistent manner.

Story Twists: Like I mentioned earlier, I felt like Madoka relied too much on shock twists. For example, the whole Homura is a time traveler twist felt really out of the blue (though, it does work in the context of the story, don't get me wrong). Kyuubeys wanting the whole magical girl/witch conflict to gather energy? Again, feels like a twist that's meant to shock. But that is only the first half of the problem I had. The other issue I had with the Madoka twists is that they were too predictable. Like... For example, Mami's death? It was pretty obvious to me that that was coming. Sayaka becoming a witch? Also pretty obvious that it was coming. So, for me, it feels kind of lame that the story doesn't have any twists which were subtly foreshadowed, and that I can come back from a future watching and be like "Oh, that's cool, how did I not notice that before?" There are things that I can appreciate from a future watching (such as Homura's actions throughout the show make sense now that we know that she's looping this over and over), but... That's not really a foreshadowy twist that I can appreciate.

Story Arcing: This one is much more of a "this is something I want" opinion, but... Since it's a review, I can include it anyways. But to me, it felt like Madoka lacked a central focus "arc" to have the entire story about. And... This bugged me, because there just seems like there is so much potential in the Madoka universe to do a centralized story arc. Yes, I know that the episodes are leading towards Madoka learning about the dark dangers of becoming a magical girl, and the whole conclusion of her rewriting the universe, but... It feels like Madoka would have benefited from some sort of centralized focus. The whole conflict with Walpurgisnacht feels more like a background event, rather than something that is important to lead towards. To kind of analogize it, it feels like I could disconnect each episode, and still make sense of what was going on, since there isn't really a large overarching grand story to Madoka. And, to me, it feels like Madoka would be a good story to have that type of large overarching story.

Minor Nitpicks

The OP: The OP ceases to really be fitting after Ep 4. I think that another OP would have been better after that point. Like, sure, I get that they're trying to be deconstructive, but... Still. By that point, people realize that. They changed the ED at that point, so... Why not the OP? (And yes, I know that the lyrics are meaningful, but still...)

Lack of Magical Girl Fights: I was excited when I saw Sayaka and Kyoko fighting in Episode 6. I thought that this could be a direction that they go down: Fighting magical girls that are willing to kill each other to defeat witches, and in turn, become witches themselves. But... No. They didn't go down that route. And also, it seemed that there were a lack of fights with witches themselves. Like... I think of all the episodes, there were only fights with witches in about... Half the episodes? Which, to me is a little strange, though, I can understand why they do it.

It Takes 12 Episodes for Madoka to Become a Magical Girl The show is called Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Yet it takes her the entire show to actually become a magical girl. That's just lame, show name. That's just lame. I understand why it's done, but still... Don't call your show about Madoka being a magical girl when she isn't a magical girl for pretty much the entire show. >_>

Mami uses guns, and guns are a lame weapon.

Overall

All in all... Madoka isn't a bad show, despite my long list of criticisms. It's a perfectly good show, but... It just feels lacking to me in many ways. The "dark" premise feels too shallow, and... Not well done. Many of the story twists feel like they are done for "shock" value, and as a result, it detracts me from enjoying it. The world of Madoka itself feels like so much more could be done with it, but... It just fails to live up to that potential. All in all, would I recommend watching Madoka? I guess I would? But, it certainly wouldn't be a heartily recommended show by me for others to watch.
Spoiler : Steins;Gate Review (SPOILERS) :
Steins;Gate. It's also a thing. Like with my Madoka review, I'll first say things I liked, go on to things I didn't like, state some minor nitpicks, then give my overall thoughts.

Things I Liked

The OP: Steins;Gate's OP is amazing. It's fitting, it sounds nice to listen to, and it's overall a really well done OP. Yes, the OP is so good that it deserves its own point. And the very first point, at that.

Time Travel Logic: In time travel pieces of fiction, the logic regarding time travel is extremely important, lest you want to end up in awful plot holes and whatnot. Steins;Gate does a fantastic job in this regard: The internal logic is extremely sound, and I can't find any big plot holes in the time travel. In addition, the whole butterfly effect that is done by the different D-Mails is extremely good. I like how most of the actions done by Okabe in Steins;Gate have a drastic effect on the timeline. That is well done, and I really liked that. In addition, most of the actions hold up to scrutiny in terms of how the D-Mails were reversed, and whatnot.

Kurisu: Kurisu, to me, was a really well done character. She has really good character growth, we can see her maturing as a character, and she acts as a great foil to Okabe. In addition, it was really sweet to see how Okabe grows to really care about her, and that he is willing to do anything to save her. also, she's a total tsundere, and i like that

Research Done: This sounds like an awfully odd point, but... I really appreciate the research done by the writers of Steins;Gate. All the stuff that was mentioned in Steins;Gate? All stuff that actually exists. Like, the IBM5100, John Titor, these are all objects and occurrences that happened in real life. It's great that they took stuff from real life, and made the time traveling aspect actually seem plausible in our universe. That's really nicely done.

Things I Disliked

Pacing: Oh man. The pacing in Steins;Gate is quite poor. The first few eps are a bit slow, but, from a first time watching perspective it was fine for me. (Though, I can see if you're watching it again, how it goes by rather slowly.) For the middle part, we're decently paced, with each episode being about reversing the D-Mail sent, and watching Okabe do stuff to save Mayuri... But then we reach the Beta Timeline, and Okabe saves Kurisu in two episodes. To me, that felt rather rushed. It would have been better, in my opinion, to shift more episodes to Okabe doing that, than having all the padding in the beginning.

Lack of Character Development: Aside from Okabe and Kurisu, most of the characters really don't grow at all. Which, in a 24 anime, just doesn't seem right. Especially since a lot of the characters that don't grow get quite a bit of screentime. For example, Mayuri still remains and acts exactly the same at the beginning of the show and the end of the show. Daru also remains the same. Faris remains the same. Ruka remains the same. Moeka is lolMoeka. It just irks me that there was so much potential in all these characters, yet, nothing is really done with them.

Episodes 13/14: I really don't know where to start about my dislike of Episode 13. Just... Everything with Episode 13 was extremely poorly done, in my opinion. I like to say I have a decently high level of suspension of disbelief... But the sheer insanity of what goes on in this episode was a bit too much for me to handle. I can accept that Okabe is desperate to save Mayuri and is willing to keep going back in time to save her. I can accept that fate wants to kill Mayuri and will do pretty much anything to kill her because of the distorted world line. What I can't accept was just the sheer stupidity of how Mayuri dies in Episode 13. Like, if you wanted her to fall in front of the train and die, that's fine. But having Nae somehow push Mayuri, who probably is a good deal bigger than Nae, about 5 meters in front of a train, and have Mayuri fly head first on to the tracks? That's going from the realm of heavily implausible to the just downright idiotic. And then, there's Episode 14. Well, at least, part of the first half, where Okabe somehow magically escapes from the van, and runs back to the time travel lab (where somehow, none of the SERN members have gone to take the time travel stuff, despite the fact that they know that it is there), and travels back in time. Luckily, it gets a lot better after this, but still... These two episodes left a bad taste in my mouth plot-wise.

Minor Nitpicks

SERN Being a Lack of a Threat: SERN to me, in Steins;Gate, serves as such a peripheral villain, that they almost feel unnecessary. Yes, I understand that the plot is supposed to be more about Okabe and Kurisu or Mayuri, but, SERN still feels heavily underutilized, aside from the weird pudding threats, a threat with a doll, and killing Mayuri over and over again.

Okabe's Lack of Explaining Anything: OK. I get that Okabe is most likely stressed from all this time travel nonsense. But it still really irks me that he doesn't ever just explain his plans or what happened to anyone. Or, rather, that it takes forever for him to actually explain anything. For instance, in Episode 14, he runs through a good few number of loops before saying anything about Mayuri's constant deaths to Kurisu, despite the fact that Kurisu says that she can look in his eyes and tell that he time jumped back. I understand that it's necessary to do that to advance the plot, and to create conflict, but it seems rather strange and illogical to me.

How People Start Magically Remembering Previous Wordlines: This honestly really bugs me because all the other weird wibbly wobby timey wimey things get explained, yet the fact that people remember the previous worldlines gets completely glossed over, and doesn't get any sort of explanation. I would be perfectly happy if they gave some sort of pseudo-sciencey explanation, or if they just made up some sort of excuse of how the Reading Steiner can start to affect others if Okabe starts caring for them. But, instead, we just kinda get shafted for an explanation, and how it just... happens. Which seems rather silly to me, when everything else is so well explained.

Mayuri's Age: Or, this could honestly be about her lack of maturity of any sort but... How on earth is she supposed to be 16? She acts completely immature for her age, and her actions just seem really odd for a 16 year old. Like, if they made her 13, then her actions make more sense, or if they just made her a tad more mature, it would make sense as well. But, as is, she seems really odd as a character, because of the dissonance between expected actions for her age and how she acts.

Lotto D-Mail: Why did they never have to reverse this D-Mail? Like, did they completely forget about this one or something?

Overall

All in all, I would say that I enjoyed Steins;Gate. Sure, there were flaws in the lack of character development, and the plot sometimes gets a little silly, but it was pretty enjoyable. I would most likely recommend it to people to watch, as it's a pretty decent anime that doesn't try and go over its head in what it's trying to achieve. (Also, that OP is amazing. <3)
Spoiler : Nanoha A's Review (SPOILERS) :
Like in my previous two reviews, I'll state what I liked, what I disliked, nitpicks, then give a summation of my thoughts.

Things I Liked

Episodes 9-12: I'll just start off with the biggest thing I love about A's. Episodes 9-12 are such a perfectly and amazingly constructed arc. I honestly don't know where to begin with how much I love this, but I'll do my best. Firstly, in Episode 9, the initial meeting between Nanoha/Fate and the Wolkenritter with Hayate present is presented very well. The tension is perfectly done, and there still is some light-hearted actions done by Hayate. And then, we get to the part that reaches me in the feels every single time: When the Wolkenritter are absorbed as the final Linker Cores in the Book of Darkness. This is a scene, to me, that perfectly demonstrates how to do emotional resonance. The despair in Hayate as she sees "Fate" and "Nanoha" absorb the last of her precious Wolkenritter is perfectly done, as this has Hayate basically lose everything she loves and cares for: her friends and her family. This scene makes me really sad every time I watch it. Like, it's heart wrenching to see this happen to Hayate, despite the fact that I know it all gets better later on.

Episode 10 in itself is still an amazing episode, but it doesn't really have any amazing high points for me to draw upon, so I'll move on to my favourite episode of A's, Episode 11. Episode 11 ties up some threads regarding Fate's backstory in the original Nanoha series, and allows her to move on from the past. No longer is she going to be stuck yearning in the past in a world of "What-ifs": Fate now, due to the events in Episode 11, is able to move on and protect those who truly love and care for her. She's finally able to put her past behind her, and is able to come out even stronger as a result. It was really great that the show does tie up these loose ends, and it's even hinted throughout the show that this would be dealt with. But, by far, the best moment of Episode 11 is when Hayate re-names the Book of Darkness/Tome of the Night Sky to Reinforce. To me, this moment was incredibly touching and extremely well done with the music.

Episode 12 is a pretty great episode as well, with all the adorable ass kicking that all of them do. And that plan is pretty great. And Hayate is awesomely badass. Yeah, it's a pretty great episode.

Sympathetic Antagonists: Another great thing that A's does is having antagonists who are extremely sympathetic to deal with. The Wolkenritter are all fighting, despite breaking their promise with Hayate, to protect her and make her into the mistress of the Book of Darkness to prevent her paralysis from spreading. The Masked Men are fighting to try and deal the Book if Darkness: albeit in a really misinformed way. Either way, all the antagonists in A's feel like they have emotional and character depth, which makes it really great to watch, as you can empathize for both the protagonists and the antagonists.

The other great thing about the Wolkenritter is that we can actually see them grow as characters: Signum, initially is the very "kuudere" stoic leader of the group, who grows and gains a sense of caring and empathy that was previously lacking in her. Vita is quite similar, as she grows into a multifaceted character with a strong sense of loyalty, passion, and caring. Just, it's so great to see antagonists gain the same type of growth as protagonists get.

Fights: A's does a phenomenal job with the fight scenes. All of them feel varied and fresh. The attacks used were fun to watch. Beam spam is cool. Transformations were all extremely well done. The weapons used are really cool to see: I mean, a giant hammer? A sword that turns into a snake or a bow? An electric scythe? A pink beam firing cannon rod? They're all such varied weapons that it's really cool to see the contrast in styles in their fighting. The fights themselves don't feel really cliche, and they also feel truly balanced, that there actually is a sense of danger of the protagonist losing to the antagonist. Also, the initial fight scene between Nanoha and Vita is so much fun to watch.

Show, Don't Tell: A's does a great job at not overselling what it tries to do. Like, A's does a great job at doing things subtly, rather than just overtly being like THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS. For example, we get to see the relationship that the Wolkenritter have with Hayate, as opposed to having it told to us that they get along well. We actually get to see how their relationship grows and prospers. It's great that that's done.

In addition, A's deals with some relatively heavy topics, but just in a much more subdued way. For example, Admiral Graham's plan to seal away the Book of Darkness and its mistress subtly deals with the theme of sacrifice, and whether it is better to sacrifice one for the needs of many. It also touches upon something that was brought up in the first season, regarding what shapes a person (with the whole Fate being cloned and whatnot business.) To me, it's great that it deals with these ideas, but not in a way that's just shoved down my throat.

Introduction: I love the opening two episodes of A's as well. (I pretty much love every episode of A's, but... I love the introduction slightly more than all the other eps, save Eps 9-12.) A's is honestly the model of how all sequel series should begin. Instead of spending the first few episodes re-building up characterization and plot, A's jumps into the action 18 minutes into the first episode. Yes, there is some plot building to re-connect it to the events of Nanoha, but A's basically directly continues what happened from Nanoha without skipping a beat. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, the fight scene between Nanoha and Vita is a spectacular one, and it really does a great job at showing that the antagonists in A's are no pushovers, and are truly dangerous to fight. The fight between Signum and Fate is pretty good as well. Episode 1 has the awesome throwback to Nanoha by Fate calling Nanoha her friend, which I found super sweet. Episode 2 has Nanoha being awesome and firing a Starlight Breaker while her Linker Core is being drained by the Book of Darkness. Basically, I really love how the introduction to A's is quick, doesn't drag, and is really entertaining to watch.

Soundtrack: Once again, the soundtrack is amazingly fitting to the scenes in A's. The music is perfectly suited for the scenes that they are fit in and all the songs fit together nicely. For example, Raising Heart Set Up! is a theme that perfectly embodies Nanoha, due to its peppiness, for the lack of a better term. But, to me, the song that sticks out the most is Snow Rain. The music in this scene is just so perfectly fitting for this scene, and it's just so beautifully happy, seeing all three plot threads of that episode come together (Fate breaking apart her happy dream life to go back to the real world, Hayate giving Reinforce its name, and... Nanoha beating things up), and it's just really really really well done.

Miscellaneous: Here are some random things that don't deserve big points that I liked in A's. I like the fact that the Wolkenritter use German. German is cool. The Wolkenritter are pretty cool. I also quite like the OP. It's not an amazing tier OP, like the one in Steins;Gate, but it's still a really nicely done OP. The character design, once again, is phenomenal, with everyone getting a unique and memorable outfit design. The voice acting is really well done, as the voices emote quite well (despite the fact that I can't really understand what they're saying, because I don't speak Japanese).

Things I Disliked
Honestly... There isn't anything for me to put here, because all the things that are wrong with A's go under nitpicks for me. This section is amazingly short right now.

Minor Nitpicks
Pacing: The pacing in the episodes where there isn't too much action is a little bit slow for my liking. Episodes 7 and 8 are a little bit slow paced for my liking, for example, as with the latter part of Episode 3 and Episode 4. Granted, I understand why they are slower paced, but... I still would have preferred to see a little bit more action in those episodes.

ED: The ED is just... Not as good as the OP in A's, or even the OP and ED in the original series. Which makes me sad, because the other songs are so good, but the ED, to me, just feels... Lacking.

Identity of the Masked Men: I know that it's kind of hinted to... But it still feels like a lame resolution to me.

Overall
In case you somehow can't tell, I really really love A's. To me, it's extremely well written, well produced, and extremely entertaining to watch. I would most definitely and wholeheartedly recommend anyone to watch it, though they would definitely need context from the original Nanoha series to understand why it's so great. There are definitely a few minor issues, such as pacing, but they most definitely do not detract from the show in any way.
Toradora review forthcoming. Someday. (I'm writing it now, but... It'll probs take me a bit of time to write it.)
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Re: Review Thread

Post by kwando1313 »

Toradora review. Let's do this. oh gosh how did this get so long
Spoiler : Toradora Review (SPOILERS) :
This review is going to follow the same general format as the ones before. I'll start with things I like, continue with things that I didn't like, followed by minor nitpicks, and concluded by a quick summation of thoughts.

Hahaha, me please. Bad things about Toradora. I'm such a silly.

Things I Liked

Characters

All the characters in Toradora are really well written. Like... Honestly. Everyone in Toradora - even the minor characters - felt like they contributed well to the full patchwork and build of the anime. But... Let's start with our protags, shall we?

Taiga Aisaka: At first glance, she seems like your archetypal tsundere, with all the bakas and whatnot. But.. She's so much deeper than that. She puts up that vicious front, but... Well, in reality she isn't anything like that at all. She's soft and fragile on the inside. She puts up the bravado of being super tough, but... Well, she's delicate. She's kind. She cares about people, even if she doesn't want to admit it. Heck, she was willing to throw away her happiness just to let Ryuuji be happy. But, well, most of all, she's lonely. The situation with her family has just... Completely dampened her to the point where she believes that she won't be able to find happiness. And, even when Ryuuji breaks her out of this state initially, she wallows further back in when she tries to make amends with her father (at Ryuuji's insistence), but her father coldly and harshly rejects her by running away. She puts up the front of being tough to shield herself from the world. It's... Quite sad to see her go through this state, putting on a mask of toughness, when, in reality, she's soft and tender. She's naive and sheltered, but at the same time, she has this... Understanding and empathy about her. She breaks the standard stereotype of tsundereness. And, well, I thought she's super well written.

Ami Kawashima: At first glance, she she seems like your standard two-faced pretends to be nice but is actually a mean and cold-hearted person from like... A Plastic from Mean Girls or something. Initially, I didn't like her because she reminded me so much of the people who were two-faced that I didn't like when I was in school. But... Well, that all changed rather early in the story. I thought it was kind of interesting how her character is like an inverse of Taiga's initially. With Taiga, you had a person who seemingly didn't care about what others thought about on the outside, and acted harshly to everyone around her. With Ami, you had a person who is seemingly superficial who wants to appease others to make sure she's well liked. (I'll expand more on this dynamic later.)

Another thing I liked was the progression of her character. Despite the fact that most of her growing is off-camera (which is kinda disappointing to me, I would have wanted to see that more on camera, but, it still works out quite well in the end), we can clearly see that she's matured as a person. The other big thing I liked about Ami was the whole maturity vs. immaturity idea (though, I would have liked this, again, to be more expanded explicitly). On one hand, we have everyone tell Ami how mature she is, how grown-up she is, an idea that she herself likes. An idea that she's just been... Fed into. However, we have Ryuuji, when he sees her at the supermarket, who calls her immature, which she acknowledges. It's... A neat struggle to see, the duality of the expectations of being "mature" yet not really truly being super duper mature (though, at the same time, she probably is, by far, the most mature of the main characters).

Minori Kushieda: Oh Minori. She seems like your stereotypical energetic genki girl who just... Well, loves doing everything. She pours out her time in her work, her softball, and she seems to be trying to do, well, everything at once. She's friendly to everyone and just seems like a weird quirky personality. Except... Well, she really isn't anything like your average energetic girl. Like all the other characters, she's got a hidden side she doesn't want to reveal.

In a sense, she's kind of similar to Ami. Both Ami and Minori hide their true natures. Both of them (well, at least initially, for Ami) use a pretense of being super nice. In a sense, it reminds me of a quote that my English teacher in high school was fond of, from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, "Give us this day our daily mask" because, Minori completely fills this mold. Like... That's the weird thing about Minori. On one hand, the genki-ness of her behaviour seems partially genuine. She does seem like an energetic girl who likes being kind to others... Yet, on the other hand, as we see quite a bit in the second half, it's an act, as she uses it to run away from showing how she truly feels (like with Ryuuji). It's this juxtaposing behaviour which just works out super duper well - she (at first) seems super duper straightforward as a character with her motivations... But in reality, her actions aren't truly too similar to how she actually relates to them. The biggest example I can think of is the whole example with Taiga thinking that Minori didn't like scary things, when... Well, in reality, she loves scary things. Though this shows more the strangeness of the Taiga/Minori dynamic, it also just shows that Minori just... Tends to wear a mask to hide her actions.

Ryuuji Takasu: Our cleaning obsessed protag! He's actually a pretty nice guy - and genuinely one too. Which, well, is refreshing to see. He genuinely cares about people's well being, and just generally seems like a cool guy to be around. It strikes me as funny as to how dense he is romantically, though. And, well... When given the chance to confront those feelings (when he learns from Taiga's groggy talking), that he just doesn't want anything to do with them and just wants to have the status quo, despite the fact that he surely would have realized and known at this point that he reciprocates these feelings for Taiga. But still, he's a good protag. He certainly strays away from the (squicky) generic tropes of romance heroes by descending into harem antics and non-committal between girls. And what's really cool about him is his level of dedication. I mean, he sees that Taiga doesn't do a good job at her house of cleaning and cooking, so he invites her over for dinner and whatnot. Even after being essentially forced into helping Taiga, he doesn't do a half-assed job about it - he is fully dedicated to helping her out in whatever she wants to have done, going well above the call of duty. It's... Really cool to see something like that.

George Ushiromiya Yusaku Kitamura: So, the last of our protagonists. He's... Certainly the weakest of all the main characters, but he's still an interesting enough character. Like Ryuuji, he seems to be quite a nice guy. At least, he seems to be someone who cares about his friends and wants to make sure that no one gets hurt. But you get this... Weird immature vibe about him. Like, even though he's technically super responsible with all his vice-student council president and eventual student council president roles, he just seems like... A child, really. Like, his reaction to Sumire leaving to go to America is really immature. I mean, sure, you're in love and heartbroken, but... Why go through this weird "rebellious" phase? Throwing away all that you care about isn't going to make things better - even Kitamura admits this when talking to Ryuuji about this. Still, he's a decent enough character, despite the fact that he's... Relatively boring compared to everyone else. Though... I do wonder what on earth his obsession with being shirtless is. It's kind of odd and never explained. But, oh wells.

Other Characters: I wasn't expecting super amazing side characters, but... The side characters in Toradora are pretty solid. Yasuko, despite her airheaded appearances is pretty perceptive and really cares about how she raised Ryuuji. Yuri's kinda weird and obsesses about how she's older than 30 now (and about how she's going to buy a condo), but you can tell that she does care about her students. Maya/Haruta/Noto are... Kinda boring generic characters, but they serve their purpose of enriching the feeling of Class 2-C. But, well, the thing I liked the most about the side characters was how even they fit perfectly into the mold of some of the themes in Toradora, which is really good to see.

Relationships Between Characters

Considering this is a romantic-comedy anime, I would hope that the character relationships were good. And yeah, they were really good. Like with the characters, I'm going to break it down by relationship.

Ryuuji/Taiga: Hey, it's our marquee relationship, considering, well, this is what the anime completely builds up to. Initially, the Ryuuji/Taiga relationship builds up from a mutually beneficial arrangement - Ryuuji would help Taiga get closer with her crush, Kitamura, while Taiga would help Ryuuji get closer with his crush, Minori. And, well, this continues for a while. Ryuuji and Taiga bumble their way through with their absolutely terrible attempts of trying to get Ryuuji/Minori and Kitamura/Taiga to actually happen. But... In the meantime, they start growing closer together. Ryuuji helps Taiga around, and, like I mentioned previously, goes well above the call of duty to help out Taiga, in things ranging from cleaning her apartment, cooking dinner for her, and walking together to school.

I suspect that even earlier on, Taiga subconsciously has feelings for Ryuuji - definitely not when they first are introduced to each other, but.... To me, there are some seeds of relationship as early as episode 7 - after all, if I recall correctly, Taiga says something about Ryuuji being her Ryuuji, but... I might just be grasping at straws here. Either way, we know that Taiga most definitely is the one that realizes the true depth of their relationship - after all, she eventually stops acting super awkward in front of Kitamura, as she realizes that the relationship with Kitamura just... Wouldn't work out, and she asks Kitamura to take away her feelings towards Ryuuji. Heck, you can even argue that she cared for Ryuuji so much that she was willing to throw away her own personal feelings for Ryuuji to make him "happy", that is by setting him up with Minori... Which, well, is really tragic and heartbreaking had it actually happened. (Thank goodness it didn't.)

Ryuuji, on the other hand, is as dense as a brick regarding the Taiga/Ryuuji relationship. Actually, that might be insulting to bricks by me saying that. But still, either way, he really (somehow) doesn't realize Taiga's affections for him until really far into the show. Like... It's not until Taiga, in her dazed state after falling off a cliff, tells him in a lurid state that she loves Ryuuji that he finally realizes it. And... Even then, he tries to run away from these feelings by pretending that Kitamura is the one that saved her, to prevent an escalation in the relationship. It's not until the proverbial s*** hitting the fan situation where his feeble attempts at lying to Taiga about who saved her that he's finally able to explicitly confront his feelings about Taiga. Like... We get hints before that he cares about Taiga in a more romantic manner, but... I don't think he realizes it himself.

But... I really love how this relationship goes. The progression, while a little slow, feels completely natural. It doesn't feel like it's forced in any matter - it just starts off with their friendship, and they just grow as they realize that they need each other in their lives. Their interaction is really adorable and great. And, well, there are so many great callbacks from the beginning until the end, like how tigers and dragons are equal, and of course, how love isn't super easy to achieve. And... Well, the Ryuuji/Taiga relationship feels like a perfect culmination of these themes, and they just feel so... Natural for each other. And, from what I've heard from NN, the fact that there's even closure on a relationship like this is impressive enough already.

Ryuuji/Minori: The Ryuuji/Minori relationship is... Odd, to say the least. It's weird, because both of them share romantic interest for each other, but.. In the end, it just doesn't work out. After all, Ryuuji's interest in Minori really never got beyond anything a superficial crush. And, well, neither Ryuuji nor Minori really attempted to explicitly show their love to each other in any way initially. After all, even during the summer beach trip, when Ryuuji and Minori are together talking on the balcony alone, neither Ryuuji nor Minori make any attempt to show their love to each other. Honestly, the most explicit they got (before the whole theme shift thing) was the fact that both Ryuuji and Minori wanted to buy the photo at the cultural festival where they cross the finish line.

But... At the same time, even though they don't really seem to have that same chemistry of attraction that Ryuuji/Taiga has, they still have some chemistry together. It's clear that they have some sort of relationship chemistry, as evidenced by the scene when they're locked in the storage house and the beach balcony scene, but... It's also quite clear that it's a lot more superficial, similar to Taiga/Kitamura and Taiga/Minori. Both of them have their infatuation with each other, but... Both of them (and especially Minori) choose to keep it hidden away, keeping their mask on to pretend that nothing has really happened... Though, granted, Ryuuji isn't exactly the best at picking up social cues. It's kind of neat, to me, how both this relationship and Taiga's relationship with Kitamura just fit with the theme of Toradora.

Ryuuji/Ami: Ryuuji and Ami's relationship is one that, to me, feels like a relationship of both respect and attraction. Initially, when Ami and Ryuuji both meet, Ryuuji, at Kitamura's guidance, sees Ami's true colours - that she isn't the super nice air-headed bimbo-esque girl, but that she's actually just a normal person, albeit one who is a lot snarkier and colder. However, it's Taiga, really (this will be discussed more later... For sure) that inspires Ami to break out of her shell of pretending to be nice all the time - by standing up against the stalker. This lets Ami begin her process of starting be herself. This process allows for Ami to build up a relationship that's... Different than your standard Ami relationship.

For the first part, Ami seems to treat Ryuuji differently than she does other people. And, well, this isn't just the fact that she seems to be romantically interested in him. It's also the fact that Ami has much deeper conversations with Ryuuji than she does anyone else. She holds Ryuuji to a much higher level of respect than she holds other people. And, well, it clearly shows. For example, when Ryuuji calls her immature for not knowing how to cook, you can see that it just... Affects her.

In addition, you see her giving Ryuuji a lot of advice about just... Life in general. It seems to me that she wants to guide Ryuuji. Like, one of the more notable things (as I'll mention again later on) is the fact that she keeps telling Ryuuji to make a decision about Taiga, and not to leave things... Hanging, the way that he'd been handling it. And probably the weirdest thing is that, for the most part, Ami doesn't treat Ryuuji with very much hostility for her standards. Still, the Ryuuji/Ami dynamic is an interesting one, and apparently one where I'm at a relative loss of words at.

Taiga/Minori: Taiga and Minori is yet another weird relationship in Toradora. (Man, Toradora's relationships are... Odd. But they're in a good way odd.) At first, it seems that the relationship between Taiga and Minori is super close and super tight. They seem to be super good friends, with Minori always cheerfully saying hi to Taiga, and Taiga reciprocating that behaviour. They seemingly know what their likes and dislikes are. And, well, it just seems that they're always together and hanging out.

But... As we see later on, this is all very much a facade. I didn't realize this, but there really are just a bunch of clues (that make so much sense in hindsight) that their relationship isn't as deep as we (initially) think it is. For example, later on, we learn that Minori hasn't gone to Taiga's in almost a year because of her criticizing Taiga's attempts to get back with her father. And... Well, all this is clued in pretty well. Like, when we first see Taiga's apartment, it's filthy and a complete mess with clothes lying everywhere and dirty dishes clogging the sink. And... During the beach house episodes, we learn that Minori is, like Ryuuji, very good at cleaning things. It doesn't take rocket science to add the 1 + 1 here.

In fact, that whole beach house arc tells us a lot about the Taiga/Minori dynamic. Taiga, who apparently knows Minori very well, thinks that Minori hates scary things, and is terrified by them. And, well, it appears to be like that, for the most part, throughout that arc. But... Then, at the end of the arc, we learn that Minori was faking it all along, and that she just pretends to hate it. If Taiga, her supposed best friend, didn't even know about this stuff, doesn't this just show a lot about the true nature of their relationship? Like... It just goes to show, yet again, Minori's penchant for hiding things and not being true to herself.

Taiga/Ami: Oooh boy. Taiga and Ami. This relationship was a fun relationship to watch. Initially, when they first meet, Ami is... quite antagonistic to Taiga, to say the least. And, well, Taiga reacts with remarkable restraint (by Taiga's standards), because she literally sits there and hears it happen, for the most part. But, obviously, there's so much more to this relationship than their initial antagonism. As I mentioned earlier, Ami is inspired by Taiga's behaviour of standing up for herself when she encounters Ami's stalker. Instead of being frightened by the stalker, Taiga went and basically stood up for herself and scared him away. As a result, this inspired Ami to do the same for herself - she went and beat that stalker up, and this began a change to have her show her real side more... But that's not the point here.

Despite their initial misgivings, it's clear that there's a deeper underlying friendship. While it still started off a little tense, with Taiga basically having Ami at her beck and call with mysterious photos of different poses, it's readily apparent that Ami really does care for Taiga. For example, during the Culture Festival, you can see that Ami is looking out for Taiga and doesn't want her to get hurt when she insists that they change the introduction when her father doesn't show up for the wrestling show. And, well, even later on, you can tell that Ami's looking out for her - her talk with Ryuuji about treating Taiga like a daughter and being completely non-committal in his relationship with Taiga emphasizes that she really is looking out for Taiga's best interests and that she doesn't want her to get hurt.

Although Ami does look after and care for Taiga, they still have a relationship which is based off of teasing one another. I mean, both Taiga and Ami have their fun in taking jabs at each other - with the whole chihuahua and size remarks and whatnot. And hey, it makes for an entertaining show like this. Their relationship is just... Lots of fun. It's much more of a true friendship than the relationship between Taiga and Minori, because, well, they both get each other.

It's a weird duality between the two relationships that Taiga has with Ami and Minori. On one side, you have the "friendly" relationship between Taiga and Minori, where they appear to be close friends, but... In reality, they're not really that close at all. On the other hand, you have the much more "hostile" relationship between Taiga and Ami, but they actually connect with each other and understand each other. It's a neat theme in Toradora that I like. It's more about what's inside than what's on the superficial outside.

Others: And now time for all the other relationships that I don't have as much to say about.

Right off the bat, the biggest relationship that I don't have on here is the one between Kitamura and Taiga. And... Well, the reason I don't have it as its own point is because, well, I just... Don't have much to say about it. Kitamura's relatively boring in the cast. And, well, Taiga's relationship with him isn't super duper interesting. Though, as always, there are things to note about it. Like Ryuuji's relationship with Minori, Taiga's crush on Kitamura is much more of a superficial thing. Sure, she's attracted to him, but... If I recall correctly, she really has no idea why, other than the fact that he was nice to her sometimes. And... Well, the relationship never really goes beyond that. I find it funny that Kitamura himself was attracted to Taiga and then gets shot down, but then, later on, when Taiga professes her love for Kitamura... She gets shot down.

I guess another relatively big relationship that I missed out on was the one between Kitamura and Ryuuji. They'd been friends for a while, and... Well, we can see that they're friendly to one another. However, there's not too much depth to this relationship. We know that Ryuuji trusts Kitamura, with the whole "lie to Taiga" bit, but... Beside that, we really don't see too much with their relationship.

Also, honestly, for a relationship between childhood friends, we honestly don't see too much between Kitamura and Ami either. We know that they're friends, and we can see that Ami is able to read Kitamura like a book (with the whole Kitamura rebel phase), but... Aside from that, we really don't know too much about their relationship. Which, I guess you could say is kind of a pity, but... I don't particularly care about Kitamura, so... Yeah.

As for other big relationships that I can't talk on for paragraphs and paragraphs, I guess the last big one would be the relationship between Ryuuji and Yasuko. We can clearly see that, despite Yasuko's odd immaturity, she truly cares for Ryuuji. She really does want to take care of him. She has thrown everything that she's got to raising him to be a good son. And, while she might be a bit overprotective of him, she is looking out for his best interests. And, at the same time, Ryuuji truly cares about his mother as well, with all the housework he does. It's a nice relationship to see. It genuinely feels sad when they have their fight near the end of the show, because Toradora does a good job at building up the relationship (albeit in a more subtle way) so that it feels genuinely sad at that point. Which is good to see.

Themes

"There is something in this world that no one has ever seen before. It is gentle and sweet. Maybe if it could be seen, everyone would fight over it. That is why the world hid it, so that no one could get their hands on it so easily. However, someday, someone will find it. The person who deserves it the most will definitely find it. "

The first and most prevalent theme in Toradora is obviously about love, and how, well, love is an open door not something that's just willy-nilly and easily found. Instead, it's something that needs to be nurtured and grown. One doesn't just find love by creating it. One doesn't find love with just anyone. True love is serendipitous, and no matter the distance separating them, it'll be found. The three major love relationships perfectly show this theme. Like... The relationships with Ryuuji/Minori and Kitamura/Taiga were doomed to fail from the beginning. Those attempts at love were too forced, and weren't natural. But... The relationship between Ryuuji/Taiga grew and blossomed as they grew more and more dependent on each other, and... Well, it was nice to see that.

The second theme to me is about not running away from what you want, confronting your fears, and taking charge over what you do. We see all the main characters run away from something they love at some point. Ami runs away from her modeling career because of a stalker, Kitamura runs away from becoming Student Council President because of her love for Sumire, Taiga runs away from her love of Ryuuji, Minori runs away from her love of Ryuuji, and Ryuuji just runs away from his love of Taiga. But... In the end, all of them overcome their paralyzing fears and reclaim what they want. Ami is able to, through seeing Taiga, hunt down her fear and humanize the stalker... And proceed to beat him up. Kitamura is able to realize, through a feisty pep talk from Sumire, that he is the best candidate for the job (and, at the same time, he's able to build up his confidence to confess to Sumire that he loves her). Taiga and Ryuuji end up as a couple in the end, after taking a very long time to admit their love for each other. And Minori admits to Ryuuji that she loves him, but... Is able to move on.

Second OP

First... a link. Can I just say how much I love Silky Heart? Firstly, by itself as a song, it's well sung and it's got a nice catchy beat. But... For me, the biggest reason I love it so much is because how relevant it is to the entire thematic shift of the second part of Toradora. Silky Heart is all about lacking courage to say to the person that you love that you do love them, and how for as long as you wait, it just keeps festering and hurting on the inside. And... Well, that's exactly what the second part of Toradora is about. Both Minori and Taiga keep trying to run away from their true feelings about Ryuuji. Minori gives that half-assed talk at Christmas Eve about not wanting to see UFOs or ghosts any more and... Proceeds to run away immediately afterwards. And, of course, Taiga denied and ran away from her feelings by wanting them to disappear. And, well, in the end, it caused both of them to just hurt and hurt and hurt until they get hurt on the inside. The OP just... Fits so perfectly with the entire story and theme of this part, and it's just great.

Attention to Detail

For the most part, this isn't filled with stuff that I saw, but rather, stuff that NN was telling me that got was saying. The attention to detail in Toradora is just... Very very well done. For example, lots of the stuff that seems random and odd, such as Minori being part of the race or the fact that Ryuuji ends up in a bear suit are things that are hidden away in the background. Another great thing is the level of foreshadowing and even just... Reactions to things that make sense in hindsight - the one that readily comes to mind is one that NN mentioned before in his SoCs, where when Ryuuji says something about Taiga's father being a b******, Yasuko immediately asks if they're talking about Ryuuji's dad. Like... When I was watching it initially, I just thought it was Yasuko being her usual airheaded self, but once we learn much later on that Ryuuji was born out of wedlock... It all makes sense. Finally, I just love the fact that things that are brought up earlier are once again mentioned later on. I can't recall any specific instances of this right now, but... I do remember this happening a decent chunk of the time. And, well, having all these aspects just makes the world and character and story of Toradora just feel more alive and real.

Things I Didn't Like

... I actually can't think of anything I didn't like that would be negative enough for me to put here. Good job, Toradora. Good job.

Minor Nitpicks

Music

It's a weird thing. For such an amazing anime... Toradora's music is surprisingly weak. Yes, it's a very competent OST, but... For the most part, I can't really remember any tracks from the soundtrack at all, which is really odd because I'm usually one to remember music tracks. This isn't really a complaint at all about Toradora's OST, it's just... It's a very underwhelming OST. There's nothing standout amazing about it, like Baccano's OST or Madoka's OST. And, well, the first OP is kinda lackluster as well, which is disappointing, considering that's the OP that gets played more than Silky Love </3.

Ending

For me... I wish that we got a bit more closure on... Well, everything really. All we really know is that Taiga and Ryuuji are still together (which is a duh moment) and that Kitamura is going to the USA presumably to find Sumire... And well, that's it. Like, to me, I get that they want to keep things open ended, but... I would have been interested in seeing what happens with Taiga/Ryuuji's relationship, what happened to Ami, what happened to Minori, and all that type of stuff. Though, I suppose you can say it's a good thing that the ending made me want for more, I'm not an especially big fan of that because... Well, there isn't really any sequel material.

... why can't there be more tordadora dammit whyyyyyyy ;_______;

Overall

Can you guys tell that I like Toradora? Not sure, but maybe I should say it again. Toradora is freaking fantastic. I wrote a 5000+ word review about it, and I still feel like I have more to say about it. Easily one of the best anime I've ever watched. Everything in it just.. Works out so well. The pacing is perfect, which is weird for me because I usually am pretty nitpicky about pacing. The characters are all fantastic. The relationships between everyone is great as well. I wholeheartedly recommend Toradora to anyone, even if you don't care for slice of life or romance, because... Honestly, I can't say I'm normally a big fan of either genre, but Toradora just worked out so great. So, yeah. A full recommendation from me. But, if you're reading this review, that means you've already watched it, so...
Spoiler : Toradora! No Spoilers :
If you're reading this one, this means you haven't watched Toradora! yet. Why haven't you watched Toradora yet? Go. Watch it now. I don't care what excuse you have right now. If you have the time to read this, you have the time to watch Toradora. It's great. Go watch it. Now.
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Re: Review Thread

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This is my review of Absolute Duo. Contains no spoilers. ^^

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Re: Review Thread

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Guess it's time for another review.
Spoiler : Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero (Spoiler Free, More or Less) :
NAME: Yuuki Yuuna is a Hero
TYPE OF FICTION: Anime (There are two manga and a companion visual novel, as well.)
RATING: 8/10
TL;DR: The show combines a great, compelling plot that manages to remain incredibly unpredictable and compelling, entertaining characters to make a fantastic whole. A great show, and the best magical girl show I've seen in a long time.

FULL REVIEW:


So, let's get the basic plot out of the way. Yuuki Yuuna is about the adventures of the titular character and her group of friends, who are the members of the "Hero Club"- a club devoted to helping people out, be it lending a hand to school clubs, or helping find lost pets homes. However, this is actually a mere pretense. The girls were gathered together by a powerful religious group known as the Taisha, because they have the ability to save their world from mysterious, inhuman creatures known as Vertexes.

From the beginning, you can tell that the show isn't going to be sunshine and rainbows. As in Madoka- a pretty obvious inspiration- there are dark undercurrents that creep into the story, and just a general feeling of something being "off"; that there's more to this story than you're being told. But unlike in Madoka, the series manages to typically find a good balance between nihilistic darkness and optimistic empowerment.

There is a lot for the heroes in Yuuki Yuuna to despair about, but there's reasons to be happy too, and things that still make the world worth fighting for. The show is a story about a lot of things, but it's primarily the story about a group of girls that don't give up. They get handed a very rough hand, but instead of simply accepting it, they struggle to make the most of it. The protagonists take on obstacles that come their way and do everything they can to roll with the punches and still live happy lives. And even when things appear blackest and some give into despair, the others take the opportunity to shine their brightest.

The entire story is told ridiculously well. The pacing is great- the story takes its time to set everything up and get you properly attached to the characters, without ever really feeling like it's dragging. The premise, though not unique, is genuinely intriguing, and all the plot developments that occur thereafter manage to be very interesting as well as continually unpredictable. I could never quite predict where Yuuki Yuuna was going to go next, and that's a massive plus in my book.

The twists themselves are sometimes foreshadowed and sometimes not, but they always feel like they have some kind of purpose within the narrative- none of them feel stuck into the story for the sake of shock value, which is always nice to see as well.

For most its runtime, the show manages to avoid the pitfall of melodrama, and generated genuine pathos. The anime never managed to make me cry, but there were a good deal of great emotional moments that really did manage to resonate with me. The show does dip its toes into the melodrama well when it reaches its climax, but it never gets to the point where it's obnoxious and there's still some very moving moments. And then conclusion to the story is incredibly powerful and just fantastic to watch.

Although there are some glitches every now and then (there's one conversation in episode 4 that is just absolutely bewildering), in general the dialogue is really good- full of personality. When the show wants to be funny, it can make the back-and-forths between the characters very entertaining. And when the show wants to impact you on an emotional level, it's not bad at that either.

I'm not sure how much else I can really say about the story of Yuuki Yuuna without running into massive spoilers. It's simply a very good story that is told very, very well.

Okay, next up is characters!

All the characters have a good deal of chemistry and play off each other quite well- this is definitely a group of people that I can imagine being friends. They all have well-defined personalities and quirks and manage to all be very entertaining to watch, and I became attached to them surprisingly quickly- I have a lot of trouble when it comes to remembering names of characters, but I could remember the names of all the characters of Yuuki Yuuna by episode 4.

Their arcs are relatively well defined and are all incredibly compelling, despite being somewhat predictable- I completely understand why a certain character changes the way they do, and the development is always very compelling to watch. Whether it be the timid Itsuki learning how to step out of her sister's shadow, or Karin learning that there can be more to life than just fighting and completing the tasks assigned to her, it's continually well-written and touching.

Now onto technical stuff.

The music does a good job of conveying the mood of emotional scenes- it often helps effectively deliver a heartfelt moment. The rest of the time, it's typically very basic and unobtrusive- nothing great, but the music never really hurts the show either. It's perfectly functional. It might be a bit unfair to compare the sub and dub at this point given that only four episodes of the dub are released, but the dub isn't bad thus far. Erica Mendez and Sarah Williams do great in their roles, and everybody else does a serviceble-to-good job. The script typically manages a decent balance between faithfulness and fluidity, with only slight glitches every now and then. I'd say that whether or not you listen to the show in English or Japanese will be a combination of personal preference, and whether or not you're willing to wait for all the DVDs to be out to actually watch the entirety of the show.

The visuals are, like the music, nothing great but functional. You can tell that a good deal of corner-cutting was done at points, but the fight scenes are still decently animated, and the show always manages to look good at the points where it needs to. The character designs aren't particularly unique, but they are interesting and relatively memorable.

CONCLUSION (If you tl;dr'd the rest of this, at least read this part!):
Yuuki Yuuna is a good show that manages to create a dark tone without being consumed by it. The show balances a good plot with compelling and interesting characters that have solid development, and is just really fun to watch. I'd highly advise that everyone give this show a shot- it's definitely worth that much, at least.
"With good friends by your side, anything is possible. If you really care for each other, it makes everyone stronger! Then you'll have the will to succeed! The world is filled with painful things, it's sad sometimes, and you won't be able to handle it by yourself. But just know: If there's someone that you love, you'll stay on the right path. And you won't ever give in! As long as you keep that person in your heart, you'll keep getting back up. Understand? That's why a Hero never loses!"
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Miki by Hershey's Chocolate Bars.
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kwando1313
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Re: Review Thread

Post by kwando1313 »

Gakkou Gurashi, AKA School-Live!. Let's do this.
Spoiler : SL Review (Spoilers) :
School-Live!
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The most adorable and cute anime of the season.
School-Live, also known as Gakkou Gurashi, is an SoL anime. It's also, quite possibly, one of the most adorable shows of the season. School-Live is an anime about the "School Living Club" which lives inside the school, and does various activities, such as camping, a test of courage, and swimming.

And of course, this being a happy and carefree Slice of Lice anime, absolutely nothing goes wrong. It's all about cute girls doing cute things in a very adorable man-
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W-Wait. This isn't very cute at all ohgoshwhat'sgoingonhere
...

Let's try that start again, shall we?
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Oh. Well, there goes the school.
School-Live, also known as Gakkou Gurashi, is... Well, it's a mix of two quite different genres, isn't it. On one hand, it really is a Slice of Life anime, with cute girls doing cute things. And on the other hand, well, it's a full-blown zombie anime. It's a (seemingly) weird mishmash, but it works really really well, in my opinion.

Now that we got all that introduction stuff out of the way, I can start the review part. Like before, it's going to follow my standard review format - things I like go first, followed by things I didn't like, some minor nitpicks, and finally a summation of all my thoughts.

Things I Liked:

Characters
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Yay! Adorable jumping pics!
From left to right: Miki Naoki, Taromaru, Yuki Takemi, Kurumi Ebisuzawa, Yuri Wakasa
School-Live's cast isn't a very huge cast... But I liked them all, nonetheless. Let's go through (almost) all the characters one by one, shall we?

Yuki Takeya
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Much better.
Ah, Yuki. Our lovable protagonist. Initially, she sees the world in... Well, quite the odd state, as she's deluded herself into thinking that everything is daijoubu and okay. Of the group dynamic, she's the excited "genki girl" of the group. She's the person who brings joy and happiness by suggesting various activities, such as the trip to the mall, the pool party, an indoor sports day, etc.

Initially, some people might find her... Well, annoying, due to her easily excitable tendencies. And, well, the fact that she's blissfully unaware of the whole situation around them. In fact, she seems like the most useless member of the group - she in fact could bring danger to the group when they go out of the "safe area" in the school since she's prone to making sudden movements, loud sounds, and, essentially, being a zombie magnet in the first place.

However, I'd say (and I'm pretty sure other people will agree with me) that Yuki is the reason that they're even alive today. After all, we saw firsthand in episodes 4 and 5 what days where there isn't anything to look forward to doing will do a person's psyche in the world of surviving among zombies. We see firsthand that when they're focusing purely on "surviving" and not "living", that it just... Eventually destroys your desire to live. With Yuki here, she's the person who brings that light to their world. She's the one who brings joy and happiness to their group.

And then, of course, we get to the point of Yuki's delusion of Megu-nee. This one... Is really interesting, in my opinion. It's quite neat, in my opinion how her delusion works. After all, it seems to be... Some sort of weird safeguard for her mind to protect her in dangerous situations. After all, in episode 2, it was her delusion of Megu-nee that prevented her from being spotted by the zombie that happened to be in the library. (Though, I have no idea how that actually played out in real life.)

But right, back to Yuki proper. In the end, Yuki's character arc is fascinating. She is the character that grows the most throughout the entire series. Starting from episode 10, we see that Yuki's delusions of her perfect daijoubu world to break down, as she realizes that the window is broken. And, in episode 12, this is where we really get to see how she's grown. She's able to realize that the zombies still have memories of their old lives, and is able to just... Get them away by telling them to go home, thus allowing Miki to give Kurumi the medicine, and all that schbang. We see that, well, Yuki actually is a pretty smart person. Like the other girls say, the activities she suggests are always at the best time, because they bring up morale for the School Living Club. Heck, her suggestion to go to the mall is what let them save Miki in the first place.

In short, Yuki's character is a lot deeper than what meets the eye. She seems like a typical airheaded genki girl... But she really is a lot smarter and more perceptive, albeit subconsciously for most of the show, than she actually is. And besides, that hat is super adorable.

Kurumi Ebisuzawa
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When you have a character introduced by polishing a shovel... I think you know she's going to be an interesting character.
Ah, Kurumi. Or, my favourite character in the show. She's the designated zombie killer character of the show. And she always carries her shovel around with her.

Kurumi isn't really a super duper deep character like Yuki is, but she's a very entertaining character nonetheless. The first time we see her, we see her just being a... Generally excitable and happy person, who likes to be lighthearted, yet is mature, considering the whole situation at hand. (And she also very much loves her shovel.)

And then, of course, in episode 2, we see how she survived the initial outbreak in the first place - it was in a pretty brutal manner, as she had to kill off a zombified version of her senpai... And, well, she manages to do it.

One of the things that impresses me the most about Kurumi is... Well, how she's able to keep things so lighthearted, despite the fact that she's stuck with all the dirty jobs. Like I'll mention later, as much as she tries to de-humanize the zombies she's trying to kill, she... Just fully cannot do that, which shows to me that she doesn't devolve into a cold-hearted cruel killer. She... Manages to deal with the stress of being the zombie killer, without compromising who she is.

But, of course, we see this mental fortitude at work when she gets bitten by Zombie Megu-nee in episode 10. Even in her pain and struggling, even when she's in severe mental pain, we see her fighting. And of course, her reaction after being cured is golden and classic Kurumi - even after all that pain and suffering and just... General unpleasantness, she's still able to bring a bright smile to her face.

And, well, I guess that's what I like about Kurumi. She's just a generally cool girl, and I just really liked how her personality meshes with the rest of the School Living Club.

Miki Naoki
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I keep interrupting you from your Steppan King book, Mii-kun...
Ah, Miki. She gets quite a nice dynamic character arc, which is cool to see.

When we (chronologically) meet her first, she's... Pretty skeptical about this whole School Living Club schbang. Which, to me, is quite understandable. After all, she'd been staying inside a mall with her friend Kei, cooped up in a state where... Well, survival was the only thing she had to "look forward" to. And, of course, it doesn't help when Kei decided to leave and Taromaru ran away from her... But still, all those events happened, so it makes sense to me that she was a lot more reserved about the whole situation at hand.

Of course, the whole reason that Kei left sets up a rather large character arc for Miki - the reason that Kei left the safe room was because she felt that she was no longer "living". After all, staying cooped up in a safe location, but spending days passing by endlessly like that... How could anyone call that living? But, we see, as she stays with the School Living Club, she grows more and more comfortable with the rest of the girls, and opens up a considerable amount. She grows a lot warmer, and you can tell that she starts actually caring for everyone else as well. It's cool to see.

Instead of just "surviving", she instead now is living. She's making use of her life. She's enjoying her life. She's not merely surviving on a day-to-day basis, but she's making the best of what she can right now. And... Well, that's a pretty cool message to see.

...

(Sorry this section is so short. I don't really have that much more to say about Miki. But, yes, she's quite a well written character as well.)

Megu-nee
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Megu-nee is the best most living teacher.
Let's start with Megu-nee. Well, the actual Megu-nee (because, as fascinating as it is to talk about Yuki's delusional Megu-nee... I'm pretty sure I covered her enough in the Yuki section of this review.)

In episode 3, we see her getting sussed out by one of the administration for being too kind and too caring and being too attached to her students. In fact, we see (throughout the flashbacks) that this isn't really a weakness at all - in fact, it's quite easily one of her strengths. Because of her kindness and selflessness, Yuki, Kurumi, and Yuri were able to survive the zombie outbreak - not only because she helped during the initial stages when the zombies began to outbreak, but by also suggesting the founding of the School Living Club in the first place. Without the School Living Club, most likely Yuki, Kurumi, and Yuri would end up like Kei did - despite the fact that they survived, they wouldn't truly be "living" because they would be living day-to-day just to keep themselves alive, rather than finding a way to enjoy and make use of every day.

And, as we see in later flashbacks, this selflessness carries on, eventually leading to her death. Though we're not completely aware of what happened on that fateful day, we do see that Megu-nee willingly sacrifices herself to prevent the zombies from attacking Kurumi, Yuri, and Yuki. She truly is a selfless teacher who puts herself above others. She really does care about others, and is willing to put her life on the line to protect her students, which is quite sweet. And... We know that Megu-nee ultimately, because of this sacrifice, dies alone. She undergoes the painful process of being zombified, but even during that time she's still thinking about her students - she goes to the place that is furthest away, the underground bunker.
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I... Think you've seen better times, Megu-nee.
Of course, unfortunately, that kindness is what (ironically) leads the whole spiel of events in episodes 10 and 11 in the first place. Her running down to the bunker, the one place that would have been super far away from the rest of the girls... Is what leads her to be the last obstacle for them to go access anything in the bunker instead. But... Despite all that, even in her zombified state, we still see that she cares for her students. When Miki goes and tries to get the medicine from the bunker, we see that Megu-nee - at some point in time - tried to retrieve the medicine inside. We also see that she continues to "write" in her journal, and that Yuki, Kurumi, and Yuri are still on the top her... Well, mind, I guess.

In short, Megu-nee is the dedicated devoted and just... Generally all around great teacher. She's not a character with a huge character arc or physical presence, but her actions, as seen through the flashbacks, are the backbone of why things are the way they are during School-Live!.

Music
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Click the picture for the OP!stupid lack of youtube tags
Music time. Let's rock and roll with it.

Firstly... The OP. By itself, it isn't anything super special or anything. I mean, it's pretty standard J-Pop fare (though, it is sung by the ensemble cast, which always gets bonus marks for me), but... That of course isn't the reason why I love the OP so much.

The first reason is the the way that it constantly changes throughout the episodes. In the first episodes, it starts off as (quite possibly) one the most misleading OPs in the season - you really do just... Get the impression that School-Live! is just a standard SoL/girls doing cute things anime, where everything is perfectly fine (and daijoubu). Of course, after the reveal at the end of the first episode, you see the zombies show up in the second version of the OP. There's a minor change for episode five (showing that Kei is dead), but after episode six, when we learn of Megu-nee's death... That's when things start changing a lot more.

First, the colours of the OP start darkening. The part when they show the exterior of the school shows that the sun is slowly setting, and more zombies are appearing. Megu-nee disappears off of the OP, and is erased off the whiteboard, and replaced by her grave-marker. The photos appearing on the notebook have changed of more... Sad looking pictures. In fact, the notebook itself has become dirtier. And then... Episode 10 hits. After the reveal at the end of episode 9 where Taromaru confronts the Zombie Megu-nee... You get Taromaru walking by himself in the title appearing area. The sun has set even further. Even more zombies have appeared. Taromaru's leash is empty, and his bowl is full of food. Megu-nee's grave marker has been replaced by her zombie self. And Yuki's hat has become slightly bloody.

Secondly, you need to look at the lyrics to the song. Looking at it at face level, it seems happy and fluffy enough, about going to clubs after school and how it's exciting and happy to see everyone. Except... The words used in the original Japanese have lots of double entendres. There's a lovely reddit comment here that does a wonderful job at explaining this, but I'll give a condensed version here.

Shitai, for example, can mean dead bodies, so you could take the song as being about dead friends. Houka can mean abandonment, so one of the lines could be taken as "What to do after the abandonment of the school". And, of course, many of the lines are written in past tense, implying that all this stuff has already occurred.

So couple the happy sounding melody, with the potentially dark lyrics, and the progressively darker OP visuals, and you've got an OP which manages not only to be catchy, but also downright unsettling and creepy. It's really well done like that, because you get the contrast of the joyful upbeat melody, with the darkness and the hopelessness of the world around you. (And besides, I quite like it when songs have cheerful upbeat melodies, but really dark meanings with the words.)

Now that we've gotten the OP out of the way... Let's go with the second ED.
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Actually, this is a really nice shot too... And once again, stupid lack of youtube tags...
Afterglow, or the second ED for School-Live!. This one I like quite a bit, more because of the song itself, than anything. It's a really beautiful melody, and just nice and clean and simple. There are some nice visuals as well (like the shot I just posted above), and there's also the fact that they have a lot of the important items prominently left behind (like Yuri's knife, Yuki's hat, etc.). But yeah, I just really liked Afterglow as a song.

Which leads me to my next point, which is about the music direction in general for School-Live!. School-Live!'s OST isn't something with stand out amazing tracks that will stay in your head forever... It's a lot more like a movie's soundtrack, where the music thematically just works with the scene in place. The best example I can think of this is the scene where Miki asks Yuki who Megu-nee is, where the music, which originally was nicely playing, slowly slows down, eventually breaking down completely in the end. Just... Scenes like that made me really like the general music and sound direction of School-Live!.

Cinematography
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Oh man. This is probably one of my favourite things about School-Live. The cinematography in this anime is just simply phenomenal.

While the general art direction isn't anything spectacular, (I mean, I like the moe art style, but... It's not like it's phenomenally drawn or anything. It's serviceable, but nothing amazing.) School-Live does a really really great job at the way things are "filmed". Like... Take the shot that I show in the gif above. Showing the zombies off of the reflection of the glass while having Kurumi poke at the glass (which we now see is broken) is just... Well, a really gorgeous shot.

I really don't know what more to write here (because this is more of a see than read idea), so have a few more shots that I really like from School-Live!.
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Like I said, School-Live does a really nice job with the cinematography. Really like the way they compose their shots, and using the background to the fullest extent and things like that. And honestly, I've only shown brief bits that I like - mostly because I'm lazy and don't want to... acquire other episodes to make gifs with.

Foreshadowing
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That... Is an interesting lesson to teach in English.
Oh man. The foreshadowing in School-Live is simply phenomenal.

The first episode itself is chalk full of clues hinting towards the true nature of the zombie world. The broken windows in the background. The aforementioned weird chalkboard scribblings. The zoomed out shots of the zombies roaming the school grounds. The unanimated nature of Yuki's "classmates". All these clues were pretty well shown throughout the first episode of School-Live (and it's also quite apparent on a re-watch).

And then there's the foreshadowing of Megu-nee's actual non-existence, or rather that Yuki is the one who is deluding herself into thinking that Megu-nee's still alive. Of course, as the episodes go further in, they show this more and more, but even in the first episodes there are plenty of clues to her ghost-ness. There's the lack of a chair for her in the club room. There's the fact that she seemingly disappears and re-appears at will. There's the fact that there's a cross with a ribbon that looks like Megu-nee's ribbon on the roof. There's the fact that only Yuki directly interacts and communicates with her - Kurumi, Yuri, and Miki all just react to how Yuki reacts to "Megu-nee".

On top of that, there's other bits of smaller foreshadowing as well. The school being oddly well equipped for handling a zombie outbreak was casually referred to by Miki in episode 2. The zombies being semi-sentient is shown throughout the series. The existence of Zombie Megu-nee was shown in brief clips throughout the series. Every object that appears to be drawn in black felt in the OP appears, at some point, in the show. (Like, the Yuri's knife, the balloons that were used to release the letters... Things like that.) Heck, even the book that Miki is reading in the beginning by "Steppen King" is a subtle hint of how the events of the story might unfold.

In short, School-Live really nicely handles these small touches, which I as a viewer can really appreciate on a second-time viewing. It's really neat to see some details foreshadowed in advance like that.

"Realism"
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Um... Yuki. Might need to try a little harder next time.
For an anime about zombies... School-Live does an awfully good job at making the whole outbreak and the girls' reactions to the zombies extremely well.

Firstly, the zombies in School-Live are genuinely terrifying. They represent a threat that's constantly there - the school that they're living at is surrounded by zombies, and even parts of the school aren't safe because zombies are inside. They're not weaklings either, as demonstrated by the gif above. We see the scary power of the zombies when they bite Kurumi, because neither Miki nor Yuki can take out a zombie with their respective weapons (shovel and baseball bat). Of all the four characters, the only one who can consistently take out zombies is Kurumi.

Secondly, the behaviour of the zombies is relatively realistic as well. It makes sense to me that, despite becoming mindless flesh-eating monsters, the zombies are consistently shone as retaining... Some sort of memory of their past lives. We see this multiple times - with Megu-nee "writing" in her diary in the bunker, with the zombies not being in the streets when they go to the mall, with Taromaru saving Yuki from the zombies before going to the broadcast room, and with the zombies going home after Yuki makes her broadcast in the climax. To me, this just makes more sense that they retain some sort of primal instinct in their lives. (It also makes the fridge horror a bit more terrifying.)

Thirdly, the School Living club members correctly fear the zombies that surround their world. We see that Kurumi is the only one who has the strength to really even kill the zombies in the first place. In episode 11, when Miki goes down to the basement bunker to try and get the antidote, she notices that the shovel is actually quite heavy, and that Kurumi was single-handedly bearing the brunt of this burden of taking out the zombies.

But right, back to the reactions of the characters. The most intriguing reaction is the one by Kurumi, as she's the one who has to face the zombies the most. As I mentioned before, she's not a callously cold character who doesn't care about the zombies. She remembers who the zombies are. She remembers that zombies were humans before. The first zombie she had to kill was her senpai. She tries to de-humanize the zombies in order to kill them, but when she's given a stark reminder of their humanity, (such as the cellphone dropping from the zombie in episode 2), she hesitates. And, of course, we all know this leads to her downfall when she sees Zombie Megu-nee in episode 10, as her seeing Zombie Megu-nee causes her to get bitten.

Basically, the girls react in a way that I would expect most people to act. Typically, in zombie flicks, the main characters become bad-ass zombie killing machines, not willing to let zombies get in their way of their goals. But... In School-Live, it subverts that, and gives, to me, a much more realistic approach to how someone would react. School-Live makes the characters hesitant to kill the zombies, partly because of the zombies' strength, and partly because they cannot fully de-humanize them, and still see the zombies partially as the humans they used to be.

Things I Didn't Like:

Once again, a weirdly empty place, devoid of anything, because... Well, honestly School-Live doesn't do anything that I disliked enough to put on here. Huzzah!

Minor Nitpicks

Fanservice
I'm not putting an image here.
I get that School-Live is supposed to parody aspects of Slice of Life. I mean, that explains all of the activities that they do early on. But... Still. There's a bit more fanservice than I liked. I'm looking at you especially, Taromaru's bath scene. I'm also looking at you, episode 9. (Episode 9 is also, for me, my least favourite episode of the show because of all the fanservice. Though, it does provide a nice breather before all the events of episodes 10 and 11, so... I guess that's nice. Also that credit scene was great.)

But yeah, there's a little bit too much focus on the fanservicey aspects in School-Live. Not enough for me to feel super uncomfortable, but enough of it for me to be like ehhhhhhh...

Yuri Wakasa
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Don't worry, Rii-san. I'm sure everything's going to be daijoubu.
This... Isn't really a complaint about Yuri herself, but... It's more the lack of character that we get to see in School-Live. Initially, we see Yuri as the strong and motherly type character. She's the one that is the shoulder to lean on for the other girls. She's the one who helps to cook, keep inventory... Basically, do all the tasks that lets them continue their (relatively) idyllic lives and stay alive.

However, as we see in episodes 10 and 11, she... Does not cope to pressure well at all. Once Kurumi gets zombified, she does not handle the situation well at all. She seems to be fine at first, but once she's alone with the slowly zombifying Kurumi, she completely panics. She remembers the promise she made with Kurumi to kill her if she ever gets zombified, but... She can't bring herself to do it, and instead breaks down crying. Granted, this makes sense to me - it's extremely difficult to see someone who you love and care for suffering like that. It's even harder to think about potentially putting them down like that.

That being said, we... Don't really get to see a full character arc for Yuri, despite the fact we get to see this spectrum of character. This, to me, was quite disappointing. All the other characters (as noted above) get some sort of character arc, but... Yuri really doesn't get a big one at all, which was a total shame, since I feel like she has a lot more character that could be explored. She's, unfortunately, a bit underutilized in her role. Hopefully, if there is a sequel, we'll be able to see a bit more of Yuri's character shine.

Overall

Initially, when I heard about School-Live, I must admit, I was quite skeptical of how good it was going to be. I mean, most of the time, when I hear "Oh my goodness this anime is so great!" I... tend to disagree. (I mean, look at my opinion of Madoka, or Bebop, or other anime which are touted to be like "super amazing".) So, it was with this skeptical attitude that I watched the first episode.

And well, the first episode completely changed my mind about that. For the most part, during that first episode, I was thinking "Well, what's so special about this?" After all, most of the first episode is... Well, pretty standard Slice of Life anime. But then, of course, the reveal happened. Even at that point, I was still cautiously optimistic about School-Live!. At that point, I still had no idea what the show would bring. I mean, sure, the reveal was great, but how would the rest of the show play out? Would it be engaging and intriguing? What would the plot bring?

I think I can quite safely say now, that School-Live was easily the best anime I've watched this season, let alone this year. Heck, I want to say it's one of the best anime I've ever seen. I would wholeheartedly recommend School-Live. It's quite possibly one of the most clever shows I've watched, with an astounding attention to detail. Plot points are subtly alluded to and foreshadowed, characters grow and bond with each other, and most of the episodes feel important to the overall flow of the show.

In short, School-Live is really really amazing. I loved it. If you're reading this review, you've watched it as well, and I hope you thought it was as great as I did. But yeah, School-Live is one of the best anime I've watched, and is easily one of my favourites now.

But more importantly, don't forget...
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... Wait no, that's not the lesson we wanted to learn.
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Kei, I lived, and it was all worthwhile.
Much better.
Avatar made by Rimuu~

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Re: Review Thread

Post by Sleuth »

kwando1313 wrote:Gakkou Gurashi, AKA School-Live!. Let's do this.
Spoiler : :
Who is Kei
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Re: Review Thread

Post by Lind »

Wrote a frenzied rage-review of SAO II when I realised I hadn't posted a negative review in over two years.

Found here, contains swearing.
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Re: Review Thread

Post by GuardianDreamer »

I wrote some words about Fire Emblem Gaiden. This is less a proper review and more me rambling a lot about how Gaiden did a lot of stuff first that gets attributed to later games in the series, and also I find it interesting to talk about Gaiden because of how different it is from the rest of the series. Do keep in mind that this is written with the impression that you have played at least one FE game before, or at least have basic knowledge of what the series is like. I'm not going to spend paragraphs talking about why Marth and Roy aren't in this game. Also, this is going to be a spoilery review, in case anyone wants to avoid spoilers for a game that's older than I am and that's been spoiled anyway if you bought certain Awakening DLC. Before continuing, I feel the need to mention that I don't consider Gaiden a fun game to play at all, but it DOES have its fans that genuinely like it and consider it a fun game, so just remember that my opinion is subjective and stuff.

If you just want an overview of stuff that's generally weird about Gaiden or stuff about it that gets attributed to other games in the series, just skip to the very end and look for the easily-spotted list. You can skip everything else if that's what you're looking for.
Spoiler : FE2 WORDS :
First of all, I should start off by saying that I consider Gaiden to be the weakest game in the FE series. It's aged very poorly, even worse than the original FE1 which already aged pretty badly, was never really that good, and if you want to experience it for yourself, I ask you to consider looking up a Let's Play or something. With that out of the way, I'll also say that I have an unusual amount of respect towards Gaiden and I'm probably more fond of it than I should be. Gaiden was an extremely ambitious game with tons of ideas that kind of just fell apart. I'd love a remake of it, but that's a pretty unlikely prospect.

Released in 1992, Gaiden was the first sequel in the Fire Emblem series, as well as the second (and last) FE game on the Famicom. As the title implies, it's a sidestory to the first FE game... Sort of. It takes place on an entirely different continent and has four returning characters who I assume returned because they were popular. There aren't really any story connections between the two games otherwise. Later on, Fire Emblem 3 was released, which WAS a proper sequel to the very first game (and even included an updated version of the first game with it, albeit with some chapters removed) so I'm guessing Gaiden was made during a time when it was uncertain about how the franchise would progress in the future. Later games in the franchise have since stuck to the "2-3 games spent on a certain world/cast, then moving on to a new world" rule, with a couple of exceptions. And then Awakening connected all of them... But that's a story for another day that's also kind of messy.
Story and Character Stuff
The story is... Well, I never considered Fire Emblem to have particularly great stories (though a case could be made for a few of them) but... Well... It's really barebones, which is probably due to it being such an old game. If there's ever a remake, they would need to expand quite a bit. Just so no one is lost, I'll summarize the story in a few paragraphs that will probably make it sound incredibly silly.

Summary: Alm, one of the two protagonists, is the number one disciple of this former general called Mycen. Alm lives in a village in the Zofia Kingdom, having presumably been raised by Mycen since Alm is an orphan who doesn't know anything about his biological family. One day, a soldier named Luka arrives in Alm's village to seek Mycen's aid for a liberation force that he's a part of, since the king of Zofia was slain by this guy called Dozeh, and Dozeh is kind of a bad person. Mycen proceeds to refuse his role as the J-GUN of the game by basically saying "ahahahahaha no" and doesn't help Luka at all. Feeling like Mycen is showing cowardice, Alm volunteers to join Luka instead, and together with some other villagers he helps the liberation forces, and eventually his group of losers expands and becomes a formidable army.

Elsewhere in a monastery, a priestess named Celica (who is a childhood friend of Alm's) decides to go on a journey since the Earth Goddess Mila has disappeared (which she knows due to how their recent crop harvests have been terrible) and that's obviously not a good sign. She starts out with an all-magic party (though Celica is also a capable swordfighter) which is really weird in FE, though non-mages do join her group quickly enough. Her journey and Alm's only occasionally intersect, mostly one time when Celica talks with Alm about war and the loss it brings, and the very end of the game when Alm shows up to help Celica against the final boss. Somewhere along the way as the game alternates between Alm and Celica's groups, it becomes really obvious that Alm is not the nicest person ever when he keeps insulting the Kingdom of Rigel and talking about how much it sucks. His hatred is almost fanatical and he believes peace with them is impossible.

So it's kind of a surprise when Alm fatally wounds the King of Rigel (who was allied with Dozeh) in battle and that king reveals that Alm is Rigelian before he dies. Specifically Alm is the king's son. Oops. A lot of stuff happens, and eventually Alm and Celica slay an evil god because it's an RPG and that kind of has to happen.

If I made the plot sound silly, that's because it's kind of barebones and filled with long moments where not much happens. At the same time, I DO feel like expanding on this plot could lead to something competent. I kind of skimmed over the King of Rigel's motivations for allying with Dozeh, but his plan makes very little sense once you stop and think about it. To keep it short, it's the typical "Villain starts a conflict in order to stop a war or something disastrous from occurring, except there wouldn't even be a conflict in the first place if you didn't do anything you silly". I feel like there's a competent story to be told there, but there's not enough in the game itself to really make it interesting or engaging in any way. To be fair, a big part of that is due to the game's age and technical limitations.

Most of the characters in the game don't get much in terms of personality, though at least it's an improvement over FE1 where there were units that literally had no lines. To be fair to Gaiden, this wasn't really resolved until FE4 at the earliest, or maybe until the Support Conversation system was introduced in FE6. So I'm just going to go over Alm and Celica quickly, though I will note that Zeke (a character originally from FE1, going by a different name) does actually have a character arc that you can only fully appreciate when you have FE1, FE2, and FE3 in mind. So that's something.

Alm is quite possibly the rudest protagonist in the series, something that's cemented by how he acts in Awakening's DLC when we can see more of his personality. But even in just Gaiden itself, it quickly becomes clear that Alm lets his anger guide him too much, is the worst diplomat ever, and sees no issues with using force if he believes it's for a good cause. Alm is not an evil person, and does clearly value his comrades and protects them, but at the start of the game, I'd definitely describe him as the FE protagonist with the most flaws. In a remake of the game, I feel like his character arc could fully be done justice, since it's pretty clear that he's supposed to soften up once he realizes his true heritage and realizes what a jerk he's been. Miscellaneous fact: Alm can't decide what color his hair is. His in-game portrait has blue hair, his art on the cover of the game has him with green hair, and then Awakening apparently made it canon that he has both.

Celica is comparatively a lot closer to a "typical" FE protagonist, being much closer to Marth in terms of personality than Alm is. Celica honestly believes the best in people, is quite kind, and clearly wants to find non-violent solutions to the problems she encounters. This might sound like it'd make her less interesting than Alm, but I feel like her character also has a ton of potential since she could serve as a foil to Alm. The biggest issue there is that Alm and Celica's paths don't really intersect THAT often, but it's still nice to have two protagonists who contrast with each other yet have very similar goals and never come into conflict with one another. Again, their dynamic is another thing a remake could expand upon. As it stands now they talk like two or three times. Some cool facts about Celica: She is the first "magic knight" type of unit in FE in that she is a swordfighter, a healer, and a mage all in one, and she's good in all those roles (especially the mage part). Celica is also the first Lord to ever promote in Fire Emblem. Marth lacked a promotion of any kind, and Alm's storyline promotion takes place after Celica's.
Visuals/Map Design and Gameplay Stuff
Gaiden is... Not a very visually-impressive game, even keeping in mind that it's a Famicom title. On the other hand, it is a noticeable improvement over FE1. Just compare the FE1 character portraits to the Gaiden character portraits. For starters, there are not playable characters with literally the exact same portrait who are completely unrelated (though palette swaps still exist). On the other hand, I'm kind of sad because the FE1 portraits were hilarious. (Just look at Abel's silly expression, or Jagen/J-GUN/Jeigan's serious face with epic eyebrows, or pick your own example.)

The map design honestly gets my vote for worst in the series. There are a few interesting ideas, but the maps seem to rely a lot more on poor gimmicks and annoying terrain rather than solid map design that's fun to play. Of course, annoying terrain and such has a place in FE, but the game kind of goes overboard with it. Every map seems to either be very plain (and much bigger than it needs to be with a lot of empty space) or just very annoying to go through (and much bigger than it needs to be with a lot of empty space). The sheer number of maps with annoying terrain are one of the reasons why fliers are so good in Gaiden. This especially stands out when you compare it to FE1's map design... I'm not going to claim FE1 had the best balance ever or that the map design was the best thing ever, but a lot of it was neat, and the remake for FE1 (FE11/Shadow Dragon) is a game that I consider fun to play with some pretty interesting maps. Gaiden feels like a pretty big step back in this regard.

Gaiden's game balance is also very... Not good, shall we say. Gaiden was the first game in the series to allow for traveling on the world map, similar to FE8 and Awakening's system. Unlike either of those games where you could get through the game without ever grinding, Gaiden pretty clearly expects you to grind. Random encounters are also not as optional. The later maps take roughly forever if you don't grind. The game also pulls a few mean tricks on the player that I consider blatantly unfair in terms of gameplay design. One thing I do appreciate is that I DO feel like Alm and Celica are at least in-character while hunting down enemies to get more EXP: Alm is totally violent enough for it, and Celica would want to protect people from monsters. Still, it's an annoying system.

There's more I could say about the gameplay, but I think I'll leave that for the very end of this review/weird rambling thing where I list all the weird things about Gaiden that it did first.
Music
This is going to be a really short section because there's just one thing you need to know when judging Gaiden's music. Do you enjoy retro videogame music? Have a look at this list (Disc 2 specifically), and listen to the following tracks to see if you enjoy them: "Battle Map 1", "World Map - Chapter 3", "Battle Map 5", and "Ending 1" since I consider those the standout tracks. If you don't, Gaiden's music won't do anything for you. If you do, Gaiden's music is a cool part of the game, though some themes to get repetitive when you have to hear them over and over again. (And over again, and over again... To be fair, FE1 was even worse about this.)
Closing Thoughts/Weird Stuff
Gaiden is a broken mess of a game that I wish could get remade into a fun game, since I honestly feel like it has the potential to be one. It's had a great influence on later games in the series, particularly The Sacred Stones, Awakening, and Fates. It feels a bit odd that FE1 and FE3 have updated versions while FE2 doesn't. All things considered, Gaiden is without a doubt the worst game in the series in my mind, but also one I appreciate for being so ambitious.

I'm just going to close off this review with a list of things unique to Gaiden, or stuff introduced in Gaiden that I feel often gets attributed to later games in the series.

- An atypical FE protagonist (Often attributed to FE7's Hector)
- Multiple lords (Often attributed to FE4 or FE7 depending on how liberal your definition of "multiple lords" is)
- Mixture of human and monster enemies (Often attributed to FE8)
- Weird magic level stuff and an odd magic system in general (Gaiden-exclusive)
- Using magic costs HP (Gaiden-Exclusive)
- Magic power and attack power run off the same stat (Returned for FE3 then stopped happening)
- This is the only game in the series where Anna, the series mascot, does not appear in any way
- Actually useful bows, seriously bows have like 1-5 range in this game, albeit with some drawbacks (Often attributed to FE4 or Fates)
- Infinite weapon durability (Often attributed to Fates, or FE4 if you count being able to repair weapon uses for gold, though durability does exist there)
- Multiple difficulty modes, albeit it's just a Normal Mode and Easy Mode, and the Easy Mode is hidden (Often attributed to FE6)
- Some classes have more than just one promotion tier (Often attributed to Radiant Dawn)
- Infinite level ups, albeit only under very specific circumstances for a few characters and this might have been unintentional (Often attributed to Awakening)
- Being able to attack without any weapons equipped, which just gave you the lowest tier of weapon (Gaiden-exclusive)
- You could literally only have one thing in each character's inventory, whether that was a weapon, a shield, a ring, or whatever (Gaiden-exclusive)
- Oh yeah by the way Gaiden had shields, and not the type that gets consumed (Gaiden-exclusive)
- Being able to walk in villages/towns (Which seems to have sort of returned with Fates' base system thing)
- Access to a lot of revival opportunities for characters (Usually limited to a single-use staff if present in any other FE game at all, or a single-use staff in FE4 that costs a ridiculous amount of money to repair)
- Axes are enemy-only (Exclusive to Gaiden)
- There are no playable Thief units (Exclusive to Gaiden)
- No gold or currency system of any kind, you found stuff in treasure chests or from enemy drops (Exclusive to Gaiden)
- I'm probably forgetting more stuff but Gaiden was weird

I think I'll end it there. Thanks to SerenesForest for being the best source of FE info ever, thanks to Intelligent Systems for making this game, and thanks to The Fury Wraith for looking over this to make sure I didn't suddenly start talking about the history of gloves or something equally as unrelated to Gaiden.
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Lind
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Re: Review Thread

Post by Lind »

Wrote a review for Kaiba, one of Yuasa Masaaki's masterworks. If you have a MyAnimeList account, please rate helpful.
Spoiler : :
Kaiba is an experimental anime best known as being the brainchild of Yuasa Masaaki, who would later go on to direct The Tatami Galaxy and Ping Pong the Animation, two of the greatest works of the current decade of anime thus far. And Kaiba is undeniably in the same vein of brilliance as his later works. However, as impressive as Kaiba is, it's not as good as Tatami or Ping Pong - which is regrettable, because by all accounts it should have been just as exceptional as these two - if not better.

I mean, it was certainly more amibitious than either of them, and those two were plenty ambitious as it is. Where Tatami and Ping Pong were both highly eccentric coming-of-age stories, Kaiba is a highly eccentric dystopian high-concept sci-fi, revolving around the concept of a fictional universe in which memories are tangible, modifiable, and transferrable.

The first thing you'll notice about Kaiba is that it is visually stunning. This extends far past the surrealistically cutesy character designs and bizarre environments - the animation is tremendously fluid, the visual design is a thing of awe, and the impressive and elaborate set-pieces are a great example of Masaaki's incredible talent as a director.

The design isn't just a shallow aesthetic choice, either. The cutesy designs are a stark contrast to the dystopian setting, making the graphic nature of this series far more unsettling than it would have been given a more conventional presentation. The music is similar, in that it is a mix of creepiness and childlike innocence. The bizarre technology is a great part of Kaiba's aesthetic as well, with the vehicles, weaponry, and memory technology bearing a creative design that comes off as both high-conccept and cutesy at once.

The early episodes are the series' strongest, each of them an episodic vignette about the planet the episode is set on. These build excellent short stories that not only make for great worldbuilding, fleshing out a well-realized setting in which human lives are cheap and where memories are a commodity, but also create the kind of ethereal, atmospheric dreamscapes out of the setting that you can really lose yourself in.

The problem with Kaiba arises when it becomes plot-driven in the latter half. While the core of it - a central character conflict between our three leads, Kaiba, Neiro, and Poppo - is very strong, it gets lost in a larger entanglement of numerous subplots revolving around minor characters that become impressively convoluted in a short span of time. There are an absurd number of twists regarding the identities and goals of characters before the plot even has time to make us invested in them. The viewer never has a chance to be grounded in what they are supposed to believe - it's hard to be surprised by a twist about a character you never knew from the start, and harder yet to understand why any character does what they do when their supposed motives and alliegiances will shift at the drop of a hat.

But for a series with such a poorly-executed plot (and do keep in mind, this would be the death of almost any lesser series), Kaiba remains a remarkably impressive piece of work. The concept is brilliantly utilized, the setting is both engaging and entrancing, and the presentation is damn near peerless - perhaps rivalled only by Masaaki's later work. There's also some surprisingly strong characterisation in play here... not for the titular character, though, who is mostly a blank slate (which, to be fair, is used to great effect in the early episodes), but for Poppo, who is perhaps the only good example of a shift in motives in this series (and there are many). To elaborate too much on this would be to ruin it, but I will say that there's a certain scene in his backstory that evolves as the plot progresses, and this is combined with certain plot devices in a clever way that shows Masaaki's directing as nothing short of masterful.

Final Words: Kaiba really is a unique, impressive series, and I'd highly recommend it. But it is frustrating that it didn't live up to its full potential - perhaps if it were longer, it would have been able to fully flesh out its plot.

Story/Plot: 4/10
Characters: 7/10
Animation/Art: 10/10
Music: 10/10
Acting: 8/10

Overall: 8/10

For Fans Of: Angel's Egg, The Tatami Galaxy
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Re: Review Thread

Post by Lind »

Watched Whisper of the Heart for the first time yesterday (my 650th completed anime at that!) and immediately wrote a review. If you have a MyAnimeList account, please rate helpful.
Spoiler : :
Whisper of the Heart perfectly captures the anxieties of growing up and finding your place in the world, and the anxieties faced by any creator finding their creative voice, weaving the two into a spectacular coming-of-age story.

It's surprising that this is one of few Ghibli movies to not be directed by either Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata (although Miyazaki was heavily involved with other elements of its production). It possesses both Miyazaki's incredible skill at visual storytelling, and Takahata's subtle mastery of conveying plot through emotion.

It's almost redundant to say this of any Ghibli movie, but the production job here is incredible. The background art is incredible, even moreso than in most of their movies. Despite its urban/suburban setting, the movie manages to seem almost like a fairytale (which is certainly not accidental, as this is a common theme within the movie's plot).

More impressive is the characterisation. The leads, Shizuku and Seiji, aren't especially unique in their own right, but they're not intended to be. This makes them much easier to relate to. While that would run the risk of making them uninteresting, the way their thoughts and feelings are conveyed in this movie, through subtle details in expressions, or through subtext in dialogue, rather than through unique character traits, makes them seem utterly organic and real, like actual people with worries and doubts and passions like us, not like something a writer thought up.

The whole movie is rich in subtle nuance. For example, Shizuku is working on a set of lyrics in the first half of the movie. The first and second time we hear them, they're remarkably different - the second one is influenced by her first fairytale experience in the movie. It never feels the need to state it, but the way the new lyrics mirror her experience, it's clear how much it meant to her.

This nuance carries over to the main plot of the movie - Shizuku being impressed by Seiji's craftsmanship at making violins, and his passion for becoming great at it inpires an insecurity in her about her own ability to create things and her lack of purpose. Along a backdrop of teenage drama and angst, it parallels the same struggle of growing up that we all follow, but it's never spelled out.

Final Words: Whisper of the Heart is an exceptionally well-told story, and one that feels very much "from the heart". It easily stands as my favourite Ghibli movie.

Story/Plot: 8/10
Characters: 8/10
Animation/Art: 10/10
Music: 8/10
Acting (Dub): 8/10

Overall: 10/10

For Fans Of: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Only Yesterday
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Re: Review Thread

Post by energizerspark »

Spoiler : Zootopia/Zootropolis review (spoilers) :
I think this film is one of the cleverest films Disney has ever made.

The screenplay writers for this film deserve a raise. The dialogue is witty and the characters are well done. Each character has their own distinct personality that sticks close to the Disney movie formula while still being unique enough to keep you from guessing the whole plot of the movie.

That can be said for most of the film. The entire film, while most likely not to be taken literally as allegory, still contains many social and political references that seem quite well-timed in the current climate. Whether or not that stands the test of time remains to be seen. Add in all the pop-culture references, and it seems like this film could be destined for irrelevancy,. It's worth pointing out that most of these aren't specifically called out until they become plot-relevant, so it's not necessarily like the film's trying to educate kids on current racial situations.

"You probably didn't know, but a bunny can call another bunny cute, but when other animals do it, that's a little..."

And when the film isn't making sneaky racial jokes or Breaking Bad references, or even the occasional meta Disney in-joke ("Life isn't some musical cartoon...Let it go!") it's making the obvious and/or non-obvious animal jokes which could slip by if you're not paying attention.

"I'm just a dumb bunny, but we are good at multiplying" -in the middle of some math

I felt the pacing seemed a little off at times, but it never seemed to detract from the film (and some of the issues I felt may have been down to me underestimating the length of the film and thinking 90 minutes would pass by quicker than it does). Like I said earlier, the story sticks reasonably close to the Disney formula while still being unique enough to keep you guessing.
I feel like Disney was trying for a more mature approach with this film, as some aspects of the film seem a little darker than your average Disney fare. The two main films I had in mind while watching this were Robin Hood and Chicken Little, mainly due to the anthropomorphic characters, but I felt like these films could easily be headcanoned into all taking place in the same universe...

The animation quality is spectacular. Disney tries to improve on/showcase a particular "effect" of their animation - Frozen demonstrated good snow effects, Big Hero 6 demonstrated the big crowd effects of San Fransokyo and the light effects of Baymax, and this film seems designed to show off the fancy fur effects. It's no coincidence that all of the characters with the most screentime are furry to some degree. And that's the last time you're going to hear the F-word in this review.

Regarding the music, I was so focused on the story and the dialogue that I didn't really pay much attention to the music. One memorable scene I enjoyed involved a bunch of snippets of stereotypical sad songs being skipped through on the radio. The voice acting seemed very much up-to-scratch, and the actors seemed to have good chemistry - the main duo play off each other quite well.

The comedy in this film is possibly up there with The Emperor's New Groove.

Overall, I found it very enjoyable and one of Disney's best films in a long time. It throws Frozen out of the water and heats it up to a more tropical level. There were a few problems here and there, but they didn't detract from my experience enough for me to mark the film down too much.

TL;DR
+Top-notch animation as usual
+Fantastic writing
+Almost guaranteed to entertain all ages

-Some scenes could have used better pacing
-A few bits of unnecessary tension here and there

8/10
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