Reviews

I reviewed the Pilot some months ago, and I wasn't impressHOLD ON, DON'T DOWNVOTE ME YET.

Some time passed and they released a bumper/commercial called "POMNI WAKE UP TIME TO GO ON AN ADVENTURE" with animation and everything. A mere 3 minutes of what's ultimately an advertising for the merch, nothing unusual EXCEPT, it had a surprisingly snappier pace, the jokes make me chuckle, and it felt *extra*.

So at this point I thought "well, maybe they'll stepped it up in the next episode to this standard and it'll be better". Turns out I was right! Episode 2 is much, much better than the Pilot. First of all: the pacing is snappier. They removed all the unnecessary pauses, everything is much more dynamic. Dialogue I think has gotten a little bit sharper too. The jokes are better delivered, so even some throwaway lines gave me a smile.

I didn't burst out laughing or anything, this is still pretty much Tumblr comfort food like I said in my previous review, but now's been upgraded to something much more charming and entertaining to watch. I'll say this too: surprisingly decent emotional moments. It's still a SatAM cartoon with an internet edge, so it's not that deeply written or anything, but I think the voice acting with the better directing made the whole existential crisis arc of the Crocodile dude more engaging than I expected, even if I knew a mile away that it was a setup for a joke.

Also, I should mention, the animation and attention to detail has been improved too. I expected that but it also has better shots and better visual composition, so now it feels like a profesional show that could air on TV. I think there's still a lot of room for the show to get better (hopefully it can break the barrier of just being a comfort show and start being more witty, have jokes with more punch), but as it is now, it's gotten to the stage where it's genuinely charming and I'm engaged. I'll keep watching.

I've been seeing a lot of fanart of TADC for a while now. It looks like it's going to be the next big thing, but I can't quite say the pilot has impressed me.

The production values are surprisingly polished and smooth. It's going for a PSX high definition promotional render aesthetic, mixed with a very tiny bit of creepy glitch flair. "What if you got stuck into a digital world and things were weird?". It's not the most original idea but you can make it work and put your own spin on it.

The thing is.... it mostly works like your typical saturday morning cartoon but with a Tumblr edge? It's screaming "look how weird and quirky I am!!" but it's not really all that weird nor out there. The cast's personalities are pretty standard, the weird stuff is very sanitized and has no bite, the pacing and energy doesn't match the concept, and the directing is disappointingly standard. Even the music sounds weirdly polished and musical considering the setting, something more sample/synth-based and glitchy would've enhanced the setting but instead we get very generic instrumentation.

It looks like Tumblr comfort food. And I'm sure there's people out there craving for that stuff, but for me it's very middle of the road. There's always the chance that the actual series will have a more snappier pace and it will embrace its weird ideas properly, but as it is looks to be an unadventurous show.

Hiroshi Takahashi, one of the figures that helped shape the Japanese horror scene, makes a movie in 6 days independently and with very little budget and this is basically the result: a pretty interesting idea and concept that's unfortunately hindered by its production values, because it's basically a theatre play of a group of people talking about their supernatural experiences in an unknown location for some kind of experiment.

The movie is 71 minutes and despite the short runtime it feels stretched by the very slow line delivery of the actors. I understand the decision because they're trying to create this slow-burning creepy atmosphere through words alone. To the movie's credit, it manages to do it and because there are some unexplained elements, there's a certain mystique around the movie that feels very oldschool horror. Despite that, it's also 71 minutes of people talking slowly while sitting with the occasional event that breaks the monotony, so it was hard to maintain interest.

The ending was very interesting, and there are a few mysteries around what happens in the tape that left me wondering for a while. I wished the movie had more budget behind it and instead of being a movie with people telling stories, they actually performed said stories like it was meant to be originally when Takahashi wrote it (apparently he had been trying to make it a reality for many years) but I understand it couldn't have happened with the budget it ended up having.

Do I recommend it? It's difficult to say. I liked the concept and the ending a lot, but the execution is what it is. So, if you don't dislike the idea of something closer to a minimalistic theatre play and are interested in Takahashi's work, you will get something out of it. If you're into filmmaking yourself you'll probably get inspired because it's very respectable what the movie manages to do with very little. If not, you'll probably struggle despite the short runtime.

No joke, I think the idea of a One Piece idol musical could've been great if they truly went for it, but there's only a handful of songs and the rest of the movie is spent into yet another massive fanservice fest with an overcomplicated backstory that's not very well written and massive overblown chaotic action scenes with tons of characters that end up being visual noise.

If they scaled down what was happening and kept it more straightforward, with less characters but more character moments, and trying less to be this incredibly tragic and epic scenario and bank more on the fun and silly musical side of things, this could've been an enjoyable "what if Hatsune Miku was a One Piece villain-of-the-day" spin off. Unfortunately, this is not the case. If you want a good musical idol experience, you're better off playing Space Channel 5 or something.

Deep Space 69 is what happens when someone roleplays a character and puts all their skill points to sex and comedic timing. It's a series that looks like a dumb sci-fi sex parody that turns out to be an incredibly entertaining and very dumb sci-fi sex parody, and it just keeps getting better.

Megamind feels like a movie a major studio could release today as a response to the increasing superhero genre burnout, but it's not.

Even though superheroes in movie theatres wasn't something new by 2010, the genre was still years away from its peak in popularity, so the fact that Megamind subverts a lot of the tropes from the genre to deliver a very smart twist on the formula, at that time, deserves a lot of credit.

The movie isn't perfect, sometimes it falls into stereotypical Dreamworks jokes or setups (not to dunk on Dreamworks, because if there was a movie studio capable of delivering a movie like this, it's precisely them), and it can be pretty predictable. However, it's still pretty damn good. I had a smile on my face the whole way through and the movie is charming as hell.

With not much information about this documentary and the great idea of screening it in cinemas one night only around the globe, I expected something special or at least very juicy in terms of fan service. But... it's just a collection of clips during the Humanz tour and some very sparse and out of context insight on some tracks. They clearly wanted to give some use to a lot of moments they had recorded and decided to make a documentary out of it, but with no thread, no structure, not much attention put into pacing, not much input on the songwriting and actual music making, and a lot of typical behind the scenes recordings of "oh man, it's great making music with these guys, Gorillaz is my family"... yea, you can tell that the people who'll like this the most is precisely Albarn as his friends. It's like if I made a montage of my vacation, me and my buddies will love it, but even if you know me you'll have a hard time connecting with it if you weren't there.

I won't be too harsh on this since this was later uploaded to Youtube for free, but I was one of those who went to the cinema just for the idea of a Gorillaz movie and it's not the same to watch something like this while it's in the background in the comfort of your home, going for some snacks, chill out and so, than watching it in cinemas where you have to stay on your seat with no pause button and with the expectation of watching something more noteworthy... yea, it wasn't the best. Not a horrible experience by any means, and I'm sure people at home will be more ok with it, but my viewing experience was kinda lackluster.

I'm a big fan of Big Hero 6. It's a very conventional teen superhero/tokusatsu-like movie, but the execution is really good which makes it very enjoyable. After seeing it multiple times I thought to myself "This could perfectly be the first arc of an animated series with new villains, new themes and new plots". Disney must have been aware of it too, and because of that we're getting a BH6 series on Disney XD, with the TV film Baymax Returns serving as both a bridge between movie and the series and as an appetizer.

For the shift from cinema to TV, the CG animation of the movie has been replaced with more rough, traditional 2D animation. I don't have much problem with the change of technology and the lower budget., but in this case the end result is kinda generic and bland. It tries to be a bit more stylized with more geometrical shapes and lines and it kinda succeeds giving it a more distinct look, but this could be any other run-of-the-mill TV Disney cartoon. It's not bad, but it could have been much better.

But the thing that kinda kills the experience for me is the writing, pace and overall direction of Baymax Returns, and the reason for that is that I can't avoid comparing it to the original movie. I know I can't expect too much from a kids TV show, but Big Hero 6 was so tightly constructed and everything flowed so well that this in comparison feels like a heavy downgrade. I know it's unfair to say that because a movie of that size has way more planning and ambition behind, but nowadays there are animated shows that are a blast to sit through, specially if we look at anime, and Baymax Returns is just OK. Nothing terrible, but it just didn't engage me the same way the original did and it didn't leave me wanting more.

I'll keep an eye out for the series, because I want to see if they improve the quality and capitalize on the possibilites of the source material, but I'm kinda disappointed with this one.