Reviews

I was skeptical of seeing this movie after having already seen the 1995 animated version by Mamoru Oshii, but some of my friends wanted me to come and see it with them, so I just went along with it.

After finishing the movie, my friends enjoyed it, but I was just disappointed beyond all belief. The reason is because this movie had everything that could have made it a great adaptation. The visuals are phenomenal, the actors/actresses were spot on, and the action scenes was enjoyable to watch, so why don't I like it? Well, it is because the writing is utter garbage.

One thing I noticed was that the main antagonist of the film wasn't The Puppet Master, but Kuze, from SAC: 2nd Gig. Kuze, however, has remnants of the Puppet Master, which confused me. I ended up finding out that the Kuze in this film was the combination of three well-established antagonists in the GiTS franchise molded into one (The Puppet Master, The Laughing Man, and Hideo Kuze). I am not sure whose bright idea it was to mesh these three characters together into one, but his did nothing but create an inconsistent antagonist that felt empty when given nothing more than some bland revenge story to go by. Even the major's story was pretty bad, given nothing to latch onto and hope she succeeds in her journey. Her issue was that we are given no time to understand or sympathize with her and are only told her story instead of shown.

Another thing that bothered me was how forced and clunky the line delivery is for most of the movie. Hollywood starts to anger me off when it thinks its audience are a bunch of idiots who believe they must be spoon-fed every line of dialogue/exposition because they believe we aren't smart enough to understand complex ideas/themes. It is painful as all hell to have to be told everything about this movie without leaving things up to our interpretation, which was something I enjoyed in the 1995 version of GiTS. The complexity of the themes had been watered down so heavily by the bad writing that it is literally just shapes and colors.

For the positives: The visuals were gorgeous, the actor/actresses performed and understood the characters very well, and the action scenes served to make the movie thrilling to watch.

Overall, Hollywood needs to work on writing better scripts. They can make movies look good, but they don't give them any substance. I wanted to like this movie, knowing how much work was put into it just by watching it, it honestly shouldn't have been as bad as it was. But having incompatible ideas from previous work of the franchise, Kuze being a mesh of three already known antagonists from other GiTS stories, artificial and clunky delivery of dialogue/exposition, and the overall generic and predictable plot that Hollywood always churns up, this movie just couldn't reach its full potential.

Elfen Lied does everything that makes me roll my eyes or makes me sigh out of boredom and disbelief. This is an anime that doesn't want to tell a good story or even give us interesting characters, but instead, be as graphic and disturbing as possible.

There are being called Diclonious that have invisible arm like appendages called vectors that they can use to dismember anyone in their path. This is where we are introduced to characters such as Lucy, Nana, and Mariko, who are discriminated and often times, tormented by the humans. Lucy, the main character, breaks out of a research facility, but loses her memory after being shot, and becomes Nyu, a split personality of Lucy.

We then have the human characters such as Kouta, Yuka, Mayu, Kurama, Bando, and several others I can't bother to remember. Kouta has the typical tragic backstory that was so tragic that he doesn't even remember the incident when coming face to face with Lucy. Yuka is the cousin of Kouta that only exists just so there is incestuous pandering. Mayu also has a tragic backstory that made me stop caring since almost everyone has to have one. Kurama is probably the only interesting character of the show and whose backstory is the best out of the bunch, especially when it came to his Diclonious daughter, Mariko. And Bando is just the prick who would find any reason to hurt or kill anyone he sees.

There are so many problems with this anime, starting with how unrealistic the characters are portrayed to be. They make them as if humans were the devil's spawn and the slow and boring writing doesn't really help at all. This anime has almost no substance and its only defining features are the dark elements that are played, but even then it fails at that. This anime tries to be mature, but like some other anime that delve into this sort of subject matter, it has no clue what the hell maturity is.

Overall, this anime is way too edgy and often doesn't know how to create compelling characters or even follow up on an interesting concept with poor writing. Originally, I would have given this a one out of ten, but Kurama and Mariko were the only saving graces for this anime, everything else can go suck it.

Alright, let's start off by saying that XX sucks, but not because women made it. It sucks because the women that made it don't know how to write horror stories...no, they don't know how to write ANY stories. There were some good concepts to work with, but the concepts don't mean sh*t when you have no idea how basic storytelling works.

The first two stories were awful: bad delivery of lines, lousy script, unbelievably stupid character actions/lack of actions, and overall no comprehension on how horror or suspense works. Also, no conclusion.

The third story was the only short that wasn't complete cat urine, but still sh*t nevertheless. Literally no point.

The fourth story was just boring and nothing interesting ever happens, with wooden acting, boring dialogue, and overall no elements of basic storytelling.

Overall, there was no point in any of these stories. No conclusions and no real professionalism when it comes down to how these..."stories" are told. There were women that can make good films, but these women honestly cannot.

Also, where the hell is the horror?

Okay, let's be real. This movie sucked...it was boring, the characters were flat, and nothing really made any sense.

Jaiden Smith failed to create a character any of us can resonate to, but his performance is so bad at times, it was fun to look at this movie as a comedy. Will Smith plays an inexpressive character who has the ability to turn invisible to fight the..."URSA!!!" (Isn't this Russian for bear?), but also gives no effort to make audiences care about him or his son.

The fact that this movie tries to promote the relationship between Will and Jaiden, it failed to create any real or touching moments between the two and only comes off as empty and laughably pathetic.

Given that M. Night wrote the story, it makes too much sense that this would be bad...unless you look at it as a comedy. :P

I will not beat around the bush, this film is basically Satoshi Kon's "Perfect Blue", but with minimal changes. When you discover that Aronofsky bought the rights to Perfect Blue just to use certain scenes from that movie, that should bring up some red flags. It is not like Inception taking Paprika's themes and doing something different, (Though Inception is another boring and unimaginative movie that gets praised as the best film ever -_-) this is basically plagiarism of Perfect Blue, but without the lawsuits since he bought the rights.

Due to Perfect Blue being underrated, it is no surprise that people would claim this film to be the best and have never heard of Perfect Blue before. But if you have seen Perfect Blue, then watching Black Swan would be an enormous waste of your time.

The movie itself was pretentious and boring. I am giving it a 3 because the performance wasn't too bad, not great, but probably the only saving grace I can give it.

After looking at some reviews about the anime, I became excited to see this anime with all the praise it has gotten. But sadly, I quit watching around episode 6 and came to the conclusion that this anime wasn't as good as everyone made it out to be. Where do I start:

Animation: Surprisingly, the animation was very...bland and sub-par to the other anime I have seen. The setting while well made were just dull to look at. Most of the environment weren't that great and fell flat most of what I had watched.

Characters: There are times when I ask whether color theory is even a thing in Japan anymore, because this show has some of the worst color palettes I have ever seen. Colors were definitely never considered in this anime and could have actually made the show itself much more scary.

Also, the fact that the character design are also stiff and feel restrained to the point that they too feel dull. Giving characters large cat eyes when they go insane did nothing for me. They weren't intimidating in the slightest and made me question how anyone could find the characters terrifying when their visible personality is never really shown.

Also, just to get it out there, I hate moe stuff. Their actual designs and character makes me cringe and forces me to watch anime before the moe craze became a thing.

Plot: The one thing that got under my skin the most weren't the characters, but the structure of the story. Literally the first second of the first episode starts with a gruesome scene, and then we get a boring backstory that lead up to the scene that takes several episodes to tell before we actually get back to it. The story being half moe slice of life and half psychological and suspenseful doesn't work when you reveal the gimmick to your anime this early. To be honest, I didn't care anyway about what happens since this anime loves to beat you over the head with its disgusting moe sh*t.

Overall, the anime fails to interest me in its story with flat, boring characters and poor structure of storytelling. I do have to give credit to the soundtrack though, it was one of the few things I actually did like.

The best way to describe this movie to someone is to ask them if they ever watched Alice in Wonderland.

Satoshi Kon has always had a thing for duality as the core theme in this movies, whether it is Mima's private and public image in Perfect Blue, Chiyoko's heart-wrenching story both on screen and off-screen in Millennium Actress, or the salvation and destruction of family in Tokyo Godfathers. In Paprika, it is reality and dreams that play as the tools for this theme when a device allows the user and others to observe and even delve into their own and other's dreams.

Paprika's beautiful animation accompanied with hypnotizing music made this a real treat to watch. I was pretty confused at first on what was going on, but knew enough to not get completely lost. This movie accurately portrays just how absurd dreams are and Paprika shows what happens when we allow our subconscious to run amok, causing chaos and confusion, sometimes in beautiful ways. Characters were very fun to watch and the story, whether absurd or grounded, is engaging to follow along.

Overall, I enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone interested in Kon's work or wants to try something a little out of the norm for anime.

Originally, I was going to give this show a 3 out of 10, but given the current score, I might as well drop it a little. When I started watching it, I kind of enjoyed it...until it became very clear from continuing on what this show was going to be.

This show became nothing more than shallow, pandering drivel that only knows how to throw boobs and butts in your face...oh and the power of friendship bullsh*t just to add to the very things I hate about anime.

Characters are incredibly one-dimensional and this show has WAY too many characters to develop any of them for sh*t. When the main leads do nothing but try to humor us with weak gags and shout the most generic lines ever in shonen anime, it becomes pretty much impossible to care/relate/sympathize with them.

Story is weak and often repetitive and each arc always ends the same with the typical Nakama power because the writer doesn't know how to write a conclusion to save his life. It didn't work for Sailor Moon, so how could it possibly work in this show?

Another gripe I have against this anime is the absence of any real threat or stakes, as characters will often be perfectly fine after the stupid Nakama power and nothing is ever really lost. Erza being brought back after death and Lisanna being returned to her own dimension (After we were shown/told she died off-screen) shows that there is nothing to feel concerned about, making the story feel empty and pointless to watch.

Overall, Fairy Tail cements the things I hate when looking for a shonen anime to watch. I sound like an pretentious jerk for this review, but I ended up wasting so much of my time hoping this anime was actually going to get good, but it didn't. I wanted to like it, but I will not force myself if it doesn't entertain me.

After finishing Satoshi Kon's, "Paprika", I thought I would give a look see at a film that was inspired by Paprika that I have heard from many people as being amazing...but to me, it was just a massive disappointment. I can try and not compare the two films, but that would be rather impossible given they both use the same ingredients, but have completely different recipes to making their films.

First thing I notice about the film are the characters. The actors are great, but the characters they are given are just bland and uninteresting. Having bad characters is worse than having a bad plot to me. They were very one-dimensional and felt rather emotionless. Paprika's character felt more human and were very easy to understand and/or feel for. Dom Cobb was a character I couldn't possibly care for in this regard.

Next is the plot. While both films took completely different directions of the same concept, Inception felt incredibly convoluted and far-fetched to take any of it seriously. The "M. Night" twist at the end also never helped with the ending. While Paprika also felt convoluted in certain scenes, such as the end, it was very forgiving because of the direction. Paprika used a more surreal approach to dreams that made it rather fun and engaging to observe. Inception was rather stiff and took itself too seriously, making the convoluted aspects all the more jarring.

Lastly are the presentation of the dream world. Inception had a dream world that was incredibly unimaginative and felt very flat and boring. The dream world in Paprika takes the cake for clearly being more bizarre and overall lacking any cohesion, similar to our own dreams...being extremely chaotic, nonsensical, and just surreal, altogether.

Overall, Paprika's focus on the more bizarre elements of dreams and the humanization of characters portrayed the theme of their respective movie better as the plot didn't interfere with the tone of the movie, which wasn't made to be too serious. While Inception is by no means a terrible movie, it is just grossly overrated for trying to be "smart", "serious", and "thought provoking", though ends up being pretentious and shallow.

This was a film that screamed, "Hey look, we are so smart and philosophical, we are the best movie of the decade."

I decided to watch Berserk 2016, and oh my God, what did I just watch? Let me start with the elephant in the room: the visuals.

The visuals are jarring at best and flat out disgusting at worst. The use of CG didn't pay off at all. People complained about Sailor Moon Crystal's use of CG, but even that was leagues better than any of the visuals I saw in Berserk. The animation was just as bad, as the characters didn't move smoothly and felt clunky overall. But to make it worse is the direction of the camera, it was disorienting, sloppy, and caused me to lose track of what the hell was even happening. Makes me question if the director knows anything about the basic rules of film making.

Now, I do understand why they went with CG, as they wanted to try and replicate all the little details, but even so, it was clear that the people beyond the animation had little to no experience with 3D modeling/animation. I have seen better cutscenes on the PS2 than this.

The story to me wasn't that bad, but nothing that special either.

Overall, the story is okay, but the visuals were trash. The first two season of Sailor Moon Crystal were also trash, but got significantly better at season three. Hopefully the same can happen with Berserk.

If anyone were to ask me to describe this movie to them, I wouldn't know how. This movie just felt like a Shaggy Dog clone, but more dull and boring. The people behind this film didn't know how to make a film enjoyable for kids and adults and became too boring for kids and too juvenile for adults. Characters were either hated or bland and the effects were nothing special. Even the title wasn't clever or charming at all. Just because it has a cat, let's use the nine lives belief as the title of our boring movie.

Even the Rugrats movie wasn't this incompetent, while wasn't great either, it was leagues better than this mess. I can't recommend this movie to anyone, mostly because I don't know who to recommend it to.

If it isn't clear by the title, I hated the original Sword Art Online. While most of the hate is clearly mob mentality and part of a meme, the series itself was horrible. Terribly one-dimensional characters and a Gary Stu piled with plot armor as the main protagonist, worthless female characters that serve nothing but to fall in love with the main character for no reason, laughably pathetic and generic villains, writing that is equivalent to a fourteen year old's fan- fiction, and worst of all, fanservice that never seems to end and hinders whatever credibility I could possibly give to this mess of an anime.

Normally, when I heard there was a parody of this anime, I thought it was going to be nothing more than lazy writing with some of the lowest form of wit for the sake of comedy, but after finishing the whole series on the Aincrad arc, I just loved it. SWE ended up rewriting the story and gave the characters actual...character. The finale was perfect and even got a laugh out of me when one of the scenes criticized the resolution of the original...actually, most of the series got a laugh out of me between the way Kirito and Asuna interacted with each other and others alike. Kayaba became much more than a lame antagonist that doesn't even remember the very reason why trapped and killed thousands of players in a very unique and interesting way. The side characters were fun to watch, especially Klein, who has more relevance to Kirito and the plot than in the original. The story was well rewritten and actually made me care about some of the characters with voice acting that didn't make me want to shut my ears.

Overall, I commemorate everyone who worked on this project. All the hard work was clearly there in making an otherwise bland anime into something worth watching.

It really says something when you realize just how polarizing this anime is, and how it became a meme to hate on it. However, the series was still incredibly bad and it all has to do with the writer himself. I'm sorry, but after watching this, Reki Kawahara is a horrible writer. He had a strong premise that had a lot of potential to actually be a great anime, but instead, we get this:

Kirito, or self-insert Gary Sue, is a boring and bland character that is overpowered as all hell and get all the females to love him for no discernible reason. He wears mostly black because edginess, and is never in any real danger due to heavy doses of plot armor Reki gives him. His "friend" Klein is just the butt monkey of the anime, Agil is just the black guy who is the only person with any lick of sense in this world. Asuna is just the boring love interest whose character is just as inconsistent as Kirito's, the harem baits just exist because harem, and the villains like Kayaba were never given any real motive to do what he had done (Don't even get me started on Sugou).

The story sh**s itself time and time again when time skips are used with little to no explanation on what happened, the show loves to flaunt around its..."plot" countless times just to pander, and most of the serious scenes are worthless because you can't possibly care about anyone in this anime. And the Aincrad ending...my god...

The animation at times is good, but the art style is nothing to write home about. Most of the characters don't look any different physically and share literally the same face model with different hair and colors.

The music is the only thing I can say is good, but it is not worth watching the anime just to listen to the music.

Overall, this anime's potential was wasted on senseless pandering and bulls**t writing that would make you groan in agony. If I had to make a list of the arcs from the best to worst, it would be this: Mother's Rosario, a tie between Aincrad and Phantom Bullet, Excalibur, and the Fairy Dance.

Back when I liked Fairy Tail, I stumbled across this movie...and oh my God, it was absolutely terrible. It basically makes the series look worse by comparison. So where do I start:

The silent context-less prologue: The beginning of the movie has no dialogue, meaning you have to assume you know what's going on. Not a good way to start a story.

The story in general: The story felt so formulaic and predictable that if you watch the series, you know how it will all end.

The characters: My biggest beef against this film ere the characters. You have cookie cutter one-dimensional villains shouting the most generic villain dialogue ever...and then you have Lucy. Lucy does ABSOLUTELY nothing in this film, unless you count crying like a stupid baby for most of the film as something. The fact that this film centers around her and her relationship with Eclair, she doesn't add anything to the plot. She is also portrayed to a degree as useless, when I remember that she has keys to summon celestial spirits to aid her.

Overall, this movie is not worth watching at all.

Sailor Moon had a thing going for her back in the 90s. With its catchy theme song, beautiful art, and colorful cast of characters, it is quite easy to see why it was so beloved by children back then. However, I couldn't possibly recommend this for any adults unless they grew up with it as a kid. The first time I watched it, I was in high school. I thought it was pretty good...until I revisited it just recently and my thoughts of the show definitely changed.

Each episode was just a copy and paste of the previous. From the recycling of animations, which just padded out the time for the episodes, and the lack of any real action (Characters using their attacks only once and that's it), it became an incredibly boring experience after the first few episodes. Most of the episodes consist of dialogue and hardly ever show movement, making it very stale after a while, despite the fact that this is a story about sailor warriors fighting villainous characters.

After the first story arc, the rest of the arcs become absolutely predictable. Sailor Moon herself is the most boring and uninteresting character out of the whole cast. She never really develops and when she does, her development resets after each arc is finished. She also becomes annoying when she literally refuses to fight and instead pleads and begs for the villains she is fighting to stop being villains, which they turn good or some sh*t. Other times, when she is not being lame, she uses the power of love to ultimately win, just like that power of friendship bullsh*t in shonen anime.

Overall, it has good music and beautiful art, but the main lead is no one to care for, really. The stories are formulaic and predictable, and the action scenes are incredibly scarce, if they ever existed at all. Like I said before, this is a show that children can like, but for adults, well...it may not be your cup of tea if you dislike chessy story lines and things along those lines.

When I looked at this show, the only thing I could see was that it was a combination of both Tom and Jerry(The violence) and Ren and Stimpy(The gross out humor), but without the charm or humor of either. The animation was passable at best, but at worst, it was boring. Most of what happens is attempted slapstick humor that doesn't qualify at being slapstick. The characters also resemble Ren and Stimpy, but with reversed personalities, and yet, I couldn't give a damn about either of them. The lack of stakes or tension also leaves the plot of each episode nothing to get invested in. At least in Tom and Jerry, Tom would be punished greatly if Jerry destroyed the house, but in one episode, Shnookums and Meat can be seen destroying a house without no consequence coming as a result...that's boring. Ren and Stimpy excelled with its over the top animation and gross out humor, but this show was too scared to go anywhere near Ren and Stimpy's level, mostly because this was a Disney show. Seeing as Disney hardly if ever took risks or pushed boundaries like the two shows mentioned, it's no wonder it was pretty boring.

There is no point in making a gross out or violent show if you are too scared to go above and beyond with those themes, obviously Disney didn't do so with this show.

The concept alone for Mirai Nikki was actually very interesting, but the execution of that concept was a total waste on this anime.

1) Most of the characters you're suppose to get invested in are not only unlikable, but most of their actions aren't even the least bit realistic. Yuki is one of the most poorly-written characters I have seen in any anime, being nothing more than a loser, sack of sh*t crybaby that has no depth whatsoever. The same can be said about Yuno, who also lacks depth and her motives are often never explained.

2)The story itself is riddled with plot holes and contains plenty of inconsistencies. Most actions made by the characters were so contrived, it was laughable. Even the anime itself doesn't take anything seriously when one of the characters looks like a stuffed strawberry shortcake doll or when a woman farts out rockets and a motorcycles comes out from in between her legs.

3)The fact that this anime tries to use rape as a plot device not only once, but twice, is simply mind-boggling. It just shows how tasteless the writing can be.

4)The animation was passable, though the use of CG for one of the characters is just laughably terrible.

So much wasted potential is what this anime is.

At first when I heard about Star vs The Forces of Evil, my original reaction was that it was going to be one of "those" kinds of shows that would just be childish and stupid. When I started watching it, I did like the animation and I gradually started liking the art style. The content seemed alright and the characters gave off what kind of people they were...but as you continue watching, it becomes a lot more than just some silly show.

What really hooked me were the last few episodes of the final seasons, where things took a rather dark tone and an actual story was being made. Characters begin to develop and become ultimately likable. Even today, it's still a show that has its childish gimmicks, but it helps balance that out with episodes taking a serious tone and actual story progression.

Overall, it's not the best show, but it is definitely one to get invested in if you are interested.