Jeoffrey

The original review is from 01.06.2016 - Once again, my impressions were contradictory at first. This anime series has a decent narrative, the subject matter of immortality is quite intriguing, and the way society reacts to it is very realistic in my opinion. The atmosphere of the show is also quite good, there is quite a lot of action and it is soundtracked quite well too. Seeing things through the eyes of an immortal boy who is constantly on the run because he is being hunted, is also a good idea. When his legs were broken, he handled it in a way that seemed to show the character would probably grow and develop in interesting ways (at least I hope so). However, I personally find the animation really dreadful and hard to watch. Sometimes the CGI looked OK, and at other times the characters and movement looked really awful... If this was a classic anime series, I would perhaps be able to ignore that and be very satisfied due to the interesting narrative and consider awarding it a rating somewhere between four stars and five stars. However, the use of CGI means I have lowered the rating to between three stars and four stars, leaning more towards three stars at the moment. Meanwhile, I would be really happy if someone explained to me why they made an anime series and on the same day release a movie that basically has the same content and so watching the first six or so episodes is utterly pointless if you have seen the movie... 6.3/10.

Did Makoto Shinkai with his movie Your Name open the door for other studios who are now getting away with producing supernatural romance dramas? It looks this way... Anyway, out of the four anime movies I have stuffed into my imaginary gunny sack in 2019 of supernatural romance dramas, this one is definitely among the better ones even though it is not quite perfect. As a viewer, I thought it presented some pretty interesting ideas and subject matter pretty well. The character motivations and behavior are also quite believable. The storyline and the struggles depicted made sense to me most of the time, except perhaps for one moment near the end. I thought that it even worked on an emotional level too. However,! After saying that, I did not really like the main female character who I sometimes found irritating and the movie was also unnecessarily long-winded... Despite all this, I still found it appealing and I would also like to mention the animation which was, in my opinion, very good. After I had finished watching it, I was left wracking my brain wondering how a confrontation between me and my much younger version would turn out... In the end, I resolved this issue after reading a review of the movie that contained the quote: "Never regret your past, and never give up on your future'', which was enough to snap me out of that mental funk. 7/10.

I was browsing through the channels on Twitch because I was bored and came across this! In one word, "awesome." Bob Ross looks so comfortable and does everything so naturally... It is incredibly easy to watch, great to relax to, and most importantly you get the feeling that painting can actually be simple and fun - there are no mistakes, just little happy accidents. Bob's obsession with big trees and wooden log cabins is quite entertaining. Sure, a lot of the paintings look quite the same, although the creative process is wonderful to watch! 9.5/10.

It is nice to see that Jules Verne’s home country is not lacking in imagination even in modern times. This is very interesting, sophisticated, and charming even though it is perhaps quite naive for my taste... 8.2/10.

I have just finished watching a very interesting science fantasy series which is also the epitome of "political correctness", as it is probably the greatest animated commercial for LGBTQ+ ever produced, and surprisingly (for those who know me) I really enjoyed it. All the homosexual, bisexual, lesbian, and non-binary characters (plus others I may have missed because I was not really focused on that), did not impede the narrative’s flow or storyline’s strengths, and (not only) in a fantasy world with its own rules, I could not care a less if boys are dating each other, girls are dating each other or even if cats are going out with... In my opinion, as a viewer, the new She-Ra manages to be a show that does not have complicated and lengthy discussions addressing the nature of dating and who likes who (instead of the actual plot) in almost every episode, and the characters’ relationships and chemistry are believable. I think the original 1985 Filmation show went down a very different road because this 2018 Netflix series is a more unconventional and modern take on She-Ra (and this goes some way to explain some of the disgruntled reviews from the fans of the original He-Man and She-Ra shows that I have come across). So, does any of that matter at all? Not really! The show’s narrative is both interesting and complex, each season is always very watchable (because of the high-quality animation, humor, pace, and soundtrack) and the ending itself may have been "over-the-top" or "too rainbow" for some, although I found it satisfying in most respects. I especially found the third and fourth seasons really entertaining on the whole, and I managed to finish the whole Netflix series in less than two weekends. Obviously, we have come a long way in the world of animated TV shows since The Legend of Korra, but well written and well thought out narratives are still being produced, and that makes me a little less skeptical about the future, which will probably take everything even further under the tagline "Be whatever you want to be!"... All in all, 7.1/10.

The fifth season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is very emotionally charged, and I think delivers a rather satisfying conclusion, with most of the storylines being wrapped up, and all the relationship issues coming to a head. Everything is incredibly "rainbow" and although I am not particularly crazy about it, I thought most of the denouements felt quite natural and made sense, so I am actually quite satisfied. 7.5/10.

I found the fourth season quite intriguing. It answered a lot of questions I had and demonstrated that the narrative of the show is quite well thought out and everything about it was very enjoyable. I have nothing to complain about, as I have said before, as I quite like science fantasy shows. I even enjoyed all the scheming and divisiveness that this season threw up because I love intrigues! Actually, Double Trouble is (a non-binary person using the pronoun “they” is a strange concept for me personally, although nothing I could not handle...) an interesting character, and I actually enjoyed the way they were playing their devious games with the other characters. There is a lot of emphasis on learning lessons about friendship, which are more complex than My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and at least two characters learn that having friends is the most important thing. I am curious how this will turn out because I saw how Captain Picard dealt with the Borg, so the question is whether this will be anything like that... A lot of the characters are finally getting somewhere - the way they gradually transform is quite noticeable, and to be honest, I can predict how they will develop further quite easily. I was also pleased to see the narrative has changed, and characters that were not very interesting before now have a more important role, so almost no one is superfluous. 8/10.

I have attempted to watch this anime series twice, and I just could not get into it. The first time I tried to watch it, I took a cursory look at one episode when the show had just come out (I do this with every new anime series, and if something does not feel right, I pretend I have not seen it) and was put off by the animation and the fact that it is about anthropomorphic animals. I am not a big fan of CGI, which is probably obvious from my other reviews, and I did not particularly like how they use it in this show, even though it is supposedly top quality when used in this style of animation. When I saw the hype around it, I watched a few more episodes and got the impression that this is a Romeo and Juliet style story, where the former does not know if he wants to eat or fuck the latter which seemed pretty weird to me. "Well, okay, I shall come back to it later..." I thought. Then the next year arrived and suddenly animal anime series were all over the place. There was Nekopara (I gave up on that within minutes), Seton Academy: Join the Pack! (I could not even get through the first episode) and even something about Oda Nobunaga reborn as a dog (the previews were enough to put me off). So then I got kind of fed up to the back teeth with animal themed anime series, and perhaps I missed out on a great anime series I do not know. Fortunately, the next year BNA came along which I really enjoyed, and because of that I decided to give Beastars a second chance. I managed to watch three episodes, and then totally gave up on it (I actually watched the third one this morning, after a two-week break + I took a cursory look at some other episodes). I am afraid that this show is just not for me for some reason. Sure, it is certainly full of allegory, and maybe it is an interesting romantic drama, although I am not sure I want to think about the sexual exploits of anthropomorphic animals. Maybe some people are into it, although personally I just find the idea of a wolf shagging a rabbit plain weird, and I found other such strange pairings are equally bizarre. I am not being narrow-minded, this subject matter does not offend me, it is just that there is too much of it in this show, and so I am out of my comfort zone. I just could not relate to the characters and build a positive relationship with them. The whole thing was just too weird for me, and it was as enjoyable as stroking a cat’s fur the wrong way (in keeping with the animal theme...), and although I get what the phrase "a gentle wolf" used on the Netflix website means in this context, it is still an oxymoron to me personally. So no! I am not going to finish Beastars (dropped after episode three), I am not going to give it a third chance, and if I had to sum it up in points, I would simply award it 3/10 at most.

Yeah, it was great to be young... This movie is about a youth rebellion against the establishment and is full of social satire. I cannot say it was anything brilliant, or fantastic, or shocking, it was just pretty cool. I found myself rooting for the main characters and their rebellion was quite charming in the end. Meanwhile, only someone not paying attention would have been surprised by Aya because at least two of the scenes clearly indicated that particular twist and really you could have just put two and two together, even though for some it may have been unexpected. Personally, I found the Mallet thing a much bigger surprise. Do you know what I am talking about? So just watch it... 7/10.

Something tells me that the second and third seasons of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power were actually supposed to be a single thirteen-episode season because otherwise, I cannot explain the differences in pace and suspense. If these seasons had been aired together, the gradual intense build-up, and the very intense denouement, which was what the third season was about, would have made more sense... In other words, what played out in the second season and was left open, went into overdrive, and it had quite an impressive ending with no shortage of tension or emotion. This season was good, it was very good, and I have been into exactly this kind of science fantasy since I played, for example, the Might and Magic RPG series. Personally, I thought it was definitely the best season so far because of the well-executed conclusion to this particular chapter, and I am quite intrigued as to what is going to happen next... 7.5/10.