ribittoredfox Reviews

Falling in Love Like in Movies (2023)

More than just like a Film

[8/10 · 1 April 2024]

An excellent Indonesian film in meticulously combining a cheesy melodrama romance movie with a more artistic film. They bring both a popcorn-eating-couch movie and a film shown in award shows, by making the plot quite simple for general audiences to grasp, but also presenting cinematic techniques for critics to enjoy. This combination is prominent in how they add explanations of technical things in the dialogues. Which is also another amazing thing they succeed in, making exposition enjoyable.

Although the slow tempo might be off putting for some people, they still managed to make the audiences hooked with the natural dialogues and acting. Furthermore, they put many references to the real life, thus adding comedies by breaking the fourth wall. Indonesian audiences would understand the references, however, international audiences need to do research to understand them. Perhaps they didn't think about this film reaching the international audiences.

Bottom line is this film is splendid, very light and visually pleasing film. I highly recommend it!

Solo Leveling (2024– )

This will be different from the source material

[4/10 · 16 January 2024]

To clarify, I love love the source material, the novel, manhwa/webtoon. But, I'm not liking the first two episode of the anime adaptation. Why? Because they changed several scenes and that destroys the nuances.

You might think, hey, they are following the original storyline and just added new scenes different from the source. It seems like it will not be a big deal. True, we still get to see our protagonist starting from zero and struggling the same way in his life-changing dungeon experience. However, the way they tell that particular epic scene and how it lead there is what bothers me.

They introduce us with the fighting scene with the ants which, for me, is not a good hook to grab us into the story. At least not as much as the first scene in the source material where we get to see inside the life-changing dungeon. The reason is, the anime one has little connection to the first few stories that will come up and the ants are probably still hibernating in their island anyway (iykyk). Compared to the hook the source material uses, it grabs our attention to what will happen next, in the immediate future, and it relates to our protagonist.

Other scenes changed which I found not as good as the original, are the introduction to the men in suit talking business, the cool somehow-made-into-fanservice hunter hero, the mysterious-highschool-hunter girl(I'm trying so hard not to spoil anything). And the scenes would be popping in the middle of the life-changing dungeon raid (Even if they just popped for a bit). It honestly disrupts the flow and the story build up. Even though, the life threatening atmosphere was there in the dungeon scenes. As the result, the story climax fell short and lacking.

I was also surprised with the way they added fan service. What's with the cool hero girl's unnecessary butt close-up? You can make a character sexy and cool without zooming on their butts. And I know the healer girl is portrayed to be weak, but they changed one scene where the protagonist said to himself he can't let the healer girl rendered helpless. It was only for a quick moment. But, that scene create the illusion of an even more hopeless damsel-in-distress. I do hope this series doesn't change into a typical shounen anime with many fan services.

Anyway, these are my two cents. Despite all that, I am still excited to see how the story will turn out, perhaps they will change it as they see fit. Oh well, I guess I am throwing off my thinking hat for a while and try to enjoy this brand new anime (not adaptation if they change the story so much).