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hippygarden
Reviews
Gurankuresuto Senki (2018)
compelling story good characterization low budget animation
An extremely compelling story with complex and believable characters with animation that reminds me of Hana and Barberra: dialogue without mouths moving, many still shots, etc. But the animation is bright and colorful the characters clearly rendered and unique background settings adequately detailed.
The episodes are short and fast paced all ending on notes that leave you dying to know "what happens next?" like early "Fairy Tail". It was a day i need some real escapism and I ended up binge watching till the sun came up (and then some).
Clearly has a feel of a game (card game) expanded into a story but wonderfully realized. It is full of interesting and compelling characters with clear motivations that behave in believable ways. It never has those story killing moments where one ask "why would they say that" or "how can someone be so blind and stupid", you know, when characters do things that any competent 12 year old would not or that the character would themselves not do within their characterization.
The world building is great with a unique and and interesting medieval/Victorian fantasy world with established rules that remain consistent, It has a feel of old school fantasy with kings and kingdoms and noble knights rather then the dark fantasies now popular like "The Witcher", more like George Lucus "Star Wars" or rather 1970/80s fantasy novels. The pacing is fast and the conflict constant but with no real bad guys. All the characters are driven by understandable motives where they feel they are dong the right thing. The lead character has believable growth where he starts off understandably young and naïve but grows into his roll. Backstories are acknowledged but not dwelt upon. There was no character that i found excruciating so +++.
It was wonderful that they came off as real heroes. They are not cutiesized. This is an adult series with high gore and some level of sexuality. It has so much going for it in this regard. People express their feelings when appropriate. Hero characters will kill people when necessary but not gratuitously. People show competency and incompetency in equal measures. I would say this is one of the best amine ever to make real and uncontrived heroes.
This is not a comedy but a heroes journey at it's purist. The only reason I did not give a 10 is the animation that is so old school Saturday afternoon cartoon, but could this be on purpose as a homage to those old classics with a feel of he-man underneath?
Highly recommended netflix continues to throw out gems.
Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017)
i am glad they are making star wars movies but wish George Lucas had been allowed to continue
Warning major spoiler ! So this is Disney, a well oiled machine. Completely competent movie but completely vanilla. Somewhere I read that this movie had an unexpected ending and broke all the star wars tropes. Nothing could be further from the reality.
Disney the money making machine, heard that people hated the prequels (which by the way I love) and loved the original trilogy. So what did they do, made the original trilogy over again with a new younger and more diverse cast. Every plot point in the empire stikes back is covered like a check list. Rebel base gets discovered and rebels need to escape: Check. Main young protagonist goes of to seek the master: Check. Ground war: Check. Need help and seek it out on a gambling planet but seem to get sold out to the bad guys: Check. K could probably go on. It is empire strikes back with a gender reversal with the main and secondary characters nothing more.
And as for the movie itself, there was no character in there I really liked except maybe the the Asian woman who was a Tec. I wasn't really invested in anyone.
I loved Rogue one. I loved the characters . The robot was the best ever. I loved the backgrounds, the motivation. I loved the pseudo science. I cared about the characters. Why couldn't they have used the original extended star wars universe to create new movies rather then remake the originals.
Also it was sloppy writing. Unless I missed something there was a huge plot hole. She the code breaking character betrayed them he did so by revealing that the shuttles were sneaking down to the planet. How did he know this? That information was never revealed to him. When they were captured they were still under the notion that they were trying to get down the tracker.
And by the way, the prequels. I am a science fiction fan and these were true science fiction. Science fiction can be about Tec. But mostly it is about the human condition, about who we are as humans and is dorm of the deepest most meaningful of writing as in Brave New World . The prequels where about how a society can sink into authoritarianism. They are high art and so relevant to our times there 20 years later and high art. The Last Jedi is not. Also sorry about the editing writen on a cell phone