Back to Firechick12012's Profile Firechick12012's Profile

Who here has heard of this anime simply titled Piano? Yeah, I doubt you'll be able to get search results on Google by typing just that. You'd have better luck typing it with its full subtitle, Piano: The Melody of a Young Girl's Heart. It was one of those anime that I always knew about when I was younger, but never actively pursued. One year, my mother got me one of the DVDs for Christmas, but I wasn't interested and told her to return it. That's about as far as my experience with Piano went, because child me back then thought it would be boring ... as all hell. Though now that I'm a 33-year-old woman, my tastes have evolved quite a bit since then. I decided maybe now was a good time to watch Piano in its entirety and see if it was any good. Maybe in some attempt to prove child me wrong. I previously dismissed stuff like Angel's Egg, Cardcaptor Sakura, and ToHeart when I was younger but later came to love them. I had hoped that Piano would do the same...but now that I've seen the entire series, maybe child me was onto something. I wouldn't necessarily call Piano bad, but it's not particularly noteworthy, and some issues it has hold it back from being something truly good.

Based on an original story concept by Ah My Goddess and Sakura Wars character designer Kousuke Fujishima, the story centers on Miu Nomura, a fairly average middle school girl who enjoys playing the piano and takes lessons after school. There isn't much of a plot to speak of, as the series is a very low-key, subdued, down-to-earth slice-of-life series in the vein of Anne of Green Gables or Super Cub. There's no big drama bombs (Except for episode 9 but we'll get to that), no drawn out love triangles where everyone gets mad at each other over petty stuff, everyone behaves as down-to-earth as humanly possible, and the plot of every episode reflects that. One episode focuses on Miu's older sister Akiko visiting the family while on vacation from her flight attendant job, and another one focuses on Miu helping her friend Yuuki ask out a boy she has a crush on. The only real throughline in the series is Miu's lack of confidence in her piano skills and being unsure of how her piano teacher, Mr. Shirakawa, feels about her progress. So yeah, if you're patient and are into slow burns, this is the show for you, but if not, you're going to be bored in no time. Piano is like Super Cub in that it's the kind of series that favors telling over showing, prefering a mostly minimalistic approach to its storytelling and character development, though not to the same extent.

However, unlike Super Cub, I do think Piano's approach to its characters kind of works against it at times. Remember in my Tsukigakirei review, I said that in the show's attempts to adhere to "show, don't tell" often resulted in important pieces of information not being explained? Piano has this exact same problem. For one, we don't learn why Miu decided to take up playing the piano in the first place, and the show teases that her older sister Akiko was in some sort of relationship with her teacher, Mr. Shirakawa, but we never learn the details about it. Not to mention Mr. Shirakawa as a character is pretty one-note in that he mostly spends all his screentime standing around and being cryptic. Man, no wonder Miu is always frustrated whenever she attends his lessons. Actually, now that I think about it, it's the male characters who feel the most one-note in the show compared to the girls. In the middle of the series, Miu and Yuuki start noticing some boys and developing crushes on them, but the boys in question are such non-entities that there's literally no reason for why the girls would even crush on them in the first place, making it hard to care about their teenage romance shenanigans. I found the girls to be much more interesting, and Miu's chemistry with Yuuki was always palpable and genuine...except for one conflict they had in episode 9 which just came off as really forced and unnecessary melodrama that clashes too much with the series' subdued atmosphere.

But what about everything else? For a show made in 2002-2003, the animation, while not exactly bursting with style and dynamicism, still serves the series fairly well, fitting its laid-back, subdued tone, even if Kousuke Fujishima's tendency to overstylize hair still comes through. At least the characters still manage to look distinct, I'll give him that. The backgrounds do look rather stiff at times, and it can be easy to spot parts of them that are digital assets, such as books lined on a shelf. The soundtrack is also fairly nice and similarly atmospheric, using soft wind instruments and, of course, piano pieces. Fun fact: Ayako Kawasumi, Miu's Japanese voice actress, is also an accomplished pianist and composed the opening theme song. As cool as that is, you have to wonder if this anime was just an Ayako Kawasumi promotional vehicle. Not that that's a bad thing in this case. The ending song is cute, but I don't have much else to say about it. Piano as a series is also fairly short, only going for ten episodes. As nice as it is that Piano doesn't overstay its welcome, the final episode leaves a lot of questions unanswered and plotlines unresolved, so I think it could have benefited from another two or three episodes.

In conclusion, Piano: The Melody of a Young Girl's Heart has its heart in the right place, but it doesn't quite do enough to rise above being average. It wastes time on pointless romance when it would have benefited from just keeping the focus on Miu and her family and friends, and was uninterested in exploring its existing cast of characters on a deeper level. I guess it's no wonder Piano failed to make a real splash, even with Right Stuf putting it out on DVD and giving it an English dub.

Real talk: I haven't watched Violet Evergarden yet, and I still haven't, mainly because when it came out, I was deep in the trenches of anime burnout. I might get to it when I feel like it, I'm not sure, as too many other things are taking priority. But one series made by the same author did pique my interest, Agents of the Four Seasons. Its premise seemed interesting, and I read a bit of the manga adaptation so far. I figured maybe watching the anime would be a good way to dip my toes into Kana Akatsuki's work. But...oh lordy. Before I get into ... my review, let me explain to you the phrase "Less is more." It's a literary device that empathizes the idea that being short, sweet, and to the point is more effective than adding more and more to something to the point those additions bog it down rather than enhance it. It's not limited to just books, every form of media has their own way of conveying a lot with very little if they want to. You can do it with environments, emotions, graphics, lighting, and so on. Basically, subtlety and restraint can work better than bombast and overwhelm. Agents Of The Four Seasons...is a series that, for as much as it wants to be this big, moving, emotional character drama, has absolutely no concept of subtlety or self-restraint whatsoever, which wound up being its biggest Achilles' Heel.

In the land of Yamato (Which is totally not Japan in all but name, what are you talking about?), the gods assign human avatars to summon each season, the Agents of the Four Seasons. These people have magic powers that bring forth the seasons through song, but are under heavy surveillance, forbidden to use their powers for anything besides continuing the cycle of the seasons, and are often targeted by terrorists and insurgents who want to either kill them or use their powers for nefarious purposes. Ten years before the series starts, the Agent of Spring, Hinagiku Kayo, was kidnapped by a terrorist group, resulting in spring's complete disappearance from the land. She has managed to return, but the kidnapping took a serious mental toll on her. She intends to resume her duties regardless, and accompanied by her loyal and stalwart guard, Sakura Himedaka, Hinagiku travels across Yamato to welcome spring for the first time in a decade. It won't be an easy time for Hinagiku, Sakura, or all those affected by the events of ten years ago, more so when the very group that kidnapped Hinagiku is up to their old tricks yet again.

Now, for the record, I have not read the light novels for this yet (I do intend to at some point), and my only reference is the manga adaptation, which only has four volumes out in English as of this writing with more on the way. Any comparisons I make will only be towards the manga. But I won't lie, I have strong feelings about Agents of the Four Seasons. Before I get into my thoughts about the anime, I have a question for you all: When do you decide when something you watch, read, or play comes off as too depressing? Where do you draw the line? I'm of the opinion that even media that's bleak and depressing can have value and be good when in the right hands. Some of my favorite anime of all time are famously dark and sad, not because they're only dark and sad, but because they either have more to offer than that or have something meaningful to say about society. Agents of the Four Seasons' concept alone is actually pretty interesting. Having people be godly avatars that magically bring forth the seasons and using the premise as a commentary on oppressive societal systems that hurt and exploit them, and showing the negative effects it can have on those being victimized by said system could be amazing in the right hands, and there's a lot you can do with that premise or anything adjacent to that.

Agents could have had the potential to be an interesting story...if it wasn't so obsessed with indulging in overblown angst and melodrama at literally every single opportunity. Seriously, I know a lot of people like to rag on the likes of Visual Arts/Key and Mari Okada for milking their drama and angst, but here's the thing: The stuff they created still had some moments of levity to break up the tension, and actually saved their moments of drama for when they can actually have a meaningful impact. A tiny bit of angst once in a while is healthy, but there are reasons why media need lighter moments, both so the audience can take a breather and allow for chances to flesh out the characters and show what they're like when they're not trying to save the world or undergo overlong Shounen battle tournaments. Agents doesn't think any moments where the characters aren't constantly crying, screaming, moping, angsting, and monologing about their capital T trauma are worth anything, any that it does have are really few and far between and too short to really matter, and because of its overreliance on melodrama, it comes off like an incredibly cheesy, predictable soap opera. Not to mention Agents is constantly beating you over the head with flashbacks that constantly repeat information it's already given to the audience with no reprieve, like it's hitting you with a giant mallet that says "YOU BETTER CRY RIGHT NOW, BITCH!" in neon marker. Because of this, the series drags its feet, and even when it attempts to finally get the plot moving, it has to completely stop in its tracks to deliver, you guessed it, another flashback that takes up the entire episode, convinced that the audience has the attention span of a lobotomized squirrel and can't remember info it already pontificated to hell and back several episodes before. This is what I mean when I say less is more: Agents wastes more than half the series on characters indulging in angsty pity parties and milking the pathos for all its worth, when it could have focused on its main plot and solved everything within half its run time, or doing other things. Everybody is made to display their emotions in the most histrionic manner possible, constantly at a 10 when they could have benefited from dialing it down to a 5 or 4.

This also results in the characters lacking any real depth because Agents is convinced that giving its characters horrible backstories and having them scream their feelings all the time translates to depth, nuance, and personality. Newsflash, it doesn't. This is the problem I have with Takopi's Original Sin as well: The characters are completely defined by their circumstances rather than anything they themselves have to offer. To springboard off this, I have several questions to ask: What do we know about Rosei other than he's the brooding angsty boy with trauma and in love with Hinagiku? What do we know about Sakura other than she's traumatized, hates Rosei, and worships Hinagiku? What do we know about Hinagiku other than she's traumatized, loves Rosei and Sakura, and has a speech impediment? The answer is nothing, because Agents isn't interested in showing its characters as being anything except rehashed tropes but with capital T trauma as the cherry on top. Even Hinagiku's speech impediment feels less like a legitimate handicap and more like a cutesy poo verbal tic that's there solely to make her into an infantilized moeblob akin to Ayu's "Uguu!" from Kanon, and what justification it does have doesn't do enough to make Hinagiku feel like anything beyond yet another sad girl moe archetype. Seriously, take away all the sad uwu backstories, and all you have are shallow ciphers with cliches and tropes slapped onto them. The only character who really goes through anything resembling a real character arc is Sakura, which is fine, but even her backstory is ridiculously overblown and feels like it's just there for maximum angst. Oh, Sakura's parents abandoned her? We need more drama, so let's have the entire village hate a 9-year-old girl just because her parents are deadbeats! How dare! And here's the thing: For all that the series touts Hinagiku as the main character, she isn't even the one driving the plot forward. Sakura does. Sakura is the one who is constantly taking action or demanding others do the same, whereas everyone else is just twiddling their thumbs or indulging in their pity parties for the umpteenth time. Hinagiku is mostly there to just be a cutesy waif who spouts overlong monologues pausing at every other word and pining for Rosei. She honestly feels more like she could be a side character than the main one, since she doesn't do much on her own.

Beyond this series' love of milking its angst even when the well is truly dry, a lot of its narrative doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you stop and think about it for more than two seconds. For one thing, for all that the series claims to have tons of security detail around the agents, they sure do a piss-poor job at it. The agents only ever seem to have one singular guard around them, and any security personnel they do have can't seem to do diddly squat to actually protect them, not to mention a ton of insurgents manage to infiltrate their security personnel on the regular. Does their whole agency have no concept of background checks? Though then again, considering how often this happens IRL, maybe this isn't that much of a stretch. Plus, it's said that every time an Agent dies, a new one is chosen immediately, so it makes no sense that terrorists would waste valuable time and resources to kill something that'll just come right back in a few years anyway, so any motivations these terrorists have make even less sense under scrutiny. I haven't read any of Kana Akatsuki's work yet, so I can't claim to know her thought process in terms of writing, but it seems like she struggles with throwing a bunch of stuff together without considering whether doing so would actually work or not, along with the aforementioned overreliance on angst for easy shock value. For all I know, maybe a lot of this is on the anime. I've heard the anime rearranged some scenes from the novel, and I know this is true in regards to the manga because the scene where Sakura and Hinagiku sit by the lake took place before they met the Hazakura sisters in the manga, whereas the anime had it happen after that. Not that this changes the fact that Agents' core mission is to just indulge in piling on endless angst for cheap shock value and near fetishistic trauma porn. If the series had dialed back the angst, cut out the terrorist plot, and focused more on the systemic oppression behind the agency as a whole, I think Agents could have been a better series that actually could have had something meaningful to say, since systemic oppression is a real issue.

Agents of the Four Seasons is an example of how too much drama and angst can ultimately hurt a series rather than elevate it. It's easy to fall into the trap of wanting to throw in as much high octane drama and conflict to entice your audience and not knowing how much is too much. I've struggled with that problem myself when writing my own stories, and I probably still struggle with it. I've taken tons of writing classes throughout my time in school, and I still struggle with knowing how much is too much or too little. Here's some examples of series that managed to strike a good balance of being dark and sad while not completely indulging in misery: Nobody's Boy Remi, a series about a young boy adopted by a wandering minstrel and dealing with the hardships that come with it. Any drama that show has is on account of its 19th century setting and exploration of classism towards the poor/working class people. One World Masterpiece Theater series I really like, Romeo's Blue Skies, explores the chimney sweep business in 19th century Italy and how it exploited children who were made to work in that business, and its main emotional backbone is the friendships Romeo forges with his fellow chimney sweeps and others. Girls Last Tour is a manga that shows two young women exploring the remains of their dying world, finding food and just getting by, and making the best of their situation. Twelve Kingdoms, a shoujo isekai light novel series, has its main character Youko be terrorized by all manner of different forces when she first arrives in a fantasy world, but has her facing up to her flaws, learning more about the world, actively making a place for herself, and working to dismantle the complex societal systems that oppress the different kingdoms and the people living under them. All of those series don't have the characters constantly wallowing in their misery in every single second of screentime they have, and any times they do feel sad over their situations are saved for when they're appropriate. Humans aren't stone walls that can just withstand anything thrown at them. Like I said before, a little bit of angst is healthy because it shows your characters are human. Agents of the Four Seasons' overreliance on non-stop angst and melodrama makes it feel more like it and everyone in the series is continually indulging in a victim complex rather than actively wanting to do anything more with itself.

But what does Agents have that's actually good? Well, a few things. The animation is quite beautiful, with fantastic visual direction at some points that really make it look gorgeous...though I really hope Wit didn't use AI for this since they were caught doing so in the recent season of Ascendance of a Bookworm. I almost think the animation alone does more to sell the series' themes than the series itself does with its characters. Even the action scenes are well choreographed and amazingly animated. Kensuke Ushio's soundtrack is also a big highlight. I admit, I'm not entirely familiar with Kensuke Ushio's portfolio despite having heard his work in other stuff, but I really liked his soundtrack for Agents. Hell, the soundtrack is pretty much the only thing about the series that isn't trying too hard, though I'm not as much a fan of the opening and ending due to them having that weird voice digitization that makes the singers sound like Vocaloids during the high notes. Though speaking of the audio, I do think the Japanese voice actors, for as hard as they're trying to make the material they're working on sound more important and emotionally affecting than it actually is, overact quite a bit. Hearing these people scream and monologue and act as histrionic as humanly possible really starts to hurt your ears after a while. It makes you wonder how they didn't wind up losing or damaging their voices. At least that's one good thing about reading this story in novel and manga form: You don't have to hear these characters constantly screaming their angsty monologues on a constant basis! I'd almost recommend watching the English dub because 1. It's not as overacted as the Japanese, and 2. Marisa Duran absolutely kills it as Sakura and nails her inner conflict and lingering angst. Almost everyone's performance made me want to get more invested in the show than I was, but…I just couldn't.

It's a shame, because I want to like Agents of the Four Seasons! I really do, and normally I love stories about people healing from trauma and overcoming seemingly impossible hardships! I do enjoy the manga for it because its better paced and has details the anime didn't cover, and for all I know, maybe the novels execute this concept better. I have no clue. If you put a gun to my head and made me choose between this or Redo of Healer, I'd still pick Agents any day of the week. But the question remains whether you want to sit through unnecessarily thick layers of over-the-top melodrama and angst just to get to what little semblance of a plot it even has.

So...today I learned that this exists thanks to a tweet by Japan Society Film that randomly appeared in my feed out of nowhere advertising a screening for it next month. I was already intrigued by the movie it talked about, Rex: A Dinosaur's Story, both because its premise sounds like a mashup of both ET and Jurassic Park (Both movies even came out that same year!) and because the movie got pulled from theaters because Haruki Kadokawa, the then president of Kadokawa and the creator of the media mix concept, was arrested due to a drug scandal. If that doesn't tell you how super strict ... Japan is about drugs, I don't know what will. But I became even more morbidly fascinated when I found out apparently the movie was a VERY loose adaptation of a manga that CLAMP did the art for! CLAMP didn't write the story, as that was written by some zoologist named Masanori Hata. Now, I'm not entirely sure if the manga is considered the original source or the movie is, or if the manga is just supposed to be a promotional tie-in for the movie. I couldn't find anything concrete on that. But I was able to find that someone fan translated the manga for Rex: A Dinosaur's Story into English. I found it, read it, and here I am! My verdict: It's a cute little manga about a girl being friends with a baby dinosaur, but don't expect anything more out of it than that, as it's silly, cliche, and cheesy as all hell.

Chie Tateno is a 10-year-old girl living in Tokachi, Hokkaido, with her paleontologist father Akira. She's feeling lonely because hasn't seen her mother in years and doesn't know what she looks like. Her mother divorced her father to pursue a career at MIT, but they're still cordial with one another even after the split. One day, while exploring a cave deep in the forest, Chie, her father, and father's assistant come across dinosaur eggs that haven't fossilized. They take the eggs back to the facility, and after some close calls, one of the eggs hatches into a baby tyrannosaurus rex...that immediately latches onto Chie and views it as her mother. Chie is delighted by the thought of raising a baby dinosaur, naming him Rex, and resolves to be the best mother she can be for him. Unfortunately for her, a researcher named Tsuchiya intends on taking Rex to a university where the baby would be studied...and starts discussing dissecting him. Chie, overhearing the conversation, takes Rex and runs away, hoping to save the dinosaur.

If that summary sounds like every single "kid makes friends with alien/animal and is pursued by an evil guy who wants to do bad things to it" plot out there, complete with all its well known tropes and cliches, you'd be right on the money. Lonely kid with divorced parents who wants friends? Check. Kid is having trouble in school? Check. Kid makes friends with a mysterious/magical creature and becomes its sort of parent? Check. Antagonist who wants to take the animal away from the kid? Check. Kid tries to run from the antagonist and protect the animal, complete with a long, elaborate chase scene? Check. Kid eventually has to be separated from animal in the end and move on with their life? Checkity check check! I swear, you might as well slap a John Williams soundtrack on this to make this whole picture complete! Oh wait, the movie already did that (The movie's music was done by a guy named Tomoyuki Asakawa, but it's so John Williams-esque you might as well think the real thing made it!). This manga is pretty much just ET but with a female lead character, dinosaurs, and drawn by CLAMP, complete with all the overwrought sentimentality and cheesiness that you'll find in pretty much every story that plays this premise completely straight. Rex: A Dinosaur's Story does absolutely nothing to change or reinvent this formula for better or worse. You'll either love it for its commitment to its premise and lack of interest in being anything except what it is, flaws and all, or you'll hate it for those same reasons.

Though in fairness, from the research I've done, other than the base premise and the characters, the manga and movie approach them very differently, making them almost separate entities. In the manga, Akira's ex-wife Naomi went to MIT, whereas in the movie she moved to New York. In the manga, Akira doesn't hold the fact that Naomi chose her career over her daughter against her, whereas the movie makes him much more critical of her. In the movie, Rex's existence turns him into a national media sensation, but his existence is still mostly kept secret in the manga. In the manga, Rex hatches because of Chie holding his egg, and Chie only knows he's alive because she can...magically hear his heartbeat for some reason. In the movie, Chie plays an ocarina next to Rex's egg, which makes him hatch, and there's absolutely no sign of an ocarina anywhere in the manga. The movie shows Rex getting bigger and has the story take place over a long period of time, whereas the manga doesn't depict Rex growing and has everything happen within a matter of days, what with it only being 6 chapters long, which is why its pacing is rather brisk. Even the big, elaborate chase scene is depicted differently in both versions. I'm gonna stop there because if I explained every single difference between both the movie and manga, we'd be here all day. Again, I don't know if this manga version is meant to be the original source material or just a tie-in product to promote the movie, but it is interesting to see just how different they are in how they approach this silly premise.

I do think the characters are rather one-note though, and now that I've actually watched the movie, I learned that the movie gave them more characterization than the manga did. In the movie, Chie is a nice yet lonely and snarky kid who isn't afraid to remind her mother of the fact that she abandoned her. In the manga she's more of a stereotypically prim and proper lady who comes off as a bit too idealistic and patient. Daisuke, one of Akira's assistants, is depicted as a bumbling yet friendly guy in the manga, but in the movie is apparently the main antagonist. Naomi's characterization remains the same. Because of the manga's short length and brisk pacing, a lot happens in a short amount of time, but the characters don't really evolve beyond their base archetype. This also results in Chie's supposed bond with Rex not feeling as genuine as it is in the movie, because the movie actually shows Chie spending time with Rex, teaching him things, and making an effort to raise him, so there, you actually get a sense that they've developed some sort of bond. There is one character that I feel is rather superfluous in both the movie and the manga: Kenta, a boy from Chie's school. He's mostly just there to be a convenient plot device to help Chie escape from the people trying to kidnap Rex, though both adaptations' versions of how they show him doing this are really silly: In the movie, he recruits a church choir to throw snowballs at the government agents, but in the manga, he...whistles for a stampede of cows and has them trample everyone. I admit, I couldn't help but laugh at this whole bit.

But what does the manga offer that's actually good? Well, CLAMP's art is still as gorgeous as ever. What else is there to say about CLAMP that hasn't been said already? Their interpretation of this story was done using what I like to call their RG Veda style, with their characters having thick eyelashes, billowy hair, thick outlines around the bodies, and faded linework for most of the backgrounds. This was before they evolved into their more streamlined style a la Wish and Cardcaptor Sakura, and before their exaggeratedly long-legged Tsubasa Chronicles and XXXHolic period. Though I think the quality of the scans I found wasn't very good, which is why a lot of the lines look faded and the backgrounds look smeared. Still, their flair for distinctive character designs still shines through even in this early period in their career. Plus, they did a great job at making Rex look absolutely adorable, even if he does look like a Charmander prototype. I will say, if you want to read this in English, there is a fan translation out there, but its mediocre quality at best. Some Japanese words are completely untranslated, there's poor grammar and poorly constructed sentences abound, and some characters' names randomly change between chapters. I doubt this will ever get officially licensed, even with the CLAMP prestige behind it.

Whether you're watching the movie or reading the manga, Rex: A Dinosaur's Story is a silly, cheesy, wild romp of a ride, and could make for a good introductory manga for any kids wanting to get into anime or manga for the first time. It's basically just ET but with dinosaurs, what more could you want? Like I said, you'll probably enjoy it more if you don't expect it to be anything but a cute, wholesome, family-friendly story about a kid and her pet dinosaur.

You're all going to hate me for this, but...I honestly don't understand why this movie is so popular. I originally wanted to check this out because it was directed by the guy who directed the Pokemon: Twilight Wings webseries, which I really liked. I guess now I ought to realize that even good directors don't always put out good stories, and unfortunately, I wasn't big on Cosmic Princess Kaguya. It took me a long time to even finish it, that's how much I couldn't stand it. The story centers on beleagared high schooler Iroha Sakayori, a girl who is living by herself, going to school, ... and working after getting into a fight with her perfectionistic mother. Adding to her already hectic life is the discovery of a baby glowing from a magical bamboo in the utility pole outside her apartment. Not having the heart to leave the baby unattended, Iroha takes it in, and in a matter of days it grows into a girl of about Iroha's age who claims to have run away from her home on the moon. Naming her Kaguya after the moon princess from The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, Iroha gets driven up the wall by her free-spirited unruliness, but nevertheless keeps a roof over her head. Iroha even brings Kaguya along on one of her visits to the virtual world of Tsukuyomi—and that very evening, Yachiyo Runami, an AI streamer/singer who Iroha idolizes, announces a competition she calls the Yachiyo Cup, with a collab concert with her as the grand prize! Kaguya immediately sets to work on a streaming career of her own in order to compete, dragging Iroha into using her songwriting talents to help out — but what kind of ending will her story actually reach, especially as her attachment to Iroha only grows stronger and more mutual?

Man, that plot summary really tells you how bloated this movie is, doesn't it? Seriously, the movie tries to tackle a bunch of different plotlines all at once, and none of them manage to make any lick of sense if you spend more than two seconds thinking about it. We have alien girls, VTubers, VR metaverses, MMORPG battles, Iroha's half-baked family drama, copious amounts of songs that take up screentime that could have been used to flesh out the characters, I felt like I was watching Gundam Wing all over again what with how much it tries to cram into an almost three hour movie! Cosmic Princess Kaguya tries to do way too much in a short amount of time, and it really shows. None of these plotlines mesh well, and the story could have benefited had it limited itself to just one or two subplots and fleshed them out. I did hear somewhere that Cosmic Princess Kaguya was originally pitched as a TV series, but that was shot down and was truncated into a movie instead. Somehow, it wouldn't surprise me if that was the case. This needed way more than just two and a half hours to flesh out everything it tried to do in here, and because it tried to do too much, the movie's narrative comes out a bloated, directionless mess. Plus, because the movie wanted to rush through all its subplots, it raises a ton of questions that it just doesn't want to answer: What exactly is Iroha's deal with her mother? Why are Iroha and Mikado so estranged? How the hell does Mikado have enough money to buy Iroha a whole-ass apartment complex?

The movie's complete lack of interest in anything except J-pop songs and sakuga also affects the characters. It really wants you to invest in Iroha's relationship with Kaguya and all these other characters. However, I could not give two shits about any of them, mainly because anyone who's not Kaguya, Iroha, or Yachiyo has all the depth of a shallow puddle. The side characters all seem to only exist to advance the plot rather than have anything to offer on their own. Mikado's two flunkies are such complete non-entities that you could cut them from the movie entirely and nothing would be lost. Iroha would have been a perfectly fine character if the movie had bothered to flesh out her family troubles beyond random exposition dumps, but even her arc is dampened by the movie favoring overwrought sentimentality over actually bothering to develop her as a character. Not to mention I absolutely couldn't stand Kaguya as a character, as she spent most of the movie being an annoying entitled toddler with absolutely no respect for Iroha's space, boundaries, or property, and is constantly causing her no small amount of grief, yet this movie wants me to think her friendship/romance with Iroha is the bestest thing ever. No, movie, you cannot convince me that an overgrown Manic Pixie Dream Girl who intrudes on Iroha's life and throws tantrums like a brat is someone worth caring about and investing in, so as a result, you did a terrible job at trying to get me to invest in any relationship they could have had. Seriously, why does this movie think shipping Iroha with an overgrown woman child makes for good romance? Because it doesn't!

For a movie with a big focus on music, many of the songs are just generic VTuber bubblegum pop that are just there to pad out the run time and not add anything to the already convoluted narrative. I did like that the English dub actually bothered to dub them. The actual soundtrack itself is fine, probably better than the actual songs. But what does Cosmic Princess Kaguya have that's actually good? Well, Studio Colorido strikes again with their great animation, and they wasted no effort here...though I think they overdid it with the sakuga and visual effects here. The movie has dynamic animation, yes, but sometimes it got so bright that it got a bit too visually overwhelming for me to handle. I do find it kind of weird that it was reported that Studio Colorido was contracted to make three movies for Netflix, but wound up making four of them, this being the fourth after Drifting Home, A Whisker Away, and My Oni Girl. I guess Netflix liked them enough that they wanted a fourth movie out of them, and sure enough, this one proved to be the big hit.

Sorry guys. I didn't jive with this one, and it's a shame, because it does have interesting ideas that it could have executed well had it not tried to do so much in a format that didn't leave room for any of its ideas to breathe. I wonder how Cosmic Princess Kaguya would have turned out had it been a TV series like it was originally planned to be? I may not have liked it, but it did bring in a lot of money, so hopefully its success will allow Shingo Yamashita to do other things he wants to do. Hope it works out for him. Cosmic Princess Kaguya may have made him and Colorido bank, but being successful doesn't translate to it being a quality product.

I have a sentimental relationship with Full Moon o Sagashite. I bought all the manga volumes as they were coming out and enjoyed the series immensely. I still own those manga volumes to this day and have no intention of getting rid of them. However, my attempts to watch the anime didn't pan out. I only made it to episode 10 before stopping due to other obligations like school. It wasn't until this year that I finally managed to complete the anime, and only because AnimEigo licensed it for a complete blu-ray release for the first time ever. Viz Media once attempted to release the ... series on DVD, complete with an English dub, but low sales made them stop halfway through, and many thought the second half of the series just never got dubbed, or if it did, it'd be lost forever. Imagine peoples' surprise when it was revealed that not only was the full series actually completely dubbed, but the second half of said dub would be on the new blu-ray! With the fact that the anime is now back in the limelight thanks to this news, I figured it was high time I got off my ass and finally watched the entire series. Though having knowledge of the manga, I do feel the anime doesn't really measure up.

The core premise is the same as the manga: 12-year-old Mitsuki Koyama has lived a hard life. Her parents died when she was little, and she spent most of her life in an orphanage. Two years ago, her friend and childhood crush, Eichi Sakurai, got adopted and is living in America now. Mitsuki dreams of becoming a singer, if only so she can reunite with Eichi. Unfortunately for her, she has a cancerous tumor in her throat called a sarcoma, which makes it hard for her to both sing and talk loudly, and the only way for it to be removed is through surgery, and even then, the procedure could make her lose her voice. One day, she's visited by two death spirits, Takuto and Meroko, who are surprised she can see them. Mitsuki is informed that she has one year left to live. Mitsuki decides to goad them into helping her fulfill her dream of becoming a singer. In exchange for Mitsuki accepting her fate when her time is up, the two shinigami give her the power to turn into a 16-year-old version of herself that has no throat tumor. Against all odds, Mitsuki—under the alias Full Moon—manages to pass the audition she desperately wished to attend, setting her on the road to achieving her dream. Now she has to work hard to manage her newfound double-life while keeping it a secret from the discerning eyes of her strict grandmother, and dealing with the lingering presence of other shinigami whose intentions aren't good.

Before I get too deep into dissecting the anime, I'm going to give a huge warning: If you're going into this thinking it's a faithful adaptation of the manga, you'd best throw those expectations out the window, because not only is the anime completely different from the manga in terms of its tone, it diverges so much from the manga's plot that it goes completely in its own direction. Granted, this is mainly because the anime was produced as the manga was still running. Hell, the anime only got made right as the manga reached its fifth chapter, so it had to make up a lot of stuff on the fly to not only fill up a 52-episode run time, or in the case of events that had happened in the manga during its run time, incorporate them into the anime in a way that fit the events of the anime. Because of this, a lot of stuff such as Meroko and Izumi's backstories are completely absent, some characters have different characterization or backstories than they did in the manga, and even whole arcs from the manga never got adapted. Not to mention the anime's tone is much more comedic, kid-friendly, and light-hearted compared to the manga's more darker approach and Don Bluth-like sensibilities. All of this will definitely affect whether or not you'll be able to enjoy the anime. One example of a change the anime made that completely changes the status quo: In the manga, Oshige and Dr. Wakaoji don't learn about the Shinigami until near the very end of the manga. The anime makes it so that they learn about Takuto and Meroko, along with Mitsuki's secret identity Full Moon, in episode 19, and they get more involved in keeping Mitsuki's secret from her family. Hell, Mitsuki goes to school and has friends in the anime, whereas in the manga her illness makes it so that she's unable to go to school at all.

Not only that, the series even goes as far as to change the character designs to some extent. Meroko's black outfit is made red in the anime (Albeit with Tanemura-sensei's permission), and several characters' hair and eye colors are different than in the manga. If you're a manga purist who dislikes any kind of changes made in an adaptation, you're going to want to skip this. That said, is the Full Moon anime any good even with all these changes? Eh...it's fine. The animation by itself is your standard early 2000s digipaint fare, there's not much in the way of actual motion as was the style at the time, and Studio DEEN has always had a reputation for their work not being the best even on their best days. Plus, you know there's no way they'd be able to really depict Tanemura's highly detailed art into motion, but the effort they did put in is commendable regardless. The soundtrack is pretty good, and all the songs are decent, considering the series revolves around music, but it does have the problem of overusing certain songs way too much to the point that it gets extremely repetitive, diluting their impact during the more emotional moments. Speaking of the audio, I found a good portion of the voice acting to be pretty hit or miss. Several VAs sound like they can't act their way out of a paper bag, or use a voice that doesn't quite match the character's age. For example, Myco, Mitsuki's actress, can't sound like a 12-year-old girl to save her life. You can easily tell it's an adult woman voicing a kid, and she makes no effort to sound anything remotely close to child-like. I know they wanted to have an established singer to voice Mitsuki, since the whole series is about her being a singer and all, but not all singers can be good actors, as acting involves a whole other set of skills separate from just singing, though singing can help with things like controling one's pitch and projecting one's voice.

Like I mentioned earlier, because the anime went in its own direction and couldn't adapt the manga faithfully during its run, the characters wound up suffering quite a bit in the adaptation process. Now, this isn't to completely diss the creative staff and their attempts to at least work with what they had, as they had no way of knowing how the manga would turn out in its later chapters, and even if they did, the divergences made in the anime would have made it impossible for them to course-correct. However, the lack of foresight on the staff's part does result in the characters lacking the depth and dimensionality they had in the manga, with Izumi being the biggest victim of this. The anime makes Izumi into the primary antagonist in the second half, whereas in the manga, he initially starts off antagonistic but becomes allies with Takuto and Meroko. This isn't to say the characters by themselves are bad, and again, the producers had no way of knowing about or being able to really adapt their backstories and depth into the anime without retconning everything they had established, but with the characters' rough edges being sanded off, they come off much more cliche and archetypal here than they were in the manga. There are also instances where, in order to fill up an episode's run time, they had to come up with rather cliche plots just to give the characters something to do, and sometimes this resulted in characters behaving out-of-character. Seriously, did we really need a whole episode about Tanaka and Oshige in a stupid competition over who can be the best housewife, and making Tanaka seem needlessly mean-spirited and cruel to Oshige for no reason?

This also resulted in the series having to make up some one-off characters of the week who I honestly couldn't give two shits about, like Oshige's replacement manager who can't be a good manager to Mitsuki if his life depended on it. The only anime original character I liked was this old guy that Mitsuki meets who can also see shinigami and is about to die, but wants to see a rare flower bloom before he does so. Now, this isn't to say the writing for this series is completely lackluster. When Full Moon wants to go all-in on the drama, it manages to succeed when it hits. The last quarter of the series is a good example of this, showing that even if the anime isn't faithful to the manga, that doesn't mean it can't deliver when it counts. However, I don't think it's worth sitting through the rest of the series just to get to those good final episodes, because the rest of it is either boring, cliche, or nothing special. You'll need a LOT of patience if you want to get through this. I did also notice a pretty big continuity issue: In episode 1, it's established that Mitsuki, when she's not transformed, can't yell or raise her voice because her sarcoma will act up if she does, but in a much later episode, she screams at Takuto for several minutes without issue. Consistency really shouldn't be this hard.

Overall, while I can appreciate Full Moon o Sagashite's anime adaptation for at least trying to stand on its own and make use of what it had, it's pretty clear that the manga is still the superior product. I guess there's a reason why I initially didn't get past episode 10 when I first watched it. If you haven't read the manga, Full Moon o Sagashite is a fairly decent idol series, albeit very held back by cliches and bouts of meandering. If you're a diehard fan of Full Moon's manga, you're probably not going to like the anime because of the drastic changes it made. I'm glad I finally crossed this anime off my list, but I don't know if I'm in the mood to go back to it anytime soon, not to mention the English dub has plenty of its own issues.

Man, I really wanted to like Tamon's B-Side. Shoujo manga nowadays don't always have the best track record when it comes to getting good anime adaptations, and even the ones that do don't get to last very long, which definitely worries me in light of the news of both Red River and From Far Away getting anime adaptations. I didn't know much about Tamon's B-Side getting into it, and I figured it'd be a decent time killer based on what I've heard about it. Now, I will admit, I've never read the manga, so my review is based only on the anime itself. Unfortunately, rather ... than enjoying it, I just found myself constantly annoyed with it the entire time. I do know a little bit about how the idol industry works in Japan, though not to the extent that others that have done extensive research on it have. I tried, I really tried, but I just found Tamon's B-Side as a show to be extremely tedious, annoying, and oftentimes pretty tasteless.

Based on the manga by Yuki Shiwasu, the story goes as follows: High school girl Utage Kinoshita works part-time as a housekeeper so she can afford her fangirl obsession with Tamon Fukuhara, her favorite member of the boy band F/ACE. When work serendipitously sends her to the home of her idol, she discovers that the real Tamon couldn't be more different from his wild and sexy onstage persona! As it turns out, Tamon is a pessimistic, neurotic, insecure mess in real life, and what's worse, he's threatening to quit! Utage refuses to let anyone stand in Tamon's way—least of all himself. What's a fangirl to do but roll up her sleeves and support her favorite singer with everything she's got? Yeah, this has idol fan fantasy all over it, all of it played for comedy and comedy alone. Now, as far as basing its entire premise off a single joke goes, Tamon's B-Side does manage to get some good mileage out of it, such as all the crazy ways Utage has to remind herself not to cross the line beyond just being a loyal fan, and how Utage's face explodes into pink goo every time Tamon so much as breathes in her direction when he's in Hottiehara mode. Plus, the sub translation by Michelle Tymon really helped in this regard, doing a stellar job of doing both a faithful translation and incorporating the kind of teenage internet slang that you just know kids these days will either cringe at or throw out just for funsies, complete with its own jokes.

Unfortunately, if my rating isn't an indicator, I wasn't big on virtually everything else. My first gripe is with the plot. If you take away both the whole singer/loony fan aspect and all of Japan's idol industry quirks, you pretty much just get yet another cliche "insecure man has to be constantly helped by a Manic Pixie Dream Girl" story, only with a very creepy power imbalance involved. It's not enough to have Tamon just be an anxious and insecure person, no no, he's basically made to be the most pathetic, whiny, neurotic mess humanly possible, to the point that he'll say things like wanting to be taught how to take selfies without throwing up without any hint of irony, and has to be dependent on Utage, a high school aged girl, and require her help for even the most basic things. There's an inherent tastelessness to this whole setup that I just couldn't ignore. The guy needs therapy, not some fangirl screaming at him whenever he has an episode, and why would someone like Tamon even want to be an idol, where he has to put on a completely different persona on the regular anyway? Not to mention that we have no idea why Tamon is such a mess, so his two contrasting personas feel much less like different facets of him and more like two different personalities stuffed into one body that the creators slapped together because it makes for funny comedy. It kind of undermines the whole premise of the series exploring the faces that people put on for the benefit of others. Also, the fact that he actually attempts suicide in one episode is not only played for laughs, which is just abhorrent to me, his reasoning for it just makes him come off like a whiny bitch rather than the troubled individual the show wants me to see him as. Sorry, but I think Bocchi The Rock pulled off having a perpetually anxious, neurotic lead character better because not only do we actually see why Bocchi became the way that she is, the other characters in that show have personalities and lives outside of helping Bocchi with her issues, so they feel like more well-rounded characters. Not to mention Bocchi doesn't play suicide for mean-spirited laughs and actually treats Bocchi's issues relatively sensitively.

Speaking of well-rounded characters, as a whole, this is also where Tamon's B-Side is lacking. Like I mentioned above, the series tries to explore the idea of how the faces idols put on for their audience are just a facade and how they can be just as flawed and human as everyone else is off-camera, but it's hard to really care about what it's trying to convey because Tamon's B-Side leans way too hard into exaggeration for literally everything and everyone, characters included. I already mentioned my issues with Tamon, as the lack of reasoning as to why he's such a neurotic mess gives me little reason to care about him in any way, though having his fellow idol coworkers treat him like shit for petty reasons doesn't endear me to them either, furthering the show's tastelessness in regards to how it treats legitimate conditions like anxiety. Not to mention it makes me question why, again, a person like Tamon would even want to be an idol in the first place considering how horrible the environment is for him. While I can appreciate that Utage as a heroine isn't a spineless wallflower in the face of adversity, is passionate about how much she wants to help Tamon, and does grapple with wanting to be closer to him and wanting to keep an appropriate distance as a fan, Japan's idol culture being super puritanical and all, she still doesn't have much to her besides worshipping Tamon. Actually, none of the other characters are all that interesting either. The same issues I have with Tamon are repeated with all the other members of F/ACE, as their supposed authentic selves are just as banal and archetypal as the fabricated, artificial personalities they market to the masses. Ouri being a jackass makes some sense considering his upbringing, and most people in the entertainment industry tend to let their fame and privilege go to their heads, but the second the show made Ouri fall in love with Utage because how dare she like Tamon and not him, I rolled my eyes. The only member of F/ACE who doesn't suffer this problem is Natsuki, who actually does have a decently fleshed out backstory that makes his behavior make a lot of sense, though by this show's standards that's still not saying much.

Maybe my indifference to the show is because I'm not into Japan's idol industry and the whole oshi/idol parasocial relationship it's trying so hard to promote and show as desirable and attainable. Actually, that's why Tamon's B-Side doesn't work for me: For all its attempts at getting comedic mileage out of it, it's still trying to portray the idol industry as being this great thing even when it pays lip service to how bad it actually is for the people involved. Japan's idol industry only sees its human performers as perfect, marketable products, with even the slightest flaw being enough to cause a huge scandal and tank their entire career even if the issue isn't something that should be made into a big deal or was just a one-time offense outside work. This isn't even exclusive to just singers either. Look what happened with Maya Imamori in No. 1 Sentai Gozyuger. Tamon's B-Side wants to milk the idol industry and all its quirks and idiosyncrasies for comedy, shilling it for all its worth, and all the gags about how Utage will be murdered if people find out she even associates with Tamon beyond being a fan and how Tamon is treated by both his boss and coworkers are just utterly tasteless and very troubling. Like, I don't expect Tamon's B-Side to be the next coming of Oshi no Ko or anything, I just don't want it to gloss over how bad the idol industry actually is and want the show to treat it and Tamon's issues with more gravitas and sensitivity. Oshi no Ko had plenty of its own issues in its attempts to portray how unforgiving and cutthroat the entertainment industry can be. Do I even need to talk about the whole Hana Kimura debacle? Tl;dr, I don't like that Tamon's B-Side makes light of how utterly awful the idol industry can be to both idols and fans and tries to make the parasocial relationships between fans and idols seem presentable and desirable.

Furthermore, the music isn't all that great either. All of F/ACE's songs are your typical boy band bubblegum J-pop you've heard in a million other things, offering nothing you haven't heard elsewhere. The animation is...fine, for the most part. I actually think the CGI performances looked surprisingly good...though do they really have to render the guys in CG when they're just on stage talking and not just singing? It really took me out of the immersion. I will also say that the voice acting is fairly good too. I definitely got a laugh out of Saori Hayami going against her usual typecast and going full ham as a loud, loony fan who's probably off her gourd in more ways than one. Gimme more Hayami being a screechy gremlin! Let her do more character archetypes besides the motherly housewife or the smart girl. But that's all the praise I have to offer for Tamon's B-Side. If there does wind up being a second season, I probably won't watch it. If you're into this, good for you. You got more enjoyment out of it than I have, so more power to you. I just found Tamon's B-Side to be an annoying, tasteless, irritating vial of snake oil that turns me off more than anything. I'm not sure if I want to read the manga considering how much I disliked the anime, but who knows? I'm just happy to be done with this show.

Man, that title is a mouthful. So you all know by now that I like the Love Live Nijigasaki series. It's the first Love Live series I've watched, the first one I actually like, and while it has its issues, I still enjoyed it overall, even if I haven't played the cellphone game that started this whole saga. I did admittedly find the Next Sky OVA to be rather weak though. It was later announced that the Nijigasaki series would get a three-part movie series serving as its grand finale, and you know me, I was gonna watch them. Though for some reason Crunchyroll didn't ... bother to start streaming the first movie, Love Live Nijigasaki School Idol Club Final Chapter Part 1, until today, even though by now it's a year old. For the sake of brevity I'm just gonna call this Nijigasaki Movie Part 1 and not by its mouthful of a long title. But...much like the Next Sky OVA, this first movie is rather dull, which doesn't bode well for the other two movies.

Taking place after the events of Next Sky, the Nijigasaki girls find that they've been formally invited to participate in an event called the School Idol Grand Prix, where individual school idols compete against each other via impromptu livestreams held at various venues. Emphasis on individual, as groups and units aren't allowed. The girls decide to participate and see who can come out on top, breaking out into groups as they explore different venues where the Grand Prix takes place. For this movie, it focuses on Ayumu, Shizuku, Lanzhu, Kasumi, Emma, and Kanata as they travel through Okinawa, meet new friends, visit the sights, and spontaneously break into song when they feel like it. Yes, really. There's also a subplot about two idol friends who disbanded their group, and Lanzhu having issues with her mom, but I'll get more into that in a bit.

I admit, I'm really conflicted on this movie, and one of the things I'm conflicted on is the animation. The CGI for the idol performances are still pretty high quality, as they were in the TV series, and the 2D animation by itself is really fluid. It's clear that the movie is making great use of its new animation budget to really bring the characters to life. However, I don't know if a new character designer was brought on or something, but the girls' designs look really...off, with their biggest issue being their eyes. I don't know what it is, but the girls always have this weird dead look in their eyes that just wasn't there in the TV series, and it makes them look really creepy and lifeless. I don't know what prompted the character design change, but they probably should have kept the designer from the TV series, because for as good as the animation is, I can't get over just how...uncanny the eyes look.

As far as audio goes, the music is fine, though I don't feel the songs here are as good as the ones in the TV series were, so they're a bit of a step down. Moving onto characterization...yeah, there's not much here. For one, the movie expects you to already know who these characters are, so you're not gonna be able to understand what's going on unless you either already saw the TV series or played the School Idol Festival mobile game...which has already shut down. The movie doesn't really do anything new with them, and what little it does try to do comes off as pretty hollow and half-baked, mainly because what few subplots are there could be resolved easily if the characters involved just talked to each other for five minutes. Lanzhu gets a subplot where she suspects her mom is trying to rig the competition in her favor and doesn't want her to do that, but thanks to Kasumi accidentally getting involved in her family's drama, it gets resolved extremely easily, though it could have easily been resolved earlier if Lanzhu had bothered to listen to her mom for five minutes. I didn't find the whole thing about the two idol friends disbanding their group that good either, because it also suffers from "characters dragging out a misunderstanding because they can't be bothered to talk to each other and explain things" syndrome, and we all know how much I hate that trope with a fiery passion.

So yeah, for the first movie in a three-part movie finale, Love Live Nijigasaki School Idol Club Final Chapter Part 1 is just...not good. Between its whole plot feeling rather slapdash, its odd stylistic choices, and the musical interludes feeling tacked on as opposed to actually feeling like part of the movie, it was just a chore to watch, which shouldn't be possible for a movie that's only one hour long. It honestly felt like it dragged on for way longer than it needed to. I really hope the next two movies are better, especially since the next one features my favorite girl Rina, but I'm not holding my breath.

There's no denying that without Osamu Tezuka, we wouldn't have the modern anime and manga industry as we know it. He popularized many genres, tropes, and styles that are now considered commonplace today. However, not everything the God of Manga made was good, and unfortunately, Prime Rose: A Time Slip of 10,000 Years is among his lesser works. Originally a 4-volume manga, his company Tezuka Pro decided to make it into a feature-length TV special as part of an NTV program. I haven't read the manga, and I'm not sure it even has an English translation, official or fan made. Do correct me if I'm ... wrong though. But after watching the movie version...I have no desire to read the manga anyway, because the anime Prime Rose is just...not good. At all.

One day, a gigantic satellite that eerily resembles the head of C-3PO from Star Wars splits into two and destroys two cities: Kujukuri City in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, and Dallas, Texas in the United States. Centuries later, Gai Tanbara, a member of the Time Patrol, is informed that the two cities and their citizens weren't actually destroyed, but actually sent forward in time by 10,000 years. He and his younger brother Bunretsu are sent forward in time to figure out what's going on. But circumstances make it so that Gai is enslaved in a labor camp where slaves spend their days building strange statues, and a young woman he tries to help, Emiya Tachi, wants to get revenge on the people who killed her lover. Gai, Bunretsu, and Emiya must work together if they're to both free the slaves and put a stop to the machinations of the satellite responsible for everything, the dreaded Deathmask.

If that plot summary sounds convoluted as all hell, that's because it is. There's no way a TV special that's an hour and a half long is gonna be able to cover that much material without compromising it in some way, and sure enough, that's exactly what happens. Prime Rose just moves from one plot point to another without really taking the time to flesh them out and give them the breathing room they need to utilize their potential. Not to mention that the story itself makes zero sense if you try to apply any logic to it. So two cities get sent forward in time, suddenly split into two whole nations that are at war with each other, and somehow they speak the same language? That's just the first of many questions that the story raises and gives absolutely no answers to. We never see just how this whole situation came about other than being told that they were sent forward in time, not to mention a lot of the fantasy creatures that appear just seem like they're there as an excuse for the characters to get from point A to point B because the plot demands it. Seriously, where do Emiya and Gai even get their horses from? And how did they manage to wrangle a whole group of gigantic cockroaches? Where did they even get those cockroaches? Furthermore, Emiya's ability to turn to stone seems to have no concrete (Ha, get it?) rules. Most of the time she can change back whenever she wants, but in the finale, she stays frozen in stone for over a month with literally no explanation other than we have to milk a potential tragedy to wring the tears out of the audience.

This also results in piss-poor writing for the characters overall. Every single one of them has as much depth as a puddle, Emiya suddenly goes from swooning girl to competent warrior within two or three scenes, making any development she gets feel completely rushed and unearned, and one villain just...decides he doesn't want to be a villain anymore because Gai made him sign a document demanding that he stop being a dictator or some shit. Also, FUCK BUNRETSU. This kid is annoying as all hell and easily the worst thing about the entire movie. Bunretsu causes Gai and Emiya no small amount of grief, gets way too much screen time, has several pointless scenes where he's perving on Emiya (Whether it be seeing her naked or getting too close to her butt when they're trying to escape getting hanged), and is generally a dumb, useless brat. You could cut him out of the movie entirely and it'd be so much better off for it. By the way, what the heck is Spock from Star Trek doing in this movie? No, I'm not kidding, Gai's boss, who only appears in the beginning of the movie, literally looks so much like Spock that I'm surprised Tezuka didn't get sued for copyright violations. Not to mention Emiya, after watching her first boyfriend die in a laughably silly manner, gets over him at the end of the movie and falls in love with Gai. See what I mean when I say the writing for the characters is shit?

Honestly, the animation and soundtrack aren't much to write home about either. The character designs are your typical Tezuka fare, with important characters looking a good mixture of human and cartoony whereas all the minor characters are supremely cartoonish and silly-looking. I hate Emiya's warrior outfit though. It's literally just a pair of panties and an X-shaped bra with shoulder pads glued onto it, and all it does is make her look super sexualized when she could be wearing anything else. Again, like I mentioned, there's a scene where Bunretsu almost runs face first into her butt when they're trying to escape getting hanged, and there's literally no purpose to it other than titillation. I guess not even Tezuka is immune to pointless horny sexual humor. Now, something interesting I learned is that Prime Rose actually got an English dub, which is shocking because some new company commissioned it, and I'm surprised Tezuka Pro even bothered to preserve the M&E track for it, which doesn't often happen for older properties like this. I gotta say, having actually watched this English dub, which was the very first one that SkySet Entertainment made, it's surprisingly a solid effort. Not perfect, as this is their first dub, and there were several points where dialogue didn't match the lip flaps very well, but it's a way better first attempt at a dub than I expected. Oh, and the dub outtakes are absolutely hilarious.

Not that it does anything to save this trainwreck of a TV special. So yeah, Osamu Tezuka has made a lot of great series during his lifetime, but Prime Rose: A Time Slip of 10,000 Years is not one of them. It has so many conflicting ideas it wants to explore, but can't make sense of any of them, and as a result, it feels really bloated, directionless, and unsatisfying, trying to find some purpose and coming out empty handed. Seriously, don't waste your time on Prime Rose. It's terrible.

Man...how in the world do you even BEGIN to describe the whack-a-do insanity that is Sasuke? No, I'm not talking about the infamous Naruto character Sasuke Uchiha, I'm talking about a 1968 anime that these days people only know about because AnimEigo decided to randomly release it on blu-ray this past October. Before this, the only thing people knew about it was a scene involving an exploding dog that made the rounds. I was curious about it and decided to buy the blu-ray, since 1. I want to support AnimEigo, and 2. I love me some historical anime. Apparently Sasuke is one of the earliest ... known anime to be about ninjas, and a lot of tropes and narrative thumbprints it established would influence other ninja series like Naruto down the line. Now that I've seen the whole thing...eh, I wouldn't say Sasuke is very good, but it does make for a very entertaining watch even without its historical significance.

Based on the 1961 manga by Sanpei Shirato, Sasuke takes place in the Edo Period, where ruthless feudal lord Ieyasu Tokugawa rules Japan with an iron fist and sends all manner of assassins to kill those who oppose him down to the very last. Among these opponents, there is also the Sarutobi clan and its best warrior, Daisuke Ozaru. When Ozaru's wife is killed, his son, the titular Sasuke, finds himself traumatized and with a target on his back. At first, Sasuke assumes he is alone in the world now, but a mysterious vagabond helps him out of many a jam...who turns out to be none other than Ozaru himself. Within this war torn land, father and son embark on a dangerous journey, with Ozaru training Sasuke in the ways of the Sarutobi ninja in the hopes that they can strike back against Tokugawa's tyrannical rule, fighting all manner of different enemies along the way. Yeah, if you're thinking Ozaru is going to spend the entire series hiding his identity from Sasuke, don't, because he reveals himself in episode 3. Good thing the show dropped that plot point early on, as it'd be kind of pointless to drag that out for 29 episodes straight without making Sasuke seem really stupid.

You also shouldn't expect Sasuke to be a happy fun time as a show either, because it is dark. Yes, Sasuke looks like a precious little button of a boy (And was voiced by an actual child actor!), but the show itself is extremely violent, dark, and has absolutely no qualms about showing both people and animals dying in brutal ways, with or without any actual blood. One episode has a dog being blown up because a girl sewed a bomb into its leg, another episode has wild dogs being eaten by crows with their corpses shown in full view, horses get blown up by shuriken bombs, another episode has a whole group of children accidentally killing themselves because they tried to imitate a ninja technique and their dad couldn't be bothered to teach them how to execute said technique safely, so on and so forth. If you're someone who can't stomach this level of violence in anything, you'd best skip this show. Considering this was made in 1968, when anime was still fairly in its infancy, there was still a lot of experimentation going on to see what shows could get away with showing on TV. One could argue that Sasuke was the most violent anime to ever air in Japan in that time. Do correct me if I'm wrong, though. That said, for all of Sasuke's attempts to be a serious action show, a lot of the time it borders on being downright silly, both because of it being a product of the 60s and therefore held back by the technological limitations of the time, and because of a lot of narrative decisions it makes.

Speaking of the animation, yeah there's no beating around the bush, this is a show from 1968, so of course it's going to look fairly choppy and limited. I'll give the animators credit for doing their absolute best when it came to actually animating the fight choreography within their technical limitations, even if a lot of it involved showing characters moving super fast with blur lines. But there are times when certain frames and animation cycles will be re-used over and over again, cels will just slide into the frame to simulate a character moving or walking, other times the camera will just linger on a character's face for a long time, and so on. One thing I especially noticed is that sometimes a character will talk even if their mouth isn't moving, or vice versa, their lips are moving but no sound comes out. I will give Sasuke this, while the watercolor background art isn't particularly bright, I like how it uses a lot of grays and thick, smudgy charcoal lines for things like barren trees to really convey just how oppressive the world feels to a child Sasuke's age.

Moving onto the audio, I don't have much to say on the soundtrack, other than that it can be very loud and obnoxious when utilizing certain instruments. Sasuke as a series looooves its shamisens, and you'll be hearing those a lot throughout the entire series. I will say the opening is pretty catchy, and I often found myself singing it whenever I was in the mood. I've only seen the Japanese version of the series, and AnimEigo's blu-ray also has a...random English dub that was just never put out into the public eye until now, which I haven't seen yet. Based on what I've heard of the original language, the acting in Sasuke is admittedly rather mixed, often bouncing between stiff and stilted to over-the-top and theatrical. I'm admittedly surprised the producers decided to have Sasuke be voiced by an actual child actor, which is fine, but even his VA had moments where he was rather green, particularly with the constant repetition of one sound bite of him laughing. A lot of the overdramatic acting resulted in a good chunk of the story not coming off as serious as the series seemed to want it to be.

Granted, the story and characters themselves aren't really much to write home about, even if for the time it might have been considered the best thing out there, and from what I hear, the anime only covered the earliest parts of the manga. Sasuke is mainly just about Sasuke and his dad fighting a bunch of cliche bad guys every few episodes, Sasuke learning responsibility and ninja skills, and helping people with their problems. The characters don't really develop all that much except for Sasuke, and even what he gets is fairly inconsistent. Sometimes he'll be a little badass and other times he'll be whining about his mother and screaming her name constantly for the 100th time. Ozaru I'm the most mixed on because sometimes he seems like a decent dad, other times he'll be a real dick towards Sasuke even when the situation doesn't warrant it. The villains are mainly just cliche cartoon villains who are just there to go after Sasuke or cause problems, and there's a TON of villains Sasuke and Ozaru have to deal with. I can only imagine Sasuke and its manga were one of the first to really try for a story that had more stakes, so I guess a lot of this is due to being a product of its time and not really getting a fine grasp on things like character development yet.

Honestly, you'll probably only remember Sasuke's story because a lot of it is pretty...batshit. It does try to explain how most of the ninja techniques work, even if a lot of it still relies on your suspension of disbelief, but other times it goes in pretty crazy directions just to do what it wants to do. For as dark as the show tries to be, it can be downright silly most of the time too, and I don't think it was intentional. Whether it be because of the limited animation, or just how unhinged and insane some of the narrative decisions in some episodes are, there's so much in this show that'll make your jaw fall to the floor. Even some of the many animal and child deaths start to become rather unintentionally funny after the 20th time in a row. I almost wonder if people would be better off treating it as a comedy because of all the crazy shit that happens in the show. I did find myself enjoying Sasuke because I kept wondering just what kind of shenanigans the show might pull out every episode. Or all this could be my lack of familiarity with Sanpei Shirato's work in general. I don't know if Sasuke's manga ever got an English translation of any kind, fanmade or no. Also, for anyone wondering, episodes two and three have uncensored child nudity involving Sasuke, complete with uncensored genitalia being shown for long periods of time. Those are the only two episodes that have it, but I wouldn't blame you at all if you dropped the show for that reason.

In conclusion, Sasuke tries to be a serious historical ninja show, but it being a product of the 60s and how crazy it gets prevents it from achieving true greatness. It does make for fun riffing material, or something to watch with friends while you're smoking marijuana. Sasuke is a wild ride, though historical significance doesn't always translate to quality. I certainly don't regret buying the new blu-ray, but I doubt I'd go back to it.

At this point, you all know my feelings on Gundam Wing by now. It's a series that thinks it's a serious war drama when it's actually a ridiculous, campy, convoluted mess that tries way too hard to be the epic of the year at the expense of more important things like coherent storytelling and character development, gleefully pulling stuff out of its ass just to be bigger and more bombastic than it really has any right to be. And yet even with all of these huge problems, it still did pretty good in Japan and was the series that put Gundam on the map in ... North America, being a mainstay on the Toonami block for quite a while. So in light of its popularity, Sunrise decided to make a 3-episode OVA called Mobile Suit Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz in 1997, which would then be recut into a theatrical movie with a new Two-Mix song and some new footage slotted in a year later. Fitting how I wrote this review not only on GW's 30th anniversary, but right as Endless Waltz is being screened in US theaters for the very first time as part of this celebration. Now that I've seen it, I've gotta say...seriously, why couldn't the series have been more like this?! Endless Waltz actually goes out of its way to address a lot of my issues with the show, even if it winds up having its own problems!

A year after the events of the TV series, it seems like all is going well. The Eve Wars have ended, and both Treize Khushrenada and OZ have passed from existence. The Earth Sphere Unified Nation (ESUN), and a special peacekeeping police force known as the Preventers, rose from the ashes of OZ. Since they figure they will no longer have a role in the post-war era, four of the five Gundam pilots put their Gundams on a giant disposal satellite headed for the sun, with Wufei being the lone holdout. Peace reigns supreme on Earth and in space...for about a year: on the anniversary of the Eve Wars' end, a rebellion occurs on newly-completed colony L3 X-18999. The rebellion, led by seven or eight-year-old Mariemaia Khushrenada, who reveals herself to be Treize's daughter, kidnaps Relena Darlian (now the Vice Foreign Minister of the ESUN) during a diplomatic visit to the colony. As the Gundam pilots investigate further, they discover that Mariemaia's grandfather—Dekim Barton—really controls the rebellion. Dekim plans to use X-18999 to go through with the "original" Operation Meteor— crashing the colony into Earth and letting the Gundam pilots take control in the chaos—if the ESUN doesn't comply with his demands. The Gundam pilots must prevent Dekim from seizing power over the ESUN, but two things complicate matters: most of the pilots don't have their Gundams, and the only one that does—Wufei—has defected to Dekim's side.

I know a lot of people, both Wing fans and non-fans alike, have their opinions on Endless Waltz. Some say it's a great conclusion to the TV series, others say it's a hot mess that's worse than the series, and so on. I'm of the opinion that while it does still have its own set of issues, I actually think Endless Waltz makes an effort to improve upon the TV series and remedy a lot of its issues. It may not have succeeded a lot of the time, but it tried. For one, the movie actually bothers to explore the backgrounds of the Gundam pilots and actually flesh them out for once! Sure, it's not to the level of Episode Zero, but it's a lot more than the TV series bothered to do! We actually get to see and learn about the events that made Heero into a suicidal nihilist, the reason Trowa got roped into piloting Heavyarms and even how he got his name, and, most of all, it actually bothers to give Wufei something resembling a character arc! Is it weird that I feel him having an antagonistic role wound up actually helping him in terms of rounding out his character? For one, his motivations for being an antagonist here actually make sense and are coherent this time around compared to his wishy-washy, all-over-the-place characterization in the TV series, though a more concrete explanation for why he does what he does here is still relegated to another side story manga called Battlefield of Pacifists. Seriously, what is it with Wing and delegating all its most important stuff to side stories that aren't in the TV series or movie?!

The biggest improvement from the TV series to the movie is obviously the animation. Sunrise really stepped up their game here. Wing's animation in the TV series was serviceable, but there were times when the characters would be really off model, and often times the colors would be flat. None of that is present here. The designs on both the characters and mechs are more detailed and sleek, gone are the wonky facial expressions and flat colors, and the action sequences are a feast for the eyes. Seriously, the way explosions and missile barrages are animated here, knowing that they're all lovingly hand painted, just amazes me and we'll never get to see anything like that again. Though even Endless Waltz had to have some sequences using very wonky CGI, but it's only used for showing asteroids. Not that that makes it any less jarring. The soundtrack also continues to be an absolute banger, Two-Mix's two new songs included. Though I kind of wish they could have found a way to integrate White Reflection into the movie rather than relegating it to just the OVA, considered the inferior version of Endless Waltz. Maybe they could have used White Reflection as an insert song and had Last Impression just be the ending theme. Them giving the song the shaft like that is doing it a massive disservice since it's still a pretty damn good song on its own!

One of my biggest issues with Gundam Wing in general was how convoluted it got a lot of the time. In an attempt to be this big, sprawling epic war drama, it had way too many things happening all at once, with characters constantly changing sides and going places on a dime, often for little to no reason, and it became far too complex for its own good, sometimes even leaving things completely unresolved and with no real payoff whatsoever. It could have benefited from limiting itself and cutting out a lot of unnecessary fat, and I'm guessing a lot of production issues behind the scenes resulted in how it came out. I know that was the reason episodes intended to explore the pilots' backstories got cut in favor of recap episodes and relegated to the Episode Zero manga. Endless Waltz, being a movie, cuts away all of the fat and focuses on one particular plotline that's guaranteed to have the biggest payoff, and is all the better for it. This also allows for all the relevant characters to have a role to play in the movie, no matter how small, their actions being the culmination of all of what little development they got in the TV series, even if the plot itself is still your standard cliche "Villain is gonna destroy the Earth because he's evil and he must be stopped!" plot.

That said, Endless Waltz does have some pretty serious flaws that prevent it from achieving true greatness, with two of them being especially egregious. For one thing, all the Gundams got complete redesigns. This in itself isn't a bad thing, though considering how the series ended, they'd have to fish for some sort of explanation for why they'd redesign the Gundams and then have them be sent into the sun to be destroyed. Instead of doing that, Sunrise decided it'd be a great idea to just act like these redesigns have always been around, both in the opening sequence and in flashbacks that take place before the TV series starts! Like...what?! I know Gundam is primarily made to sell merchandise and Gunpla kits and all, and if you wanna market new toys, fine, but don't do it in a way that completely ignores and disregards continuity!! Seriously, I know for a fact that no kid who watched the TV series would be stupid enough to not notice that the very bright red Heavyarms is suddenly navy blue and not be baffled by the movie treating it like it was never bright red! I think part of this is due to the fact that Endless Waltz was made with different staff than that of the TV series, similar to how that Digimon Adventure 02 movie Hurricane Touchdown was also made by different staff than the TV series and had its share of continuity issues as a result of the staff not doing their research.

Speaking of flagrantly ignoring continuity, this is gonna go into spoilers here, but I can't possibly tip-toe around this so I'm just gonna go all in: WHY THE HELL IS ZECHS STILL ALIVE?! Didn't he get killed in a nuclear reactor explosion in the final episode?! You can't just show a guy somehow surviving something like that with no explanation for how he did it and why!! Though considering Wing as a whole loves pulling random Deus Ex Machinas out of its ass and handwaving any possible explanation in order to do just about anything, this isn't really out of the norm, but it's still aggravating as all hell! Also, apparently Treize's age is said to be 24 years old, but Mariemaia, who is apparently between 7-8 years old, is somehow his daughter, assuming she isn't some kid that Dekim plucked off the street for his own machinations like the movie seems to subtly imply. If you do the math, wouldn't that have made Treize 16 years old when he impregnated Mariemaia's mother, whoever she is? If that's true, then...ew. Hey Wing, MTV called, they want their Teen Dad pitch pilot back. Also, due to Endless Waltz's nature as a sequel to the TV series, there's no way you're gonna be able to watch this and understand what's going on if you haven't watched the series beforehand. I forced myself to watch all 49 episodes of that off-the-rails convoluted mess, because I'm a masochist apparently, but for anyone who can't afford to do that, there now exists a cute little recap video of the TV series narrated by Duo's seiyuu you can watch on YouTube. I'd post a link, but unfortunately MAL doesn't like YouTube links for some reason. Hey, I'm always down for more of Duo being a sassy little bitch even when he's explaining the plot of Gundam Wing to you like you're a toddler.

So yeah, Endless Waltz isn't a perfect movie, and it's in no way a standalone movie, but its attempts to at least address some of the TV series' flaws and be actually comprehensible makes it a valiant effort all around. The fact that it was also made to celebrate the Gundam series' 20th anniversary also shouldn't be ignored, considering its influence on later Gundam series down the line and its impact overseas. Now I'm curious as to Yoshiyuki Tomino's thoughts on Wing as a whole. But yeah, Endless Waltz might appeal to you more if you're already a dyed-in-the-wool Gundam Wing fan, and it's an interesting little novelty that I might come back to every once in a while and a good send-off for the After Colony era as a whole.