Omni's Daily Dose of Anime

Wow, that's a great review Omni! Well done! Since it is an actual movie, you should definitely tag it to be a review.

And yeah I do agree that the fight with the werewolf was a little disappointing. He's built up to be a bad-ass and then D kills him in like 3 seconds...

Thank you very much, I will do that, but I want to finish the Kara no Kyoukai movies before I tag the rest of my reviews. I'm kinda OCD like that.

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Movie Reviews | Anime Reviews
Top 100 Action Movie Countdown (2015): List | Thread
"Well, at least your intentions behind the UTTERLY DEVASTATING FAULTS IN YOUR LOGIC are good." - Captain Steel

*THREAD UPDATE:

I will be taking a temporary hiatus from Episode updates to address pressing technical issues and side projects.

Completed Series and Movie Reviews will be posted periodically until further notice.

Dirty pair looks like fun.

Go Project Eden if anything. I've still got the Dirty Pair 2 OVA series and Dirty Pair: Flight 005 Conspiracy to check out, but Project Eden definitely seems to be the best of them so far.

Dirty Pair: Flight 005 Conspiracy (Dub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie


WHOA. WAIT. Hmm? What-happened. Oh. The movie? It's not over. ( =_=)>

*Yaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnnn*


Saying Dirty Pair: Affair on Nolandia was boring was underselling it, at least it had a trippy jet ski sequence, a terminator, and nudity.

Those are pretty bottom-of-the-barrel compliments though, especially considering I criticized each of them in my review for that movie.

Flight 005 Conspiracy is a movie I will not even bother to describe the plot to you for, because it's perfectly comfortable doing that itself. The vast majority of the movie is dominated by talking, talking, and more talking, and once again I feel pressed to emphasize that I am not adverse to anime where the majority of what happens is merely talking,


but Flight 005 launches STRAIGHT into exposition about planets, their relationships, their major industrial exports, their governments, their corporations, and with little to keep us interested in what's they're actually saying beyond a couple diagrams.

We're never given any serious investment into what's going on, so it just idles in exposition hell for nearly the whole movie. Seriously, the Dirty Pair get told their mission, explained the circumstances of the mystery they have to solve, and they banter back and forth about how it may or may not be solved throughout the whole movie with their only charm being infinitesimally small compared to something as relatively bland as a Sherlock and Watson.

I don't get it. Flight 005 Conspiracy has the classic character designs, the 80s vibe, and the city setting that was missing in Affair on Nolandia, but it skips on almost everything that Dirty Pair was even mildly good at, which is to say NOT storytelling.

No crazy aliens, no crazy robots, no crazy gunfights, no crazy explosions, no crazy chases, not even all that much T and A, it's just blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah


Instead of those qualities, Flight 005 decides to sprinkle in a few new ones such as... blood and gore.

Some guy's head violently explodes after drinking poison.

Great.

Also Yuri dies. Except she doesn't. Because of course she doesn't.

Actually, Yuri is considered dead JUST BEFORE the scene in which the guy's head explodes after which she immediately appears having been watching him and Kei the whole time.

Kei's reaction to seeing her longtime partner and best friend still alive is instantly forgotten in favor of, "OH NO, THAT NEW GUY WE BARELY KNOW!!!"


You know what? Here, I'm going to post up something significantly shorter, significantly less creative, and yet significantly more interesting to watch than this movie:



This movie might be total crap. The story, I mean. I don't really know, I was so not engaged, I literally cannot tell you after watching it if there were any plotholes or if the plot even made sense at all in the first place.

And Dirty Pair really doesn't need to make sense, it just needs to be THIS AND NOTHING BUT THIS:

Kara no Kyoukai/Garden of Sinners: Oblivion Recording (Sub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie

It's been very up and down for the Kara no Kyoukai series, hasn't it? Let's take a look at what we've seen so far and see if we can predict the outcome of the next movie, shall we?


We started with a bad movie, then an okay movie, then we had a good movie.

We had another bad movie, the next one was okay again, so the next movie should be Pretty Good, right?

Well, let's see, 4 minutes and 15 seconds in we get an inner monologue from a new female character who identifies herself as Azaka, Kokutou's sister, Touko's apprentice, and Shiki's rival in love-wait, what?

I'm not liking where this is going...

O-okay... *closes eyes, clenches teeth, turns away*

Kara no Kyoukai/Garden of Sinners: Murder Speculation (Second Half) Status: COMPLETE
Movie


Murder Speculation's second part comes to us not only several movies late release-wise, but it's also divided from it's first part chronologically.


The whole idea is to tie together the loose plot threads from Murder Speculation (First Half), which, to be honest, is really only one plot thread:

Did Shiki really commit those murders like she said she did, or is Kokutou right and she never killed anyone?

Well if you're even remotely sane, you wouldn't have watched this far into the Kara no Kyoukai series like I have.

BUT if you possess the bare minimum degree of intelligence it would require to understand how and why exactly Oblivion Recording managed to **** up in the first 5 minutes, then your answer is probably... yeah. Shiki killed those people. Kokutou's an over-optimistic idiot.

Unfortunately, you would be wrong as this movie serves two purposes: firstly to prove that Shiki wasn't the killer, and secondly to bore you to death.


Once again we have a two-hour long movie and even more than last time I'm inclined to say it is WAY TOO LONG.

Now look, I'm no stranger to long movies. I've seen the extended Lord of the Rings trilogy.


But whereas Lord of the Rings manages to engage and largely keep you engaged, Kara no Kyoukai is, thus far, a traditionally slow series of movies. When they double their run-time in order to neatly fit into a televised animation block, then they have to create enough content to fill the time.

Unfortunately, Murder Speculation 2 just comes across like a much shorter movie where nearly every individual shot lasts longer than it needs to.

No joke, there was a point in the movie where I actually thought it froze since it was a still-shot and Kara no Kyoukai routinely employs dead silence instead of a backing track.

I shouldn't be ripped out of the movie by it literally slowing down to the point where I'm not just looking at an establishing shot, but a wallpaper.


The first two thirds of this movie are totally uneventful. We re-examine several scenes from Part 1 in which we see additional dialog between Kokutou and Shiki which contribute nothing to the story and Souren, the Big Bad who dies in Paradox Spiral shows up to babble about "the origin" before he disappears, supposedly taking her memories of this entirely pointless scene with him. Wow, great, that really added...

...

We learn the murders from before Shiki's hospital adventure come back and each one of them is found with new street drugs.

As in previous movies the police approach Kokutou to talk about the investigation, however at this point I'm seriously questioning why.

What possible advantage is there to talk to Kokutou? He's not L from Death Note, he's a useless stock male protagonist, he's got nothing to offer.

Well, Kokutou agrees to help the police by investigating on his own, which raises several new questions about his employment and financial situation, before heading out onto the streets, buying the latest drugs that get their users killed, USING THEM, and then going, "Hmm, I see, so that's what they do."


Wow. That is some BRILLIANT investigative work, Kokutou. Hey, the victims were all found hacked up into pieces, so next time why don't you try that out and stab yourself in the face?</foreshadowing>


The true criminal who's been killing people both before and after Shiki's hospitalizations TURNS OUT TO BE... *SHOCK GASP!*


That one guy from Part 1. You know, that one guy you totally don't remember Kokutou talking to because he barely had any lines and his role in this movie wasn't foreshadowed in the slightest?

Yeah, that guy.

Apparently, that guy is in love with Shiki.


Shiki supposedly turned him down in school and he killed a stranger in retaliation. Souren caught up with him at some point and "unlocked his origin" which is honestly the most interesting thing in this whole movie.

Whole idea about "origins", with the Akashic Record, I'm GUESSING, being the origin or origins, is that in this world, reincarnation is real, and everyone is in some way influenced by the life they lead before, however in some unexplained metaphysical way, everyone can be traced back to their simplest previous existence, which is merely a concept.

The killer, Lio, became aware of what his origin was and, because of reasons, he's hopelessly become a slave to it. So, since his origin is "consumption", while he may have been able to act against this hidden impulse originally, Souren made him aware of it, and now he can't really help being a cannibal.

It's a really screwed up approach to the "fate" idea with hints of how "true names" worked in the Eragon universe: a cold summation of everything you represent.

I honestly find this interesting. Too bad it's such a small element of the movie.


The third act is where an otherwise Meh... movie becomes a Just... Bad movie for me.

We're told on multiple occasions that there's a distinct, important, and moral difference between "murder" and "slaughter".

If the movie meant this is a legal sense, I would agree, but I seriously doubt this was their intention.

This is quickly followed up by such profound quotes as,

Is that right, movie? It's instantly dehumanizing to kill another human, huh?

EVEN in self defense, huh?

And on top of that, someone who kills other people can't kill themselves? Really?

You know, I seem to recall that can still happen. I think it even happened in a Kara no Kyoukai movie. Yeah, I think it was called


You know, the very first movie in which you take a moral stance against suicide regardless of the circumstances? It seems now, you appear to be more accepting of suicide and instead are taking a moral stance against killing in general.

You know, as much as I disagree I may be able to accept that that's your view, but when you contradict yourself with lines like THIS:

You're starting to sound like MAYBE you don't actually know what the hell you're talking about.


So, apparently Shiki comes to the realization that despite killing her murderous side, she's still compelled to kill people (YOU'RE SEVERAL MOVIES TOO LATE TO THAT PARTY), but she decides that she'd rather stay with Kokutou and resist her urges.

Which is why she goes looking for the killer, tells him she doesn't have time for him, and then walks away.

Oh yeah, I can see that working out REALLY WELL.

Of course the killer knocks her out, handcuffs her to nothing, leaves her unattended, and she's instantly pacified.

Oh no, she's been MILDLY inconvenienced, but don't think about how she could probably leave, break the cuffs, or kill him regardless, we need a contrived reason for Superman to lay there as Lio molests her and demonstrates one of the stupidest new abilities he's learned...

the ability to drool a lot.

Yes, we have an extended sequence in which Lio just lays on top of her, licks her up and down, sucks on her breasts, and literally soaks her in spit.

Shiki decides to escape from her cuffs and the second she does all of the saliva evaporates for no reason whatsoever.

Kokutou tracked Shiki down because he's ******* "puppy-kun" and Lio finds him just in time to break his leg, stab him in the face (see what I did there?), and homo-erotically mouth feed him super marijuana which is supposedly 10 times as powerful as regular marijuana and enough to kill the user without intervention.


Kokutou's obviously still in the movies that take place after this though, so there's no tension to this whatsoever.

Lio returns from "killing" Kokutou to find Shiki has gnawed her thumb off at the base to escape the handcuffs, tells him she "doesn't have time" for him, and starts walking away.

Lio says he killed Kokutou, she gives up, he wastes a lot of time running around trying to scratch her to death with his nails 1000 Cuts-style, and she finally hacks him to pieces.

He dies.

Disappears in a glaring continuity error.

Reappears in another glaring continuity error.

And Kokutou miraculously survives super marijuana.

THE END.


Final Verdict: [Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]

Genshiken (Sub) Status: COMPLETE
Episodes: 1-12


After watching Genshiken more times than I can remember, it occurs to me that nothing would better encapsulate the Genshiken series as a whole than the above image which appears at the end of the opening credits at the beginning of every episode. Genshiken is a Slice-of-Life in the purest sense, it's not about the drama, it's not about the comedy, and it's not even about the characters, but all of them combined in a realistic, if at times slightly exaggerated, portrayal of a college club of geeks just trying to enjoy themselves.

Genshiken's appeal, I feel, is supremely limited to the interests of the viewer in much the same way that something like Lucky Star is. Both Genshiken and Lucky Star seek to portray a "greatest hits" sort of anthology of stories involving it's characters, but while Lucky Star, and it's oft-compared Seinfeld equivalent, is intended mainly to make you laugh at it's satire or caricatures, Genshiken is content to demonstrate the mildly amusing events that very well could have happened at a Japanese college in the early 2000s. Not only does this limit Genshiken's broader appeal, but it seeks, almost implicitly, to appeal to otaku specifically.

In short, while Lucky Star intentionally evokes classic scenarios, themes, and character archetypes in order to draw attention to them, Genshiken completely subverts them. It's a fake story about real people sharing their interests in real stories about fake people.

Genshiken's first episode opens with closet-geek Sasahara trying to decide which club to join and despite wavering between his interests in the formal Anime Club or Manga Club, he's eventually drawn to The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture, a club that appears to spread it's interests thin across multiple geeky subjects, from anime to video games, from cosplay to model-building. Although Sasahara introduces us to Genshiken, he's not the main character or protagonist outside of the first episode, he's merely the one character from whose perspective we see join the club.

Although it's never strictly stated, it doesn't take much effort on the viewers part to realize that this club mainly serves as a half-ass excuse not to specialize in any particular field of work or interest. Genshiken (as it will eventually be nicknamed in the final episode of the series) is really more of a place for the characters to hang out as much as it is the main focal point of the series. You don't watch this anime to laugh or experience serious drama, you watch it just to listen in on early-2000s Japanese otaku have a regular conversation.


At least that's my approach to it. I feel like I can mostly relate to the characters in Genshiken, they like anime, I like anime, they like video games, I like video games, they complain about directors, praise animation quality, talk about manga to anime adaptions... need I say more?

For all of these reasons I find Genshiken interesting, but I feel that these are also the biggest reasons why someone may not like Genshiken: if their interests don't overlap.

Kasukabe, the girl pictured above with the controller, feels like the creator's resident apologist for this by being the only non-otaku in the group by regularly dismissing the others or insulting them for their interests.

In some ways, I think Kasukabe represents a useful outside perspective of "commoners" looking in, whether it be by explaining what doujinshi is or demonstrating the seemingly bizarre sanctity of certain things, but in other ways I think she's just an irritating character, if not the most divisive part of the show.

Kasukabe meets Sasahara's nearest senior, Kohsaka, for the first time in many years and immediately wants to hook up with him.

At first this presents a variety of material for the show to work with:

The characters discuss the nature, variations, and applications of the "childhood friend" trope.

At least one of the otaku characters is shown to be in a mature and sexually active relationship.

And criticism is made of love-at-first-sight relationships where attraction is only skin-deep.


All of these things are great, but it seriously begins to bother me as the show goes on:

Kohsaka never demonstrates any reason for liking Kasukabe back.

Kasukabe regularly admits to wanting Kohsaka to change or drop his interests because "it's hard on her".

And finally at the peak of one of the later episodes, the lesson from it all appears to be that the true path to a healthy relationship with a bishounen dork is to give each other space and stay away when he wants to masturbate to hentai.


That's a terrible lesson to try and tell, especially when Kasukabe's a regular bitch who causes trouble for the club she doesn't even want to be in and her relationship with one of the members is demonstrably one-sided.


A far superior romantic relationship arrives in the form of Tanaka and Ohno, who get to know each other for a long time and their interests naturally complement each other. But that's in the second season, so I can't credit vanilla Genshiken for that.


Anyway, most Genshiken episodes are memorable for one reason or another, be it Comiket-related, modeling-related, or that one episode where Madarame has to employ his horribly stunted eroge-based social skills to tell Kasukabe she has a rogue nose hair.

If you don't mind listening to a bunch of guys who read manga, make Gundam figures, and play Guilty Gear casually talk about porn, then Genshiken might be up your alley.


Final Verdict: [Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]

Omni, you should definitely pick Tokyo Ghoul back up when you get the chance!

It's back on my list, but there's still quite a few things ahead of it. Since we discussed it though, when I do pick it back up, I'll go through it episode by episode.

Kara no Kyoukai Remix: Gate of Seventh Heaven (Sub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie

At last, the final Kara no Kyoukai movie.


Shut up. I said LAST. This is going to be the LAST.

Anyway, I was actually relieved to discover that Gate to Seventh Heaven isn't yet another story, but simply a complied montage of all the previous movies (save Murder Speculation Part 2 for some reason) in chronological order.

In some ways it's great because it single-handedly manages to sidestep two of my prevailing complaints about the entire series so far: the scarcity of backing music and action sequences.

Sure I've seen it all before, but here we have a very quickly edited, heavily condensed, portrait of the Kara no Kyoukai series which manages to be both a collection of the most visually impressive sequences from the movies as well as the musical themes explored throughout them.

If you were interested in Kara no Kyoukai for no other reason than to see some impressive animation, look no further than this, because it features the best of all of them as well some new sequences which look great as well.

In other ways, Gate of Seventh Heaven demonstrates perfectly my biggest problem with Kara no Kyoukai as a whole: the aimless pseudo-psychological ramblings and incoherent plot.

If you were hoping for Gate of Seventh Heaven to somehow connect all the pieces together and blend together a fulfilling story of all the movies, you'd be sorely mistaken. It's a montage in the most literal way: a lot of fast cuts of scenes from the movies set to music with meaningfully ambiguous trailer dialog talking over it.

For an hour.

Even this movie felt too long, but maybe I'm simply sick of it all by this point.

I watched these movies on the strong recommendation that they "represented everything there is to like about anime", but the movies came away even more pretentious than that quote might lead you to believe.

There's a lot of ideas and psychological concepts that are mentioned, not thought out, poorly thought out, over-analyzed, or under-analyzed in the spirit of making something deep and provoking, but Kara no Kyoukai loses itself in it's own world and characters to tell any consistent message.

Oblivion Recording is probably the worst for all of the reasons I point out in my review for that movie. It's a perfect example of losing the forest through the trees.

Overlooking View is the most pretentious with it's excessive riddlespeak and nonsense. It's too self-indulgent to concern itself with the viewer and telling a coherent story.

Paradox Spiral comes the closest to what Kara no Kyoukai seemed to be trying to accomplish by presenting the major characters with a unique scenario involving intriguing new themes and ideas while also exercising the fight sequences the animation team was probably begging for.

But Remaining Sense of Pain is still easily the best. It's simple to understand while not insulting our intelligence, it presents serious drama alongside interesting concepts, and it offers a mystery to solve without skimping on the action.

Honestly, one of the best reasons to watch Remaining Sense of Pain is easily the fact that you don't need to see any other Kara no Kyoukai movies to follow along with it. Later movies in the series are heavily dependent of prior events, but Remaining Sense of Pain is largely self-contained.

It's a shame that the movies couldn't all have been that way or else Gate of Seventh Heaven may well have been a decent anthology of short movies, rather than a 60-minute supercut that appears to serve little purpose beyond advertising for a Kara no Kyoukai boxset.



Final Verdict: [Friggen' Awesome][Pretty Good][Meh...][Just... Bad][Irredeemably Awful]


I really did like Shiki's character design. Too bad she didn't have any character besides.

CRIPES, this cost me a lot. *sweats*

Perfect Blue (Sub) Status: COMPLETE
Movie

Well, after seeing Paranoia Agent I HAD to see some of Satoshi Kon's other stuff and Perfect Blue is one I've been hearing about for a long time.

To summarize, when the credits rolled I could only give an audible, "For ****'s sake".


Perfect Blue centers around a pop idol who gives up her popularity in search of a career in dramatic acting. In the process, she realizes that someone is stalking her and pretending to her on that them thar new interwebs thingamajig.

Unlike Paranoia Agent where the subtext of a message is prevalent throughout, Perfect Blue unfolds as a mystery, but for the first third or so of the movie, it's seems like a pretty crappy mystery.

It takes around 10 minutes to get around to really establish anything important and from that point forward, our main character, Mima's, harasser is blatantly obvious.

He's the creepy looking guy that follows her everywhere and the camera constantly focuses on him. OF COURSE he's the one stalking her.

When the movie treads like this I'm just bored since all we're doing is waiting for the characters to realize what the audience already knows intuitively, however our expectations are thrown bodily out the window as soon as Mima starts hallucinating her old pop idol persona following her around and calling her a fake.

At first I'm inclined to rule in favor of what Paranoia Agent was trying to do by simply representing her inner feelings outwardly, so when she looks into a mirror and sees the old Mima we can be lead to believe that perhaps she's having regrets about her career choice, after all we're reminded several times throughout the movie that her pop group is not only doing well without her, but better, so it stands to reason that she'd probably be feeling left out, right?

No. She's ACTUALLY seeing this person, she reacts to her, she yells at her, she even chases her. For all intents and purposes, Mima is either seeing a real person who looks exactly like her and can defy the laws of physics, or she's hallucinating.


This is my biggest problem with the whole movie.

The rest of the movie plays out very straightforward with a Mima's co-workers mysteriously getting axed off one by one, but it eventually pulls timeskips, dream sequences, and starts heavily blurring reality suggesting everything from the stalker is killing them, to she's killing them, to it's all a dream, to it's all a tv show, it gets MAD.

The movie starts off so simple, but it's an utter mind**** by the end where you don't know if she's dreaming, if she's on set, if the detectives she working with are actually REAL, it crosses the boundaries of a boring obvious mystery in the first act, to an annoying gotcha! mystery in the second act, and finally it snowballs into a truly mindbending whodunnit by the third act.

There IS a definite answer which I appreciate, I'm a pretty sick of the WHATDOESITALLMEAN type of endings, but the one thing that I think screws it up is her hallucinations.

Like I said, it'd be one thing if they were just visual metaphors like in Paranoia Agent, but because the character OBVIOUSLY BELIEVES THEY ARE THERE, it stretches the plausibility of it to it's breaking point to suggest that on top of the appreciably more complex answer than the otherwise obvious setup in the first act, she's also conveniently delusional.

That... really messed up the experience for me more than anything else, especially when as soon as you introduce a hallucinatory character you're immediately dropkicking the existing possible answer and substituting Shutter Island.


There are moments I definitely liked about Perfect Blue, I liked some of the shots, I liked how while they were filming the rape scene the actor playing the rapist apologizes to her during a cut, and I like the barely recognizable foreshadowing where it seems natural in the moment, but it carries greater significance later on.

The idea of a chaste pop idol moving on to a crime drama where she plays both a victim and a killer and begins posing nude does seem like a stark enough contrast to justify a superfan to stalk her and call her a traitor. I really liked the blurring between the murder scenes in real life and in the television show and all of what it could potentially imply about the events in the movie.

But that illusion **** though. Ugh.


Well don't worry, you can wake up now because I'm not giving the infallible Satoshi Kon a negative review because

Genshiken is godly, I think I liked it more than any Slice of Life I have ever seen except Welcome to the NHK. And Tokyo Ghoul is awesome, and you should finish it I just started watching Broken Blade, I've heard some good things about it, but I don't think it's anything new.

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I'm watching the Genshiken OVA right now and both Welcome to the NHK and Broken Blade are right around the top of my list.

Tokyo Ghoul's a bit further down since it put me off the first time, but it's still on there.

I haven't seen Genshiken 2, but I mean to after I'm done with the OVA.

I haven't been able to track down the OVA or Genshiken 2.

I got Broken Blade to watch and someone recommended me Redline, which I think is about some epic race. But I think I want to re-watch RSF: Wings of Honneamise before I do any of that, it's such a beautiful film and I haven't seen it in a couple years.

The OVA's pretty good. The opening theme's not as good, but the animation quality kicks up and the show refocuses on the female cast. The talk about yaoi I think becomes quite humorous.

*EDIT: I'm also pretty sure it's necessary to watch because it transitions between Genshiken 1 and 2's arcs.

I don't know about those other two, but that trailer does look really well animated.

For a flick from 1987, damn straight. Basically it's about a guy in a space program, who upon finding out one of his crew members died in launch he becomes friends with this widow who's very very religious and he comes to know the widow and her daughter well. The whole story is basically him coming to terms with life and parallels his growth in the space program to his growth mentally and emotionally from the start of the film, very moving.

Hmmm... that's a tough sell for me. I'll probably watch it on animation quality and recommendation alone, but that puts it pretty low on my priorities list.