Hromino

Despite my original intention, I am not going to start my commentary by comparing this movie to Shinkai's previous works (and especially the last one), but I will start with what makes this movie unique compared to his previous works. Well: what the movie definitely excels at is its excellent depiction of the struggles of precocious teenagers and the conflict the naive main heroes have with reality, as they discover that a 15-year-old kid does not just become a real adult overnight. More than once while watching it, I was reminded of reading Kafka on the Shore, where Murakami also managed to handle similar issues brilliantly. Shinkai deserves another notch for one of the most accurate treatments of everyday life in Japan I have ever seen in anime - Western audiences may not appreciate it as much, but I could not help but notice how even the Japanese audience in the room giggled at it, the unexpected care and attention to minute detail with which Shinkai depicts life in a familiar Tokyo, in an effort to capture reality as faithfully as possible, and it is remarkable that so many well-known companies gave their permission for product placement in the movie without any need for inventing fake company names. In addition, anyone who perhaps disliked the narrative ambiguity, entanglement and fatefulness in Your Name should consider watching this movie, as Weathering with You offers a much clearer, perhaps one could say civil, story that is more accessible to a wider audience than its predecessor (and I do not mean that as a criticism). On the other hand, Shinkai's trademarks that were present in his previous films - Tokyo, trains, melancholy, piano music, sunsets, rain - are of course present here too, and again, by the bucketload, with the weather even playing a major role. So how does it compare to Your Name in the end? There are many crossover points (the main character from the preceding movie even makes a brief appearance!), so the comparison is simply unavoidable, however Weathering with You surprisingly does not come out of the comparison badly at all. It is a very well crafted piece of work, but it does not have the "wow effect" of its predecessor, and while I believe that this may have been intentional to some extent, I also found the movie lacking in a more careful introduction of the characters' family backgrounds, especially that of Hodaka, and of a stronger catharsis at the end - Shinkai unfortunately laid out his cards about 10 minutes ahead of time, leaving the ending itself with nothing to surprise and impact the audience. The bottom line is - a movie that definitely stands on its own two feet and is well worth seeing, it just has the misfortune of following a very successful predecessor and the expectations were set damn high for it. A strong 4 stars. (Seen at Shinjuku Piccadilly, Tokyo, 8/2019.)

I have not seen such a powerful and charged drama and family movie in a long time – and truth be told I saw many of them. The story of an intellectually ill-educated and demeaned girl (not in the sense of being bullied by her classmates or failing at school) who is psychologically abused by her grandfather. While she craves approval, he wants to humiliate her as deeply as he can. You do not experience these feelings while watching an ordinary movie, but Whale Rider is something else. Director Niki Caro, who was practically an amateur at the time, delivers an incredible performance, and together with Keisha Castle-Hughes, has created a monumental duo that works as wonderfully as the Depp-Burton pairing, though of course in a different genre and direction. The soundtrack is fascinating and reveals the mysteries and customs of New Zealand. The ending may turn out well in one way, however, after watching it a second time you realize it turned out even better – as true friendship, love and appreciation is stronger than anything else, and Whale Rider makes that clear.

If the creators had established a clear premise and provided a more structured narrative for When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace, it could have potentially stood out in the Harem genre, warranting a three-star rating. The first five episodes offer a decently comedic and relaxed show, showcasing the use of supernatural abilities. However, by the sixth episode, these supernatural elements disappear, and the season devolves into a typical harem scenario, with each main heroine vying for the protagonist's affections. The supernatural aspects are only reintroduced in the final episode, where they are awkwardly incorporated into the romantic plotline, resulting in a lackluster ending that leaves the audience questioning what really transpired throughout the series—only to realize that it was not much. Some have drawn comparisons to Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions, and I can agree with this comparison to some extent. However, the latter successfully blends fantasy and romance while offering superior artwork and animation, which is not surprising considering it was produced by KyoAni. When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace, on the other hand, does have slightly more likable characters, a catchy opening theme song, a stronger comedic element, and a more imaginative first half. Unfortunately, as a whole, the series fails to come together, leaving me devoid of any sense of enjoyment. The creators could have certainly done more and done it better.

I could not help it, but this movie did not impress me at all. While I like Dunst and Bettany, I found this to be an incredibly vacuous movie, dominated mainly by typical cinematic conventions, stale dialogue, predictability, and boredom. Ninety-eight minutes felt incredibly long to sit through, and if it were not for the above two actors, I probably would have fallen asleep from boredom. I am awarding this a weak two stars.

I don't believe World Trigger is as much of a disaster as some people claim. It's just incredibly forgettable, and there's hardly anything about it that's surprising. The simple storyline about alien monsters invading our world through an interdimensional gateway in a Japanese city might only excite undemanding and unsophisticated viewers. Those with a discerning eye may question: What sets it apart from other movies and TV series with similar plots? How will the production team bring something new to the table? Unfortunately, this is where the anime falls short. The production team seems to have struggled to come up with anything remotely interesting. They attempted to add depth by explaining the inner workings of Border, the organization fighting against the monsters, and the nature of the characters' supernatural abilities. Perhaps this decision was intended to give the impression of profundity and make the viewers feel like they were witnessing a highly sophisticated work that required significant effort and dedication, similar to what was seen in The Irregular at Magic High School. However, it still feels lacking and fails to make logical sense. The actions of Border members, who often behave like little children, don't align with the importance of the city's safety. Would the inhabitants of any city in any country truly be okay with menacing giant alien creatures randomly attacking them, endangering their safety and lives? I don’t think so. One would hope that the audio-visual experience would at least redeem the show, but once again, it disappoints. The soundtrack is passable, the artwork is unremarkable, the character designs are average, and the animation quality starts off quite poor (for instance, the first episode mainly consists of static shots), only reaching mediocrity later on. Since this show was produced by Toei Animation, a studio known for stretching stories with recaps and flashbacks, viewers might wonder how it would have turned out if a studio like Bones or Madhouse had taken on the project. Perhaps those studios could have at least delivered a more captivating audiovisual experience. Additionally, if the creators had taken bolder steps and approached the adaptation of the original material in the right way, World Trigger could have been more interesting in terms of the story. The only positive aspects I can mention are the absence of ecchi elements and the character of Kuga, the white-haired character who is well-voiced, has a good sense of humor, and exhibits some depth. However, the rest of the show is a repetitive and unremarkable mush that I've seen countless times before. The remaining thirty-five episodes probably won't surprise or impress me. Therefore, after fifteen episodes, I've decided to call it quits and give it a generous one-star rating, perhaps more than it deserves.

This is a skillfully mixed cocktail of those guaranteed ingredients for a typical Japanese high school “youth drama” – nothing more, nothing less. You could try searching for some originality on-screen with a magnifying glass, or you could even try searching under your seat, but too bad, as someone familiar with this type of movie could have easily gotten an idea of how the rest would turn within the first ten minutes, and gradually you would just confirm that there really would not be any real surprises here. Within its sub-genre, it is a well-crafted generic affair, into which the necessary ingredients of the genre are gradually thrown in (choosing school clubs, declarations of love, rejection, finding the solutions to the problems with themselves and problems of the surrounding characters...) and which will not make a deeper impression on you, but which, thanks to the excellent performances of the main duo, is at least nice to watch. (In addition, I shall give the producers a small insignificant plus for the cover of my favorite karaoke song at the end.)

You do know Gunma Prefecture, don't you? Let me reassure you, many Japanese people know little more about it than you do. When you say Gunma, all that comes to mind for most is the spa town of Kusatsu, and the fact that it is one of the few landlocked prefectures. According to surveys, it is the least attractive prefecture for tourists. So, this anime tries to tell us more about it. I consider the focus of the season itself, or rather its broad scope, to be a big positive: it does not try to portray Gunma as a poor little misunderstood area with so much to offer, or to self-mockingly ridicule itself as a total dump. Similarly, it is not only one-sidedly oriented towards audiences outside Gunma, but also towards the people of Gunma themselves, who it is also trying to educate, and share interesting facts about their homeland that they may not know. Stereotypes are treated with exaggeration and humor and are not presented as pure 100% absolute facts. The humor works, the presentation of everyday life is varied and interesting, the animation and soundtrack are purely average, and the characters are about as flat as an ironing board. However, given that by the nature of the season the characters having no depth does not play a major role here, and there is an ending (however absurd), which is very unusual for a twelve four-minute episodes, I am throwing the aforementioned shortcomings to the wind and awarding 4 stars.

Your Lie in April is an extraordinary cocktail about growing up, finding life-goals, friendship, music and goodbyes. However, it is a cocktail where, along with some great ingredients, some awful ingredients have been mixed in as well, and unfortunately in almost equal proportions. What strikes one first and foremost, is the imaginative portrayal of the main hero’s inner feelings, which are linked to his very successful, gradual and believable development. Aside from the main protagonist, one can also appreciate the successful chemistry between the characters and the excellent theme song in the intro, which I probably never skipped, as well as the hilarious ending. The road to the ending, however, is paved with an excess of completely silly, would-be comedy passages with lots of screaming and caricatured faces, which are so inappropriate they ruin an otherwise well-developed scene in an instant, then there is an unnecessary anticlimactic part with the piano prodigy, and above all unbalanced screen-time for the individual characters. It is a great shame that all the attention is focused on the main character, because if Tsubaki or Watari were given more screen-time, they might have not just seemed like one-dimensional appendages to the main couple, but fully-fledged characters in their own right. So, all in all, I give it 3 stars, with a complaint that basically only a few cosmetic changes would have been enough to improve the experience.

I had almost given up on this artist, because I was convinced he was experiencing a gradual decline in his creative powers and heading inevitably to the bottom of the artistic abyss. If one could explain Makoto's creative failures of the last few years to me, lost in dullness and rumoring, by the fact that he was just saving and gathering his strength for this gem, then I would let him be forgiven for these indiscretions and enthusiastically pat him on the back. What I expected from him, I certainly now got: polished visuals, fluid animation, sunsets and picturesque skies bordering on the kitschy, lots of shots of trains, full of melancholy, and an excellent soundtrack, albeit this time performed by my favorite band Radwimps; but all this now goes hand in hand with an interesting storyline, which, although God knows how far from being original it is, and even if some might call it a mixture of various anime tropes, it is handled exceedingly well. It offers various interpretations of the story, making the movie resonate strongly with the audience even after watching it. It is playful, cute, and funny, but it is not primarily touchy-feely in a stupid way. It is classic Makoto, all of his trademarks are there and in large quantities, but at the same time it is a distinctive and unmistakable work in the context of Makoto's oeuvre. It is an oeuvre that teeters on the thin edge of superficial likability, where you can see both a merely audio visually compelling story, and a multi-layered piece that will not let you rest for a minute and will resonate with you for quite some time – and Mitsuha and Taki have clearly pulled me towards the latter. After a very long time, this is finally one hyped anime that I can relate to and ride the wave of, too. A small insignificant plus for Shinkai for making me buy both a movie on DVD and its soundtrack after nine years. And a minor minus for getting really crushed by the phenomenon and not being able to resist shelling out a disgusting amount of yen to visit a themed café and buy a bunch of crap like notepads, pens and postcards. What a cheeky movie! (Seen at Toho Cinemas Nijo, Kyoto, 11/2016.)

I would compare watching YowaPed to when someone puts small amounts of a laxative in the food you are eating, and then just excitedly waits for you to completely shit your pants. At the same time, the first third of the season looks quite pleasant - they sometimes poke fun at sports anime tropes we have seen a hundred times, and the main protagonist’s character’s naivety and over-the-top enthusiasm is entertaining, and his transformation from anime otaku to cycling otaku is really plausible, as well as his interaction with new co-competitors and the formation of new friendships. The second third of the season is in the spirit of preparation for the main race, being less comedic than in the first part of the series, portraying the characters getting fitter in an effort to achieve their goal. Here, however, the complete inability of the creators to build up any suspense begins to manifest itself, which is a fundamental shortcoming in the case of sports anime. The last third of the season is excruciatingly painful, due to the fact it is dominated by over-the-top and completely demented scenes contradicting (not only) the laws of physics, a cruelly slow pace, characters seemingly written after ten beers, who pull power-ups out of their asses, but they also lose or gain energy according to the whims of the screenwriter, and the audience simply does not know whether they should really stand for this, laugh at it, suffer or yawn with boredom at it. The day before the main race, the character is on a drip, and the next day they almost collapse again, but all they have to do is sing a song, and an 80-kilometer (?) race in the mountains is suddenly completely fine? There is a guy who has a fancy name for his left and right breasts, because he is in love with them, and lovingly chats with them in the middle of the race? There is a racer unable to overtake anyone from the left, just because in the past a rabbit ran into his path from the left … I could go on. In addition, the series lacks any real ending, and the story ends about 400 meters before the finish line (WTF?!) and the audience has to learn the results in the second season. If it was a straight-up parody of sports anime from beginning to end, my rating could have been something else, however, this was an altogether considerably tortuous anime, and lasted two and a half years - which was exactly how long it took me to watch all of it. So I am refusing to watch the next season, thanks, and only highly recommend it to all masochistic sports anime deviants.