Jeoffrey

So ended the first anime series of the fall 2018 releases, and while the conclusion was actually quite acceptable and perhaps quite enjoyable for me, I still could not shake off the impression that I did not feel like I was actually watching anything compelling. The subject matter was not so bad, I even quite liked some of the characters, even though I still had to force myself to watch other episodes rather than looking forward to them in any way. I do not want to explicitly say that it is the fault of this anime series, or that maybe they somehow did a bad job when creating the atmosphere. However, throughout the whole thing, even the biggest surprises and twists not even once engaged me in any real way. So while I may have been watching a fairly well-thought-out narrative, it is probably not going to be that memorable  and I am probably going to forget Derrida and the others in a few weeks. 4.6/10.

This is definitely a very strong and really emotional movie, featuring lessons about what motherly love means, what it means to live life to the fullest, and other subject matter that has some depth. However, it still manages to present everything relatively naturally (although the feeling that it is a bit forced emotionally gets a bit too much sometimes). It has some beautiful moments that grabbed me and touched my heart (though I fought back the tears in the end). It also has some visually beautiful scenes (like when Maquia is kidnapped by the dragon, and when Maquia leaves Ariel after the battle...) it has some wonderful music on the soundtrack, with the final song accompanying the credits being the icing on the cake. This is definitely a very good movie that will move sensitive people a lot, and at least sometimes give perhaps tougher people something to relate to. Of course, I know better, stronger, and more moving movies (like Wolf Children for example), however, I am still glad I sat down and watched Maquia on a chilly afternoon because the movie actually warmed, pleased, and saddened me in equal measures - it just worked. 8.3/10.

Somehow I just cannot think of anything to say about an anime series mixing Joan of Arc with the Philosopher's Stone other than that it just seems like a bunch of tedious crap to me. Dropped after episode four - 2.5/10.

This was a strange psychological anime series that had a promising and mysterious beginning. However, it turned out to be very ambiguous, and the show had a lot of allusions without really saying anything. I guess what the show’s creators really meant to convey and how it actually ended is perhaps going to be the subject of much speculation for a long time to come. Like in the final scenes: what was meant to be a reality, and what was just in the girl's imagination? There was a bit of allegory, there was a bit of philosophy, and a lot of food for thought for the audience. However, did it all affect me deeply in some way that I in any way found the narrative absorbing and so gripping I could not sleep? Well at times it did have a very pleasant atmosphere (sometimes the soundtrack was excellent), and I was quite taken with the central two protagonists, and sometimes I even thought for a moment that they would... Perhaps this is a brilliant production that I just did not appreciate, and perhaps this is just pseudo-philosophical psycho-babble that is really pretentious. Well, I for one am not really sure at all, so I am awarding it 6/10.

Creating something appealing, intelligent, interesting, and entertaining - something you can enjoy every moment of - can seem difficult, although occasionally there are some shows that convince me that it is basically terribly easy. For example, they have to be able to get the characters and the atmosphere right and do things like mix something unnatural (and it does not have to be supernatural like it is in this show) with something completely natural. It requires finding the right combination of characters so that the chemistry works. It also has to look good and sound good. This anime series has it all! It is simply always a refreshing feeling to come across a character like Sakuta - incredibly honest and yet so ordinary, amusing, and relatable at the same time. Plus, with a charming, intelligent, and interesting girl like Mai by his side, it makes for a couple that works well together and is a joy to watch and listen to. There are also a few other interesting supporting characters, plenty of girls who need some help with their problems, and Sakuta just has the bad luck to attract these types of people. Does that sound like something you have seen before? Perhaps, but no... This is because no matter what problem the main male protagonist is facing, the anime’s creators manage to end it all in a way that often (except maybe the first two cases) turns out completely different from the usual clichéd way, and at the same time it feels completely natural and normal. Because of this, you do not have to have a problem with the supernatural goings-on, because everything, including the behavior of the characters, seems completely acceptable and endearing - just believable (including all of Futaba’s scientific analysis). Furthermore, if you know how to use atmosphere, i.e. entertaining and amusing moments plus touching sad scenes - then you have a winner. Someone like Jeoffrey is enthralled by this show, he finds it enjoyable and wishes in his heart he could be as direct and wittily sarcastic as the main male protagonist, and he also dreams of having such a wonderful girl as Mai... I have been mesmerized, entertained, and supremely satisfied = I think this is the BEST release of the anime season Fall 2018 - 9.5/10.

So now we are going to mess around with time and pit a couple of important figures from Japanese history against each other. Could this be interesting? For example, Drifters did something similar and it was quite interesting, even though they had a broader range of characters than just well-known Japanese figures, and the narrative (or rather, the beginning of it) was probably a bit more straightforward and a lot more insane than simply messing about with a chronometer watch and trying to take over the world. Drifters had interesting characters, a collection of weird psychopaths and madmen. In this show, however, the characters are not anywhere near as interesting, they are just kind of boring. Well, boredom prevailed throughout the first three episodes, where I was basically just forcing myself to watch yet another episode, waiting to see if there would be an interesting and surprising twist or a great fight scene, in other words, something to keep me engaged. There are some surprises, however, and sometimes there are fight scenes, although not enough to stop me from laying there motionless and unaffected. So neither my favorite characters from the end of the Edo period (which I loved so much when parodied in the Gintama anime series) nor even the likes of Sanada Yukimura and his ilk (it is surely just a matter of time before Oda Nobunaga shows up, in my opinion) were enough to keep me going... Dropped after the third episode and I am awarding a maximum of 3/10.

Okay, so we are halfway through season three, and the rest of the season is supposedly coming out in six months, so why not review this first half of the season now, and then review the second half of season three in the spring... Before I even started watching this third season, I had heard from a few people that the Royal Government 'Uprising' arc was bad. I didn't really get it, because usually a bit of a political power struggle and some internal feuding adds some kind of depth to the narrative, which I think is a good thing as it balances out all the fighting... Yeah, although it is all about the timing! The biggest problem I have with the whole first half of the third season (and this means the Royal Government 'Uprising' arc), is that it is a beautiful example of the meaning of "anticlimactic". What does that mean exactly? Well, here is another of my great “romantic” analogies for the sake of comparison. Imagine that you have a beautiful partner (a lady in my case) who is almost everything you desire and even her personality is attractive, so you decide to “go for it" as they say. So you are fooling around, get down and nasty, let us say “getting to know each other better” if you know what I mean? Everything is going just great, and then as all the foreplay gets you to that place, when you are already as hot as a car roof in the middle of a hot summer day (going for that big "storyline"), out of the blue, your sweetheart starts telling you about the risk of STDs. Sure, it is related to the subject matter, it might be interesting and informative for some (if it is presented well), however, at this point, just when you are expecting something a little different, it kills the mood and dampens all the enthusiasm you had, and so brings you crashing back down to earth (or in the worst case, underground). So what was going on in this part of Attack on Titan instead of actual titans? Well, perhaps some informative scenes regarding the world on the other side of the wall, the introduction of some more interesting characters, or perhaps finally unraveling the mystery around the basement and the key? Well, actually there was a big boring history lesson (regarding the Reiss family)! There was also a pretty boring military coup. Then there was the discovery that the toughest people around do not go by the name Norris (because Chuck), they go by the name Ackerman, and they are just everywhere like they have been breeding like rabbits, in every nook and cranny. There are some action-packed scenes like the Levi bar scene which is easily the best scene from all the first eight episodes. There is also one very strange titan, plus a bunch of lore around it, and it concerns things I had been suspecting for a really long time. I consider it a positive thing that Eren is not as hysterical and a lot more of a thinker now. Armin has finally stopped crying... but what exactly is the point of Armin now, and why was he even there for this part of the season?!? Oh, and Mikasa is just all about "EREN", so not much has changed there, although she was in a scene during the final episode where I thought she was kind of cute for a minute or so (when the guys were fighting). Unfortunately, only the last two episodes reminded me of why I think this anime series is actually very cool, mostly because of these series "Severus Snape" (the elaborate subplot from the penultimate episode...), the happy and emotional party where Sasha was once again very entertaining, and the departure itself, which I found quite emotional, and I did smile contentedly when Erwin raised his one and only hand at the end. I am not going to say it was a let-down, because it was still quite interesting at times. It is just that somehow it has dampened my spirits, and I am starting to get the impression that the cool and five-star story arcs that manga readers have not been sleeping on for a couple of years now are only going to come when, in the Game of Thrones, winter is really coming to Westeros, and frankly speaking, both are dragging on now... The first half of season three - 6.5/10. EDIT 01.07.2019 - THE SECOND HALF OF SEASON THREE. I am very glad that this time the fans were not lying and that, unlike other anime series where I am always hanging on for some great scenes (like with Sword Art Online), there were some moments that were really worth five stars. The entire second half of the third season is action-packed and intensely dramatic, plus it also has some rather poetic and philosophical moments. It provides most of the answers the audience has been waiting for (and some of which they may have already partially guessed). The action-packed scenes are good, it is sometimes a bit too dramatic, but so be it. The poeticism in contrast to all the action and drama is pleasing, and the philosophical element of the show? Some important decisions are bound to inevitably cause rifts, and not only between the characters themselves. Plus, like me, perhaps you are going to disagree with some of the paths the narrative is going to take. However, I guess that is the point: a well-written production is supposed to provoke the audiences to show emotions, encourage thinking and lead to a discussion! So even though I am maintaining my position, and I could go on about how everything is not as I would like it to be, I am going to move on and embrace manga artist Hajime Isayama’s vision. This means that the second half of season three could have been awarded five stars, and so the final rating would end up somewhere around 9/10. However, that would not take into account the fact that there is still that first half of the third season to consider, and that part did not really grab me. So, I am definitely not going to go higher than four-stars as the rating for the whole of the third season, although it is a strong four-stars - 8.3/10.

Somehow I just cannot think of anything of real worth to say about this anime series. It had a pretty decent narrative, some interesting characters, a completely unnecessary romantic subplot (I did not get the main female protagonist and her contribution), and a pretty acceptable ending. In other words, this "animated Underworld" was actually pretty good... 6/10.

Season three of Overlord follows a similar course to that of the previous season in my opinion. The beginning was kind of lackluster, full of unnecessary crap (because I really needed to know that there was a virgin succubus, for example) and filler. I thought the first episode was more like bonus episode (OVA) material and definitely not an introduction to a new season. I did not find the whole Carne Village Arc all that interesting, even though on the other hand it was at least more relevant to the storyline that followed than the Lizardmen Arc (sorry, but I just cannot get them out of my mind) in the last season. The second part with the invasion of the tomb by the adventurers was better, much more interesting with a very good ending that reminded me that the main male protagonist of this show cannot be described as a pure character (he is more like a villain here). What about the ending? The season builds up brilliantly and it is an example of what it means to be truly OP, and that it can be awfully appealing under certain circumstances. I was once again feeling on top of my game during the last few episodes, I really enjoyed them, and I am now looking forward to the next installment. One thing I want to say is that the way the seasons starts up is always really weak (but I get, that even these parts are part of the source novels). 8.2/10.

At the beginning, I liked this show a lot, I thought it had the necessary amount of suspense, and the sport itself was very well portrayed. Every badminton match and training session looked really good because of the well-animated movements of the characters and the shots of the shuttlecock flying through the air. If there had only been the drama on the court, or if they had managed to make the off-court narrative interesting, I would have probably given this a much higher rating. However, as it is, this show is just an ordinary "MAMA drama", even though only the main female protagonist experiences it to the fullest. She was suddenly like a total psychopath, going from cheerful schoolgirl mode to serial killer mode in a matter of seconds, if only she could have just had a nice talk with her mom... Unfortunately, that is not how shit goes down at Ayano's house, and even the mom did not attract any great sympathy from me, and, rather the opposite. Unfortunately, this dramatic element somehow makes not only the much more interesting character of Nagisa but also the game of badminton itself get overlooked, and even the ending, while offering them a way to resolve the problem, does not provide the audience with any great sense of relief. Actually, I am kidding, it does - relief that this is all finally over... All that is left now is to explain to the neighbors that what I have just been watching was not pornography, even though it might have seemed like it was, due to an insanely long (and utterly stupid) sequence filled with nothing but the tired sighs and moans of the two main protagonists. 5.5/10.