Movie Reviews, LOL
Jul. 1st, 2007 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talkingsoupOkay. So I've got two movie reviews for you, both of them anime movies.
First off,
Karas
Pure hands-down, balls-to-the-wall, action-packed, visually orgasmic awesome.
It is confusing, but any decent anime movie leaves you a bit confused at the end. In any case, the movie is about the Karas, a sort of mechanized warrior who keeps the balance between the human world and the ghost world (or rather, the world of the youkai). The new Karas is a former human called Otoha, and his power is controlled by a being called Yurine, a girl with poofy white hair and awesome goggles. One of the former Karas, someone called Eko, has decided that the human world needs to be destroyed--so he starts creating an army of mechanized youkai (demons), called Mikura, to fight and kill humans. Karas and Yurine stand in his way, as well as a rebel Mikura called Nue and the most awesome little snail youkai ever, called Amefuriko, I think. Meanwhile, two human detectives, one of whom believes in demons, are investigating the recent supernatural happenings and find themselves drawn into the fight as well.
This probably had the most awesome opening of any anime I've seen, with the exception of Naruto: Shippuuden, of course. It starts out with this absolutely beautiful aerial battle between another Karas and Eko. It uses both animation and 3-D CGI, and blends them together seamlessly, which isn't done very often. I'm not the biggest fan of CGI in anime, to be frank, but when it's combined with the animation well, then fuck yes.
The visuals in this movie are absolutely stunning, some of the best I've seen. Yurine, Nue and Amefurkio had some of the best character designs ever. The movie wasn't quite long enough to really get a handle on the personalities and such of the characters, but I think Amefuriko and Nue were my favorites. Amefuriko is just so adorable--I'm not sure if it's a girl or a boy, but it's this little transparent snail -youkai who wears a raincoat and attaches itself to Nue, who wants nothing to do with him/her.
The one problem I had with the movie was the end. It ends in the worst place possible with absolutely nothing resolved. Now, if this had been the only Karas movie out, I'd be pretty fucking pissed off, but it turns out there's going to be another one with the last half (it seems like it's actually 6 OAVs, chopped in half and put on separate movies). The next movie comes out in September and I'm definitely checking it out then.
If you're an anime fan, this one is a must-see.
Score: 8 out of 10
And secondly,
X
So this movie begins with the main character's naked mother ripping a sword out of her own stomach and giving it to him.
Yep! We're off to a great start.
This was my first taste of the dreaded CLAMP, and I don't know what I was expecting, but this wasn't it. The movie is about Kamui, who I guess is a high schooler, who has returned to Tokyo in order to protect two of his childhood friends, Kotori and Fuma. Leave it to the end of the world to rain on his parade. Some strange people come to him and tell him that he must become one of the Dragons of Heaven, seven warriors who fight to defend the world from destruction. On the opposing side are the Dragons of Earth, who want to destroy the world so they can purify it. Kamui could care less until his friends both get involved--Kotori gets captured and Fuma disappears as it then turns out that Fuma is destined to choose the opposite side of Kamui. Of course.
Now I'm gonna have to get into some spoilers so don't read on if you haven't seen it.
Okay, this movie can pretty much be summed up by the phrase, "Tokyo falls, everyone dies."
No, really. It's one of those animes, where everyone dies. The world might be destroyed, but it doesn't matter. And the main character doesn't die, but he just saw Kotori murdered before his eyes by Fuma, and then of course he went off and killed Fuma himself and a very anticlimactic final battle. So, with nothing left for the character to live for and most of Tokyo destroyed anyway, the credits roll.
Alrighty then!
Eventually the death toll just gets to be hilarious. It's not like other anime where like, everyone dies in one fell swoop and you're left all like, "holy shit!" This is like, you end up counting down until the next character dies. At a certain point everyone starts dying faster and faster. Pretty much, Fuma snaps and goes crazy and then it's like, "one down, two down, oop, three and four down, oh he just killed the other three, okay so she's gonna die pretty s--okay, yup she's dead." It's just ridiculous.
Spoilers end.
In all honesty, it wasn't completely bad. It had more than the typical anime "fuck the whatery" going on. Parts of it were almost on par with Cat Soup for its WTFness. But it was also very pretty, which is I think what CLAMP is known for. The visuals were very nice, the action scenes were decently done, and the character designs were well done, though they made all the guys look like bishies. Not that I have a problem with that, but still.
Two major problems with this movie, though were the lack of character development and the fact that it was oozing melodrama. Both kind of go hand in hand, actually. The story and whatnot was just so melodramatic and ridiculous that I didn't really care what was happening to the characters. You get no backstory. You get no reason why the Dragons of Heaven became the Dragons of Heaven, or why the Earth guys became the Earth guys. There are two characters called Dream Watchers, but no backstory there either--how did they come to be? Who are they? Were they born that way or were they created or what? Also, why did Kamui leave Tokyo in the first place? What made the Dragons of Earth decide they wanted to destroy the world anyway? Why should we care about Fuma and Kotori, except that Kamui cares about them? Who the hell are all these people?
You end up not really caring about them that much, and that combined with the melodrama just makes all the serious bits come out funny. Kamui is so like "Bah, I don't care about the world, I'm way too emo!" Fuma is as flat as a pancake and his sister Kotori isn't much better. Buildings keep getting destroyed but it's always in such a melodramatic way (plus, aren't zillions of people dying every time that happens?). The fights are pretty cool, but they're pretty melodramatic too--the fighters always seem to float around and are just like, "La, I attack you."
In short, it's not wonderful in the least, but it's worth taking a looksee. It is a classic, after all. I may have railed on it pretty badly here, but it was okay I suppose, to some degree. Just don't pay money to see it.
Score: 5.5 out of 10.
Not much else to say, really.
Oh, some more AMV biz for y'all.
This one is absolutely amazing in its originality, though it took me awhile to recognize the song. It's from the trailer to Sin City.
This one took me a few watches to get into. It's different. It's probably the only Bleach vid I have that's not action-oriented (woot! originality!). Yet the song somehow fits the relationship between Ichigo and Rukia (and no it's not all ooey-gooey romantic. It's dark and wonderful). And the editing is simple, but somehow I like it.
This one is just plain wonderful. The only truly good Paranoia Agent vid I've found, to the Tears for Fears version of Mad World. Quite awesome.
First off,
Karas
Pure hands-down, balls-to-the-wall, action-packed, visually orgasmic awesome.
It is confusing, but any decent anime movie leaves you a bit confused at the end. In any case, the movie is about the Karas, a sort of mechanized warrior who keeps the balance between the human world and the ghost world (or rather, the world of the youkai). The new Karas is a former human called Otoha, and his power is controlled by a being called Yurine, a girl with poofy white hair and awesome goggles. One of the former Karas, someone called Eko, has decided that the human world needs to be destroyed--so he starts creating an army of mechanized youkai (demons), called Mikura, to fight and kill humans. Karas and Yurine stand in his way, as well as a rebel Mikura called Nue and the most awesome little snail youkai ever, called Amefuriko, I think. Meanwhile, two human detectives, one of whom believes in demons, are investigating the recent supernatural happenings and find themselves drawn into the fight as well.
This probably had the most awesome opening of any anime I've seen, with the exception of Naruto: Shippuuden, of course. It starts out with this absolutely beautiful aerial battle between another Karas and Eko. It uses both animation and 3-D CGI, and blends them together seamlessly, which isn't done very often. I'm not the biggest fan of CGI in anime, to be frank, but when it's combined with the animation well, then fuck yes.
The visuals in this movie are absolutely stunning, some of the best I've seen. Yurine, Nue and Amefurkio had some of the best character designs ever. The movie wasn't quite long enough to really get a handle on the personalities and such of the characters, but I think Amefuriko and Nue were my favorites. Amefuriko is just so adorable--I'm not sure if it's a girl or a boy, but it's this little transparent snail -youkai who wears a raincoat and attaches itself to Nue, who wants nothing to do with him/her.
The one problem I had with the movie was the end. It ends in the worst place possible with absolutely nothing resolved. Now, if this had been the only Karas movie out, I'd be pretty fucking pissed off, but it turns out there's going to be another one with the last half (it seems like it's actually 6 OAVs, chopped in half and put on separate movies). The next movie comes out in September and I'm definitely checking it out then.
If you're an anime fan, this one is a must-see.
Score: 8 out of 10
And secondly,
X
So this movie begins with the main character's naked mother ripping a sword out of her own stomach and giving it to him.
Yep! We're off to a great start.
This was my first taste of the dreaded CLAMP, and I don't know what I was expecting, but this wasn't it. The movie is about Kamui, who I guess is a high schooler, who has returned to Tokyo in order to protect two of his childhood friends, Kotori and Fuma. Leave it to the end of the world to rain on his parade. Some strange people come to him and tell him that he must become one of the Dragons of Heaven, seven warriors who fight to defend the world from destruction. On the opposing side are the Dragons of Earth, who want to destroy the world so they can purify it. Kamui could care less until his friends both get involved--Kotori gets captured and Fuma disappears as it then turns out that Fuma is destined to choose the opposite side of Kamui. Of course.
Now I'm gonna have to get into some spoilers so don't read on if you haven't seen it.
Okay, this movie can pretty much be summed up by the phrase, "Tokyo falls, everyone dies."
No, really. It's one of those animes, where everyone dies. The world might be destroyed, but it doesn't matter. And the main character doesn't die, but he just saw Kotori murdered before his eyes by Fuma, and then of course he went off and killed Fuma himself and a very anticlimactic final battle. So, with nothing left for the character to live for and most of Tokyo destroyed anyway, the credits roll.
Alrighty then!
Eventually the death toll just gets to be hilarious. It's not like other anime where like, everyone dies in one fell swoop and you're left all like, "holy shit!" This is like, you end up counting down until the next character dies. At a certain point everyone starts dying faster and faster. Pretty much, Fuma snaps and goes crazy and then it's like, "one down, two down, oop, three and four down, oh he just killed the other three, okay so she's gonna die pretty s--okay, yup she's dead." It's just ridiculous.
Spoilers end.
In all honesty, it wasn't completely bad. It had more than the typical anime "fuck the whatery" going on. Parts of it were almost on par with Cat Soup for its WTFness. But it was also very pretty, which is I think what CLAMP is known for. The visuals were very nice, the action scenes were decently done, and the character designs were well done, though they made all the guys look like bishies. Not that I have a problem with that, but still.
Two major problems with this movie, though were the lack of character development and the fact that it was oozing melodrama. Both kind of go hand in hand, actually. The story and whatnot was just so melodramatic and ridiculous that I didn't really care what was happening to the characters. You get no backstory. You get no reason why the Dragons of Heaven became the Dragons of Heaven, or why the Earth guys became the Earth guys. There are two characters called Dream Watchers, but no backstory there either--how did they come to be? Who are they? Were they born that way or were they created or what? Also, why did Kamui leave Tokyo in the first place? What made the Dragons of Earth decide they wanted to destroy the world anyway? Why should we care about Fuma and Kotori, except that Kamui cares about them? Who the hell are all these people?
You end up not really caring about them that much, and that combined with the melodrama just makes all the serious bits come out funny. Kamui is so like "Bah, I don't care about the world, I'm way too emo!" Fuma is as flat as a pancake and his sister Kotori isn't much better. Buildings keep getting destroyed but it's always in such a melodramatic way (plus, aren't zillions of people dying every time that happens?). The fights are pretty cool, but they're pretty melodramatic too--the fighters always seem to float around and are just like, "La, I attack you."
In short, it's not wonderful in the least, but it's worth taking a looksee. It is a classic, after all. I may have railed on it pretty badly here, but it was okay I suppose, to some degree. Just don't pay money to see it.
Score: 5.5 out of 10.
Not much else to say, really.
Oh, some more AMV biz for y'all.
This one is absolutely amazing in its originality, though it took me awhile to recognize the song. It's from the trailer to Sin City.
This one took me a few watches to get into. It's different. It's probably the only Bleach vid I have that's not action-oriented (woot! originality!). Yet the song somehow fits the relationship between Ichigo and Rukia (and no it's not all ooey-gooey romantic. It's dark and wonderful). And the editing is simple, but somehow I like it.
This one is just plain wonderful. The only truly good Paranoia Agent vid I've found, to the Tears for Fears version of Mad World. Quite awesome.
