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Carol & The End of the World (2023)
Room temperature water with a faint taste of lemon...
If someone brought it to you no one would complain when they get it, but nobody would really feel much of anything either.
I quite like the concept of this show, but I feel that they could have done much better with the execution of it.
Maybe an anthology could have worked?
TLDR: Overall I wouldn't recommend this show to people if they have anything better to do, but it was a nice background watch.
Some things that I liked:
- The animation was pretty nice, when they used 3D it didn't feel too out of place
- I think that almost all the characters were at the very least mildly entertaining
- I quite liked all the side stories
Now for some of the stuff that I didn't really like:
- The main character... I just didn't click with her, her personality was eh, her voice was eh (very flat and emotionless), and worst of all I didn't really like her design (her eyes touching each other bothered me every time I noticed it...)
- The nudity, yeah it made a statement in the first episode, but after that it felt needless... If anything it took away from situations...
- The world building also kind of bothered me, how is the world still functioning if everyone is off having fun, it bothered me every time they had to do anything out in the world.
Castlevania: Nocturne (2023)
Doesn't live up to the original
I binged the whole season!
I have to say, that I quite like it and would watch season 2, but I can't help comparing it to the original and it doesn't live up to Castlevania.
Visuals (Animation and Choreography):
The animation is quite good, better then an average animated show but comparing it to the original it is worse.
As I was watching I kept noticing all the cut corners, like when they just warp something instead of drawing it again or when they use CGI and it looks out of place, it doesn't look bad but just not as good as the original.
It does reach almost the same highs as the original but even at its best it doesn't quite do it.
(I even noticed a couple of animation errors while casually watching, and I wasn't even looking for them!)
The same sentiment applies for the action, it is less exciting, the choreography is way less interesting, and they use a lot of cuts and implied action. It is still good, but I feel that it could have been way better.
Writing:
The ideas behind story are interesting, but the execution of them is sadly kind of weak...
For example a couple of times characters showing up when needed even if there was no build up for that to happen.
Or character strength just flip flops depending on what the writers want to happen next.
And lots of little things that I feel should have been removed or improved upon on revision, it kind of feels that the writers were planning to come back and flesh out the moment but just never did.
Magic and Monsters:
The magic system is worse, even tho it is a soft magic system so it should be hard to do so, additionally the use of it lacks creativity.
Using the main characters for the examples:
1) The MC looses his magic for no good reason and then gains it back at a key moment for no good reason as well. When he finally does use that magic it is only 2 elements and it isn't even done in creative ways, for fire he does a fire whip and flame-thrower and for ice he does an ice shield and ice gauntlets.
2) The Speaker Mom also does ice and fire, except for the ice gauntlets she does ice spikes.
3) The Speaker Daughter has a unique ability to summon minions to fight for her, and it seems that she can do that without any limits, but she just do that in most fights for some reason...
4) The Free Slave, she does metal and earth, but she barely does any magic and mainly uses her metal powers to make swords to fight with (she does control them to come back after she throws them, so there is that). She can also can access the spirit realm, to talk to her teacher and maybe eventually her ancestors.
As for the monsters changed the vampires and the night creatures, not sure why as it wasn't anything that would impact the story...
1) Now the vampires don't fade to dust after death.
2) The Night creatures are now not 100% loyal to their master and in one situation the soul of the deceased person stayed with the body which was kind of random, and what annoys me about this problem is that they could have solved this whole complaint by just mentioning that the machine made a different type of night creature or something.
Baymax! (2022)
Short and sweet!
A very well done short series! With very short episodes everything that would have made the episodes feel slow or awkward just isn't included, so everything is straight story with some humor sprinkled in!
Dead End: Paranormal Park (2022)
Could have been way better...
So it started very solidly, and I was expecting it to easily hit 9/10, but as it went on it just kept getting slightly more boring every episode, but at the end it really picked up, so I would say that it is worth a watch! Even if the middle is kind of a slog.
== Major Spoilers ==
The conflict between Barney and his parents didn't really work for me...
I don't know if I missed something but the whole thing felt hollow, I kept waiting for the reveal of them doing something that would be bad enough for him to run away, but it just didn't come.
They did keep saying that the Grandma was saying terrible things but we never do hear what she says, so unless you decide to do the heavy lifting with your imagination and make the grandma into something truly horrible than the whole conflict feels kind of empty.
They do kind of hint at what Grandma says in episode 2, so we do kind of have an idea of what she says that makes her so bad, but it doesn't feel like it reaches running away from home level, especially as she doesn't live with them and only visits occasionally!
The whole thing would have worked way better if it wasn't Barney reconciling with his parents but Barney reconciling the grandma.
Another thing that didn't really work for me was Norma feeling betrayed and starting to cry due to the reveal that Pauline Phoenix was a ghost, and was possessing her own impersonators to continue living!
I mean what exactly does that betray? That she isn't as immortal as she seems? That she isn't as perfect as she imagined her to be? I don't know and anything that I imagine feels like it isn't enough to cause such a reaction from a fan, feels very forced!
Would have worked way better if she had decided to spread the truth to make sure that her perfect reputation didn't survive, or something like that...
Additionally I didn't like that they really spent a whole episode showing Norma's anxiety issues and then just never brought them up again, especially when she had to preform/talk/sing in front of lots of people constantly... It felt very inconsistent, and could have been an interesting problem for her to overcome!
And final thing that comes to mind, is that it wasn't clear if all supernatural stuff was normal to literally everyone or if they were just supper accepting of it all, like what was the situation there? Because they constantly see Courtney and Pugsley doing magic, even if that is somehow explained away, Pugsley is a talking dog and basically no-one ever questioned that! So that should have been explained way better.
But other then that everything was pretty good, the animation was on-point, the music was good, the voice acting was good, the characters were good and even if the overarching story was kind of a stretch in places it was also good!
Can't really think of anything that they did perfectly that I will think back on later...
Arendelle Castle Yule Log: Cut Paper Edition (2021)
The best thing that I have ever seen!
This is probably the best thing that I have ever seen! The lighting, the effects and the story are amazing! This could be the peak of fiction, I don't know how anybody would be able to top this!
If I had to give it a critique it would be:
It does get a little repetitive after 2h 55min and due to that the ending is kind of predictable, I would go as far as to say that I saw it coming from about the half way point! But the 1.5 seconds of darkness really carried the ending, and lifted the score from 9/10 to a solid 10/10!
Hilda and the Mountain King (2021)
Everything I could have hoped for
This movie continues the story of the Netflix show Hilda, so it is a must watch for anybody who like the shows season 1 and 2, but the show must be seen by anybody who wants to watch this movie.
This movie turned out to be everything that I could have hoped for, it beautifully concluded an ark that had silently started in the background of season 1 and had been openly building all through out season 2.
The Story:
As mentioned above, this movie is the third act of a much longer overarching story of the conflict between the trolls and the humans. I can't say anything more without spoiling it.
The Characters:
They are just as well done as in the series, maybe even better, as in this movie every character that has any relevance to the story has a clear motivation and don't act dumb, another thing to note is that a character that I found annoying in season 2 isn't annoying in this movie.
The Animation
The animation is everything that I expected and more, the movie mostly stays on the same amazing level as the rest of the series but it has moments through out that are of even higher quality! It does not disappoint.
The Flaws:
If you forced me to think of a flaw that I notice while watching, it would be this: about 7/8 of the way through the movie a charter types on a keyboard and the finger strokes don't match the keyboard, that is the thing that bugged me as soon as I saw it. When I rewatch the movie maybe I will notice something else, but at the moment that is the only thing that stands out to me.
Vivo (2021)
Barely worth watching
The art is really good, the sound design amazing as well!
The songs, not much to say, they were pretty good tho nothing that I would listen to again.
The story is kind of a stretch, but with the right characters it could have been really impactful! And that is the problem in my opinion.
The characters them selves are OK, but it's the emotional journeys that they take and their arcs is what really brings this down. It feels like somebody wrote how the character starts and their journey ends, but then didn't tell that to the person who was writing everything in between, and by the time they realized that the parts didn't match they just shoved it all together in hopes that nobody would notice... So the conclusions that the characters come to have almost no build up, they just decided to change their opinion due to a seemingly unrelated events!
Carmen Sandiego (2019)
An almost perfect story
I have been watching this series since the beginning, and I think that it easily makes it into my top 5, the ending is weak, but the rest of the series is amazing, tightly written, full of well done action, just well done overall. I think the art style really works here, the voice actors nail every line and almost every episode is done just right.
Adventure Time: Distant Lands: Obsidian (2020)
I'm disappointed
To give context to this review, I'm a fan of Adventure Time and I liked the previous BMO movie.
I have seen this movie twice, the first time that I saw it I thought that it deserved 7/10 or even 8/10, but after having some time to think, and re-watching the movie, I now believe that it deserves a 3/10.
Now without going into spoilers:
The concept of the movie is actually ok, after all it doesn't need to be anything ground breaking, all it needed to do, at the very least, was serve as a good way to showcase Princess Bubblegum's and Marceline's relationship. Did it accomplish that? Barely. Instead of bringing them together and showing their collective strength, all it did was separate them for a large chunk of the movie.
Now you might be thinking "At least everything else was good, right?", and you would be wrong! The execution was also very iffy, there were flashback that just plainly spelled out what was hinted at in the original series, emotional moments weren't really emotional, and lots of other things, it's hard to talk about this without spoiling stuff.
The worst part of it all was the ending in my opinion, it was very random and nonsensical, making it very unsatisfactory and boring.
A nitpick, but they changed the animation style for some reason...
Now there are some good point to this movie:
The singing was good, when characters interacted for not plot related reasons it was good