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Reviews
Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
Nothing like the original series.
I wanted to like this movie... I really did. It had everything down right. The SFX, The actors, the over the top acting, the beautiful ship sets. It had so much going for it... Then you get the actual story....
The story is not bad per say... It's just not interesting. It's meant to encompass and cover 26 episodes (of the 1974 first season of the SBY series, I know because I'm a fan of it.) in a 2 hour time frame, which anyone knows is a pain and a real struggle to make a good movie from.
The film however tries to throw everything in along with the kitchen sink. And 2 hours is not enough time to cover the story from earth to Iskandar and back to Earth, and try to cover other minor character sub plots.
This is what hurts the film. Because they are trying to cram in as many characters and sub plots from the anime as we can. And it takes away from the film making it drag and be sorta boring. I do understand and realize that Space Battleship Yamato was a character driven series. and you had more moments on the bridge rather than in battles at times. But in 2 hours you can't really have everything from the series.
If the film had been cut down to a sorta trinity... Susumu Kodai, Okiti, and Yuki Mori, And focused on the 3 of them and the trip to Iscandar and back to earth, I think the film would have been tighter and pulled together better.
Because the way the film goes right now... It should have been broken up into either a trilogy or a quadriology. So you could tell more story and focus on more of the characters from the series.
As a Space Battleship Yamato fan... I couldn't recommend this to fans or people wanting just a fun film to watch. Look into the original series or even the remake "Space Battleship Yamato 2199. You'll enjoy those more than this.
Chôjikû Yôsai Macross II Lovers, Again (1992)
OVA and Movie are both fun
I rate this one pretty high even though it's not official Macross Canon. It was made without Shoji Kawamori for Macross's 10th anniversary. When they finally were able to get Kawamori back to work on Macross Plus and 7, He was kind enough not to dismiss this thing's Canon and instead place the Canon in that of an alternate universe that takes place after the events in Macross: Do You Remember Love? Now quite literally this OVA is an almost carbon copy of "Macross: Do you Remember Love?" with the way it's story goes. Just without any of the characters we known and love (other than the Macross Ship.) Instead it gives us 3 new characters and a new Love Triangle to deal with ,and a new Race of Zentraedi controlled by Aliens known as the Marduk.
Are main characters consist of Hibiki, a reporter for SNN and wants to bypass the military to make ratings and get the truth out to people.
Silvie, An Ace pilot for UN Spacy and already caught up in the SNN news with a scandal.
Lastly Ishtar, an emulator for the Marduk who sings to control the Zentraedi soldiers.
The story is fun and quite detailed to it even without Shoji Kawamori's involvement but without going into to much detail, to say it is a carbon copy of "Do You Remember Love?" holds true to it.
Animation wise though it is quite nice and the animation style is that of early Ninties OVA's which have well detailed characters, backgrounds and sharp lines. And the Mecha's used in it are rather nice Though the UN Spacy mecha's are not a Kawamori design so design wise it's different and has a few flaws in it. But you get over it after you continue watching the OVA.
Music, while the music is a good complement to the OVA, it's nothing really that memorable like Macross Plus.
The voice acting in Japanese is quite good like most Japanese audio tracks are. Where as the English Track coming from the movie version... It's more meh than anything else.
Overall? Macross II Lovers again (OVA and film) is a fun anime. It is a carbon copy and not official Macross Canon. However If you look away from these and more consider it a parody of Macross, it's pretty fun and enjoyable.
Not everyone will like it, not even die hard Macross enthusiasts are happy about it. (because in the states, it gives the very bad impression that it look like the end of the Macross Franchise which isn't true at all since it continued on with Macross 7, Zero, and Frontier.)
Gekijouban Makurosu Purasu (1995)
A bad splice job overall.
I give the original OVA a lot of praise because it's a beautiful series and has a grand story. The movie version however...
I couldn't recommend this to anyone, even Macross fans like myself. The major problem with it is that it's a retelling of the events in Macross Plus.
And sadly it's not like Macross: Do You Remember Love?. This one still uses the exact same academy standard 4:3 aspect ratio like the OVA.
It has the same graphics, it has the same music. It's story should be relatively the same shouldn't it? It is but it's been altered a bit to retell the story in a different way. This wouldn't be a problem either... However they took the typical Quick method and just cut and spliced parts of the OVA together. This wouldn't be a big deal. However the problem with this is that it ruins the pacing and some scenes seem forced or to short, and then there are some scenes that are just randomly spliced in for god knows what reason to tell the story.
The story in this one is also relatively weaker compared to the OVA because the retelling just wasn't as good since it's a cut and splice job. And it literally feels like that. Not a full fledged movie. So because of this sadly... I have to give this movie a lower rating compared to the OVA.
Macross Plus (1994)
A very powerful sequel to the original
Macross Plus is possibly the best animated sequel to Super Dimensional Fortress Macross. Technically the first sequel to Macross was Macross II: Lovers Again. However it didn't have Shoji Kawamori work on it and Kawamori considers it canon only in alternative universe only.
Macross Plus however is one of his defining achievements. It was vastly different to Macross in the fact it didn't have you fighting aliens and nor were people into war. The story was a simplified story focusing on test pilots instead and still bringing about the usual theme of Love Triangles which is a Staple of Macross story telling. This one is a little different and much more emotional in ways to the older Minmay, Misa, and Hikaru love triangle. It's still good none the less and you get pulled into it much more than previously The Animation is an improvement compared to the original series with sharper lines and more details to the characters and backgrounds, The big difference between filming with 16mm film (at one time was the standard for filming for television) compared to 32mm film (was the standard for filming movies.) And like with any sci-fi series with mechas, it has to have updated Mecha's from the original, and this one delivers with 2 very beautiful Plane designs and a competition to see which one will become the UN Spacy's next major model Mecha to replace already aging and outdated Mecha's.
We also see some interesting things put into the story like artificial Singers who are quite popular which is something quite relate-able to today (vocaloid's Hatsune Miku as an example.) Music is also a big thing in this and to add icing to the cake, they were able to get composer Yoko Kanno to work on it and is almost nothing short of being perfect. Granted there are some pieces that are weaker than others, but overall it's still amazing music to listen too. "Information High" being one of my personal favorite pieces.
The best part about this OVA? It's completely separate from the original! So you don't have to watch the original to like or enjoy this OVA.
I wouldn't recommend the movie version in my opinion. It adds some different details and the story is slightly different. But it's really a cut and splice of the original OVA with a slightly altered story. The movie version does feel like it was random scenes spliced together since it jumps from one part of the story to another without any real reason to do so. And other than splicing in new scenes for the movie, it honestly isn't worth it even to see them.
You will be better off seeing this OVA since it is a much more natural pacing and doesn't jump from one random scene to another and doesn't feel like a cut and splice job.
Robotech (1985)
A product of it's era...
Robotech... a franchise that helped introduce Macross to the states, but at the same time helped bar Macross from the states as well.
Robotech was the creation of Carl Macek and Harmony Gold at a time when Anime was slowly starting to see an early boom in a very heavily edited form. You had Speed Racer, Voltron, Star Blazers, Transformers, Battle of the Planets, you had a large variety coming out. Harmony Gold wanted in on this bit of the pie as well. So they got a hold of a Japanese Anime called "Super Dimensional Fortress Macross", But seeing as it was 36 episodes and could not meet the minimum standard episode limit of that day and age, they bought up 2 other unrelated anime series. "Super Dimnsional Calvalry Southern Cross" and "Genesis Climber Mospeada" and attempted to try and interweave these three unrelated series into the multi-generational war with a technology known as Robotech.
And here in lies it's fault... Even though Macek got the stories all to line up and work together, He left out certain details or changed certain details in scenes that while they may not be caught as a child they can surely be caught as an adult and left wondering "what the hell is going on?, Why did they do that?, What?!?!, Wait a minute... How many people died?, Where is Rick Hunter?, etc, etc." You'll be left sadly with more questions than answers by the time your done watching all 86 episodes along with The Sentinels, Robotech the Untold Story, Shadow Chronicles, and Love Live Alive.
Minmei in this version only ever sings 2 songs and both are sung by Reba West (And if you've ever heard her sing, it's like nails on a chalk board) and both songs are "I'll be a star" and "We Will Win" which are terribly lackluster and repetitive in the way they are done. It's obvious they were not written by a song writer (And probably written by Macek himself). Ironically "We Will Win" Got an album of it's own from Harmony Gold and there are 10 different versions of the song on that album.
There are some more technical faults with both the legacy and remasters. I will focus on remasters first. There remastered audio (existing in all previous re-releases of the remastered versions) in order to access the original Mono track if you've got a 5.1 surround system. You need to set your surround sound system to Mono in order to get all the original 1985 sound effects of the series. The Remastering is also heavily over saturated across all 3 series. So some details are heavily lost. They may be minor, but it would be like someone saying "The Mona Lisa needs more saturation" and suddenly she's a brighter yellow than before and much the background detail is lost. It's an extreme example, but it gets the point across that the remaster is over done. Not to mention that it puts back in the gore scenes and the nudity scenes which are great for the older fan base that grew up with Robotech in 1985. It's not great however for a still budding younger fan base. Robotech was made for Kids with an adult style Saturday morning cartoon story. It's more recently that Harmony gold went and took a more adult style story telling trying to move away from the kid side of things and just try to sell there product with a bit of blood and sex and the nostalgia factor.
The legacy version however is perfect if you wanna introduce your kid to the Robotech franchise, for it cuts out the gore and the nudity, it is how the show appeared in 1985. but it has the major flaw of being taken from the old master tapes (What they used in broadcasting years back and sometimes still use today), I kid you not. When DVD first hit shelves, Harmony gold didn't wanna go through the time of actually remastering Robotech for a proper DVD release, so they took the old master tapes they had, handed them over to ADV, who transferred them to DVD and released it out to fans. This became known as the Legacy edition (something that is impossible to find new, so you have to find it second hand.) So the legacy versions will have a bit of a blur to them and the picture quality has faded drastically. It still has the original 1985 mono track which is good. And the original Text effects from that era too.
Would I personally recommend anyone new to Robotech watch it or buy it? I honestly couldn't recommend anyone watch it, unless your already a Robotech fan who enjoys the nostalgia, or you have an archaeological curiousness about it.
If you have an almost archaeological curiousness in ancient English dubbing of the 80's, and wondering how Robotech got popular, I say watch it. It's what I did and it's what later got me introduced to all the original series that Robotech is based on.(which I highly highly recommend to watch over Robotech.)
Lastly due to the whole inconsistency of not providing a child friendly remaster edition of Robotech (Like the legacy version, and cutting out the gore and nude scenes). I couldn't recommend it to parents that want to get this for there children.
Chôjikû Yôsai Macross: Ai Oboeteimasuka (1984)
One of the greatest Animated films of all time
Let me say this, I love this film... I absolutely love it. I am a Macross fan, and for any Macross fan who loves the original TV series, you will enjoy this film. Even if your not a fan of the series, you will enjoy this film. My rating shows a bit of my bias to that I'll admit to that up front, but I'm not afraid to admit when the film has it's own faults.
It is a retelling of the original series. But that's not a problem, it was made a couple years after the original and unlike some series that have usually a TV movie that does a retelling, it's usually a cut and paste job of the series and slaps it together.
No, this film had a theatrical release with an all new story (a retelling but still a new story) and brand new cutting edge animation of the time to really separate itself from the original.
It is truly a visual spectacle to behold. For this was hand drawn animation at it's finest. You will never see hand drawn animation in this detail in anything else. It still holds up very well to this day. When you see the VF-1 Valkyries in space (or Veritech for the Robotech fans) It is beautifully detailed out from the paneling on them, to the shading and the firing of the multiple missiles. Even the space battles have insane amounts of detail to them. But nothing seems to compare to the opening's beautiful Reveal of the SDF Macross, it is a massive wow factor.
Another thing to note, the music selection is perfect and works harmoniously with the animation and doesn't ever feel like it's out of place. And Mari Iijima (The actress that plays Lynn Minmay) her songs are placed through out the film But there is one particular song in this film that shot her off into super stardom in Japan. I won't spoil what song it is for you, but it plays a massive part in the film, that is what I will say.
However the film has it's faults as I said before and I will not deny them. Biggest faults are in it's story. It is a retelling of the original that is going for 2 hours. And there is not much you can do with the very large diverse cast of characters from a TV series that spanned 36 episodes and now is condensed to 2 hours.
So while some of the more minor but still somewhat important characters may make an appearance, they're subplots are either omitted or skimmed over like in the case of Max Jenius And Milia Fallyna (Known as Max Sterling and Miriya Parina in Robotech).
In the case of the main cast though, they changed Hikaru Ichijio's (Rick Hunter in Robotech) origin and Lynn Minmay's (Lynn Minmei in Robotech) origin. They stayed relatively true to Misa Hayase's (Lisa Hayes in Robotech) origin however.
But the telling of the love triangle is vastly different. Where as in the TV series Minmay is a character no one likes for being what she is... A teenager caught up in the moment with a budding singing career. In here she's actually very sweet, kind and loving, despite her singing career and would do anything for Hikaru.
Misa on the other hand, in the series you had to warm up to her. In the movie you still have to warm up to her but she whines a tad bit more than she did in the series.
And Hikaru Ichijio... He's very much the same lovable idiot that fans of Macross know from the TV series. I've read from others complaining about a certain scene that makes him appear as chauvinistic pig. The scene in question I won't spoil. But you'll know it when you see it.
In a way, yeah it does look a bit chauvinistic. But I don't think that was the intent. Even though he's a good fighter pilot, through out the Macross series, he kept showing how much of an idiot he could be, especially when it came to women and there feelings for him. This I feel was more a moment of him showing some of that idiot from the TV series and I personally think it's funny. Others don't.
The Love triangle that is done in the movie is a tad forced and you will notice that it's more forced in this one than in the TV series. But it's OK. For a film trying to condense down a 36 episode TV series, it still did a good job at handling the Love Triangle as best that it could. The rest of the movie makes up for some of the faults in the story itself.
While I love the Japanese dub, I absolutely hate the English Dub. The original English dub was done in Hong Kong in 1986 and was a way to teach natives of Hong Kong, English, and it has a mix of both people from Hong Kong and a couple Australians in their, probably the voice coaches for the Hong Kong actors. it's a very horrid dub, and I really don't recommend it since it will ruin the viewing experience of the movie. This same dub can be found on the heavily edited "Clash of the Bionoids" VHS tape as well.
I highly recommend people watch it subbed, but if you really cannot live with watching a movie subbed, then I hope you won't dock the movie points because of a horrid dub.
Jurassic World (2015)
Terribly predictable.
Let me clear the air on this. When I first heard about a new Jurassic Park movie (back in 2006), We already had heard word it was going to be called "Jurassic World" But we didn't know about it and plans for the movie were still in the beginning phases, it didn't help that 2 years later Micheal Crichton died and all word about another Jurassic Park movie went silent. Now (2015) several months before the release, I heard word again about Jurassic World. It brought back thoughts I had in 2006 that it would be another flop like "Jurassic Park III" After finding the first teaser trailer and seeing the Jurassic World website and going so far to create a few more fictional websites to really dig in and build up the internal universe of the movie I thought "Ok maybe this will be good after all" since they were going the extra mile to bring more of the fiction to reality.
I went in with high hopes since they were trying to make this feel as real as possible and I pushed aside the thoughts I had years and months back, So I went into the theater with expectations up rather high, yet I came out saddened, it wasn't good at all. I over-hyped myself hoping it would be good. Yet it didn't deliver. Maybe I'm jaded by the original Jurassic Park and the Micheal Crichton Novels. But there was seriously no magic to this film.
The first Jurassic Park was magical since it was one of the first films to display dinosaurs in a way we had never seen before. Before Jurassic Park, all we had was Claymation. Jurassic Park was one of the first films to display dinosaurs realistically. Today it is dated, but it still holds that magic every time you see it. It was a rather magical thrill ride.
The second film "The Lost World" while it wasn't as good as the first one, it wanted to continue the story of International Genetics (Ingen) and wanting to bring John Hammond's Dream to life except this time in California at an abandoned Jurassic Park Amphitheater. And it had some of the magic but it was very much a fast paced action adventure ride that was hanging on the coat tails of the first film.
The Third one cut out the ingen storyline, but continued the idea that man should not try to play god with genetic engineering. It left itself down to being a fast paced action ride instead. Which is really the beginning of the end of the Jurassic Park franchise.
The new one tries way to hard to capture the magic of the first one and try to pretty much retell the story of Jurassic Park again except with an opened theme park, and even bring back Ingen as a security/military division of the Masrani Company that acquired it some years back (based on the fictional details from the Jurassic World website and the tie in fictional Masrani company website.)
And seems they automatically went back to square one with Ingen. Instead of having learned the lessons of John Hammond and his nephew from the second film, they are back and intend to do more than just help the Masrani company with there Jurassic World theme park, they have other intentions that involve certain modified Dinosaur Embryo's.
And just like with the last film they have to introduce an even bigger bad ass dinosaur that can outclass the T-Rex. Except... This new one isn't an actual dinosaur with fossil records, this one is a 100% engineered dinosaur based on several creatures rather than that a dinosaur that has a bit of frog DNA to help recreate it. And I'm not spoiling anything by saying this. This is stuff that can be found on the Jurassic World website. Stuff you could pick up before the films release.
The story is the biggest problem I have with it. It's utterly predictable, with what seems to be a bunch of idiots that seem to have failed to understand WHY the original Jurassic Park failed. Not only are they so over confident and seem to have no humility at the fact at a possibility the park COULD fail. Especially with the genetic engineering of there animals (remember the first film?)... But that the filmmakers had to sneak a hint in early on in the film to blatantly state "Murphy's Law is about to happen people," I mean I kinda had expected the film would be a little predictable and follow the formula of the last 3 films, I didn't expect the film to shove it in my face about 10 minutes into the film to tell me it's going to be predictable.
And from there it's just the same old formula. Boys go to park, Wowed by attractions, Park owners over confident and inept, Something happens, People get killed, Dinosaurs on lose, all hell breaks lose, boys get lost, boys found and get back to park, park is being rampaged by dinosaurs, They somehow escape the island, Not a single one of the main characters your suppose to care about die at the end, literally the end.
If you think I spoiled anything there. I honestly didn't. The movie is THAT PREDICTABLE! It's as predictable as any of the teen slasher movies like "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Friday the 13th", "Halloween", even "Scream".
Do yourself a favor and save your money, wait till this thing is out at Redbox or even Netflix and then make your decision on whether you like it or not.
Because it is not worth seeing in theaters.
Choujikuu Yousai Macross (1982)
A classic among classics.
What can be said about the Super Dimensional Fortress Macross? Probably a lot can be said about it.
Most people, mainly Amercians and probably some others across the globe, got introduced to Macross through another series called Robotech which combined the original Macross Anime with 3 others. While the Robotech version is good and tells some of the story that the original had, it edits the more philosophical points that the original had. And more turns the original space opera into that of a 1980's Saturday Morning Cartoon (which was the intent at the time since Japanese Animation in it's original form in the 1970's and 1980's wasn't as much appreciated in the West like it is today.)
The story takes place in 2009 (this anime was made in 1982, they didn't know how the future would exactly turn out then.)around the launching of the United Nation Spacy's new Super Dimensional Fortress Macross and focuses around the character Hikaru Ichijio, a pacifist suddenly plunged into a war with an alien race known as the Zentraedi. After his friend and Military Pilot Roy Focker gets him into one of the military's new jet fighters to test fly it, The Macross large energy cannon goes off and attacks some Zentraedi ships in space. Roy is forced to leave Hikaru alone in the jet. Hikaru soon finds himself ordered out to take this jet and help defend the Macross. Once he enters the battle the fear of it takes over and he is soon hit and forced to land the jet into the city surrounding the Macross. This is where he meets the girl Lynn Minmay and the story begins on his Journey from a pacifist to that of a soldier.
I'd highly recommend watching all 36 episodes of the Original Macross since there is so much story and sub plots going on in it (and some of it as said was edited out in the Robotech version.) The anime is dated because of it's animation, that's true, And probably a good number of people will not watch it based on this fact alone. I'd still recommend watching it since your really in for a treat. And if you got into the Macross Franchise watching Macross Plus, Macross Zero, Macross Frontier, or perhaps even the retelling movie "Do You Remember Love?" Give the original a try. I promise you, your in for a treat. The show that started a grand franchise, that is sadly limited to Japan only thanks to the likes of the owners of Robotech...
And if your a fan of Robotech: The Macross Saga, I'd still recommend you watch the original Macross as it was intended to be seen. I think for those Robotech fans, it would at least give some of you a greater appreciation for the series that gave your preferred franchise "The Macross Saga".