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Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
You had one job and you couldn't even get that right
The most anticipated movie of the year has currently turned into one of the worst movie of the year for me. I wasn't really expecting much from a movie called "Batman V Superman" but I was expecting something.
The biggest problem I have is the plot. The plot doesn't know when to stick with something or when it should drop something. It feels like I'm watching multiple episodes of a Superman TV show with the odd cut to Batman. I literally couldn't keep a straight face while watching this movie, I was laughing through it. I kept on thinking of the Room when I was watching this because there are so many scenes that go nowhere. The movie is 2 hours 30 mins and for about 2 hours it's trying to get us to understand this story and get immersed in it and they only got me immersed in this plot line was in the 1 hour 50 mins mark. I was only starting to get immersed in it as they were busy cutting it off. I'm still questioning a few of the scenes that were in this movie as well. There's a scene when Superman is talking to Lois while she's in the bathtub for some reason. There's this whole story where it's supposed to show that the public are starting to fear Superman because they're not sure how they can control a God but that didn't seem to go anywhere and it was also cut off around the point I was getting immersed in it and for the rest of the movie, it felt like it had been completely forgotten. So the majority of the film feels like it was a complete waste of time and felt like it went nowhere or if it was intending to go somewhere, I fail to see where it was going. However, I have a different opinion of the last 40 mins of the film. This is where I'm going to get into spoiler territory. The actual fight between Batman and Superman only lasts 5 mins and it happens as the film is nearing it's 2 hour mark. The fight was well staged however and it was well thought out. Batman defeats Superman by using kryptonite weapons to bring Superman down to Batman's ability and Batman brings him down from there. That was an intelligent way for that fight to go. However just as Batman is about to kill Superman, he finds out Superman's mother has the same first name as his so they decide to work together to bring down Lex Luthor. Yes that's the actual reason Batman and Superman team up. Their mother has the same first name. I'm not joking. It isn't the same mother or anything, it's just that their mother has the same first name. That's one of the stupidest reasons I've heard for someone wanting to be my friend. "Hey, we have the same amount of armpit hair, want to be friends?" Then they go on this mission to stop Lex Luthor and save Superman's mother. They save the mother successfully however, Lex Luthor has unleashed Doomsday upon Batman and Superman and they learn he can only be stopped by kryptonite. The only kryptonite weapon Batman has left is a spear, which left in Gotham. Superman goes back to Gotham, saves Louis again (because obviously we haven't see that enough times), takes the kryptonite spear stabs Doomsday killing Doomsday and then Superman dies. I wasn't entirely sure why Superman died. He wasn't hit by the kryptonite (Batman scraped him across the cheek with it and he didn't die then) he was just near it. Superman has a funeral and obviously they had to leave it open for a sequel so Batman says to Wonder Woman "Get the others ready" Wonder woman responds with "how do you know something else will happen?" Batman says "I have a feeling." That segment of dialogue gets my "dreaming of the money" award, when a writer was too busy thinking of the amount of money he was going to be paid for something, he forgot he still had to write a piece of dialogue that was good.
That was me just explaining the last half hour of this movie and it's the most exhausting thing I've ever had to type up. It was like that for the whole 2 hours and 30 mins and I can't think of any better way to explain it than to type up a segment of the film, which I've just done.
If you're going there to see action then you aren't going to be disappointed, but for people like me that aren't satisfied with just seeing action and want something more from the films you see, this is definitely a skip.
Fred: The Show (2012)
Worst show ever?
This is a great example of why things that you see on the internet, can't be translated into 15 minute TV episodes consisting of 24 episodes. I've been forced to sit through FRED: the show with my little cousin who watches it and likes it for some reason. I didn't know at the time that the show was based on the web series FRED because I never heard of it, so I checked the web series out as I was curious. The web series consists of around 5 min short clips of the character FRED, played by Lucas Cruikshank. I also don't find the web series funny but I found it more bearable than the show as the web episodes are just 5 mins.
I've gone way too much into describing the background of FRED, what's the show like. The show is what it is, a 15 minute version of the 5 minute web episodes. The show suffers from the same problem the web series does, it doesn't even try to be funny and because it's not funny and puts this annoying character in front of you, you will find the show annoying and unfunny. It's the same reason why I hate the Annoying Orange as well (which is another show my little cousin has forced me to watch.) If something sort of works on YouTube (and I literally mean it just sort of works) then it is common sense that it will not work for television and FRED: the show is the testament to that. I can't think of one memorable moment from the whole show. So let's do a bit of math. Each episode is 15 minutes long, there are 24 episodes = 6 hours of my life I will never get back. The things that are going on throughout the show don't make any sense at all. I can't tell whether they're trying to be realistic or fictional as it's somewhere in between. One minute it's following the laws of physics, next thing FRED makes a love potion which doesn't exist. That's a great message to send out to the kids isn't it? "Can't find love kids? Just make a magic love potion, no need to go through that stage in life known as dating and getting to know someone, just get a love potion, FRED seal of approval (and the Mellow seal of disapproval.) It also baffles me as to why they made this show, as they already made 2 movies based on this character and they both failed critically and financially, so why did they think a TV show would work? Just leave this "thing" on the internet where it belongs and leave it on the internet.
The Room (2003)
What did I just watch?
This is easily the worst 'thing' that I've ever sat through. Me and 7 of my friends were having a movie night yesterday and my friend Stephen brought this with him, claiming "I don't know what this is and apparently no one on the planet does so we should watch it." There was me, Stephan, Mason and Shane who are all male and Anna, Katie, Zoe and Gina who are female (I'm saying this just so I can establish and go into more detail about one of our reactions later) and all of us had different reactions to what we were seeing. Me, Mason Anna and Katie were looking on in confusion throughout the whole thing, Stephen and Shane were laughing uncontrollably, Gina was offended and Zoe fell asleep.
There was just so much stuff wrong in this thing that I repeatedly asked the question "why was this made? What possessed Tommy Wiseau to make this? Did he intentionally make this bad? Did he make this to settle debt? Did he actually think he could become a memorable film director?" I can only answer one of those questions, he became a memorable film director/producer/writer/actor but for the wrong reasons.
Where do I start? The acting is some of the worst caught on camera. I was in an amateur theatre production by Queen's hall arts called Minor's Strike and I would like to emphasise, it was an amateur production and all of our acting was praised in the performance and I was 13 at the time. These actors, who are around their 30s/40s are acting worse than we did and we were amateurs and hadn't taken acting school at the time. Tommy Wiseau is easily the worst though. He is the worst actor and this film and what goes well with a bad actor you might ask? Badly written dialogue for this bad actor to spout out.
"We have a new client at the bank we make a lot of money, anyway how is your sex life" This is an actual piece of dialogue that was delivered by Tommy Wiseau, imagine that an 8 year old French boy is saying this line and you will get Tommy Wiseau's whole performance.
There are also these really uncomfortable sex scene moments which is what Gina was offended by. I know that we're in an age where the ESRB raters are awfully sceptical about letting certain age demographics watch certain movies and usually controversy is applauded by audience and that's why Harvester and Hatred got as much attention as they did but this thing in The Room, these sex scenes which is applauded by possibly the horn word (not allowed to say it because of IMDb's rules) teenage boy demographic, these sort of scenes are just plain awkward for people to sit through. Also, there is about 5 of these uncomfortable sex scenes in this film, each lasting about 5 mins. Which means the total amount of time we spent watching some porno was just under 1/3 of the film.
There are also these really weird scenes that don't go anywhere. They happen and then that's it.
I wish there was a way that I could unsee this film and none of you get this film, even if you're curious, don' get it. I wish to never see Tommy Wiseau in anything again, if he even is in anything else and if he is, there's something wrong with this world.
Sword Art Online (2012)
Great setup, mostly terrible delivery
*First season review* Every so often a series comes on that splits people in half. People who love the show no matter the flaws and people who hate the show and would give up a kidney to make sure that that show would never air again. SAO is one of those shows. What's my opinion of it? Meh. There are good parts but there are also bad parts of the show.
The plot of the show (well the first half of the show but I'm not going to reveal the plot of the second half due to spoilers) is that a new MMO is released called Sword Art Online. Everything goes well on launch however; the creator removes the log out feature, which means that everyone who's in the MMO is trapped inside. The only way they can escape is to beat all 100 floors of the boss rooms. However, if you die in the game, you die in real life. This is quite a good idea for a plot but the thing is the plot seems to be getting side-tracked. There are about 5 episodes that doesn't focus on anything related to getting out of the game and feel really unnecessary. There's an episode where he joins a guild only for it to be disbanded in the same episode he joins it. He has an episode where he goes fishing. I'm being serious. There is an episode where he goes fishing. I like the idea and the setup of the plot, but it fails at its delivery. Also, the plot decides to do a full 180 turn halfway through the series and gets rid of any sort of redeeming factor the plot had left in it.
Our main protagonist is Kirito. I'm not going to lie, I hate Kirito. The people who created his character make him easily the most disyllable character for the show. I also think the writing for his character is sloppy. The writers for him must have gotten lazy. He seems OK for the first episode but I got an immediate disliking for him by the end of the second episode. I'll give you the reasons why I don't like his character. Firstly, he's way too overpowered. The writers don't give him any sort of way for him to solve problems so they just decide to make him a god. He can just whip out a magical weapon to beat a boss. They make him have infinite health so he can't be killed by a guild. The list goes on for his entire god like abilities that they give him and decide to throw them out the window as if he never used them in the next episode. Secondly, his harem. The only reason the writers add in female characters is just to add onto the harem that he is building for himself. There are tons of girls that are introduced as characters that are used as just a love interest for him. There are also at least 3 that are only used for one episode. This show doesn't know how to treat these female characters with respect. There was going to be one exception and that exception was going to be Asuna, the main female lead. She starts off well enough and was actually thinking she would be treat with more respect than the other female characters. But about 3-5 episodes later she also falls into his harem and is defenceless without the "Oh so important god among players protagonist Kirito, praise to him." All the other female characters, you can see why they are there, just from looking at their designs. That's about all the characters there are, Kirito and female girlfriend #205.
There is one thing that I do like about the show and that's the animation. The animation is fantastic, some of the best animation that I've seen in an anime. The battle scenes are brilliantly put together, the scenery is beautiful to look at and the world they're in.
If you were to put together the whininess of a lost dog who doesn't know where he's going and the ideas of the most sexist man alive, you will get SAO. It's a beautiful looking series, but the plot just seems to get bored of it so when it does, it focuses on something else for one episode, two if we're lucky and then subsequently get bored of it again and move onto another plot. If you're willing to forgive the shortcomings of the show, then I will recommend it to you, but if you're like me and can't see past the shortcomings a show has and don't think the things that are good about the show exceed the show to be good, you should give this a skip.
Tron (1982)
why does this movie have a cult following?
I don't like Tron. There I said it. People regard this film as a cult classic but personally I don't see why.
For anyone that is unaware, Tron is a film released in 1982. It's about a video game creator's idea being stolen by a big company head. He goes in to get proof that the idea was his, only for a machine to get him sucked into the game he created. He needs to work with programs that he created in order to get out as well as fight against viruses inside the game in order to get out. The plot was probably one of the best things about the film. It was quite a unique idea at the time and was interesting to see this new sort of plot being taken on.
The main thing that's praised about Tron is its visuals and I'll come to agree. The movie's effects were really impressive for the time and even live up today.
The one thing I noticed about the reviews of Tron was that they only seemed to talk about how good the visuals were and didn't talk about anything else. I find Tron stupid. Some questions are left unanswered and it also has a few confusing and unnecessary parts. I will go onto list them here. At the start of the movie a scientist says "his whole life he's worked on a machine" and that machine's purpose is to make objects disappear and then they reappear a few seconds later. I don't know about you but I think that's his life wasted. I can't think in one way how that sort of machine could be useful. The guy who created the game is introduced in an arcade playing a video game which he for some reason sweats from, I don't know one person who sweats from playing a video game. It might have also just been an excuse for that actor to take their top off to reveal his pecks for no reason and yes that actually happens. There is a scene when he's about to have a fight to the death with a program. I'm not sure about you but if I was going into a fight to the death and I was just a video game creator, I would be terrified, but this programmer isn't as he goes into the fight to the death grinning like an idiot. There's a huge dramatic moment where one of the programs dies and despite this program appearing in about 2/3s of the film, the other characters don't seem to care. I'm actually going to type the dialogue that is delivered after he dies.
"Where is he?" "He died" "*gasp* alright* I'm not joking, that is actually what is said. There's another part where one of the programs is tired from lying down. I'm not joking about that either. He literally lies down, gets up and is gasping for breath.
I fail to see how other reviews of this movie haven't considered that this movie is so bad that it's good. That's how I see it. Yes the plot is creative and the visuals are cool and still hold up today but everything else falls flat. The characters aren't given anything to be called characters, the acting given off feels like the actors were held at gunpoint to perform, there are scenes that don't go anywhere, and most of all it suffers from bad writing.
Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Animated movie of the year
I criticised Super Mario Bros. as a bad movie adaptation of the video games, so after I reviewed that I decided to write a review of a good movie about video games and I consider Wreck-It Ralph to be among the better ones.
The plot follows a video game villain called Ralph who has served as the bad guy in his video game for 30 years, but he's sick of being a bad guy and decides to leave his game in order to become a hero in another. He ends up becoming a hero by getting a medal in a FPS, but when he's leaving he ends up losing it and is thrown into a racing game and in there he encounters a girl called Vanelope who has dreamed of competing in the race for ages and finally gets a chance to when she steals the medal from Ralph and uses it to enter the race. Ralph learns the only way to get his medal back is to help Vanelope win the race. However, back at Ralph's old game, due to Ralph not being in the game, when their game starts up, Ralph is not there so they are temporarily put out of order, so Ralph is also on a time limit to get back to his old game before it's shut down for good. Scenes seem well thought out and seem to know when they might seem to start to run stale and cut themselves off before it does, with the exception of a couple of scenes. Scenes are also well thought out however a couple of scenes near the beginning there were a few scenes that felt unnecessary. For example near the beginning, Ralph is going through a metro, which is actually the wires running from the back of the arcade machines which all lead to a power source and can go to whatever game they want. The scene when they do this feels unnecessary because the whole 3 minute scene builds up to a joke which I only got a chuckle out of.
The cinematography in this film is very good. They have a mixture of sets that they experiment with and all of them add to the overall feels that we are in totally different environments as we jump from game to game. When we're in sugar rush, we are in a bright colourful environment with bright personalities but when we're in the fps, we're in a setting that looks a bit like the Alien movies with dark setting and more serious personalities.
The films comedy is mostly good. Most of the jokes work however there were a couple of jokes that I predicted the outcome. One thing I'll admire about the joke department in Wreck-It Ralph is that it doesn't rely on running gags to fill in it's comedic element like most other comedies, instead it relies on mostly thought out humour and light hearted jokes to get itself through and I admire it for that.
The music is well composed but there are a couple of questionable music choices. For example when Vanelope is driving around they chose "shut up and drive." That might sound like a good music choice on paper but in my opinion, I don't think it works in it's execution. Apart from that the music is good.
The acting is also good, however none of the acting particularly stood out. The acting was good but I can't really think of any voice actors in particular that gave a noteworthy performance, except for Alan Tudyk as King Candy. He gives off a gr8 comedic voice for a villain that still fits in with the game he's from.
Overall I still really enjoyed Wreck-It Ralph despite the film having a few shortcomings. I would recommend it to nearly everybody I know. Go out and watch this film.
Super Mario Bros. (1993)
Disgrace to the video games and Nintendo should be ashamed for letting this THING get released
Another movie that popped up into my brain that I decided to critique, since I've finally gotten around to movie reviews, is the Super Mario Bros. movie. I have childhood memories of playing the video games and I just found out a couple of years ago that a movie was actually released based off of the video games. I watched the film and it sucked. Let me tell you why.
The plot of this is sort of like the Super Mario Bros. games. It follows the basic premise of the games where there are 2 Italian plumbers and they need to go rescue a princess, but the movie does this sort of plot in a different way to what the video games did it. In the video games it had Mario jumping on goombas, parakoppers and all sorts of enemies. In the film it has stuff like the brothers being sent to jail, Mario biting a woman's chest (and yes that actually happens in the film) and instead of a huge reptilian creature capturing the princess, we have Dennis Hopper in a business suit who repeatedly says he's a lizard sort of descendant capturing descendant. So yeah the plot doesn't exactly follow the game entirely but at least it got the basic premise correct, sort of.
The main problem I have with this film is that it has little to nothing to do with Super Mario Bros. The only thing it has to do with the Super Mario Bros. is that the characters have the same names as the video game characters. If you decided to change the name of the characters, it could easily pass off as a completely different movie than the Super Mario Bros. Even the actors don't look much like the video game characters and I also have a few issues with the casting choices. Bob Hoskins is playing Mario and I'm going to say that he is probably the only actor that looks sort of like the video game counterpart he was meant to be. John Leguizamo is playing Luigi. OK there are a few problems I have with Leguizamo playing Luigi. One, Bob Hoskins is a British actor so I think it should have been common sense to get another British actor and not a Latino. Two, he doesn't have a moustache. You can't deny the Mario brothers' moustaches are a pretty prominent feature and Leguizamo doesn't have one. There is also Dennis Hopper who plays koopa. I know that in the 90s Dennis Hopper was the prominent actor to get if you want a villain in the movie, but could they at least make him look like koopa? He's still a human. Last I checked, koopa was a great big huge dinosaur esque reptilian creature, not a human businessman. They don't even get the female lead correct. You know how in the games that princess peach is the female lead in the games? Well she isn't in this one as she is replaced by Princess Daisy, from the super Mario land games on game boy.
If casting is bad that's one thing how is the acting. A lot of people seem to criticise the acting in Super Mario Bros. but I'm going to make an exception for one actor and that's Bob Hoskins. He is great, even if he possibly wasn't a good cast choice he still put on a relatively good performance. Everyone else gives off bad acting and every scene feels like they're awkwardly trudging through the bad writing.
One thing that I will say I like in the movie is the effects. Some of the effects that were used in this still hold up well today.
The cinematography is also a thing that I like about this film but I also dislike it. Let me explain. It's good cinematography, but it's not fitting for the film. I love looking at this dark world that's in this film but the whole idea of the settings in super Mario Bros. was that their worlds were bright, colourful and happy. This setting seems to have had a more dark setting to it. So for cinematography in general, it's great but for the tale it's trying to tell, it's bad.
Music for this film is bland, boring and unimaginative. The only thing that I remember sticking out in the music department is the video game theme at the opening. Everything else is just dull, boring, unimaginative and forgettable.
The main thing that goes wrong for this movie is that it doesn't follow it's source material that well. As well as that nearly everything else falls flat. The plot has this dark tone that kids might not really enjoy, especially to the ones that have played the video games and are used to the happy tones set by the games. The cinematography while good, isn't fitting to what sort of tale they're telling. The tone is really unnecessarily dark. The musical score is boring and forgettable. The acting given off from all of the actors is bad, with the exception of Bob Hoskins. Stay clear.
The Happening (2008)
I went in expecting a movie like the triffids, I came out and something 'happened to me'
I've finally started to do movie reviews, which I've wanted to do for quite some time. I decided to start off with in my opinion one of the worst but at the same time one of the best movies I've ever sat through, The Happening.
I only need to say the name of one man and you know how bad/good this movie is "M. Night Shyamalan." Anyone who's ever sat through at least one of this director's films know that he is famous for making good actors turn in horrible performances and it carries on over with the happening as none of the actors seem to be acting normal at all but easily the most entertaining is our main star, Mark Wahlberg. Like Shyamolon, if anyone has seen any movies with Wahlberg in it know how good he is as Wahlberg always seems to turn in brilliant performances, but the Happening is his exception. He seems to deliver his lines in this weird over emphasised tone. Now at first I didn't really think much of it in the first few scenes he was in as I saw he was playing a teacher so I was thinking teachers usually need to speak like this when they address their pupils but as I saw the movie go on, I realise that this is his whole performance. Zooey Deschannel is probably worse than Wahlberg's. Her delivery is about as equally bad but the thing that seems to put her that extra step in front of Wahlberg on the bad acting scale is her facial expressions. She seems to widen her eyes in a lot of the shots, some of them when it's even unnecessary to do it. Everyone else basically delivers the same sort of acting you would expect in a Shyamolon movie.
It's also really lazily written, particularly the script. It's hard to describe how lazily written the script is so what I'm going to do instead is quote a few of the lines from the movie.
"You like hot dogs right?" "Cheese and crackers!" Keep in mind that this is a sort of post-apocalyptic movie and there are just some random lines that are put in this movie about food for some reason.
"All we have left is cough syrup" "Look I don't know if you guys have read an article in the New York Times about honey bees vanishing." I think that should be enough to tell you that the happening is a really bad movie. When I was going into this movie, I was expecting some sort of "the triffids" esque movie, but I just got a poorly directed, badly written, horribly acted post-apocalyptic drama. Avoid this.
Kanon (2006)
Fantastic
How exactly do I sum up kanon? It has a lot of things going for it and I really enjoyed just as much as I think a lot of people will. But the question that I'm asking myself is, is it a masterpiece? The plot meanders around a bit in Kanon but unlike other shows where I will criticise this for I can see that Kanon wasn't necessarily used to create a plot. It was made for the viewers to experience something a little different. They seem to have some sort of a plot going for the first 2-3 episodes where our main character Yuichi Aizawa returns to a little town which he used to spend most of his childhood in but the thing is he doesn't seem to remember much about the town aside from his cousin Nayuki and his aunt Akiko. While spending time in the town he encounters some girls that are all connected with his past and the more time he spends time with them the more he remembers about his past. So the plot goes into arcs with each girl getting about 5 episodes with Yuichi spending time with them and helping them out with problems in their lives. Now you might be sitting there reading this thinking that it doesn't sound that good and you may be right but it isn't exactly about that. It's about how Kanon delivers this to us. The one thing that stands out to me about Kanon is how they deliver this simple idea and turn it into something emotional. I'm not gonna lie I did end up crying a couple of times during Kanon. Mainly because it addresses a few depressing themes. It tackles stuff from self-harm, suicide and disease. But Kanon isn't all about the depressing stuff it does have comedic moments thrown in at times. Personally I think just that should tell you that you should watch this show.
The characters are fantastic and none of them are the same. You have varying characters with all sorts of different personalities. There is the energetic character, the attention seeking character, there is also a character that is intentionally made bland because they want to add a mystery persona about there and they succeed in it. I wasn't that fond of the dub however. There wasn't that much wrong with how the lines were delivered or anything it's just the voice actors in general. They all seem like pretty good voice actors it's just that I didn't really think their voices matched with the characters. I personally preferred the sub version.
The animation is similar to my thoughts of Bunny Drop's animation. Mostly the animation seems good and the animation adds something more to the characters called moe. It makes me like the characters even more with the animation that they're given. I know that that may sound a bit strange but if you watch just one episode of Kanon you will know what I mean. However I did notice sometimes in the show that sometimes the animation stuttered a bit but overall it was good.
Like Bunny Drop there isn't much I can say about the sound in Kanon as unlike other animes there isn't much action (there's like 5 episodes of some sort of action.) The sound that is used in Kanon though is good. That's all I can say about it because there ism't much to talk about it was just good.
I highly recommend Kanon to everybody I know it misses a few marks off of me because of a couple of flaws it has. I would say give it a miss if you can't stand disturbing or depressing themes though.
Usagi doroppu (2011)
Beautiful
The one way that I can describe bunny drop or Usagi drop is unique. It tackles a subject that is rarely tackled in anime, parenting. Bunny drop is what it is, it's short but sweet but that also brings up one of the things I don't like about the anime. It feels too short, lasting only 14 episodes. I'd say 20 would have been much better.
The main plot of Bunny Drop is that Daikichi is attending his Grandfather's funeral and while there he realises there is a little girl he hasn't seen before. It's revealed by his grandmother that she is actually his Grandfather's daughter that he had about 7 years ago with his house maid. Yes I was also confused that that would technically make her Daikichi's auntie but it's just best to forget about that. The little girl is called Rin. After the funeral the topic is brought up about who will take care of Rin. No one is willing to take care of Rin but Daikichi decides to do the noble thing and take her in. The main plot of the anime from then on is about how Daikichi takes care of Rin. Keep in mind that Daikichi has gone from working for how long he physically can and earning a lot of money and paying just for himself, to working from the morning to the end of Rin's nursery, earning less money and now needing to pay for two people. Bunny drop is just that. There's no action or fighting or anything else. That's where the charm comes in to Bunny Drop. It's really simple and doesn't try to force anything down your throat and it doesn't add things that are really unnecessary. Most of the plot for Bunny Drop if it were in any other anime I would just call it filler. Mainly because the plot doesn't branch of to anything. But the main purpose of Bunny drop is to give people a look into what parenting is like and for that the plot succeeds in my books.
The characters are mostly great. Daikichi seems to be the ideal sort of character personality if this sort of situation was thrown at someone. Rin is possibly the greatest kid ever. She is well mannered, she's cute and she thinks of others. The other characters are OK but you might be thinking "There must be an exception" and you're right there is an exception. About halfway through the series Daikichi gets into contact with Rin's biological mother and she is the exception. She seems to be the only character I have a real big disliking for. I sort of think that takes something away from Bunny Drop due to it being a sweet show. I also think that plot arc takes a bit away from Bunny Drop. I think what Bunny Drop was mainly aiming to do was to be a nice sweet anime tackling the issue of parenting. I thought that Daikichi taking care of Rin was good enough and I find this particular part of the show just there to show bad sides of parenting. I thought that that was already tackled well enough with Daikichi taking care of Rin. Other than that the characters are good.
The animation in this is mostly good and is put to really good use. I also though the animation was fit and soothing for Bunny Drop. What I mean by this is that the animation fits towards the overall tone that Bunny Drop is going for. The kids look cute, the backgrounds look calm and overall it looks great. However there is this one exception in the animation. At the start of every episode for maybe the first 2 mins of each episode, there is a weird different looking sort of animation that looks like the animation that's used for the show only it looks like it wasn't completely finished. It doesn't have the charm the rest of the animation has I think the main problem with this is that I believe this animation was hand drawn only and didn't put much animation in. I also don't entirely get why they change the animation for the opening 2 mins of each episode and it looks really unappealing. It was so bad that when I started up the anime on the first episode and I saw the animation, I was really tempted just to stop watching it. I was so happy to find out that that wasn't the animation they were going to use for the whole show.
There isn't much I can really say about the sound. I tend to comment on the sound if I'm reviewing other sorts of anime that are action packed with tons of varying sorts of sound going on but with Bunny Drop there isn't much sound I can comment on. I can't even talk about the dub because there hasn't been a dub made. The only thing I can say about the sound is that it's good. There is good use of environment noises just to fit the calming tone of Bunny Drop, the Japanese voice actors do a really good job and none of the voices felt too much out of place or not fitting for a character.
Overall I recommend Bunny Drop to any sort of anime watcher, however if you're thinking of having kids someday, maybe this anime isn't for you. But Bunny Drop will satisfy almost everybody else with everything it has to offer and succeeds in what it was trying to do.
Digimon Data Squad (2006)
A lot of problems yet passable
*Disclaimer* this is my first anime review so apologies if I miss out on any important things I should be paying attention to also there are going to be spoilers in this review and this is the first digimon show that I've sat through. If you think I can't give this show a fair rating because I haven't seen the alternative material this show is based off of feel free to stop reading now
This is a show that I remembered watching when I was 6 years old and thought it was awesome. I rewatched it quite recently to see if it was as good as I remember. Is it? No. Was it still good? For the most part yes.
The story is that our main character is Marcus Damen a high school boy who encounters Agumon a digimon on the run from the data squad. They befriend each other and the data squad notice their bond and hire them to work for them. The plot in the first 10 episodes or so is relatively weak with it acting like some sort of more action packed Pokémon episode. It starts to pick up a bit after it finishes this mark though. There's a scientist who used to work for Markus's father 'who is currently missing' that comes to DATs wanting to go on an expedition to the digital world to confront the head of the digimon, Merukimon. He brings an army with him and when they get there he kills Merukimon which DATs are shocked by and the plot for the majority of the rest of the show is to stop Kurota, the scientist.
One thing I don't really like in this show is the amount of side plots they have going on and keeps on getting side-tracked and is full of filler episodes that are really unnecessary.
The main characters are OK with one exception. Markus, Thomas and Keenan are all given a good background and back story, Markus and Keenan especially but Yoshi is the exception. She feels bland and she seems really unnecessary in most of the show's situations except to stop Markus and Thomas having arguments. I have the same problem with the digimon. Falkomon, Keenan's digimon is probably the best as he's given a really scarring back story. Agumon, Markus' digimon is OK but he isn't given much background but he is a good bit of comic relief. Gaolmon and Lalamon, Thomas' and Yoshi's digimon respectively, like Yoshi feel bland and aren't given much reason for me to like them. They say they have a strong relationship with their digimon partners. Markus and agumon and Keenan and Falcomon I can see have bonds but Thomas and Gaolmon and Yoshi and Lalamon I just see them giving orders to each other. Keenan and Markus talk with their digimon and play around with them and the others I see nothing.
I can't really say much about the animation except it's OK but the animation is really good during fight scenes. I can't really explain why it just is. The sound is also gr8 in the show. The dub is actually better than the sub in my opinion
Final verdict Digimon: Data squad is good enough for kids and is a good distraction for them but there is little to please other audiences.
Pros + Action scenes are fantastically put together + Good lore + gr8 sound + good dub Cons - Most characters are bland - Some have uninteresting back stories - Some talking scenes are boring