(note: this is a rather old review but always kinda liked it, and since i haven't done shit lately, any activity is good activity)
So you wake up one morning to find your crankin' hand has turned into some chick who's always dug you? Straight, lets roll with this XD I wont go further into the basic story because a: there's a dozen reviews already here and b: you can look the hell up in the story synopsis for that if you still need it crowbarred in.
The show has one of the more outlandish premises i've seen in a show that isn't centered around pure chaos(a`la Abenobashi). sure the original set up is straight out of left field but the show itself is well written, has very likable characters and can easily put a smile on the face of the most angsty of the broody-brood set. The show has a fairly long list of good points and only a few, that i could find, of bad points.
for the good, lets start with the most important: IT ENDS!!
I don't know why, but a good percentage of Ro-Co's(romantic comedy) leave you with an ending that's left open so as to not piss off too many fans who wanted a specific ending. this show is at least kind enough to give you an ending. is it completely obvious 10 minutes into episode 1 what that ending will be? yes, but that's not the point. this show thrives on its characters: put them in the sun and watch them shine. Takamizawa being one of the best of the supporting cast. He's obsessed with dolls and puppets and is the only person in this entire universe that can actually see the fact that there is a frikkin person on protag-Seiji's wrist, which really doesn't solidify your hope for mankind. Of course he originally thinks she's a puppet to begin with and tries to get it naked so he can see the serial code so he can try and get one himself.
After Taka, there's Seiji's neighbor's 10(i believe) year old daughter who's got a mad-on for him, as well as a girl from school who keeps trying to set up the perfect opportunities for them to hook up that always are explained in a way that reminded you of when the Coyote finished setting up a trap for the Roadrunner and would non-verbally exposit exactly what he wanted to happen before it's inevitable downfall. I gotta admit, these fantasy sequences are flat-out awesome and even come equipped with title and ending sequences to cement the fact that every one of these people are bat-shit insane.
the biggest problem i had with the show was that, no matter how awesome the characters are, the bulk of them just disappear after a certain moment. loli-fest drops off the earth after her centric episode half-way through the series and Taka Kaiser Soze's after some chick runs after him like a fool in love, but at least that one makes a little sense since it can just be said that they were off making nasty, cosplay-rific, pimply(that's pimple-e, not pimp-ly), oily whoopee. The sister character only shows up to scream 'boogadu-boogie' every now again, steal all of Seiji's money and say something to try and get him and Midori together. What made me furious the most is that the character of Midori's maid seemed like she would be an awesome character to put into the story some, i know it would be hard to do but it looked like they took so much time into giving her a personality to just toss it all in the wastebasket and go about their day.
the only other bad part was some of the music. i heard a trumpet's wah-wah waaaaaaah a few too many times and was glad there was no chase scenes cause you just KNOW that Yakety Sax would cue up. But, as for bad parts, that's about it.some of the sound bytes were archaic and they dropped some characters with no explanation. But the goods far out-way that and its hard to properly convey how well this show is put together. if you're a fan of sight gags, cute and/or odd story telling and rocoms, i suggest you check this show out some time.
The show was released in the U.S under the title. "Midori Days" due to Media Blasters wanting to sell their shows to more than weeaboos. It has one wonderful thing the original does not, Bloopers! An amazing addition to any show, the first time I ever saw that was in Berserk and oh god did i fall in love with that show(might go into it in a later review[i'm going to have to make a drinking game compiled of all the times i say that]). It should not be hard to find the entire series in a collection set on the cheap, so there's very few reasons not to find it
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Sunday, June 5, 2011
X-Men: The First Class
as a prologue, to properly convey how i went in to this movie(like a few other people) i had absolutely no expectations coming into this movie. The trailer pissed me off to no end; What's Angel Salvadore doing there... and why doesn't she look trashy as all shit/Wait... Havoc is younger than Scott, wts?!/Is the villain supposed to be the Cold War?
But, I got off work early yesterday and decided to give it a shot, lord knows you can't be burned if you EXPECT the movie to be shit(see my Avatar Review for a contradiction to that fact) so i decided to downshift my dorkness and try it out, and what followed is something that I, honestly, thought i would never say: The First Class actually achieved the same result as The Dark Knight.
... You know what? I don't think i need to talk about the movie in general as there are much more in depth and less-ramblely reports on the movie out there(highly recommend the Movie Bob review over at escapistmagazine.com) so I'm going to touch on something i don't think anyone else really noticed from this movie.
We all know that, in the previous movies(and in this one particular) Magneto has,when not being a genocidal douchefuck, always look at mutants who think low of themselves and seen the greatness inside them. Like he, alone, was able to pierce the veil of social norms and see people for the beautiful, unique, snowflake that they are. Why, in the TFC, he is regularly harping on Raven that she needs to be more accepting of herself and let her scaly ass shine instead of hiding... Hell, when beast shows up all furry, Erik says he looks awesome and the dude thinks he is fucking with him and nearly chokes him out. But, if you pay close enough attention, it looks less like he's just an accepting guy, and more like he is trying very hard to not be anything like the Nazi(... wait, is the plural for Nazi still 'Nazi', like with moose? ah, who care) who had him at their whim during his formative years.
I know this sounds odd, but think about it. Here was a group of people brainwashed(god, i hope it was that because the alternative is just too fucking depressing) into thinking that all people who weren't what they considered 'proper' were disgusting aberrations that needed to be contained and eradicated. Now think that someone who fell WELL into this category was spared such a fate by them because Kevin Bacon had a science-boner for them, they would seriously have some issues with them, not only because of what they did to you(and, oh man, do you see that he had some issues with them, physically), but because of who and what they were. You would probably spend your life, when not plotting out all the wonderful ways he wished to dispatch every Nazi who escaped prosecution of course, making damn sure you saw people for as much of what they were as possible. Enter the only other mutants he has ever seen: Society will hate them and a good portion of them are physically awkward. So, naturally, he tells them all that they are beautiful and they are good enough, they are smart enough, and, doggone it, people like them, but it seems so wooden and forced, like he's trying to convince himself that they are not abominations as much as he is trying to convince them. He is trying so hard to be as unlike the people who wronged him, that his is ham-fisting them something that you can actually see he doesn't fully believe
No wonder, though, her was so focused on trying to see them as normal and fine, that he completely missed that he turned into a fascist cockstain who wanted to kill every thing that didn't have an active X-gene.
It's not even ironic anymore, it's just fucking sad.
post script
i may get into what i really thought of the movie and why, exactly, everything that pissed me off did, but right now i got a new comp to put through its paces
But, I got off work early yesterday and decided to give it a shot, lord knows you can't be burned if you EXPECT the movie to be shit(see my Avatar Review for a contradiction to that fact) so i decided to downshift my dorkness and try it out, and what followed is something that I, honestly, thought i would never say: The First Class actually achieved the same result as The Dark Knight.
... You know what? I don't think i need to talk about the movie in general as there are much more in depth and less-ramblely reports on the movie out there(highly recommend the Movie Bob review over at escapistmagazine.com) so I'm going to touch on something i don't think anyone else really noticed from this movie.
We all know that, in the previous movies(and in this one particular) Magneto has,when not being a genocidal douchefuck, always look at mutants who think low of themselves and seen the greatness inside them. Like he, alone, was able to pierce the veil of social norms and see people for the beautiful, unique, snowflake that they are. Why, in the TFC, he is regularly harping on Raven that she needs to be more accepting of herself and let her scaly ass shine instead of hiding... Hell, when beast shows up all furry, Erik says he looks awesome and the dude thinks he is fucking with him and nearly chokes him out. But, if you pay close enough attention, it looks less like he's just an accepting guy, and more like he is trying very hard to not be anything like the Nazi(... wait, is the plural for Nazi still 'Nazi', like with moose? ah, who care) who had him at their whim during his formative years.
I know this sounds odd, but think about it. Here was a group of people brainwashed(god, i hope it was that because the alternative is just too fucking depressing) into thinking that all people who weren't what they considered 'proper' were disgusting aberrations that needed to be contained and eradicated. Now think that someone who fell WELL into this category was spared such a fate by them because Kevin Bacon had a science-boner for them, they would seriously have some issues with them, not only because of what they did to you(and, oh man, do you see that he had some issues with them, physically), but because of who and what they were. You would probably spend your life, when not plotting out all the wonderful ways he wished to dispatch every Nazi who escaped prosecution of course, making damn sure you saw people for as much of what they were as possible. Enter the only other mutants he has ever seen: Society will hate them and a good portion of them are physically awkward. So, naturally, he tells them all that they are beautiful and they are good enough, they are smart enough, and, doggone it, people like them, but it seems so wooden and forced, like he's trying to convince himself that they are not abominations as much as he is trying to convince them. He is trying so hard to be as unlike the people who wronged him, that his is ham-fisting them something that you can actually see he doesn't fully believe
No wonder, though, her was so focused on trying to see them as normal and fine, that he completely missed that he turned into a fascist cockstain who wanted to kill every thing that didn't have an active X-gene.
It's not even ironic anymore, it's just fucking sad.
post script
i may get into what i really thought of the movie and why, exactly, everything that pissed me off did, but right now i got a new comp to put through its paces
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