Scalpelexis

86 knows how to reward the viewer. Everything we deserved and wanted. More please...?

A relatively naive and slyly manipulative attempt at a tear-jerker that doesn't forge hot steel with an impeccable first half only to boil with water that has long since evaporated from the pot. The narrative doesn't waste time on Haruto and Misaki getting to know each other, and it quickly flips in an unpleasantly suspect manner through the first wild images, which will hardly overwhelm audiences saturated with Japanese cinema (or the uninitiated, most likely) with its inventiveness and use of metaphor/experience. Despite some noteworthy foreshadowing, which my romantic self didn't mind at all, I wished that this part could have been prolonged substantially (note: It's almost unbearably ironic that the relativity and evenness of the time sequences of the two halves is woefully out of balance with the rub of the film). After all, it wouldn't be the Japanese if they didn't pour not a dash but a full demijohn of emotion into it, and so I was sorry they didn't take a clear opportunity to maximize the happiness of the characters, and the audience on the receiving end, so that the subsequent dramatic impact would be all the more crushingly effective. The whole time you can see clear from the moon what the director was trying to accomplish, but in my opinion they missed the target by the distance of Pluto and made the second hour drag excruciatingly slowly for the filmmakers, the actors, and above all the audience. The hitherto passable script completely crumbles, the characters start acting downright unnaturally; I truly hate it when a simple and obvious solution is thrown away to create an artificial island of disaster. Ultimately, the relationship between the main characters is bitterly unrealistic, and the final showdown left me shrugging my shoulders. It's a great shame, because the potential was enormous and its skillful exploitation would certainly have left me emotionally destroyed. I have no complaints about the actors, cinematography, or music. The disappointment that’s filling me up inside won't let me go higher than a very shabby 3 stars.

A semi-developed, colorful, and somewhat childish yet relaxing film from the slice-of-life stable, mixing touches of the cultures of the current teenage generation and those up to 2 generations older without deeper connections. The curmudgeonly Cherry sold me on the unusual hobby for his age of haiku writing with about as much success as he had on his Twitter profile and the influencer Smile's streaming about what's on sale at the mall right now didn't enrich me much mentally either. Weaving Cherry and Smile's storylines together made minimal sense, and Cherry's distant demeanor in particular stood in the way of building any more sensitive atmosphere more successfully than any politician's unwelcome bill (poor Smile was even pushed by the plot into liking his haiku-status without even reading it). I understand that the goal wasn't exactly to think about anything (though haiku composition lends itself to that – but how can I take it seriously when one of its promoters was committing excessive vandalism?), but without a solid foundation and natural causality/development/relationship dynamics, the climax and slightly cheesy ending finale aren't going to have much punch. I liked the overtime assembly work and would-be coincidental connections between names, events, and appearances, but I didn't feel any destiny in it. I also quite liked the backstory of the lost record, but the whole denouement of finding it (whether primary or secondary) could have had a hair more epic and complicated contours. The headphones vs face mask had underdeveloped symbolism. The best part hands down was the playful artwork (when it wasn't playing around with 3D nonsense) full of life, positivity, good cheer, and generally something I honestly didn't expect from Satelight. I think the film would have benefitted more from getting split into about three OVAs so that we get better character background development, more genuine bonding, and more imaginative use of the haiku's message. As it is, it's just your average fake lights at sunset, 3 stars.

Didn't you find it a little half-baked? Compared to the Mandalorian, Boba is as clueless as an army of workers at an excavation site and offers less in terms of plot than a completed crossword puzzle. Not to mention the fact that unless you've just seen The Mandalorian, half of the pure fan service will be largely incomprehensible to you. I was living under the illusion that Fett was a cool hired assassin, not a sensitive soul with the tiniest little heart and a head full of almost childish naivety. Favreau either used Boba as an additional cheap cash cow or downright snapped early on in his ideas of what he was supposed to do with Boba. So for good measure, he switched over to the Beskar-clad Mando track and tragicomically benched the main character for the last few episodes. Din Djarin's perpetually hidden face gives off 100x more likability and believability than the pointlessly almost constantly uncovered Fett, and the other characters (the moto gang of spoiled LA teenagers) don't help one bit. I'd expect more from Rodriguez in the director's chair than those idiotic episodes full of the lamest action (Um, you know you've fired about 1000 times into those shields already, right?), so the only thing worth highlighting from the originals are the solid flashback passages with the Tuskens. That's a pathetically small amount, so the verdict is clear: Leave Fett in the Bacta tank and slam this "book" shut forever. Barely 3 stars

High-five! Apart from Chinese food, I'm not a fan of other products from this country, and donghuas are no exception (the gamer with scarf and an umbrella didn't impress me), so I need a proper smackdown to watch another one, and the ranking/recommendations for Link Click couldn't be ignored for long; especially since the supernatural genre is my favorite treat. In the end it was well worth it and I would have clawed my way back so as to not be slacking for so long. For the time-travel genre, Link Click has a superb structure, solidly plays with time twists, and it's all done in a way as simple as a slap in the face, which makes you wonder why such a successful approach isn't taken more often. A few opening episodes for a quick denouement and a natural flow towards the main storyline is almost imperceptible and all the more remarkable when we start artfully weaving the past into an engaging present. The more classic buddy duo of the calculating cool hand and the emotive idealist resolutely fight their way through the poignant human stories of the less fortunate and surprisingly explore the supporting characters far more than they present themselves, which for me is surely the most significant minus of the entire series. To fully enjoy this thriller's ride from one cliffhanger to the next, I would have welcomed a more intimate connection to Lu and Cheng, but I admit that I couldn't find room to shoehorn this presentation into how bloated the script and atmosphere are already. Indeed, I got heavily into the civilized episodes related mostly to the petty debts of old relationships and the uncompromising switches to the detective thriller-style, even considerably dramatic levels. It's not difficult to see through the final shenanigans, yet my face stretched out like the teacher from GTO at the last scenes, and the second series either promises the first clumsy somersault or such a flub that we'll be pleading for another ASAP. While I'm not a fan of the lisping and grunting of Chinese, it's made up for by the English-language opening song, and artistically it has nothing to be ashamed of. For 5 stars it was lacking something that would have outright blown me away, but I have a feeling I'll get there with more photos. An elegantly strong 4 stars

Is it just me or did they replace the writers from season 1 with the clowns from the president’s office? Or do I have to be somehow educated in DOTA lore, which I'm not? Because I absolutely did not get what was going on here. I'm having trouble thinking of a single character who was consistent with their character, knew what they were doing, and yet wasn't awkwardly and weirdly enamored with Davion, who did absolutely nothing. Lina? The handmaiden and the blue-winged wyvern? The teleporter? The departure of an episodic bad guy? The connections between episodes are chaotic, and the direction of the plot is like rolling a 50-sided die. Aside from these major flaws, the other qualities from Season 1 remain, but this was all Greek to me. A better 2 stars.

I've had an aversion to abstractness since I was a kid, and in the case of Arcane this was helped by my long-standing dislike of League of Legends. I didn't believe you could make a quality animated series based on fictional characters that didn't have as sophisticated a background as other similar previous projects that didn't even land well themselves. Wonder never cease, and especially this minor point: Arcane actually achieves nearly 6 stars out of Whirlpool's 5, and even that rating is still a few percent off in my biased eyes. While the story is fairly unoriginal and alternates between the stale plot standards you'd see in any similar sibling rivalry story whose scope has significant geographical and political ramifications (ok, maybe not enough of them fit that description), it's truly put together in a detailed way. The solidly depicted bipolar world is filled with characters with deeper motivations, rational and conversely psychotic reasoning, under the baton of perfectly tight direction that gradually adds to the fire until the anticipated ecstatic finale. I absolutely must single out the excellent sense of art as the camera leans towards exploring previously unrecognized angles and excellent visuals (it took about an episode to get used to it), enticing you to explore every millimeter of it, which you never fail to do, gladly and repeatedly. The action is dense: Whether whizzing past or in slow motion, machine-gun battles or mano-a-mano, not holding back even from a glimpse of less comfortable images. The modern pop soundtrack didn't blow me away, but I would praise the fitting dubbing. Arcane is exceptionally over-the-top in just about every column, and a rare treat for both younger and older viewers. Despite its narrative clichés, a near perfect animated spectacle.

Finally, one very well made fantasy anime that, towards the end, lives up to its premature abandonment of replicating negativity and pessimism in the opening. The story of Naofumi, a reviled hero who comes by nothing easily, is refreshing in his bitterness, disdain for virtue, and successfully models the cruel injustice of life. You'll find yourself raging with him at the unkindness around him, fleeing from places where incessant gossip spreads everywhere, and wrestling with a fate that, unlike the other heroes, has given you a far inferior tool to fight with. Indeed, I enjoyed getting a glimpse into the stirring character of this untrusting anti-hero, and I liked that his consistently but rarely displayed humanity was constantly getting beaten down as if by a gang of thugs in a dark alley. Because of this, Naofumi's sourness and disgust was believable for half the series, and suitably complemented by the contrasting positive duo of the overly perfect Raphtalia and the childish Filo. By the end, you discover that the whole plot has deeper mythological roots, and I'm thrilled with myself for recognizing Penkin's music from the first notes. So what’s wrong with it? I feel like a bit of a killjoy, but I wished we had stuck with the main character's suffering longer. The grilling wasn't quite seen all the way through to my taste, and in the moments when even that wasn’t happening, it was sadly packed with filler. For 2/3 of the anime you feel that it's not just about our group, the other heroes are also working on their development with different missions, only to return at the very end to the stereotypes of substandard, dim-witted whippersnappers. Then we start focusing more on the shōnen-esque multiplication of abilities with suitably bland names and I started getting the unfortunate feeling that the protagonist was obnoxiously invincible. Why be generic like other, more consumer-friendly isekai? Well, I guess I just answered my own question. But it's their loss, because Shield Hero was definitely aiming for higher standards. But what isn't can still be, and I'll probably give the next season a chance. Just shy of 4 stars

A very pointless combo of Fate/stay night + Black Bullet + Magical Girls and yes, if this already sounds stupid, it is indeed Takt-lessly so. If even a single mind with some awareness had sat down for a few minutes to think about it, the idea of mixing a roadtrip through apocalyptic America with a superhero movie’s liquidation of blizzards of aliens might not have become futile along the way. I can imagine an episodic, human narrative, learning about the protagonists' pasts, their struggles with inner demons, and other meaningful character development. This last part came to us like salt in coffee, and to all appearances we were supposed to be reveling in the exaggerated design of the magical ladies and their colossal crushing of enemy scum. The main male character, Takt, was as sweet-faced as the nastiest thunderstorm, and the motivations and thinking of the bad guys was like fifth-hand pawn shop quality. You would have thought that the musical themes would be ubiquitous and reasonably complementary, and even though we were hearing familiar tunes from European operas, the attempt to sell some mission of music in our lives was poor to the point of pathetic. Frankly, I was also annoyed by the choice of character names; especially the pronunciation of "Cosette" as "Cozetto" dropped my enjoyment below the freezing point. The only plus in this column from me goes to the admittedly rather underdeveloped but likable duo of the fatherly Lenny and the mischievous Titan. The reason is that the budget was poured into the CGI effects of the various gunshots, explosions, and supernatural motion creations during the fight scenes, which may have glittered like something out from a desk at the Ufotable animation studio, but for MAPPA the choreography and distinctiveness was surprisingly sterile and constantly repetitive. Overall, it felt like the creators were having a lot of fun for about 3 episodes, but after that they somehow wanted to get it off their chest despite powerful opposition. I don't blame them at all. 2 stars

And I make it less than 1 cm closer to Shinkai every year, because I actually write reviews a few miles closer to Japan than most. Jokes aside, his fantasy-heavy screenwriting style has so far failed to light any kind of pleasant stirring within me, and yet the opening story got off to a good start. I like the motivational story of overcoming the boundaries of the unknown to achieve a desired goal, and the main couple do that with naive but dogged dedication. A person from the Western Hemisphere might be surprised by the ultimate indifference and modesty in expressing and showing feelings and emotions, but the endearing harmony in it warms the heart. Even though I understand the message of the other two stories, in the shadow of the previous work it’s hard to find the logic behind not only the behavior of the central couple, but the overall philosophical approach to the subject matter. Even though I believe the next 2/3 of the anime is about poetically mourning over humble fate and emotional perseverance, in my mind it inadvertently came off as a critique of impotence in the end. The script casually helps all this along by outright avoiding explanations of essential facts and never answering completely banal questions like: "Why didn’t they go by train again? Why didn't they call and just wrote?". While I don't think I'm jaded emotionally, I guess I'm too accustomed to and grounded by the endless batch of Japanese affected and elaborate untold love stories that more variations on this incomprehensible act of waiting for Godot won't pull me out of it. I did not get the feeling that this was the love of the century. I did not get the feeling that I was being given compelling reasons to feel sorry for the unfulfilled grandiosity or instead to nod appreciatively: "Yeah, that's just how life is!". The best element, as always is with Shinkai, are the beautiful images accompanied by either a tastefully chosen soundtrack or subtle Japanese pop. If there's one thing I appreciate about the tedious dragging, it's enjoying the audiovisuals, which are magnificent. But I'll never give 5 stars for that alone.