Back to Khashishi's Profile Khashishi's Profile 263i1k

I'm surprised by the very high rating here. There might be a story here, but it is held back by some weak animation, sound, and direction. Also, the story is unfinished, with the movie just ending as things start to heat up. The characters and art don't project a lot of emotion. The whole thing is just dry.

The struggle of human society adapting to robots is not uncommon in sci-fi. In this case, the presence of a cafe where robots can act like people is a fresh take. It shows that the robots are a lot more human than they seem on the outside. But, ... we don't see enough of the outside to really feel the conflicts.

The animation is stiff and has very little motion, often feeling like a slideshow. Often, nothing is moving for a few seconds. The backgrounds have a VN look to them, with the characters drawn over, just flapping their lips and nothing else. Occasionally, the camera will rotate around a bit, showing off the 3d environment. There are a lot of jump cuts and it isn't always clear how much time is represented by a cut, or if it's a flashback.

The OST is pretty weak, and there are a lot of silent scenes which, combined with the low animation, feel empty. When there is music, it's not impressive.

It's actually pretty well done, but it doesn't know if it's trying to be an homage to Heroes of the Storm, or be its own thing. You can't do both.

Fans of HotS can enjoy the first half geeking over the familiar characters and setting being brought to life. The characterization is great for Stitches, Gazlowe, Nova, and acceptable for Valla. We get to see them battle in a couple arenas, with Dragon Shire really being brought to life. The fights are decent, and we get to see some moves used by the game characters. It is an unofficial work, and it's easy to enjoy it ... for what it is. The underdog story is pretty cool as long as they keep it close to the original game.

But then, the writers decided they wanted to do their own thing. The second half takes place outside of the setting of the game, and basically is a bunch of drama and talking and no gameplay and minimal fighting between characters. This kind of shift could work for a standalone project, but absolutely fails for an homage project. We still see game characters, but they are no longer characterized like they are in game, and basically become bland exposition dumps.

Animation is good, full CGI. Music seems to rip from other sources, but is combined well. Pacing is poor, with everything feeling very slow. There are a lot of CGI sequences which feel like they drag on way too long, and excessive amounts of flashbacks, which makes it hard to watch even at 1.5 times speed.

I'm putting Mixed Feelings because I think fans of HotS should watch the first half of the series, but then skip the rest.

They aren't joking: this is the most Love Polygon show I've come across. EVERY major character is part of one giant clusterfuck. It's pretty cringe, but the other parts of the plot really make up for it and make this a good viewing.

It gets off to a slow start, with the relationship melodrama taking the center stage, and the topic of racism. It drags out for such a long while that I started to assume the whole show was like this. But, the show turned out to be Very Surprising, indeed. Big things start happening in the middle, and the show starts to introduce other ... topics. This is where it gets really interesting. Though, after stabilizing, it returns back to love polygon angst taking the center stage. It comes to a nice beautiful conclusion where everything is wrapped up.

A big issue I have is that most of the characters are unlikable, which makes it hard to care about their relationships. It's hard to see why so many characters fall in love with other characters, when I don't see them as lovable.

It's refreshing to see a fantasy world which is not a swords and sorcery fantasy. It's squandered by making the underwater village basically a copy of real life above ground architecture and technology, with nonsensical roads, people walking around, crying tears, cooking with a pot on the stove in the standard kitchen (though they are supposed to be underwater), etc. The mythology is pretty cool, with a festival which feels authentic.

The music is pretty nice. I like both OP and EDs.

A promising concept held back by mostly weak characters and bland execution. I almost dropped this during the lackluster early episodes. But it does get good near the end.

The structure is mostly episodic, with one or more new guest characters coming in at the beginning, with information revealed about them during the span of the show, finally revealing their fate. A weakness here is that the information is just handed to the audience, mostly through unearned notes that are found in books or randomly fall from the sky or similar. It would have been better to tie the reveals to some kind of character catharsis, ... or to some completed task, which would give it some more emotional impact. So, for the most part, these guest characters are bland.

Things become interesting with the character introduced in ep 3. He is the most interesting character, and adds some necessary spice to the show.

The rest of the characters are not great. The major characters are largely described by some cringe behaviors; for example, the director is lazy and sleeps on duty. It's not just a character trait he has, but rather a trait that he is fully modeled around. The MC has some weird obsession with the cooking girl which just keeps getting displayed.

The tone is inconsistent, with the goofiness of the characters making it hard to take seriously, but the story getting darker near the end.

There are some excellent musical performances in some episodes, with some nice jazz saxophone.

I enjoyed the second part more than the first part of New World. The science is still kind of OP magic, but the strategizing, suspense, and hype building makes up for it. Add some solid visuals and great soundtrack and it is a great experience.

What this show does better than most shounens is giving us worthy adversaries. They are not mere brutes but also use strategy and show some agency and use information gathering. A lot of other shows use super strong dumb enemies who are stationary hills to be climbed over but not this. Both the protagonists and the antagonists push the plot in ... a great battle of wits.

The science stuff is kind of weak, and it didn't really make up the focus of this part. There is an unrealistic supply of resources and time to engineer and manufacture parts.

Watching this anime is eating a big bowl of pure sugar, full of teeth-rotting empty calories. You've got a cute little girl who is some writer's embodiment of wish fulfillment for a perfect daughter. She's smart, easy to care for, loves her daddy, and doesn't cause trouble. And the daddy MC never stops going on about how cute she is, that it gets annoying. The characters and situations just lack any sort of authenticity and don't resemble real people at all. If you don't mind that and just want some cheesy happy cute series with no drama, then maybe you'll enjoy it. But if you ... want something to ponder, then stay away.

The story mostly avoids difficulties in child rearing. Any other potential difficulties are resolved quickly without effort.

The animation is slightly below average, with generally acceptable quality but no moments which look great. The music is a bit on the annoying side.

The characters are all fairly one dimensional with no real trials which test their range of emotions, so there's not much to say about the acting.

It's like Spy x Family without interesting characters, without interesting premise, without an overarching plot, and with much worse production value.

For a chibi short, this is a bit different than some others that I've seen in that it follows the story of the main series quite closely. (Don't watch this without watching the main series.) You can watch it in parallel or watch after the main series as a recap.

You could probably classify this as an educational series, as mostly it adds a bit of explanatory context to the plot, such as some properties of herbs or poisons, and some symbolism. If you have watched Kimetsu no Yaiba, this series is very similar to the Taisho secrets segment at the end of some episodes, though ... the info here is more relevant to real life.

The animation is really very nice, and the designs are very nice, but I can't say I feel anything after watching it. The story is a bit of a head-scratcher, but I don't think it's really worth trying to decipher the full meaning. The basic meaning is clear enough: getting people from around the world to play together heals the world. But I don't know what these little elemental spirits are supposed to be, or what they have to do with the Olympics. Maybe worth watching for the animation, but your life will be no different if you skip it.

Here's a nice movie with a basic plot told in the most interesting way possible. It's definitely style over substance, and I respect that, though I prefer something a little deeper. Like other Satoshi Kon movies, it blurs the line between reality and imagination in order to tell the story. The main draw of this movie is the imaginative way that the story is presented. We see the story of the actress's life presented through scenes from movies she's acted in. Compared to Paprika, Millenium Actress is a lot simpler to understand, since there isn't really that much that happens. It gets a bit repetitive ... since the same life events get shown through many movies.

The animation is decent. There aren't really any breathtaking sakuga bits, but nothing to complain about either. Due to the nature of the work, we can see many different settings presented, though they all kinda have a similar color palette and look to them, which is a bit of a missed opportunity. It does show it's age, as the colors don't look as vibrant as today's works.

The music didn't stand out to me. Pretty forgettable.

If we imagine that this movie is the documentary of this actress's life, it is a really beautiful way of presenting it. But her life could have been more interesting.

I unfortunately gave the 2nd Season a poor rating before watching these special episodes, but rewatching the series after watching this makes the series a lot better. These special episodes really do tie everything together for season 2, and season 2 shouldn't be considered complete without this. So, I feel like I have to give this a 10 to make up for the poor review of the rest of season 2.

My main criticisms of season 2 were that Yuxiu and Ling'er don't do much and all the fighting is by random side characters we don't care about. Well, these episodes really do put the spotlight ... on Yuxiu and Ling'er, and also explain a lot of the behind the scenes stuff that occurred before in season 2 which involves Ling'er. And also, on second watch I do find myself caring more about these side characters once the complicated interactions are explained a bit better.

Another criticism was that that the power creep brought everyone to grandmaster level and you don't have that hand to hand combat or hand to weapon combat you had before. Well that part is still kind of true, but we do get to see some large diversity in skill levels in these episodes which makes things a bit more refreshing.

The action goes hard, and the story all comes together.