Rate the last anime you watched out of 10

awadama

awadama

Cardcaptor
One Piece: Stampede

This is awful, even by the very low standard of One Piece movies.

Movies based on shonen shows usually have a flimsy story, but Asda Smart Price toilet paper has more substance than this. The first 30 minutes is some kind of Fortnite/Wacky Races routine - the remaining hour is just one big fight against a boring man.

It's hyped up as some kind of "love letter" to One Piece, but all that means is that dozens of characters from 15 years ago show up, have a line or two, then vanish again. Oh it's Wapol. And there's Django. It's Foxy now. There's Jewelry Bonney. And Crocodile. Wow.

The story is crap. The animation is...fine, I guess. I had to watch it over three nights because it's just so boring. I couldn't have coped sitting in the cinema to watch this all in one go.

2/10
 
awadama

awadama

Cardcaptor
@Neil.T It really doesn't deserve that one star, but I'd get annoyed if I had something without a star rating by it on Anime Planet. I gave this absolute mess half a star (out of five stars) on there, so I guess that translates into 1/10.

Really though, there's absolutely nothing good about the show. The story is nonsense but also horrible. The characters are a hateful shower. The dub just seems to be a huge piss take. Even the OP and ED songs are bad.

But on the bright side, at least it's another DVD I can get out of the house! At the minute I'm split between leaving it on a bus for some poor soul to adopt or just burning it in the shed.
 
Professor Irony

Professor Irony

CYBER FUNKER
Moderator
Patlabor: The Mobile Police (1989) Scotland Loves Anime cinema showing

Very much enjoyed revisiting the first Patlabor movie after quite a number of years - and in the cinema, no less! Seeing Special Vehicles Section 2 tangle with an increasing number of unmanned mecha going berserk around Tokyo Bay, following the death of renowned computer programmer Eiichi Hoba, this is very clearly a Mamoru Oshii film, with the familiar combination of high tech crime and political manoeuvring, but it's frequently a lot warmer and funnier than his later work, finding plenty of humour in the very human foibles of our heroes.

In many ways the film does seem to predict Oshii's later films however, particularly Ghost in the Shell, with its equally meticulous attention to background detail employed for some very similar scenes of environmental storytelling, as pair of detectives wordlessly navigate the city's slum districts in search of Hoba's former homes. Something that particularly struck me on this viewing was how the characters never explicitly discuss Hoba's motivation for doing what he does, but we can certainly infer a lot from what Oshii shows us, with these richly detailed shots of the junk left behind from demolishing what were clearly peoples' family homes, and the (rather less subtle) motif of the empty birdcage.

Despite it being part of a wider franchise, I think it's also impressive to see how well the film works as a stand alone piece. The OVAs and TV series both provide a backstory for the characters, but I feel their personalities and situation are conveyed so well during the film that it's hardly a requirement for any newcomers. I'd go as far as to say I think this might be Oshii's most accessible film, although I've certainly not seen all of them.

My only minor complaint about the film is that I would dearly have loved the climactic assault to be just a little bit longer. The scenes of SV2 battling their way through a hoarde of security drones while Kenji Kawai's guitar wails in on the soundtrack are spectacular, but rather brief, and, much as I can appreciate that the whole sequence was no doubt difficult and time consuming to animate, I think a few extra shots of the battle becoming a desperate scrap would have really added to the scene.

It's unfortunate that the sequel film isn't also playing as part of SLA's cinema lineup (although I believe it is available through their streaming service at the moment) as, while I've seen this first one a few times over the years, I've only ever watched Patlabor 2 once and I'd be curious to see what I'd make of it now. Patlabor 2 is highly regarded, and usually seen as the better film, but I remember finding it very dry and dialogue heavy compared with the first. Although I do always have to qualify this by saying that I was about 12 at the time and would most likely appreciate it more now, even if I'm not sure it would ever quite replace the first film in my affections.
 
awadama

awadama

Cardcaptor
Ace Attorney season 2

I really enjoyed the first season and I was excited to see the followup, especially because it's based on my favourite AA game (and one of my fav games of all time) - Trials & Tribulations.

I had no objections - it didn't let me down at all.

Compared to other game adaptations I've seen (Danganronpa), Ace Attorney really works. It gives the story time to breathe and doesn't rush through things (unlike Danganronpa). If anything, the last case went on a little bit too long - but I can forgive it, because it was still very enjoyable (especially compared to something like Danganronpa).

It looks good, the dub cast is pretty much perfect and it all makes sense (it's easy to follow, even if you've never played any of the games). There are a couple of anime-exclusive/filler stories in there, but they're interesting and both offer something new - one of them focuses on young Edgeworth and the other is a trial set on a train.

After the first season, I was pretty sure this one would be a winner and I was totally (W)right!

I find this show guilty of being a 9/10
 
RadFemHedonist

RadFemHedonist

Death Scythe
awadama said:
Ace Attorney season 2

I really enjoyed the first season and I was excited to see the followup, especially because it's based on my favourite AA game (and one of my fav games of all time) - Trials & Tribulations.

I had no objections - it didn't let me down at all.

Compared to other game adaptations I've seen (Danganronpa), Ace Attorney really works. It gives the story time to breathe and doesn't rush through things (unlike Danganronpa). If anything, the last case went on a little bit too long - but I can forgive it, because it was still very enjoyable (especially compared to something like Danganronpa).

It looks good, the dub cast is pretty much perfect and it all makes sense (it's easy to follow, even if you've never played any of the games). There are a couple of anime-exclusive/filler stories in there, but they're interesting and both offer something new - one of them focuses on young Edgeworth and the other is a trial set on a train.

After the first season, I was pretty sure this one would be a winner and I was totally (W)right!

I find this show guilty of being a 9/10
Click to expand...

Wow you rly didn't like Danganronpa (glad you enjoyed Ace Attorney so much though!) 😅:p
 
fabio de lunatico

fabio de lunatico

Claymore
Professor Irony said:
Patlabor: The Mobile Police (1989)
Despite it being part of a wider franchise, I think it's also impressive to see how well the film works as a stand alone piece. The OVAs and TV series both provide a backstory for the characters, but I feel their personalities and situation are conveyed so well during the film that it's hardly a requirement for any newcomers. I'd go as far as to say I think this might be Oshii's most accessible film, although I've certainly not seen all of them.
Click to expand...
I'd agree with this. My first exposure to Patlabor was this film as that and the sequel on VHS were all we got over here from Manga. Outside of there obviously being some kind of backstory for Kanuka, I never felt I was missing much for not having seen the OVAs.

As much as I love the second film - I think you will appreciate it more now than you did then - the first better captures the spirit of the manga and TV/OVA series in that it has moments of levity. One of my favourite scenes is where Azuma and the chief are having a shouting match while their angry faces are distorted fishbowl-style. This film was perhaps the last time we saw this kind of visual humour from Oshii, most evident in his Urusei Yatsura directorial work, though I haven't seen Vlad Love.

Great film.
 
Dai

Dai

Thousand Master
Overman King Gainer
I've seen quite a few Yoshiyuki Tomino shows at this point. If there's one word I wouldn't use to describe most of them, it's 'goofy', but King Gainer sure is a goofy show. Turn-A Gundam had its odd moments and the first half of ZZ was heavy on comedy, but this is on a different level. I suspect the famously weird opening is designed to make the viewer cast aside notions of expecting a typical straight-laced real robot show, and buckle up for some super robot madness.

That said, it takes a few episodes for King Gainer to hit its stride and for it to become apparent what kind of show this is, mainly thanks to some sloppy plotting while it's setting up the scenario and character motivations. This is especially problematic in a series-long plot thread involving the murder of Gainer's parents. We never meet them, they're killed off-screen between the first two episodes, and we only find this out a couple of episodes later when Gainer starts shouting about it in the middle of an unrelated robot fight. That's the worst example, but the show generally falters when it tries to be serious.

Fortunately, most of the series focuses on one over-the-top super robot battle after another, and these are the highlight. Enemy mecha have a plethora of bizarre abilities that make for varied and interesting battles, and the designs are some of the quirkiest you'll see this side of Gurren Lagann. The robots wear interchangeable clothes, for example, and the cockpits close with a giant zip. Most of the characters are likeable oddballs, with some of them adding an almost Ghibli-esque feeling of comfiness to the series. The villains chew the scenery in classic Saturday morning cartoon fashion.

Any time King Gainer doesn't take itself too seriously, it can be a joy to watch. It's just a shame that the writing for its series-long arcs is relatively poor.

7/10
 
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