Julia's Reviews on Various Media

[Juliko]

This review was finished yesterday.

Rating: 78/100.

Tell me you've heard this premise before: A child mourns the loss of their parent, and mysterious events make them into a magical chosen one who is tasked to save the world or fulfill some magical mission. A pretty cliche premise, right? Stuff like that is pretty common in kids' shows and movies. However, I have the philosophy that every single plot has already been done before, but as long as you make good, believable characters that drive the story and put care and effort into what you create, you can create whatever the hell you want. Child of Kamiari Month, a new anime movie that just dropped on Netflix, is no different, as it does use some pretty stock cliches throughout its entire premise...but having seen it myself, I also found it to be pretty charming and sweet. I mean, yeah, Kamiari Month probably isn't going to make a blip on anyone's radar, but I would wholly recommend this to anyone who wants to get their kids into anime for the first time.

12-year-old Kanna Hayama is still reeling from her mother's death a year ago, and because of this, she's lost her passion for running, something she really connected with her mother over. One day, when putting on her mother's amulet, time stops all around her, and she finds herself seeing spirits, including a cute bunny spirit named Shiro. It turns out her mother was an Idaten, or the God of Footracing, and the Idaten are tasked with collecting offerings called chiso from various Gods inhabiting shrines all over the town of Izumo and taking them to one particular shrine as part of the Gods' divine banquet only held once a year. Now that Kanna's mother is gone, Kanna winds up inheriting the position, and it's up to her to gather the chiso and take it to the Izumo shrine by the end of the day. But it's not going to be easy, what with a demon named Yasha trying to steal the chiso, and Kanna's own mixed feelings about running getting in the way.

So yeah, not exactly an original premise, but the thing that makes Child of Kamiari Month's premise stand out from other movies with similar story beats is its very heavy focus on Shintoism. For the uninitiated, Shinto is a nature-based religion or belief indigenous to Japan, and it's the belief that spirits and gods inhabit every form of organic or inorganic life, from plants to the objects we use in every day life. Child of Kamiari Month is very much steeped in Shintoism, from its overall themes to its entire plot revolving around nature spirits and demons, a divine festival, and heavy usage of shrines and torii gates as plot points. In essence, it's a very Japanese movie, containing a lot of concepts and ideas that would probably go over people's heads if they don't already know about them. I only know about them through watching anime over a decade, and through studying a little bit of Shintoism in college for my Japanese studies. So in terms of standing out from all the other kids movies with this same premise, I think Kamiari Month manages to succeed on this front.

The animation was done by LIDEN FILMS, and their pedigree is...not exactly the best. While they've made some great things, a lot of the decisions they make in terms of animating stuff aren't always the best, and they've put out some...controversial stuff such as the modern Berserk anime, the very poorly animated Farewell My Dear Cramer, the short anime Aiura, which has great animation but everything else about it sucks, and the currently very divisive Tokyo Revengers adaptation. Thankfully, Child of Kamiari Month has proven to be one of their better endeavors, as the animation is smooth and colorful, the backgrounds are detailed, the character designs are on point, and I didn't notice any animation goofs or off-model characters, though Kanna's overall design can take some getting used to. I don't have much to say on the soundtrack, as it wasn't very memorable. It does its job, and the songs were well sung, but again, I barely paid much attention to them.

The characters here are...alright. They're not exactly the most original or the most three-dimensional, and if you've seen movies with a similar premise before, you're going to be familiar with the archetypes that they adhere to, like the main character grieving her dead parent, the angry adversary who wants to challenge the main character but becomes her friend later, and the cute animal advisor. I found Kanna's overall development to be alright, and she does grow over the course of the movie. Since the movie only focuses on Kanna, Yasha, and Shiro, none of the minor characters who appear get much in the way of development, so they wind up coming across as little more than one-note plot devices. To be honest, I kind of wish this movie had been longer so we could have seen more of the main trio and how they bonded over the course of the film, or even show more of the minor characters such as Kanna's father, or showing how Kanna's mother dealt with being the Idaten. But I think the movie did okay with its main trio, and I genuinely enjoyed following them throughout the movie.

My only real gripes with the movie is that it leaves a lot of unanswered questions, all of them pertaining to Kanna's mother. How did she become an Idaten, and why? When did she stop being the Idaten, or did she even stop being an Idaten to begin with? If Kanna's mother is technically a god, how did she manage to shack up with a human and have a child? Yeah, the movie leaves a lot of questions about Kanna's mother unanswered. Plus, for people looking for something more original, you're not going to find anything here, as Kamiari Month is pretty predictable, rehashing a lot of the same story beats and character progression as many other stories tackling the same overall premise. Honestly, though? I personally like it for what it is, as it's a nice little kids movie about overcoming grief, spiritualism, and holding onto your passions. This would probably make for a pretty nice movie to show to your kids if you want to get them into anime for the first time, and it helps that it's widely available on Netflix, so anyone who has a subscription can watch it legally. The English dub is pretty stellar as well, and they actually cast a child as the main character, which makes Kanna sound much more authentic.

Not exactly the most original movie out there, but Child of Kamiari Month is a fairly charming, heartfelt film that respects its target audience, so give it a look if you want something wholesome and sweet.

 

[Nicolas721]

I watched it yesterday and I agree, it's a fun simple movie that gets the job done. I like stories about how a quest can help you understand a loved one better. However I wish the trials for the chiso had been expanded since they seemed interesting, and that Yasha had gotten a character arc.

 

[Juliko]

Oh cool! Glad you liked it! Definitely agree that Yasha could have benefited from having an arc.

Today's review was written on May 19th, 2021, and...ugh. Another bad movie.

Rating: 49/100

Romance media usually isn't my cup of tea. There are good ones out there, but the majority of them are either bad or just reuse the same premise over and over again without much in the way of substance. Others try to do new things with it, and some succeed while some don't. Fireworks falls into the latter category, as it tries to do something new with its premise...but really doesn't do it well. Basic plotline is that a young boy, Norimichi, finds a classmate of his, Nazuna, trying to run away. When he sees what happens to her, he wishes to change the outcome, and by way of a magic sphere he finds, he's able to repeat the same day over and over to make it go how he wants to, helping Nazuna in the process. This premise has been done before, but there's so much wrong with Fireworks as a movie. I'm not going to use my usual reviewing style for this one, as I really don't want to waste brainpower trying to make sense of this, so here's a laundry list of the movie's flaws:

1. The main characters are woefully bland, have no chemistry, and there's basically no real reason for them to really be together in any way. Norimichi in particular really can't carry the movie, as he's too passive for his own good, and he just gets dragged into the plot by Nazuna, who's just a mysterious girl without much in the way of actual depth to her. Nazuna also never bothers to consider that she's essentially dragging Norimichi into her scheme and how this might hurt his very clearly loving family who know nothing about her or her issues whatsoever, which makes her come across as very selfish and thoughtless.
2. Norimichi's friends are not only useless, but absolutely annoying as hell, as they contribute absolutely nothing to the movie. Yusuke in particular is especially bad, because his characterization is inconsistent. He asks Nazuna out but then blows her off, but later in the movie, when he sees Nazuna with Norimichi, he completely flips out, which not only makes him a hypocrite, but speaks to the movie's bad writing.
3. There's this stupid, unnecessary subplot involving Norimichi's friends openly sexually harassing their teacher by talking openly about her breasts WHILE IN CLASS, and they don't get punished for it. What purpose does this scene even serve? You could cut it out and nothing would be lost. Seeing that really skeeved me out and there is literally no reason for this scene to be here in the first place, as it accomplishes nothing.
4. It fails to flesh out just why the marble Nazuna has is able to either take them back in time or transport them to parallel worlds, or even explain how this is even possible.
5. The movie thinks it's good at compelling drama and romance when it really isn't, since the two main characters barely know each other and have little reason to be together, but the movies tries to make it seem like they HAVE to be together no matter what by forcing them to be so rather than having their relationship grow organically. Thus, this makes the entire movie feel really contrived and forced.
6. The CGI is awful!! The 2D animation is fine, but there's just so much jarring CGI, from water spewing out of a hose to the characters riding on bikes, and none of it makes any effort to blend seamlessly with the animation.
7. The story is just another rehash of a bunch of other romance media with the exact same premise, only with time travel/world hopping slapped in, and not even in ways that make sense.
8. A good chunk of the movie is wasted on Norimichi's friends trying to figure out whether fireworks are round or flat when they explode, and this also does not contribute to the movie in any way whatsoever, so I honestly have to question why the writers thought padding it out with this was a good idea.
9. The movie is also weirdly obsessed with getting close-ups of Nazuna's and Norimichi's faces and eyes. A lot of the lingering shots on them almost have this...uncomfortable eroticism to it.
10. The premise in and of itself does have potential, but the movie never bothers to use it, just focusing on pointless teenaged shenanigans rather than stuff that actually matters.
11. The ending makes absolutely no sense and comes absolutely out of nowhere, though it's not as mean-spirited as the Ni no Kuni movie's ending.

So, taking all these flaws into account, does the movie actually have anything that's good? For one, the soundtrack is fairly nice, albeit generic and repetitive, and isn't going to blow anyone's minds. Nazuna's backstory is fairly decent as well, but the movie doesn't reveal it until near the very end. Had it revealed it much earlier in the movie, it might have been able to get the audience to actually care about her. Thirdly, the English dub is really good. The kids are voiced by actual kids, who sound pretty good, and Nazuna's voice actress, who is mainly a theater and live-action film actress, does a really good job with her. She's also a great singer, too! Unfortunately, these things cannot save this movie from being an utter trainwreck. Shaft and Akiyuki Shinbo, why did you even bother with this? This movie just isn't good. At all. I honestly wouldn't recommend it to anyone, not even fans of the romance genre, as this is just a rip-off of other, better movies that thinks it can succeed with eclectic animation and weird time travel shenanigans when it just can't.

 

[Juliko]

Started this review on February 18th, 2022, but didn't finish it until today.

Rating: 77/100.

In all the years I've watched anime, I've found some genres that I like and others I don't. Some I outright hate, like ecchi and fanservice, some I really love when executed well, and others I don't really gravitate to, like romance, horror, and sports. There's been a real influx of sports anime lately, what with stuff like Free, Kuroko's Basketball, Haikyuu, Sk8 The Infinity, and so on. I was never into sports, and still have no interest in it, but there is one sport I really came to love that unfortunately isn't all that popular in the US: Archery. My high school gym class had sporadic periods where we could do archery on occasion, and I absolutely loved it, even though I wasn't too good at it. So imagine my surprise when I found that there was an actual anime solely about archery!...but it came out during my intense burnout phase, and I couldn't bring myself to watch any anime much, so I just added it onto the pile of shows that I'd eventually get around to watching at some point. As of today, I finally managed to watch Tsurune in its entirety, OVA included, and...it's actually pretty decent.

As a child, Minato Narumiya is entranced by the sound of a bowstring hitting the bow when shooting an archery arrow, which the Japanese refer to as the tsurune. This inspires Minato to try out a specialized form of archery called kyudo, studying and practicing it whenever he can. Unfortunately, his mother died in a car accident, and although he's kept up with practice, he's suddenly afflicted with target panic, and no matter how much he practices, he can't hit the target no matter what. When his target panic costs his middle school team a win at the nationals, he decides to give up kyudo for good, transferring to another high school rather than the one he wanted to attend. But it turns out fate has other plans, as not only does his new school start up a new kyudo club, he runs into an older archer who just might be able to reignite his passion for kyudo.

Kyoto Animation worked on this, so it's no surprise that the animation is luscious and packed with movement and detail. Every movement feels real, with every motion being a full-body event, and the characters all have expressive faces and bodies that are used to great effect. The backgrounds and set pieces are just as good, bright and colorful, perfectly conveying their desired mood and atmosphere whenever possible. Even what little CGI that's used is integrated surprisingly well with the 2D animation. I don't have as much to say about the soundtrack, though. I mean, I like it, and both the opening and ending songs are great to listen to, but most of the background pieces feel really theatrical and over-the-top, like they're trying way too hard to pull on the heartstrings and make certain scenes seem more inspirational and moving than they are, even when it's not necessary. A lot of the dramatic moments kind of lose their touch when incredibly loud woodwind instruments and violins thunder through the speakers, overpowering everything else. A good soundtrack can do wonders in enriching a story, but Tsurune could have benefitted from either toning it down or having some scenes have no music at all.

Of course, an uneven soundtrack isn't the only problem Tsurune has. I'm rather mixed on the characters. Minato is a perfectly fine main character whose conflict, while a little too drawn out for my liking, is believable for those who have gone through similar experiences. Unfortunately, everyone else in the cast is either bland or woefully underutilized. We don't learn much about the other characters or their lives outside of doing kyudo, with Nanao and Ryohei being the biggest victims of this, as all we know about them are some basic character traits that don't have much background to them, such as why Nanao has a bunch of female fans who worship the ground he walks on. Seiya's episodes are just a bunch of angst-fests that are just there to pad things out, and...honestly, I was not a fan of Kaito. Characters like him can be done well, but Kaito was way too much of a jackass for my liking. I mean, this is the guy who gets unnecessarily pissy at Minato over stuff that's not only out of his control, but not any of Kaito's business, and he keeps wanting to pick fights with him for little to no reason, even dismissing everything he does just because his attitude about kyudo isn't the same as his. The show makes the case that Kaito's actually a nice guy but has trouble expressing it, but I don't think the show did enough to actually convey that. He's not as bad as other characters in other stuff I've seen who have the same attitude but way worse (coughcoughMinkofromHanasakuIrohacoughcough), but he's just your typical hot-headed angry little shit who gets unnecessarily pissy at everything, even when it's not even worth making a fuss over. The Kirisaki archers don't have much character to them either, what with just being the rival group the Kazemai archers have to compete against, and the three girls in the Kazemai kyudo club...are literally just there to talk about the boys and nothing else. Gee, way to make them into little more than living background props, Tsurune. Personally, I found a lot of the adult characters to be more interesting and intriguing than the teenagers, and their conflicts and issues were actually somewhat compelling.

Thankfully, Tsurune isn't all bad. For one, being completely new to the brand of archery this anime is about, I loved that the anime actually bothered to explain what kyudo was and show what it's like in detail, from the little ceremonies they hold before the beginning of each session, to the outfits they wear, and the overall philosophies behind kyudo. I know an anime like Tsurune would be a hard sell for people outside of Japan, especially since Tsurune is about a very specific type of archery that not many outside the country would know about, but I genuinely enjoyed learning about it through the show. Archery isn't a very showy sport, nor is it as well known here in America as it is in other places. I personally would love to partake in it myself, but there's literally no places around my area giving lessons, and the ones that are charge exorbitant fees. Furthermore, I do appreciate Tsurune's much more down-to-earth, low-key storytelling, preferring a more grounded approach to its club drama rather than having everything be too over-the-top and melodramatic, with some exceptions. Most sports anime show a lot of competitions, but Tsurune only really has one, and that's at the end of the series, preferring to focus more on the emotional development of its key characters than anything else. It may not have succeeded with all of its characters, but I appreciate what KyoAni tried to do with the ones they did focus on, so it's not all bad. It's a shame that apparently, Tsurune is considered one of KyoAni's least successful properties, and sold poorly compared to other shows they worked on, and that's honestly kind of sad, because even with the issues that I mentioned above, Tsurune was still clearly made with a level of passion and care that most other anime just don't have. If I had to describe Tsurune, it would be like walking through a brisk, sunlit meadow on a cozy spring day, something to watch if you want to kick back, relax, and let your thoughts wander.

So yeah, Tsurune isn't exactly going to bring the house down, as it treads plenty of story beats that have been done to death previously and is much slower-paced than your typical sports drama. But I wouldn't necessarily give it a miss, either. If you're looking for something more grounded and breezy, give Tsurune a shot. It took me a while to watch it, but now that I did, I'm glad I did so, and can't wait to see the movie that'll eventually come out. Fair warning, though: DO NOT watch the OVA! It absolutely sucks!

 

[Juliko]

This review was originally started on January 31st, 2020, but not finished until today.

Rating: 91/100

Unlike most anime fans familiar with his body of work, I didn't know much about Satoshi Kon and his influence on the anime/manga industry. At one point, when I was in college, an anime club I joined showed Perfect Blue for a movie night once, but I didn't like it as I'm not really into horror, and I didn't see the whole thing, as I had to leave due to other obligations. But Kon was considered one of anime's greatest movie directors, and fans eagerly wanted him to make more movies, which would be rendered impossible due to his untimely passing in August 2010. In recent years, there's been a sort of Kon renaissance in the West, as licensing companies have been not only giving his movies and shows newer releases, but in some cases, giving them completely new dubs, whether they be from whole cloth (Eleven Arts' dub for Tokyo Godfathers and Discotek Media's dub for Memories, particularly the Magnetic Rose segment, which Kon did the screenplay for) or re-dubs to replace older dubs that were seen as inferior, with the latter being the case for Millennium Actress, the subject of today's review. I went to see the new English dub at a limited screening in my area because a coworker recommended it to me, and...I'm really surprised at how much I liked this, and now I see why Kon is so revered in the anime movie circle.

The story goes as follows: A filmmaker, Genya Tachibana, discovers that an old movie studio he worked at, Ginei Studios, is being torn down on its 70th anniversary. This event motivates him to track down the elusive film actress who sustained it for several decades, Chiyoko Fujiwara, and interview her for a documentary. He and his cameraman manage to find her, even though she had been living as a recluse for 30 years, and he even gives her an item of hers that she once lost long ago: A key on a string, which serves as the impetus for getting her life story. Chiyoko uses the films she starred in to frame her life story, and her roles span a thousand years over Japan's overall history, all of them tied to one thing: The mysterious man who gave Chiyoko the key.

Kon as a filmmaker is pretty well-known for blurring/blending the lines and boundaries between illusion and reality in his films, making the viewer unable to tell if what's going on is really happening or even just some weird dream. His visual and psychological trickery would pretty much become his signature style, and in Millennium Actress, it's presented as Genya and his cameraman not only actively observing the events in Chiyoko's life and movies in-person, but becoming participants in them as well. In less dept hands, doing this would make a movie either extremely confusing or wind up being a huge disaster. But here, Kon's signature style is used to great effect, because the approach used here implies that the reason Chiyoko was successful as an actress is because she was basically playing out her life story, putting on display her passions, desires, and what drives her, and that kind of sincerity speaks to people. Plus, bringing this story to life with animation was a good move on Madhouse's part, because animation is able to seamlessly accomplish what Millennium Actress as a movie in itself wanted to convey than the more limited scope of live-action, barring CGI advancements that would come later. The animation has some rough spots, and the visual aesthetic may come off as dull and muted to modern audiences nowadays, but it's clear the animators put a lot of effort into it. The character designs and background art all serve the story amazingly well, so I have no complaints here.

I have a little less to say about the soundtrack, though. Not because it's bad or anything, as I did genuinely like it, especially the song sung by Susumu Hirasawa at the end. The OST itself is fine, but mixing piano and synthesizer, especially at the end, can come across as a bit dated. But it does its job, so I don't mean that as a knock against it. Of course, what would a movie like this be without a cast of characters to back it up? Thankfully, every member of the cast, from Chiyoko herself to the people she worked with during her acting years all serve their roles amazingly well and are as far away from the usual stereotypes as humanly possible. It helps that the cast mainly consists of adults, and they're all fun to watch, even if some of them aren't exactly the most likeable. I also found the cameraman's commentary on all the weird events playing out before his eyes to be pretty funny. Speaking of him, there is one complaint I have about the movie: The cameraman is never referred to by name throughout the film. I know his name is Kyoji Ida, but I only found that out by looking it up on Anime News Network, and at one point in the movie, when he and Genya find themselves in 1860s Kyoto, Genya calls him Torakichi, and I thought that was his name throughout the entire movie, as nothing indicated that he was known by any other name, so when I found out that wasn't his name, I was really confused. Is Torakichi the name of a character in the movie that they were living through in that one segment? It's not made clear, and like I said before, Kon really likes to blur the lines between what's real and what's not in his movies.

Honestly, the only other issue I have with Millennium Actress is a couple of unanswered questions, but they're small potatoes in light of everything else the movie has going for it, and I think its positives far outweigh its negatives. I read that apparently Millennium Actress is meant to be a foil to one of Kon's other movies, Perfect Blue, with both movies focusing on the life of an actress, with one exploring the darker, less savory aspects of the movie industry and its fans, and the other, which is Millennium Actress, highlighting the good parts of it. With this, now I see why Kon was so beloved back when he was alive. I wouldn't say I've become a fan, as every project he's worked on is different, and some of his stuff as elements that don't sit right with me, but I can wholeheartedly say that this is my favorite movie of his. Plus, Millennium Actress is now more readily available thanks to Eleven Arts and Shout Factory putting it out on DVD and Blu-Ray with a shiny new English dub. It was originally put out by a different company back in 2003 with no dub, though Manga Entertainment did make a British dub for it for its own release in the UK, which, from what I've heard...is not very good. You're better off watching the Japanese version or the new English dub that Eleven Arts put out three years ago. The latter has its own issues, such as the occasional off lip-sync and one line repeated by accident, but it's far superior to the original dub by a country mile. It helps that it's also streaming on a bunch of websites for free, including YouTube and Tubi.

A loving homage to the film industry helmed by one of anime's greatest directors who passed before his time, and definitely a favorite film of mine. I'm glad I took the chance to see it, so give it a shot if you can.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on January 14th, 2022.

Rating: 89/100.

One genre of media that I've never really gravitated towards was romance, namely because many of the plots for romance were always very melodramatic or formulaic. It wasn't that I inherently hated romance as a genre, I just never found any romance media that really appealed to me. That would get rectified later in my life as I began to read and watch more things. I'm also not really into yaoi or yuri manga or novels, mainly for the same reasons, along with many of them having very questionable ethics in regards to things like consent. Many of them tend to idealize and glamorize toxic relationships, and I'm not down for that kind of stuff (Though this is coming from someone who unironically likes Sakura Gari). Honestly, I never even heard of Goodbye My Rose Garden before coming across this article here, but when I read it, my interest was immediately piqued. I requested it at my local library, and was quick to rent it and read the entire series in one sitting. I'm glad I did because I'm really, really surprised at just how great this manga turned out to be, especially since the last manga by Dr. Pepperco that I read, Bang Dream: Girls Band Party Roselia Stage, was decent at best but had a lot of problems in regards to its artwork. Seven Seas, thank you for bringing this manga to the US, because I love it!

In the year 1900, Japan is in the midst of mingling with the West and adopting a lot of its cultural practices. Hanako Kujo, a teacher still reeling over being unable to help one of her students, travels to England in order to find the author of one of her favorite novels, along with finding a job. Unfortunately, she hits a roadblock and is unsure of what to do. Thankfully, a young noblewoman, Alice Douglas, notices Hanako and offers her a job as her personal maid. The two of them bond over their shared love of novels and literature, but for some reason, Alice wants Hanako to kill her. Hanako is unable to comprehend why Alice would ask her to do such a thing, but she's determined to not only befriend her mistress, but to make the best of her new surroundings.

One thing I really respect about Goodbye My Rose Garden is that it really makes great use of its setting. Rather than simply using it as a backdrop, the manga takes great care to embed itself in the history of the period, through the social and hierarchal norms the characters are expected to uphold to using real events that are happening during the time, such as the very heavily publicized trial of Oscar Wilde. It's made very clear throughout the manga that Dr. Pepperco really did a lot of research on Victorian England, and when wanting to write a story taking place in the past, you really need to make sure you get all your facts straight, because if you don't take care to portray the time period as it was, or take too much artistic/creative license with it, you run the risk of either making it feel too modern/contemporary or falsifying facts. Like, you won't find the characters here saying things like "The elephant in the room," knowing about the internet, or owning cars. It'd be one thing if Goodbye My Rose Garden was trying to go for an alternate history route, or go for a more fantasy/sci-fi like depiction like what the video game Code;Realize did, but the manga makes it clear it's trying to be just slice-of-life historical fiction, with no fantasy or sci-fi elements in sight.

Another thing that impressed me was the artwork. I mentioned in my Bang Dream Roselia manga review that I felt that the artwork could be lackluster at times, especially for the backgrounds. There, it felt like Dr. Pepperco didn't put in an effort to make the world of that manga feel alive, or only did the bare minimum. That manga came out several months before Dr. Pepperco would go on to make this, and it's amazing to see how much she learned from her mistakes, because the backgrounds here are not only very lavish and detailed, especially when it matters, but feel much more alive. Everything, from the designs on book bindings, to the period-appropriate dresses and hair styles the characters wear, to the exterior and interiors of the mansions the characters inhabit, is given a lot of care and attention, and I didn't notice any significant issues or anachronisms. Even the usage of English text is very cohesive, and I didn't notice any jarring grammar errors or awkward sentence structure, something that even most World Masterpiece Theater anime struggle with from time to time.

Of course, no matter how much research you put into the setting, you can't have a good story without a cast of characters to make you care about them, and thankfully, Goodbye My Rose Garden has a great ensemble to hold it together. The main duo are a joy to watch, as they both have equal amounts of depth, strengths, weaknesses, and contributions to the story and its progression, and Dr. Pepperco really worked hard to make sure they have good chemistry, and I found their budding friendship and later romance to be very believable. Other characters, such as Susanne, Marie, and Alice's older sister Jane are also pretty likeable and serve their purposes well. Even the antagonistic characters are surprisingly down-to-earth and aren't evil for the sake of it, as the manga is careful to show that they are products of their environment and are expected to uphold the Victorian-era values and social norms that have been drilled into them all their lives, and a lot of the conflict comes from their wanting Alice to be happy but wrongly assuming being the submissive wife of a noblewoman and upholding the family's reputation is the best thing for her, since that's what women of the time were expected to be. Edward, Alice's fiance, isn't a cackling supervillain and does love her to an extent, but is a product of Victorian era sensibilities, thinking Alice will be happy if she becomes a mother, being openly suspicious of Hanako's relationship with her, and even displaying period-appropriate (But still unacceptable by modern standards) racism towards Hanako. My only real complaint is that other characters, such as the other maids working in the Douglas estate and Edward's unnamed friend who tells him about Alice's scandal and warns him about Hanako, don't get developed or utilized enough, to the point where Edward's friend doesn't even have a name. Plus, Susanne, a maid that Hanako encounters, is said to have left a bad situation in France, but we never see it. Dr. Pepperco has mentioned at the end of volume 3 that she'd like to make a sequel manga that goes deeper into exploring other characters and the consequences of their actions, but so far, nothing's set in stone.

For what it's worth, though, I'm happy with Goodbye My Rose Garden as is. It knows what it wants to be, doesn't drag itself out longer than necessary, and doesn't overstay its welcome. Now I wish I hadn't written off Dr. Pepperco back when I reviewed the Bang Dream manga she made. Goodbye My Rose Garden was clearly made with a lot of love and passion, and I can only hope she's able to make more stories like this. It helps that it's fairly short, too, only clocking it at three volumes, and Seven Seas released the whole series in the US, so you can read through it pretty quickly if you have a few hours to kill. So for anyone wanting to read a historical shoujo-ai/LGBT manga that doesn't have a tragic ending, definitely give Goodbye My Rose Garden a try. It's sweet, short, riveting, and I would honestly love for someone to make an anime out of this. I know that probably won't happen, but hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

Rating: 68/100.

Over the course of anime's existence, every few years or so, depending on the current landscape, anime likes to explore trends or capitalize on what's popular. Back in the 2000s, this was visual novel adaptations and ecchi stuff. In the 2010s, isekai stuff began saturating the market, and still does to this day, and as of recently, the newest trend comes in the form of cellphone games. Naturally, anime is made to promote the source material they're adapted from, be it a manga, game, or a light novel, with Bungo and Alchemist: Gears of Judgment being no different. Mobile games have gotten immensely popular as of late, bringing in millions of dollars, so it's no surprise corporations would want to capitalize on this success and adapt some famous games into anime, even if said anime are just glorified commercials for the game in question. There are some mobage anime that I like, such as Kemono Friends and Granblue Fantasy (Still waiting for the second season to get dubbed!), and there are just as many that are good, bad, average, mediocre, or just...dull. Unfortunately, Bungo and Alchemist has mobage game adaptation written all over it, and I don't mean that as a compliment.

The story takes place in a labyrinthine library where the world's greatest writers are reincarnated and...basically made into pretty boys. Their mission is to delve into the stories of old in order to protect them from evil beings known as the Taints. Yes, that's the name they went with, and it's as stupid as it sounds. The Taints corrupt books and intend on either changing the stories completely or outright erasing literature forever, so it's up to the authors to put a stop to them. The premise of jumping into books and saving their content is nothing new, but is actually one I like. There are even some books I've read that have used this to great effect, such as Anna James' The Bookwanderers series, and some that don't do it as well, such as James Riley's Story Thieves series. I've always been of the mind that it doesn't matter how unoriginal or cliche your story is, as nowadays it's impossible to make something original, so long as you create good, deep, interesting characters that can drive the story and are passionate about what you create.

But passion project, Bungo and Alchemist is not. All the characters save for one are just static archetypes that you've seen in pretty much every other anime before this, all made to look like generic over-designed bishounen made solely to make girls squeal. None of them change or grow over the course of the series, and the show itself is fairly formulaic on principle: Characters go into a book, find the author of the book, fight and purify them, bring them to the library, rinse and repeat. There's just no reason for me, and by extension the audience, to really care about them as characters other than what's on the surface. None of them really stand out, nor do the writers really try to make them interesting and three-dimensional in any way. Not helping matters is that the cast itself is pretty large, and if there's one thing Lapis Re:Lights taught me, is that if you want to have a show with 20-something characters in it or more, 11-13 episodes is absolutely NOT the best length for a series with that big a cast.

That being said, Bungo and Alchemist does have its good points. For one, the animation is solid, but nothing to really write home about. Would you believe that this was actually done by the same production company that worked on Pokemon, OLM? Seriously, I had no idea until I looked it up. Also, it seems like the show's budget went into the opening at the expense of everything else, because not only is that opening theme really creative in its animation and imagery, it is amazingly well done. Why the hell is this better animated than the entire series?! Why couldn't the entire show been as creative and fluidly animated as the friggin' opening?! Don't have much to say about the soundtrack, other than that it really likes to abuse one particular instrument that I don't even know the name of. You'll know it when you hear it. As far as good things go, there is one thing that I really liked about Bungo and Alchemist: A certain revelation behind one of the protagonists and his connection with the villain. I really liked the twist about him, and it actually made the final two episodes somewhat better...though not by much.

In the end, Bungo and Alchemist just comes and goes, yet another mobage game adaptation that's just there to promote the game and not much else. It's not offensively bad, nor does it really reach any highs. It's fine if you want a nice little time killer, but you're not going to find anything groundbreaking with this one, and there are lots of other things that tackled the same ideas and concepts much better.

 

[KerfishSea]

Seems interesting, I might check it out if It's on a streaming service. This is actually one of the first blogs I clicked on when joining these forums nice to see it's still going.

 

[Juliko]

Seems interesting, I might check it out if It's on a streaming service. This is actually one of the first blogs I clicked on when joining these forums nice to see it's still going.

Definitely check it out if you can. Like I said, you can stream it on YouTube and Tubi.

 

[Juliko]

Hell yeah! It took me a while but I finally finished this review! Originally started this up on January 13th, 2013, but didn't finish writing the review until today, as you can tell by referencing shows that came out long after this one.

Rating: 92/100

Back in 2010, I wasn't the biggest fan of the Precure franchise, and it's mostly because I hardly ever saw any of the shows back then. I remember watching the first episode of the first series long ago but I never went further than that because one fairy's voice annoyed the living heck out of me. But since about 2014, I've actually made an effort to watch a good majority of the shows for that franchise. So far, including this one, Heartcatch Pretty Cure, I've seen ten whole series in their entirety, though I did watch the first episodes of every series. Basically, Precure pretty much follows the same formula as Sailor Moon: a great evil and their minions try to take over the world, ditzy girls and their friends are given items that turn them into heroes by cute little animal creatures, and they defeat monsters of the week and save the world while learning more about themselves and getting along in the process. I never got around to watching the other shows, and I didn't think I'd have time to watch any of them considering how long the shows were...until I saw one of my favorite bloggers start blogging Heartcatch Precure. He really loved it and kept on praising it up the wazoo like crazy as it was airing, and I didn't have much else to watch, so why not? I saw the first episode and...wow! He really was right about it being awesome!

Long ago, a warrior named Cure Moonlight lost an arduous battle against an organization called the Desert Apostles, and before her defeat, she tells two fairies to find another girl who can take her place. That's a dream a shy young girl named Tsubomi Hanasaki has been having for some time. She and her family move to the town Kibougahana to be closer to their grandmother, and despite being sweet and loving flowers to death, she's cripplingly shy. She does, however, attract the attention of a rather loud and bossy girl named Erika Kurumi who wants to be her friend but Tsubomi doesn't like her forceful and invasive nature. Soon, she finds Erika's Heart Flower getting ripped out of her and turned into a monster called a Desertorian by some lady named Sasorina. The fairies, Chypre and Coffret, give Tsubomi an item which turns her into a magical superhero called Pretty Cure, just like in her dream, but she calls herself Cure Blossom. Soon, she's joined by Erika, who becomes Cure Marine. They have to save people's heart flowers and take on the mission to restore the Heart Tree back to normal so that the Desert Apostles can't destroy the world. But it's going to be a tough and perilous task, especially considering how high the stakes are for everyone.

Unlike the first few series, which had the exact same animation style, Heartcatch's animation and character designs are completely different and go into their own direction, and it's a very welcome and refreshing change. There's lots of varying facial expressions, the movement is more dynamic and fluid, the colors are more vibrant, and it conveys more emotion and life than the other series. There's hardly any wasted frames here. Not only that, the anime doesn't just make the characters look good, the animators actually go way out of their way to bring the characters to life in the best ways possible, which really shows in both the every day scenes and the transformation scenes, the 3rd Pretty Cure's sequence being the best animated, the most fluid, and the best looking out of all of them. For fans of Ojamajo Doremi out there, you may notice that the character designs here are very similar to those of Doremi's. That's because both series had the same character designer, Yoshihiko Umakoshi, who also directed the animation for both series. So the two shows have a lot of things in common, from the character designs, the overly cartoony facial expressions, and...well, being magical girl series made by Toei. Thankfully, both series are able to carve out their own identities so they don't come off as ripping off one another despite having a lot of similarities. Plus, Heartcatch's action scenes are also animated amazingly well, excelling in both long-range and hand-to-hand combat, and the battles are always dynamic and never get boring or repetitive, even with the repeated transformation sequences in every episode.

The soundtrack is where things start to get tricky. Pretty Cure is notorious for reusing pieces of background music in their shows, often starting from series where they switch to a new composer and then re-use their music every time they hire that composer back for whatever shows follow until they're done with them. I haven't seen the original Futari wa series, Yes Precure 5, or Fresh Pretty Cure, and from Fresh to Smile, Toei had Yasuharu Takanashi do the music for those four Pretty Cure seasons. Since Heartcatch came right after Fresh, I can imagine that this series reused music from Fresh. But again, I haven't seen Fresh, so I don't know specifically which pieces they used from that season in here. But on its own, I think Heartcatch's soundtrack is pretty nice. The opening and ending themes are standard cutesy J-pop fare, which is no surprise there. Yasuharu Takanashi has always had a good track record with his soundtracks, and Heartcatch Pretty Cure's music is no different and no less awesome for what it manages to do. Plus, the insert songs are great, with the one being sung by Cure Moonlight's seiyuu being the absolute best one.

Of all the seasons I've seen of Pretty Cure, Heartcatch has the absolute best, most three-dimensional characters in the entire franchise that I know of, bar none. Now, Pretty Cure has a bit of a reputation for sometimes giving too much screen time to certain characters at the expense of others, which is a flaw that's gone as far back as Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart. Later seasons such as Hugtto, Star Twinkle, and Tropical Rouge, are the biggest offenders in regards to this flaw. Thankfully, Heartcatch successfully manages to avoid this problem, as every single character, from the main ensemble to even some minor characters, like the girls' families and classmates, is wonderfully developed and fleshed out, right from the very start. They all have their own distinct personalities, strengths, weaknesses, idiosyncrasies, and flaws to overcome, and the series make sure to portray them all as down-to-earth kids whenever they're not busy fighting monsters and dealing with relatable problems. Even the minor characters and victims of the week are fleshed out surprisingly well and with subtlety...though if I had to name one problem with some of the victims of the week, it'd be that the series tries to make some of them come off as sympathetic, but their methods of doing so make said characters come off as the opposite. Of course, this is mainly restricted to some of the minor characters, and not all of them have this problem, thankfully.

That being said, there is one thing I've noticed in recent years: I've seen Erika get a lot of hate as a character in recent years, with some people I know of claiming that her actions border on being abusive or predatory, with some even going so far as to call her a bad person just because of a line she says about Tsubomi in one episode later in the series. While I can understand why some wouldn't like her, and I won't judge them for it, I feel like a lot of the hate she's gotten lately is overblown, and that some people ignore a lot of context from the series. For one, Erika does, in fact, get called out on a lot of her behavior throughout the series, even if a lot of it isn't explicit, and a lot of Erika's character arc is about learning to be more sensitive to other people's feelings and personal space. She even flat-out admits that she's very much aware of her flaws as early as episode 2 and understands that people do find her annoying and is trying to be more sensitive, even if her methods of rectifying her flaws don't always work. Plus, the one line that people have a problem with—in which Erika makes a jab at Tsubomi in the power-up episode—could be interpreted as her only saying it in jest. Besides, what group of friends DON'T occasionally rib each other or dunk on each other every now and again? If you don't like a certain character, that's fine, but deliberately ignoring a lot of context in regards to how a show depicts a character's flaws and deals with them really doesn't make you look good. I've seen far worse characters in other series whose flaws are not only completely ignored and not called out for what they are, but the series they star in really try to go out of their way to justify and encourage them (Examples of this include Hanasaku Iroha, Daimidaler, Aesthestica of a Rogue Hero, Rising of the Shield Hero, Mushoku Tensei, and...this awful book series called Elsie Dinsmore). Also, would you really like Erika any better if she were an overly perfect little Mary Sue who was always nice and could do no wrong? Characters are more interesting to follow if they have flaws to deal with! Nobody likes characters who are perfect because they're boring!

Honestly, the only real flaw I can say that Heartcatch has is that, in the end, it follows a pretty predictable formula, as do many magical girl anime. Any surprises it has are more in the smaller, finer details than in the main plot. But shows like Heartcatch show that you can do amazing things even with cliches and predictable formulas as long as you put in care, passion, and effort, and execute them well. For every trope Heartcatch Pretty Cure adheres to, it also excellently subverts others. Just recently, I watched Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure, and I found it to be utterly disappointing because of the following reasons: Its plot was extremely cliche and made no effort to have any real stakes, tension, or conflict, it actively ignored opportunities to develop and flesh out its characters, most of the episodes were pointless, comedic filler used to pad it out, and the characters it did bother to focus on never really changed or moved beyond their most basic character traits, remaining bland as hell. Having watched ten seasons of Precure so far, I still feel that Heartcatch is the best one I've seen, and the best season in the franchise, and so far, nothing has managed to take its place as my number one favorite Pretty Cure season. Healin Good Pretty Cure came close, but not quite. Seriously, there are reasons why Heartcatch Pretty Cure brought in a slew of new fans into the franchise, and had Fresh Pretty Cure not managed to save the franchise from certain death, we never would have gotten this season or any of the other ones that came after it.

I really have to thank the blogger I followed way back when for introducing me to this series, even if indirectly, because had I not decided to follow his recommendation, I wouldn't have bothered with Heartcatch Pretty Cure at all. If you want to get into the franchise in any way, or just want to watch a genuinely good magical girl show that takes a lot of risks and doesn't talk down to its audience, I'd highly recommend giving this season a watch. It has everything a good magical girl series could ever need and executes all of its ideas amazingly. Seriously, don't sit this one out. It's my favorite Pretty Cure season ever, and maybe it'll be a favorite of yours if you give it a chance, and even if it isn't, that's okay. I know I'll never stop loving Heartcatch. Also, Tsubomi is best girl. Fight me.

 

[Juliko]

Just finished this review today.

Rating: 75/100.

Bloom Into You is one of those anime that I actually kept seeing people talk about during its run, and even afterward. I saw advertisements for it on websites like MAL or Anime News Network, I saw a bunch of people both in and outside my circle talk about it, and saw recommendations for it when I saw similar stories while internet surfing. But I missed out on it when it first came out because I was hit really hard with anime burnout and couldn't bring myself to watch much. Thankfully, now that I've clawed myself out of it, I decided to finally give it a shot, especially since I now have a HIDIVE subscription and was able to watch it legally. What's my verdict, especially as someone who normally isn't a huge fan of the romance genre? Well, it's...alright. I mean, I like it, but I feel like its missing something that prevents it from reaching any heights.

Ever since she was a little girl, Yuu Koito has always wanted to experience the thrill of falling in love. Having read lots of shoujo manga and listened to love songs all her life, she wants to experience the feeling of having her heart be sent aflutter. But when a boy asks her out, Yuu feels...nothing. She realizes that she is incapable of experiencing the feeling of romantic love and is unsure of how to respond. But upon entering high school, she comes across an older girl, Touko Nanami, maturely turning down a suitor of her own, stunning Yuu with the grace of her rejection. Yuu approaches her for advice, and the two become better acquainted...but she's thrown for a loop when Touko confesses to her. Bewildered by this surprise revelation, Yuu finds herself on the path to find the emotion that has long eluded her.

I don't know...something about Bloom Into You never really clicked with me. I don't hate it or anything, as there is a lot to like about it. For one, the romance between the two leads is actually allowed to progress, and they actually talk through their issues instead of simply acting dramatic for the sake of plot convenience or stubbornly refusing to clear things up. Plus, I actually really liked how the show actively showed the members of the student council actually doing things, like organizing events, helping other students, and being involved in extracurricular activities instead of just using the fact that the characters are in a student council as a means to show how uber-authoritative they are, especially when it's only used as fodder an antagonistic character uses to throw their weight around. Plus the animation, while nothing to really write home about, is nice and pleasant to look at, especially with the flower imagery, and the sound track is pretty nice as well, even if the ending theme is a little too saccharine for my tastes.

And it's not even like the characters aren't fleshed out, either. The series does try, and most of the characters have good stories behind them. I liked Yuu and Touko's arcs and how they help each other deal with their insecurities, and I found Sayaka to be a very refreshing take on the jealous love interest, as she's never portrayed as being malicious, and any antagonism on her part is much more subdued and civil compared to other characters of the same archetype. Plus, I liked Yuu's friends Koyomi and Akari and wanted to see more of them. But other ones remain pretty static throughout the entire show, like Maki and Doujima, though this may be because the anime adapts the early portion of the manga and not the later, meatier parts. Plus, I don't mind slow pacing and having everything play out in a more subdued manner, as sometimes going all bombastic and over-the-top isn't needed. But I think Bloom Into You played things a little too safe and had no interest in taking any risks, which resulted in the series coming off as rather dull to me.

Bottom line, it just feels too standard, and it doesn't help that a lot of what the anime was building up to doesn't even get realized, with the show ending before it even has the chance to do anything with all its build-up, in a very clear "Read the manga!" ending that comes very abruptly. I mean, I can see that Bloom Into You is trying. It does flesh out most of its cast and its romance better than others I've seen, and it does have a few charms of its own. But there's just as many things out there that did everything else better, and that's the main problem: It just doesn't stand out, and the few things it has going for it aren't enough for me to really recommend it. Bloom Into You is a nice series to watch on a rainy day or if you're bored, and if you like it, more power to you. But it didn't really resonate with me. I wonder if I'll have better luck with the manga? Who knows? But it does say a lot that I was able to watch this and actually complete it instead of, say, Kaguya-sama: Love Is War.

 

[Juliko]

Just finished this review today.

Rating: 85/100

It's no surprise by now that Siuil a Run: The Girl From The Other Side, I feel, is one of the best manga to come out in recent years. With its rich, intentionally messy artwork, compelling storyline, intriguing characters, and solid worldbuilding, the manga resonated with a lot of people, enough for it to get a short 10-minute OVA, which anyone who's read my review of that will know I absolutely love. So when it was revealed a second OVA was going to be made, a much longer one and with voice acting, I was hyped as hell, as were many others. It took a long time for it to come out, as the blu-ray containing it was bundled with one of the manga volumes in Japan. While it was released in March, only in April was it more available outside of Japan, and Crunchyroll even announced they're going to stream it later. So you can imagine my excitement when this finally came out. But then I saw reviews coming in saying that it deviated a lot from the manga, and arguably not for the better. I wanted to withhold my judgment until after I saw the OVA, and now that I've seen it...they're right. However, just because it deviates from the manga a lot doesn't mean the short film doesn't have any redeeming value.

At first, the OVA tells how Shiva and Teacher first met and how they come to live together as a little family before the latter starts getting concerned about Shiva's overall safety, should she continue to stay with him. After the thirty minute mark, the OVA becomes about Teacher trying to either find a human settlement where Shiva can live in peace, or trying to save her from the curse. So yeah, it's true that the OVA really starts deviating from the manga. Like, a lot. On one hand, this is somewhat understandable, as it'd be impossible to adapt an 11-volume manga into a one-hour-long OVA, so I can respect Wit Studio's wish to not bite off more than they can chew. They say less is more, after all, if stuff like the first OVA or even The Chronicles of Rebecca have anything to say about it. But I really do have to question a lot of the OVA's adaptational choices in regards to a lot of Teacher's decisions, even if the reasons for said decisions are understandable. I don't want to spoil anything, but having read the original manga, nowhere in the manga does Teacher ever consider abandoning Shiva in any way, not even out of concern for her safety. Plus, the OVA depicts some events happening very differently than in the manga, to the point of causing confusion about how they happened and why, and even has some original content that doesn't exist in the manga at all.

That being said, the characters themselves are fine, and they're mostly true to their characterization from the manga, save for Teacher suddenly wanting to send Shiva to a human village. Shiva doesn't act too cutesy moe or overly saintly like some anime children tend to act, and her voice actress honors that characterization. But Shiva herself doesn't really have much to her here other than liking Teacher and her surface-level trauma, and Teacher gets much more spotlight here, though a lot of it is spent on angsting about the curse. Other minor characters appear, but they're barely given much in the way of significance. The voice acting is fairly well done too. Not much else to say there.

Similarly to the first OVA, The Girl From The Other Side thrives on the experimental nature of its animation and the desolate atmosphere it conveys. And really, the animation alone does the OVA justice, not only to the manga itself, but Nagabe's art style. The OVA retains the shaky lines from the 10-minute short, making them more polished, the backgrounds are beautifully painted with loving detail, and a lot of the effects that this film uses—water filters, the muted color palette, jittering shading and outlines, ink blots, manipulating light, and others I don't have names for—are all used to great effect, conveying both the desolate environment they live in, and the two characters' emotional and mental states, all with a kind of ethereal beauty that only The Girl From The Other Side can convey. The soundtrack is also much more muted and ambient, doing its job impeccably, only playing when needed, and mainly restricted to just piano pieces.

In terms of which adaptation of the original manga is the best, I'd say I recommend the 10-minute silent OVA, as that one does its own thing without deviating too far from the manga, is true to the heart of the story, and narrows its focus to just showing a day in Shiva and Teacher's life. That being said, that's not to say the 2022 OVA doesn't have redeeming value. Significant deviations from the manga aside, I think the 2022 OVA is better seen as either an alternate continuity or a separate entity from the manga, similar to how the 1997 Ie Naki Ko Remi anime deviates significantly from the original Sans Famille novel and the 1977 Ie Naki Ko anime to the point of being its own entity. Plus, even The Girl From The Other Side's original manga has some issues, particularly as it gets closer to the end. The best way to watch this 1-hour OVA is to not have your expectations too high in regards to faithfulness to the manga, because it's clearly trying to be its own self-contained story, though it makes some missteps in doing so. Or, on the other hand, you can use it as a way to get people who aren't familiar with anime into it for the first time.

In the end, the 2022 The Girl From The Other Side OVA, while very ambitious and experimental with its animation, deviates a lot from the original source and doesn't make the best decisions in doing so. But at its heart, its still a nice way to kill an hour, especially if you want to watch it as just an experimental art film or take it as just a long advertisement for the manga. Plus, I'd still take this over all the shitty ecchi and light novel isekai anime any day of the week. I kind of hope some company like GKids or Eleven Arts dubs it into English and puts it out on DVD/Blu-Ray, along with the 10-minute OVA as well. That would be great!

 

[Juliko]

Finished this review two days ago.

Rating: 80/100

So...this kind of came out of nowhere. Well, not necessarily, as this indie short film, Summer Ghost, was actually announced in February last year, though without much fanfare. It only just now dropped, and GKids announced they're putting it out on DVD and Blu-Ray with an English dub. This is actually the directorial debut of one loundraw, who is primarily known for character design and doing illustration work for light novels. They did the cover art for the light novel I Want To Eat Your Pancreas and the character designs for Tsuki ga Kirei. But I had forgotten about it until it just dropped out of nowhere and GKids announced it. I was even further thrown off by the fact that Summer Ghost is only under 40 minutes long. But I had some time to kill and decided to watch it. Now that I have, what do I think? It's...pretty nice, and fairly polished for the creator's first real break into producing their own anime.

Summer Ghost centers on three high schoolers: Tomoya Sugisaki, Aoi Harukawa, and Ryou Kobayashi, who are all very different from one another and are going through their own struggles. Tomoya's controlling mother disapproves of his desire to paint and wants him to focus only on his studies. Aoi is being bullied at school, and attempted suicide once, and Ryou found out he doesn't have much longer to live. But all of them have one thing in common: They're interested in meeting the supposed summer ghost, said to be the ghost of a woman who committed suicide. After spending some time lighting fireworks, they manage to meet said summer ghost—a red haired woman named Ayane Satou. Mission fulfilled, Aoi and Ryou go back to their lives, but Tomoya begins seeing her alone, and after learning more about her, he, Aoi, and Ryou find themselves looking into just what happened to Ayane to make her like this, sorting through their own issues in the process.

In case the premise didn't clue you in, the story is pretty heavy on themes such as death, living life to the fullest, and taking control of your future. It almost reminds me of AnoHana, but with the main trio not having known Ayane or each other before this. Since the film is only 40 or so minutes long, it really needs to make use of its time in order to tell the story it needs to, without dragging its feet or focusing on anything that's not its main subject. Thankfully, I think Summer Ghost succeeded with this one. It knows what kind of story it is and what it wants to be, and sees it through to the end, remaining consistent throughout its run. The animation is quite good, especially considering this is done by a new independent studio. The character designs remind me of Makoto Shinkai's Voices of a Distant Star, only more refined and less jagged, but still maintaining an angular look about them. The backgrounds are beautiful as well, and I love how a lot of the short consists of Tomoya seeing bird's eye views of his hometown and other places he travels to with Ayane's help. I don't have as much to say about the soundtrack, but it does its job.

That being said, I'm sort of mixed on the characters. I mean, I like them just fine, and their problems are relatable, but their development is woefully predictable, and you can see the directions in which they grow from a mile away, even without the summer ghost mystery. The characters are pretty down-to-earth though, and I did like Ayane's arc, though I found Tomoya's a little too overly angsty for my liking. I do appreciate that they didn't try to drag out his angst for too long, though. It does help that the pacing is fast, but not so fast that you can't keep up with what's going on. Being a 40-minute movie, it doesn't have the luxury of taking its time to flesh out its story and characters, so it really needs to deliver right from the start. Thankfully, Summer Ghost made great use of its time, delivering on all of its plot points and characters even to the end, even if it left some questions unresolved, like specifically what illness Ryou is afflicted with. Oh, and for anyone wondering, there's no romance or gross fanservice.

For anyone wanting something with a bit more action and less mysticism and slice-of-life, this isn't the movie for you. Summer Ghost isn't necessarily breaking any new ground, but I think it's a nice little movie for anyone who wants to kill 40 minutes of their time. Considering how Makoto Shinkai also got his start in making indie movies before moving on to more official productions, I hope Summer Ghost will give loundraw the opportunity to do more things and make bigger movies, or whatever else they want to do in the anime industry. I'm also going to eagerly await the eventual DVD/BD release from GKids because I like this enough that I want to own it and show it to family and friends.

 

[Juliko]

Rating: 58/100.

During 2014, I was going to college and going through a bit of a rough patch. At one point, I went to my college's anime club, a different one from the previous college I went to, and they showed two episodes of this anime, Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun, aka Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun. I didn't go to any other meetings after that, as the club was too late in the day for me to keep going on a weekly basis at the time. But I did like what I saw of Nozaki-kun, so I decided to watch the rest of the series on my own. I finished it and I liked it...but then I just forgot about it. I couldn't have told you the first thing about it at the time, other than it poked fun at shoujo manga. So when I found out that it's going to be pulled from Netflix at the end of this month, I decided to rewatch it (First saw it in Japanese, then watched it in English) and...I suddenly remembered why I forgot about this show. I may have liked it to an extent at the time, but rewatching it now...honestly, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is pretty boring. To me, it is.

Basically, the story focuses on a young girl, Chiyo Sakura, who really wants to ask out a guy, Umetaro Nozaki. She bungles her confession, and he responds by...giving her an autograph, signed Sakiko Yumeno. Chiyo then realizes that Nozaki and Sakiko are one and the same, and that Nozaki is actually the creator of a popular manga series she likes, with Sakiko Yumeno being a pen name he uses. Nozaki then asks her to help him with his manga, as he found out she's in the art club and is good at painting. While not the ideal scenario she had in mind, this does give Chiyo the opportunity to help him out and get to know him better, so she accepts his offer and becomes one of his assistants. Over time, she meets many of his other quirky assistants and friends, and suddenly, life becomes much more exciting. Now if only they'd stop getting into so many misunderstandings.

Yeah, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is a parody of shoujo manga, regularly poking fun at and lampooning its usual cliches and tropes, often times taking them to their logical extremes for the sake of comedy, just as much as it plays them straight. I wouldn't have minded this...if it wasn't for several things going against it. One: All of the characters are stock stereotypes that play their cliches and tropes completely straight. Chiyo is just a bland everygirl defined by her crush on a guy, Nozaki is just a weird, oblivious idiot who has absolutely zero self-awareness, Mikoshiba is a hot-headed wuss, Kashima is just the popular girl, Hori is just there to physically abuse Kashima and be the straight man to Nozaki's dumbass, and all the rest of the characters are nothing more than just walking jokes and cliches. None of them show any signs of any depth to them beyond their one archetype, and many of them just act stupid.

Speaking of acting stupid, the second main problem with the series is that nearly every single one of its jokes, punchlines, or gags all involve characters either getting into misunderstandings or just flat-out not talking to each other about their issues. For example, in one episode, Kashima gets it into her head that Hori secretly wants to crossdress and play the heroine in a play. It's obviously not true, but instead of, y'know, asking him about it, she instead begins sending him girl clothes, accessories, and shoes, and since she refuses to say anything more, Hori assumes she's bullying him. The entire series is like this, as its entire backbone is having characters make wild assumptions and let their imaginations go wild rather than, y'know, simply sitting down to talk to each other and clear things up. Granted, many of these misunderstandings drive the jokes, but this method got old. FAST. I know this is more of a me problem than anything, as I've seen way too many shows where misunderstandings and characters refusing to clear things up cause unnecessary drama and drag out the conflict for way longer than it should be, so if you're into this kind of comedy, cool. More power to you. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun's method of comedy doesn't work for me, but it has managed to find an audience, so it's totally cool if people like it for that reason.

Honestly though, I don't really have much positive to say about the show itself. The animation is fine, but a lot of it just consists of characters standing around, exaggerated faces for the comedy bits, and the character designs are pretty generic. I swear, Wakamatsu and Hori could swap their hair colors and hair styles, and you would not be able to tell the difference between them. The soundtrack is also pretty hit or miss. The opening theme is pretty catchy and well-sung, the soundtrack mainly consists of piano pieces and tuba noises, and...the ending song is obnoxiously grating. Who's bright idea was it to make a helium-voiced seiyuu repeat the same phrase over and over again in the most obnoxiously high pitched voice possible?! I skip the ending theme because of this and I just can't bear to listen to it, even from the first note.

Rewatching this, I remembered why I completely forgot about this show the first time I watched it, as its attempts at poking fun at shoujo manga cliches don't work due to its need to have everything still be as cliche as possible and repeating its stale gags over and over and over. In the end, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun doesn't really stand out in any way. But hey, it may not be for me, but plenty of others like it, and that's perfectly fine. If you get enjoyment out of it, cool. I guess I should be thankful that Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is just generic at best.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

Rating: 80/100

A few years ago, I didn't have even so much as the faintest interest in Fire Emblem. I knew a bunch of my friends, both online and IRL, really liked it though, and I even follow a lot of fan fic writers who write really well written Fire Emblem fan fiction. It wasn't until Nintendo released the very first game, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light, on the Switch in December 2020 and announced plans to take it off the eShop in March 2021 that I decided to give the series a shot. Those who've read my review of that game already know my feelings on it, but tl;dr, other than a few nitpicks here and there, some of which couldn't be helped due to the limitations of the technology at the time, I honestly kinda liked the first Fire Emblem game, flaws and all. So when the news came out that Nintendo was planning to shut down the Wii U and 3DS eShops next year, along with the news that any DLC for games released on those systems would be inaccessible, I decided to hunker down and buy Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, another remake of one of the first FE games, and the last one to be released on the 3DS. I have no interest in Awakening or Fates, the latter especially, as I am NOT a fan of incest of any kind, and I hear Fates is pretty infamous for that. So being a relative newbie to the FE franchise as a whole, this review is written from the perspective of someone who has only played one other game and one who hasn't played the original Fire Emblem Gaiden, so don't expect me to reference Shadows of Valentia's immediate predecessors. Kind of fitting that the second FE game I've played is a remake of what's actually the second game in the franchise.

The story goes as follows: Many untold years ago, there were two sibling gods: the brother Duma and the sister Mila. The two had conflicting philosophies on how humanity should live, and their disagreements led to them fighting endlessly. Eventually they made a pact to end their conflict, which led to them dividing the continent of Valentia into two nations that would live for their god's beliefs. The nation of the south, Zofia, followed Mila and her teachings of pleasure and luxury. The nation of the north, Rigel, followed Duma and became a strong empire of proud warriors. However, as the years went by, both nations took their god's teachings to heart a little too much, and now the threat of war looms over the continent of Valentia, with our two main characters, Alm and Celica, going down different paths, with their own sets of armies behind them, to try and save not just their nations, but the entire continent.

Coming off of Shadow Dragon, the differences between that and Echoes are like night and day, even without taking into account Echoes being a remake. The graphics are vastly improved, with more polished overworld sprites, actual character portraits that are very well designed and distinct from one another (No palette-swaps in sight), and Echoes even added some new stuff that wasn't in Gaiden, such as some dungeon crawling segments meant to help you either find more items or grind your units. Echoes did away with the colosseums that Shadow Dragon had, but I appreciate that it tried to compensate for this by adding dungeon crawling segments. There's also the fact that while Shadow Dragon consisted entirely of just characters going through various maps, Echoes has a whole continent to explore while having the various maps limited to certain segments on the continent in question, making it feel more like you're actually exploring a whole world and not simply just going from map to map back to back. The game also lets you visit various locales and towns, interacting with NPCs, exploring the environment and interacting with various parts of it, and even doing some sidequests, making the world of Valentia actually feel alive compared to Shadow Dragon's more limited scope. It also helps that the soundtrack is an absolute banger and is more versatile compared to the 8-bit tunes in Shadow Dragon, mainly due to being on hardware that's capable of handling a soundtrack using actual instruments.

That being said, I've heard many people claim that the worst part of Echoes is that the game's map designs feel bland, tedious, and uninspired. I personally don't agree with this wholly, as I found many of the game's overworld maps just fine...save for some, mainly a bunch of the maps Celica and her army have to go through. Many of her section's maps involve a LOT of deserts and swamps, both of which are really hard to get through, namely because deserts slow your army's movement A LOT, only allowing you to move one or two spaces per turn and that's it, and the swamps have areas that, if a unit is in them, can actually leech away at their HP. But they're nothing compared to the utter pain that is Nuibaba's Abode, where you have to fight the witch Nuibaba, mainly because said witch has such insanely wide attack range that if you're in it at all, she will completely and utterly CRUSH you in no time flat. Plus, in order to avoid being in her attack range, the game makes you funnel through two very narrow paths to get to the entrance to her mansion, making it hard to arrange your units the way you want to, and said entrance is on the back side of the building, not the front, so good luck preserving your units!

If there's one thing Echoes really tried to improve in regards to remaking the original Fire Emblem Gaiden game, it's massively expanding its characters and giving them SO MUCH more personality and development, and this is where it really succeeds. Because of the Famicom's technical limitations of the time, I'm sure Gaiden wasn't able to flesh out its massive cast of characters as much as it wanted to, which was also the case with Shadow Dragon before it. Since Echoes is on much stronger, more versatile hardware that has much more in the way of data storage space, it was able to not only flesh out all of its characters much more, but even revamp their character designs to make them more distinct from one another. Most of the main cast, and any important characters that receive a lot of focus, get a ton of screentime and development, and continue to get fleshed out as the story of the game goes on. It also helps that there's many new scenes and instances where the characters actually interact with one another, both during the main story, and during base and support conversations, giving most of the characters much more depth and nuance than they ever had before. Granted, a lot of the base and support conversations aren't as expansive or massive as, say, the skits from the Tales series, nor the sheer length of the heart events in Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns, but I'll definitely give Echoes kudos for actually making an effort to flesh out most of its important characters, especially when it matters.

That being said, not every character got the same treatment. Since the Fire Emblem series often has large ensemble casts in each game, it can be hard to flesh out each and every one of them, especially if you want to prevent them from being too similar to one another. This is especially troublesome since Echoes has different characters joining both Alm and Celica's armies each. While many of the important characters like Alm, Celica, Gray, Clair, Lukas, Tobin, Boey, Mae, Berkut, and even Sonya receive a lot of depth, personality, and layers to their characters, complete with their own sets of strengths, flaws, dreams, and idiosyncracies, others such as Genny, Faye, Rinea, Silque, Deen, Jesse, Kamui, and even Nuibaba, don't receive such treatment, even though there are some sources that expand on their backstories in more detail, which the game doesn't try to utilize. Plus, the game also doesn't have a whole lot of support conversations between characters, with some only being able to support with one character and nobody else, even though interactions with other characters could really help in developing and fleshing them out more. For example, someone on TVTropes pointed out that since Tatiana and Silque are devout followers of the gods Duma and Mila respectively, a support between them would have both fleshed out their characters by expanding on certain story elements related to both their upbringings, how their churches operate, or even how they feel about one of the main villains, Jedah, since he's an example of how worshiping a God can go too far and border on villainous. But instead, they barely interact, Tatiana's characterization mainly focuses on her relationship with Zeke, and Silque is only allowed one support conversation...with Faye, of all characters. Basically, some characters receive more attention and depth than others, and with the 3DS being more versatile than other consoles in terms of data and hardware capabilities, I fail to see why Echoes didn't try to give certain characters more support conversations and interactions with one another, as I see no reason why they weren't able to. Then again, I know nothing about game design, so I'm not one to talk.

Speaking of characters who get the short end of the stick, two in particular, Faye and Rinea, suffer the most in regards to the game's character writing, mainly because their only defining personalities solely revolve around men. Rinea's just there to be Berkut's worried wife and a damsel in distress later in the story, and Faye's only real defining trait is being obsessed with Alm, almost to the point of being creepily clingy. No, seriously, Faye's entire character is that she loves Alm and wants to be with him, but even though she's well aware of the fact that Alm likes Celica, and even marries her later, she continues to pine for him even in her ending, and said character ending is honestly one of the worst and most mean-spirited endings ever. She doesn't have any depth or other layers to her, or even hobbies or things she does outside of obsessing over Alm, and the fact that the game never calls her out on her obsessive behavior really leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and many other players feel the same. I'm almost tempted to write a fan fic where she either gets called out on idealizing and putting Alm on a pedestal above everything else or eventually gets over it. Hell, it says a lot that one of my favorite Echoes characters is Clair, who, while she also gets a brief crush on Alm for a bit, does realize that he loves Celica, backs off, and has much more to her personality than just that. Plus, in her supports with Gray, she calls him out on only seeing her as a pretty face or a possession and not attempting to get to know her as a person or respecting her wishes and agency, something I wish somebody had done with Faye in regards to her unhealthy obsession with Alm! That being said, at the end of the day, Faye is just a victim of bad writing, as somebody had the bright idea to make her only defining trait be Alm this, Alm that, nothing but loving Alm no matter what. It almost borders on being kind of misogynistic, the way Faye is made to be so obsessed with one man, whom she has absolutely no chance in hell with, that she continues to pine for him even after he marries. I don't like Faye, but more than that, I don't like whoever made the decision to write her this way. Plus, I've seen worse characters in other stuff.

Whew, that was quite a long paragraph just about one character, but I just had to get it out of my system. Furthermore, uneven character writing isn't the only flaw Echoes has. For one, you can't buy new weapons, as Echoes (And I think Gaiden as well, but I could be wrong) does away with shops, so if you need to get a new weapon, you can't buy one. Instead, you have to interact with various locales and go into dungeons just to get stronger weapons and even healing items. There is a blacksmith who makes your weapons stronger if you have enough money, but that's it. Also, each character is only allowed to carry one item as opposed to four in Shadow Dragon, and while the convoy is no longer held back by being a building or space restrictions, if you need to access it during a battle, the only way to do so is to have a character stand next to either Alm or Celica if they need anything other than what they're holding. That's...kind of annoying. Plus, the final main story dungeon is a huge slog to get through if you don't know where you're going or what to do beforehand.

But I don't want to be a Negative Nancy and end this review on a bad note, because for what it's worth, Echoes' positives do make up for whatever negatives it has. It's not a perfect game by any stretch, but it did make an effort to improve on most of Fire Emblem Gaiden's flaws, even if some of them didn't always work, and I do like it more than Shadow Dragon. I'm glad Shadows of Valentia was the second Fire Emblem game I decided to play all the way through, and maybe this might make me a fan of the franchise yet. Its sprawling, twisty story, mostly engaging characters, great soundtrack and epic scale make it a pretty fun game to play if you're willing to give it a chance, and Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia couldn't be a more perfect end for the franchise's time on the 3DS. If you do decide to buy the game though, buy the DLC before the 3DS eShop shuts down, because you won't be able to access it at all after March 2023.

 

[System Error]

Need to eventually finish SoV myself. I can agree with you on Faye, she's kind of two-note, the other smaller one being being her friendship with Silque (though it is hilarious she gets a support penalty from being close to Alm). Actually, someone I talk with online is a huge fan of Faye. We like to give him crap about it on his discord server. There were rumors circulating she was supposed to be heavily into the avatar character who got dropped, although they really just wanted a female villager. Though funny enough, you can have Alm leave her (and Kliff) behind and even pick her up with Celica later.

The other big thing about Echoes though is that some OGs criticize the way Alm and Celica were handled in comparison with the original. Alm used to be way more gung-ho and aggressive to where the argument at the end of part 2 made much more sense. In fact, supplementary materials for Awakening say that the only difference between Alm and major villain Walhart is that Alm had Celica. The devs said they made Alm a nice guy to make him "more relatable" but it kind of has the side-effect of making Celica much worse in that argument as she's flipping out at him over much less. And that's before the changes to Celica's naivite: she was smarter and didn't fall for Jedah's nonsense. Alm still had to rescue her in the depths and she still followed him into a trap, but it wasn't preceded by making a stupid decision and getting turned into a witch and killed/revived by deus ex machina. (Also fun fact: Celica's party takes damage and can even die if Alm takes too long reaching them in Gaiden, got changed for the remake though)

Any interest in other FE games, curiously?

 

[KerfishSea]

Forgive me for asking but will you ever review BoJack Horseman ? Its quite the roller coaster. (it gets real deep really fast)

 

[Juliko]

Forgive me for asking but will you ever review BoJack Horseman ? Its quite the roller coaster. (it gets real deep really fast)

I might, once I get around to watching it, but I don't know when that'll be.

New review today!

Rating: 68/100

Don't you just hate it when it seems like media focuses much more on animation and graphics than telling stories with three-dimensional characters? That's what Wit Studio's newest movie, Bubble, unfortunately turned out to be. Basically, five years ago, gravity-altering bubbles fell upon the world, followed by an explosion destroying Tokyo and trapping it in a bubble dome. Since then, kids have been using the gravity defying bubbles as a means to engage in dangerous catch-the-flag gang wars for fun. A young man named Hibiki tries a reckless stunt and almost drowns, but is saved by a mysterious wild girl who he names Uta. The two of them bond, and Uta comes to know Hibiki and his friends, but another phenomenon threatens to decimate what's left of Tokyo. Yeah, not exactly a novel premise, but I'm of the philosophy that execution is important, and that even cliched characters and premises can be done well if you care and utilize them as much as you're able. Sadly, as much as Bubble tries, narratively it's kind of a mess.

For one, the anime doesn't make much of an effort to really expand on its setting. Yeah, Tokyo's been destroyed and a bunch of its citizens flat out left, but how has the government reacted to it? Did the government just leave the illegal citizens to their own devices out of apathy, or are they perfectly okay with letting a bunch of kids running around so long as Science Lady is there to supervise them? The movie never really bothers to answer these questions, or really explore how Tokyo being destroyed affects the psyches of all the characters involved, other than saying that kids who lost their families gravitated there. It feels like the decimated Tokyo is more a prop and set piece for all the parkour action, and the gravity bubbles seem similarly put there just to justify having a bunch of teenagers performing stunts that realistically would be impossible for them to pull off. Plus, even the so-called gang wars themselves seem to serve little purpose to the story other than to give the movie a thin sense of conflict that doesn't really give it a lot of stakes. Basically, the movie's trying to tackle a bunch of different concepts and premises but failing to utilize any of them to their full potential.

This also extends to the characters as well. Basically, other than Hibiki, none of the characters are remotely interesting or three-dimensional whatsoever. Hell, we barely learn anyone's names outside of some members of the main group. One character, Kai, never even so much as gets his name mentioned until an hour and ten minutes into the damn movie! If you can't even be bothered to name one of your main characters until late into the movie, that just shows you don't dare. Plus, Kai has this weird subplot where he's weirdly jealous of Hibiki for reasons the movie never elaborates on, but barely anything is done with it, and we also never learn why Shin and Makoto, the only two adults there, are taking care of this ragtag group of kids to begin with. Uta herself is little more than just a mysterious, feral waif who's there to be Hibiki's doomed love interest and a prop for tragedy porn, never being able to develop any sense of self. Also, the other parkour teams are just a complete waste of animation and are just there to provide artificial conflict that ultimately leads to nothing, especially since the movie never bothers to develop them beyond their assigned stereotypes. Ironically, Hibiki fares somewhat better, and the closest the movie gets to actually being good is having him suffer from some kind of auditory processing disorder, and a surprisingly well-depicted depiction at that. Honestly, had the movie done more with that and cut out all the other unnecessary stuff, it might have been good.

Alright, that's all for the bad stuff, so let's get on to the good stuff. It's no surprise that Wit Studio went all out for the animation department, and it really shows. From the beautiful background art and eclectic but still down to earth character designs, to the epic action and sweeping camera angles watching every move from every direction, to the lighting and shot composition, the whole movie is visually stunning. I don't have as much to say about the soundtrack, as it's your typical Sawano fare, and while it is good, it feels like Sawano is just repeating the same sound he uses for all his other OSTs. He really ought to break out of his shell and do different things once in a while. Also, whose bright idea was it to give the movie a full anime opening sequence? It looks nice and all, but I feel like it was unnecessary. It didn't work for Your Name, and it doesn't work here. I really hope this doesn't become a trend for movies. And again, Hibiki's backstory was the best thing about the movie. Had Bubble gone all in on either Hibiki's drama or just being an action movie about a bunch of gangs, it probably would have been able to find stable footing. Alas, twas not to be.

Sorry, Bubble. I really wanted to like you, and the movie does have some redeeming value. But in the end, Bubble made the grave mistake of trying to do too many things and never excelling at any of them, which proved to be its downfall. It's available for streaming on Netflix if you want a nice little time killer, but Bubble doesn't really offer anything beyond pretty animation and high paced action.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished today.

Rating: 71/100

When I was in school—possibly middle school or high school, but I can't remember for certain—I remember being made to read a short story called The Yellow Wallpaper for class once. At the time, I couldn't fathom what it was about, found it terribly boring, and thought the main character was whiny for no reason. But it wasn't until adulthood that I reread The Yellow Wallpaper and found that it's actually about a lot more than my younger self was able to comprehend, and I understand it a lot more than I used to. Basically, the story is about a woman (We never learn her name) who is confined to a small room in a rented vacation home, as per her husband's orders, for he's a doctor. She apparently had a "bout of hysteria" and supposedly the best treatment for her is to stay in her room and to never leave under any circumstances. The woman finds it terribly boring, and the gaudy yellow wallpaper doesn't help matters. Isolated and without any form of stimuli, over the course of months, the woman slowly goes insane, convinced that the wallpaper is making her ill.

Yeah, this is a short story, going for at least 60-something pages, so there isn't really much of a narrative going on. Then again, this is likely the point, as the main character is literally confined to a room and not allowed to leave for any reason. On its own, the story probably doesn't have much to it, but if one were to look into the author's history, and a lot of the context behind the time period in which it was written, there's actually a lot to unpack. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the writer of the short story, grew up during the Victorian era and suffered a bout of postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, and the Victorian era was NOT a pretty time for both women and anyone suffering from mental health problems. Even if women weren't necessarily sick, hysteria was considered a legitimate diagnosis before it was revealed to be utter bullshit, and was often used even for really stupid things like, say, homosexuality, wanting too much or not enough sex, wanting to pursue a career or higher education, or even, God forbid, wanting some autonomy and agency for once in their damn lives. Any women who were legitimately sick or mentally ill were often misdiagnosed and subjected to quack treatments like the woman in the story did and wound up worse off for it. Basically, if a woman wanted to do anything besides be submissive to her husband or be a housewife, she was seen as deviating from the norm and branded as defiant, and were often subjected to this kind of oppression as a result. Gilman herself was even subjected to a brief period of confinement by a quack doctor, similar to what she wrote in The Yellow Wallpaper, but was able to find a better doctor and go on to do great things.

In that aspect, one could argue that The Yellow Wallpaper is semi-autobiographical, an attack on the so-called "rest cure" and showing how it actually hurts and hinders more than helps. Mad respect for Gilman for actually calling out the "rest cure" bullcrap for what it is. One could argue that it's also a feminist work, in that it specifically calls out men who believe in, practice, and encourage the so-called quack treatments and force their wives to endure it because they either believed it was good for them without questioning it or out of a sense of control to try and maintain the societal status quo of the time. The main character's husband, who is a physician, treats her very condescendingly, unconvinced that she's actually fine and forces her to stay in her living quarters, acting like she's on the verge of a breakdown, not realizing that his methods are what are actually hurting her in the first place. Considering that women were expected to conform to their husbands and submit to them no matter what during that time period, the idea of a story claiming that male physicians and their methods were wrong was not only considered scandalous, but revolutionary at the time of The Yellow Wallpaper's publication.

You're probably wondering why I'm talking a lot more about the history behind The Yellow Wallpaper's publication instead of the actual story itself. Well, there really isn't much of a story other than the main character being driven mad by being stuck in a room all the time, and it has a very small cast of characters as a result of the premise and its format. Two of said characters, the maid Jennie and the main character's baby, don't even do anything in the story at all and get little to no page time. Everything is told from the main character's point of view, and since she's stuck in a room 100% of the time, readers who aren't familiar with The Yellow Wallpaper's context and history may find it painfully boring to sift through. I know I did when I was first made to read this as a kid. The characters don't really develop or change throughout the story, other than the main character, and not for the best, though in this case this is intentional due to Gilman wanting to show the downsides of the so-called "rest cure" and how it can hurt one's mental health to not have any stimuli or entertainment outside the house. The setting is also very restrained and limited in its scope, and once again, this is intentional. I once found the prose to be hard to understand, but now that I'm older, I understand it a lot more than I used to, and the prose is fairly descriptive and well done, until it spirals into florid purple prose about the wallpaper near the end, though I hear this is also intentional, used to convey the MC's descent into madness.

So as a standalone short story, The Yellow Wallpaper may not appeal to everyone, especially if you're not into stories that intentionally limit their scope. In fact, while I do like The Yellow Wallpaper a lot more than I used to, its biggest setback may be that it relies heavily on being written during a very particular context and time period during the author's life for it to be appreciated for what it is. Then again, sometimes even the mundane can be the scariest and most horrifying thing of all. H. P. Lovecraft in particular considered The Yellow Wallpaper to be an excellent depiction of horror and madness, even going so far as to use Gilman's surname for a set of characters for one of his stories. One thing can be said for sure: Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote this story with a mission in mind, and considering that nowadays, the diagnosis of hysteria and quack "rest cures" are no longer considered valid, I can say wholeheartedly that she succeeded with flying colors. While stories like The Yellow Wallpaper may not necessarily be my cup of tea, and may not be for others looking for something more meaty and exciting, I'm glad I re-read it, as I appreciate it a lot more than when I was made to read it as a kid.

 

[Juliko]

This review was just finished yesterday.

Rating: 47/100

Don't you hate it when you read a manga that intrigues you and looks like it'll be interesting, only for it to turn out that it's not as good as you hoped it'd be? Because this is pretty much my reaction to Twin Souls, or Tamashii no Futago, an obscure horror/supernatural manga that came out between 2006-2008. Basically, the story centers on two children on different sides of the world who died on the same day under mysterious circumstances. Although the two have only met once in their lives, their souls have become intertwined, destined to meet at a certain point, but the reason why, neither knows. On their respective journeys, Alex and Rite interact with other people who can see them, with two people in particular being drawn together because of them: Haruhi Kurahashi, a woman whose twin sister Akihi sees her as a rival, and a German jeweler named Theo Kloden, a former doctor who is overcome with guilt over being unable to save a child he knew was being abused. Over time, Alex and Rite's memories become clearer as they're drawn ever closer.

In all honesty, the second half of the manga is pretty easy to review: It's balls to the wall dark, exploring sensitive subjects like divorce, sexual abuse, child prostitution, gender dysphoria, children getting murdered, and so on, but the main trio evolve and change as the story goes on, keeping your attention until the surprisingly optimistic ending closes it all off. So why the abysmally low score? Well...you can blame that on a lot of things. One of which is the first half of the manga, which is basically a series of vignettes involving the titular twin souls, Alex and Rite (Yes, there's an in-story reason for why they have those names), interacting and watching over various characters who don't have anything to do with their situation. Most of said one-off characters are pretty badly written, with one of them being a super creepy otaku stereotype that the manga wants us to sympathize with, but I can't bring myself to because of his actions. It almost felt like an episodic manga that was tangentially connected by the two main characters, and honestly, a lot of those episodic chapters are pretty bad. One chapter in particular is about two friends who seem closer than normal, and it seems like it's going to go into a story about murder and cannibalism...only for it to pull a sudden bait-and-switch and suddenly, poof! Everything's a-okay! Ugh...I was not a fan of how poorly the manga executed that chapter in particular.

The second half fares slightly better in terms of focusing on the characters that actually matter, but the backstories for the two main kids really aren't depicted with the most nuance, grace, and sensitivity. Now, I'm not exactly an expert on how the subjects of child sexual abuse and child prostitution should be portrayed in media, so I know commenting on their accuracy and their overall portrayal is probably outside my wheelhouse. Plus, the manga isn't graphic in terms of bordering on hentai when it comes to showing the sexual abuse that children go through in here, but there's just enough revealed for the reader to put the pieces together, leaving very little to the imagination. That being said, a lot of it just felt like it was shoehorned in for the sake of either shock value or showing the kids as pitiable woobies and little else. There's hardly much in the way of sensitivity and nuance in regards to the way Twin Souls depicts this subject matter, and not helping matters is that the artwork gives it a weirdly voyeuristic look about it. I mean, there's literally a scene where an eleven-year-old child is shown giving a footjob to a naked adult man, and while it's not super graphic, the panel showing the child in question shows a black blob between their feet where the man's penis would be. So yeah, Twin Souls has a LOT of triggering shit in it, and if you can't handle it, you're better off not reading this, nuance depiction or no. But yeah, in regards to Twin Souls' depictions of said sensitive subject matter, I don't think it does a very good job. I've seen other media that do it better without resorting to the cliche, voyeuristic ways depicted here. Also, was it really necessary to have Rite be subject to constant panty shots?

Alright, that's all for the bad stuff. Let's get into the good stuff, though there isn't a whole lot. The artwork is competent at best, and it does do a great job at conveying a creepy atmosphere, especially in regards to the two main kids, which is fitting since this is considered a horror manga. Secondly, I liked Haruhi's growing relationship with Theo, and while I wish more time had been shown fleshing them out, they're really the only two characters I cared about even a little bit. Also...the manga has a surprisingly good, optimistic ending that actually caps it off pretty perfectly. I won't spoil it, but the fact that it's the one bit of levity in an otherwise very bleak, dark, morose manga actually almost redeems it for me. Granted, your mileage may vary. But other than those things, I really didn't like Twin Souls. Parts of it really could have been done better, and the first half was plagued by badly written, inconsistent characters who thankfully never appear again. The question remains whether or not you want to sit through the pain for the second half, and the second half of Twin Souls isn't even THAT good to begin with, only being better because of the ending.

Overall, Twin Souls has some interesting stuff in it, but I really don't think the manga is worth it, whether it be the awful episodic first half or the offensive depictions of sensitive subject matter being portrayed with all the subtlety and nuance of a burning trainwreck. But hey, if you like the manga, more power to you.