Jeoffrey

In my opinion, Coco is probably the best-animated movie of the year 2017. It is colorful and beautifully shot. It has got some drive, the characters are likable, it is entertaining, and the narrative is really good (considering it is Pixar). They did a great job as it gets really emotional, and I almost could not hold back the tears at the very end. As for the negative aspects, the movie is very predictable in places (who exactly is Hector?), slightly unbelievable at times (could a family ban music so stringently?), and the first half of the movie is much less interesting than the second. In my final assessment, I compared it mainly to last year's Kubo and the Two Strings and 2014's The Book of Life (because of the subject matter), and I am finally clear about the rating, 8.4/10.

​​"Recovery of an MMO Junkie," aka "Recommendation of the Wonderful Virtual Life," is, on the whole, an enjoyable romantic comedy with likable characters that showed me the world through rose-colored glasses. They also tried rather unsuccessfully to convince me that the world is a damn small place. So next time I play an online MMORPG, I am going to be more careful who I flirt with. This is because it could be a neighbor or a work colleague. This was an enjoyable show that managed to make me smile at times, even though at the same time it was more of a fairy tale or just some trashy romance novella rather than any kind of real insight into the world of gamers. This show was simply a nice relaxing anime series that soothed me and yet will fade from my memory within a few weeks. 6.4/10.

I was incredibly excited about this movie practically from the second I saw the trailer. I felt it made for an interesting and emotional spectacle, and I could see it took some inspiration from Miyazaki's "Ponyo". Well, in the end, I guess I basically got what I expected, though certainly not to the degree and intensity I would have expected. Yes, there is no denying that at least animation-wise, it is interesting, colorful, cheerful, and very much unexpected in this digital age, even though I cannot say I was blown away by its colorful style. I found it strange (almost weird at times), and the moments when there was dancing made me think of old animations like the French Asterix movies. Story-wise, I did not expect anything complicated. I would not have minded that that was all I got if everything had been balanced with a healthy number of emotional scenes and the kind of charming atmosphere that the aforementioned Ponyo has. Unfortunately, I did not feel very moved even though it was charming in some situations. It was endearing at times, although there was just not enough cuteness to really entertain me. I found the emphasis put on the soundtrack surprising, and I did not expect it to be about the band at all. However, I only enjoyed the music in this movie about half the time. As for the characters, Lu was quite a cute character most of the time and I enjoyed her, as well as maybe her father (who reminded me of My Neighbor Totoro). Even by the very end, the main male protagonist was only OK when he was not pouting, even though I could not get on with such an Uho (who should be called Aho more like it). Reading through my review of this step by step, beginning to end, you might be forgiven for getting the impression this was quite a mediocre movie, even though that is not really how it struck me. It was a weird movie; it was interesting; it was a lot weaker than I wanted it to be; however, I still found it mostly quite entertaining. When I enjoy something, I cannot give it a bad rating. So I am awarding a feeble four stars (6.7/10).

Hey Arnold! was one of the cartoons I watched many years ago on the German station Nickelodeon. Now, this show has finally gotten something that could easily be described as a conclusion. I finally got the ending I was expecting and got the answers to questions I was once thinking a lot about. Even though the whole narrative has serious shortcomings and some of the denouements feel a bit forced, I actually enjoyed it immensely.

I would define "The Moment You Fall in Love" as a sort of follow-up to the movie "I've Always Liked You" from 2016, focusing on different characters from the narrative. This is once again a love story. However, this time it stars the siblings of the original two main protagonists, who are a year younger. Of course, characters familiar from the first movie reappear (and they will probably also get their own story in the future, as an anime series about another couple from this franchise has just started). The plot of the other anime series is also mentioned here, even though this time it is simply a love story involving a young girl named Hina, who has the classic "Please notice me senpai" Japanese problem. Plus, her annoying neighbor Kotaro is always around to tease her, even though there is not much to tease. So from the same setting, we get a new narrative which is again quite a simple albeit decent and pretty good love story. A rather well-fitting soundtrack completes it. After saying that, I enjoyed the first movie a bit more because I found the main protagonists a bit more likable. I did not connect with Hina that much in this movie and I did not particularly care for Kotaro either. While this movie is probably of roughly the same standard as the previous one, I did not enjoy it as much this time around. So, I am awarding this 6.4/10, though, with the caveat that I am still curious to see what the next sequels are going to bring (currently mainly the before mentioned "Our Love Has Always Been 10 Centimeters Apart" anime series).

I hear someone has already rechristened this show Akame ga Hitler. Why give it that nickname in particular? Well, probably because there are a ton of fight scenes, straightforward action, and people die in the show too. There is an order of thirteen superhumans whose origins can be traced back to the Third Reich (at least according to the contents). It is all played for effect, with the main point being to shock and captivate the audience with epic fight scenes and unexpected twists. Well yeah, but I understood what was going on in Akame ga Kill!, it also had a good atmosphere, and the characters' deaths always touched me somehow. In this show, the atmosphere is completely lacking; the narrative is full of weird nonsense that my head cannot get itself around, even though I tried to concentrate. Plus, I did not manage to develop a relationship with the characters even halfway through the season. So I am quitting after the sixth episode because I have not figured out what the swastika, the guillotine, and perhaps déjà vu have in common, and I probably do not want to find out anymore. A little advice in conclusion - if you want lots of action, thrilling fight scenes, lots of bizarre situations, plus tons of killing Nazis of a higher standard, then you better get the new Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus game and forget about this anime series. Dropped after the sixth episode and 3/10.

Some people might get the idea that Two Car is a sports anime series; after all, it is about motorcycle sidecar racing, and some of the moments when the passenger's head is down against the curb are meant to evoke some real drama and tension you get with sports shows, although this is not really that type of show. This show is more about a peer counseling session for the girls because each of the couples who have come to this island to race obviously has some terrible problem that they will have to solve themselves (or with the help of the other sidecar racing team members). Of course, the couples are vastly different, as are their problems and their solutions. Unfortunately, nothing I see here, either in terms of the problems or the style of solving them, manages to convince or engage me enough to want to keep watching it. In other words, this show is not for me; this is more for girls who might be floundering in their relationship with their best friend and who might find some inspiration here. The gentlemen viewers will enjoy a little bit of motorcycle sidecar racing, albeit just the training, and a lot of bath scenes (because I guess every serious problem here can be solved with a bath). I stopped watching after the sixth episode of this anime series, which is not entirely bad, it just passed me by, and to be perfectly honest I am surprised I made it to the halfway point. 3.5/10.

I was wrong; this is not a typical ecchi anime series, where there is some innocent seduction and there is repeated unwanted falling onto people, touching, and shyness. That is not what this is about at all because this ecchi anime series delivers the ultimate tirade of double entendres and silly sex jokes with the firepower of a Russian AK-47 Kalashnikov automatic assault rifle. So instead of seeing the oft-repeated and tired situations you normally get from this genre, we get entirely new and unique tropes. Every scene is loaded with absurd double entendres and sexual innuendos. Even though these are by no means unintentional, they are pretty deliberate because the squad here is a bunch of those typical teenagers who talk about sex all the time (except for the main male protagonist, who is as always the usual innocent victim). They constantly need to make innuendos, and as it happens, the one who talks about it the most is not getting any sex. Plus, sex is discussed in every possible different way, with the latest sixth episode being absolutely perfect. There are the classic heterosexual jokes, and then because we are now in 2017 when everything just has to be politically correct, we also have allusions to yuri (girls’ love) and even yaoi (boys' love). This anime production is quite original and thus managed to keep me engaged (if not very entertained) for half of the season. The problem, though, is that it is not that original in its execution, and the same concept is used repeatedly. For example, a situation comes up with the main couple; the main female protagonist drops a few innuendos and turns each of the male protagonist's responses into a double entendre. It is then repeated, and another female protagonist appears. However, this time she is with the main couple and throws in a few innuendos on, say, the classic and popular topic for the Japanese, incest (or the main character's mom comes in and they make MILF jokes, etc.). Another female character appears, and she makes allusions to lesbianism, and finally, another male character appears, and he makes homoerotic allusions and gay jokes. Eventually, the situation somehow builds up and resolves with the main couple's mutual understanding of how much they love each other. Then suddenly, there is a new situation, and everything is, give or take, repeated yet again. When you notice this, you wait to see who is going to be put center stage and what note the jokes will be on for the next minute. It might even work if the jokes changed a bit, like at least the themes or whatever, however, they are all just a bunch of teenage sex references. I think sexual innuendo is fine if you are fifteen and even I still make those sorts of jokes occasionally. However, everyone realizes at some point that even repeating such jokes means they stop being funny after a certain time or age. So I dropped this after episode six, although I have to appreciate that this approach to the show, if they toned it down a bit, could have been another way to resurrect my interest in the ecchi genre. (I probably would have loved this show at the age of fifteen). 4/10.

The intermingling of dreams and reality can be fascinating (such as in Sucker Punch), and it partially works in this show. As long as the fantasy part works as a parallel to reality and complements the actual narrative, everything flows interestingly enough. Finding out that the main female protagonist’s father told her as much without her knowing was also quite touching. However, then comes the second half (or maybe the last third, I was not watching the time) of the season, and that is when it stopped working for me. From a certain point when reality seamlessly transitioned into fantasy and everything kind of weirdly came together, I thought it lost its charm. The supposedly epic and visually exciting but somehow completely vacuous conclusion convinced me that I do not want to give more than an average rating. 5/10.

This two-part OVA is once again very amusing and has all the other qualities of my favorite anime series. For someone who, like me, is a big fan of Tsukuyo, this OVA definitely could not turn out to be a disappointment. 10/10