I like the last 15-20 minutes of the first one even if even by rebuild standards is completely unnecessary as a whole and the second’s a pretty good action film even divorced from eva baggage. I do not like the third film despite having read many positions to the contrary and my thoughts on the last one cannot be contained within the confines of a video game forum
in b4 ideon
Last time I talked about the fourth movie ppl got mad at me because I have intensely strong feelings about it’s messaging, but if you wanna know how I feel about it you can DM me
The new anniversary short film is pretty good.
I think I can recommend watching the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Rebuild films only in the way it’s interesting to see anyone these days with vision have such intense, singular control over a production, that they create an expensive Lucas-like catastrophy which are rarer and rarer these days.
I personally was so offended by Rebuild 4, though. The suggestion that all of the misery of NGE could only be solved by Shinji becoming a salary man in a hetero relationship was just such a baffling way to end this whole thing.
The 4th one is straight up disgusting and I don’t mean that in a laudatory way. I loved the 3rd one though, so.
Yeah the 3rd one was so fresh and exciting seeming. But I can’t help think about “curse of eva…” all the time.
I felt similarly in that 1.11 felt completely pointless and unnecessary, 2.22 was real good since it did some new shit, 3.33 continued in a completely new and cool direction with everyone getting to do something interesting (even Ritsuko!). Then 4.44 is wraps it all up is very trad and disappointing way for such an out-there series.
I do think they’re worth watching for those unique moments throughout the run, there’s plenty of weird and interesting ideas, even if none of it was close to as affecting as something like EoE.
I’m mostly ok with 4.44 largely just on the section with Gendo and Shinji getting to actually fight and try to connect after so many different attempts through multiple different films and episodes. Even if the resolution was a little to clean and after school special therapeutic just the moment of seeing Gendo show a little self reflection sewed up a big hole in that tapestry of emotions from the original to here for me. After that yeah it’s to trad but still like the note of Shinji finding a reality he could embrace sincerely.
I have been so into Dorohedoro that I got sick of waiting for more of the season and just went ahead and got a Viz account and started reading the manga. It’s the only thing that’s ever pushed me to that limit and I love it.
Though I admit I am tempted to look into Frieren too
Most important boat reveal since school days
Mystery Lane (Full Episodes, In order)
I had my initial doubts about enjoying this, but after some episodes, I was invested with how the ongoing story pans out. Make sure to watch your episodes in order. It isn’t heavily serialised, but the writers refer back to previous cases with some recurring villains.
Every episode is found officially in YouTube. What’s the appeal? It’s like if Rescue Rangers took place in London and the team was reduced to just two main characters and recurrent helpers in the police force?
It isn’t going to floor you, but it’s another cool show from Europe airing on Disney that’ll never reach the USA or our cable, not even on US region Disney+. It does seem a bit niche, it has no Spanish dub yet, not even a Brazilian dub. The only Portuguese dub is the European one, oddly enough. S2 is in production.
This show is so fucking French, it has a Breton dub. A BRETON DUB. Probably the only animated series that I know to have a Breton dub at all, up to this point, the only Breton dubs I knew were stuff like Cartoon Saloon. It’s weird they modeled the setting entirely on real life London accuracy, rather than doing Paris.
i assume there are probably preschool shows with breton dubs, as there are many with welsh and gaelic dubs (including some you have mentioned liking before, like charlie and lola)
Those shows have Welsh and Gaelic dubs because the United Kingdom pretends to give any shit about using minority and endangered languages from their region. France has a long history of trying to stamp out the Breton language.
Unlike the United Kingdom, you’ve no television channels whatsoever in Breton. At most you get specialised blocks, but nothing full time like BBC Alba or S4C. Brezhoweb as its name implies is online only. The last time they tried to do Breton television, it was slowly overrun by the non Breton programs.
TV Breizh (Breizh is Breton for Brittany ) is a French pay television channel owned by Groupe TF1, which was initially set as a regional station for the Brittany region, but has since lost its initial purpose and became largely a channel dedicated to reruns of French, American and British series, mostly crime procedurals.
That recent Dark Souls thread reminded me that this exists
Saw Labrynth by Shoji Kawamori Monday in the theater. What a mess of a film. It has an Twilgiht Zone esque idea of if your Social Media persona took over your everyday personality and what conondrums that could bring but its own metaphysical metaphors lose the plot pretty quick to drag on until a big musical number. Also Aquarion gets stunt casted for a giant battle between a nerds Social Media Persona and his everyday self. It’s like a cheaper and stupider version of Hosoda’s internet powered films. It’s stupid enough to almost be fun but needed to go further to be truly entertaining. The Aquarion vs Ultraman OC was the most entertaining thing to me mostly to watch them redo some of the attack from other shows. There could’ve been solid commentary in here but it really lost any message it might’ve had in its mess of a plot.
Been slowly converting my partner to be a fan of animation after swearing it off as kiddy before. Disney was a good gateway and now we pivot to anime starting with horror and anthropomorphic animals.
Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre
My partner likes American Horror Story so this felt like a good lateral move. This is really uneven. Gets off to a rough start with a comedy episode with lots of family abuse and screaming as the punchline. Some of the adaptations are much better. Highlights for me include Hanging Balloon, Layers of Terror, The Bully, The Back Alley for imagery/ideas that stay with and unnerve you. They do a good job of capturing Ito’s strengths but many episodes just feel like question factories that end too abruptly. We had a lot of fun with it trying to guess the twists and discuss how no-one on Earth has heard about the village where every corpse transmogrifies into a tombstone at the spot it dies before. The 3D elements sometimes really suck and sometimes are effective. Feels a bit too stiff overall.
Aggretsuko
Pretty good sitcom with more mature themes than I was expecting. After season 2 (and arguably 3) it starts to get very detached from reality and leans into giving Retsuko a completely new and fantastical preoccupation which become less relatable over time. The comedic timing gets less tight over time as well. The final season involves Retsuko being convinced to campaign for local government and the whole thing feels like they’re forcing commentary to happen via bigger and bigger narrative conceits. My partner loves cute shit and became obsessed with Retsuko.
Pokemon Concierge
OK, this show is actually a bit kiddy but it’s very relaxing and brain off. Mediocre reception except when Eevee was on-screen.
Perfect Blue
Masterpiece. My partner also likes thrillers and I hadn’t seen it before but its reputation felt like a sure bet. This is the film to study to understand how formal edits can be used to both keep the plot rolling whilst also misleading the viewer in interesting ways. They blur and prolong the twist better than any comparable thriller I’ve seen and they do it in such a creative way while still keeping doubt from Mima’s perspective as to what actually happened. The bounding evil Mima sequences are exquisite.
Pom Poko
My partner got upset about some of the tanuki wanting to kill people and it made for good discussion of the messages. I forgot how incredible the parade scene was. Also had to explain a lot about tanuki testicles (which I guess is why most western Ghibli heads overlook this) but we had a good time with it. I remembered it as being one of the weaker films from that studio but it’s pretty solid.
Beastars
Hell yes. We’ve just started the final season but we love this shit. Really good presentation of the interiority of characters with the splitscreen compositions. Excellent comedy, drama, mystery, action, world building. I originally checked this out on a recommendation after venting my 1000 questions about Zootopia 2 to a friend. This series can’t answer everything (the scene of a fish person eating a bowl of udon is burned into my head as a nightmare image) but it does a hell of a good job trying. Best 3D anime I’ve seen. Really nice mixture of 2D and other styles whilst having short bursts of speed on models for quicker actions and humour so it doesn’t have that sterile vacuum feeling most 3D shows have. I think this show (as well as Aggretsuko) is the straw that broke the ongoing realisation she’s a furry. She has a huge crush on Louis.
Also this music!
the frieren manga is interesting in that it’s quite sterile compared to the anime. in the adaptation, many of the relevant characters being sorta stoic, overly analytical weirdos is played out for some kind of epic, bombastic payoff whereas the manga lacks any of those artificies. the fights and overall tense scenes are played in a completely straight, matter-of-fact way.
it’s a great manga, shame that the author has been in hiatus for almost a year at this point.