This weekend I’m quickly bop through a bit of a trio of romantic comedies from the Summer Season, which might not necessarily bear a full-length review, but are worth at least a bit of conversation. Specifically – I’m reviewing the second season of Cafe Terrace and Its’ Goddesses, Pseudo Harem, and Days With My Stepsister.
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Anime Review: Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction
I have heard very good things for quite some time about mangaka Inio Asano’s work – and I’ve also heard it’s tremendously bleak to the point of absolute nihilism, so for a while, I’ve been hesitant to read his stuff. When I learned his manga Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction (henceforth DeDeDeDe) was getting an anime adaptation and that it was one of his more… approachable works, I figured I would give the show a watch. The resulting show is interesting and messy – messy in some intentional ways, and some ways that may not be (and if those other ways are intentional it doesn’t reflect well on him).
Continue readingThis week I’m stepping into the TTRPG space (something I normally save for August, but slacked off on this year), to cover a documentary film about the life of Gary Gygax.
Anime Review: Spy X Family: Code White
Spy X Family has joined One Piece and My Hero Academia in the annals of (at the time of release) currently running Shonen Jump (or Jump+) anime adaptations that have gotten non-canonical (or mostly non-canonical in the case of MHA) anime film tie-ins. In this case, we have Spy X Family: Code White, which sends the Forger family on a weekend vacation to the mountains, leading to some Bond-Film-level shenanigans.
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Film Review: Ford vs. Ferrari
I have relatively recently gotten into motorsports after years of really not being interested, because all I had access to was NASCAR. The NASCAR variety of “regular oval track of regulation size with everyone just turning in the same direction” never grabbed me. When I played racing games on consoles, I played games which, well, had turning to both the left and right, and consequently that’s what I wanted in motorsport. So, I was curious about things like Formula 1 and – even more than that – the 24 hours of Le Mans. An endurance race that required a car to run for 24 hours straight, requiring them to go very fast and to have a good fuel economy so you don’t need to pit as often to refuel. Having access to Formula 1 through ESPN+ has got me watching that (the Shift+F1 Podcast also helps), and this has also lead me to seek out movies on motorsport – particularly the docudrama Ford vs. Ferrari.
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Documentary Review: The Dreams in Gary’s Basement
A couple years ago I reviewed Secrets of Blackmoor – a documentary about Dave Arneson, and the development of the Blackmoor campaign leading up to the development of the first edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Kickstarting around the same time was Dreams in Gary’s Basement, a documentary focusing on the life of Gary Gygax. I’ve covered a couple of biographies of Gygax’s life in the past – Empire of the Imagination and Rise of the Dungeon Master. When Dreams in Gary’s Basement went up for Kickstarter, I felt that this was an appropriate documentary to back as well. Well, now I’ve received my physical copy and I’ve watched it – so now it’s time for my thoughts.
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Film Review: Hard Target
Hard Target was John Woo’s first big film in the United States and Hollywood, and it paired him with one of the top action stars of the early ’90s – Jean-Claude Van Damme, a star who was very much not known for his gunplay, and was much more known for his martial arts. It’s generally been held up as a rough start to Woo’s Hollywood run, but that said, I think it’s still an okay fun little action movie, even if it doesn’t reach up to the heights of his earlier Hong Kong career.
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Film Review: Golden Bat (1966)
When looking at the 1966 Golden Bat film, it’s interesting to see how much it innovates – if not outright invents – in the realm of cinematic hero tokusatsu. The main hero – Ogun Bat (Golden Bat) is widely credited as basically being the first 20th-century superhero, with characters from DC having parallel evolution in the US – his cinematic counterpart innovates considerably more then he invents, but those innovations are nothing to sneeze at.
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Anime Review – Texhnolyze
So, the second of the anime series on my New Year’s Resolution list that I’m done with is one I’m dropping – Texhnolyze. I did give it a reasonable try – getting about a cour through the series before I had enough, and because I had the show on my resolution list, I do feel it’s important to talk about why this series failed for me when two other Chiaki Konaka projects – Serial Experiments Lain and The Big O – were fine.
Continue readingThis month I’m joined by Blaine of the Babylon 5 30 Years Later and 99 Years 100 Films Podcasts (at Bureau42.com) to discuss My Neighbor Totoro & Akira.
Anime Review: Mysterious Disappearances
It’s been a minute since we’d gotten a particularly good urban fantasy mystery anime series. When Mysterious Disappearances came up on the seasonal Anime List, it looked interesting, and I added it to my watchlist. I was not disappointed with what I got.
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Anime Review: Wind Breaker (Season 1)
After having read the manga Crows a while back, I got a new appreciation of the Juvenile Delinquent manga, so when a Juvenile Delinquent anime, Wind Breaker, showed up in the Spring 2024 anime list, I figured I should give it a try. It didn’t have the same degree of character depth as Crows, but I still found it to be an enjoyable show.
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Anime Review: Laid Back Camp Season 3
Laid Back Camp has, consistently, been a chill (you might even say “Laid Back”) anime series about informing the viewer about going camping, while also providing some chill vibes to accompany it, and it has generally succeeded. Season 2 stepped some things up by having some arcs include potential complications you can run into while camping – and the film covered some of the wrinkles you can run into if you decide to make a campground. Season 3 continues with the chill vibes, while also getting into “What might you have to deal with when traveling to your campground?”
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Anime Review: Urusei Yatsura Season 3
Urusei Yatsura’s 3rd season is the one that wraps up the series – putting most of the cast into varying degrees of relationships, while also finding – in an indirect way – a way for Ataru to express his feelings to Lum without either shedding their stubborn exteriors.
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Anime Review: Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included
Often with an anime series, you get the caveat of “Oh, it has a weak start, but it really sticks the landing in the conclusion” or the warning of “Oh, it has a good start, but really fumbles the landing”. Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included has the weird instance of being a series with a weak start, a weak end, but a really strong middle portion of the series. The series, which I’m going to just call Studio Apartment for the sake of brevity – starts out as a pretty standard magical girlfriend series, and ends as a magical girlfriend harem series – but there’s a moment in the middle, where the series really finds its feet as the supporting cast builds up – and where it has some interesting humor to go with it.
Continue readingQuick Update on my Anime Holy Grails
Another item on my Anime Holy Grail List is getting a US release – AnimeNewsNetwork has reported that Gkids, in addition to distributing Angel’s Egg in theaters, will also be giving the film a physical release as well. Now, this is just one item on the list, so I’m not going to do a full revision as yet (I’ll want 3 items off the list before I add some replacements), but it’s good to see this title get distribution.
Here’s hoping I don’t have to wait too long for those next two titles to make it off the list.
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A bunch of shows on my old Anime Holy Grail List have been licensed, so it’s time to update the list!
Film Review: Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me (+ The Missing Pieces)
When Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me came out, it was critically panned. Not unsurprising when a critical darling, an auteur who had been nominated for an Academy Award would dare to make his next film after daring to work in *shudder* television decides to make a movie that is tied in with that TV series. It lost money, it was roasted by critics and by David Lynch’s peers, burning him out on the Twin Peaks franchise entirely.
The sentiment of that critical establishment is not one I share – I’m a Trekker. I grew up watching the original series films, along with the movies for Next Generation – and appreciate the depths of both the series and the films, along with some of the ancillary works. Consequently, I would not dismiss a film tie-in to a TV series – so I came into Fire Walk With Me, and the edited-together Deleted Scenes of The Missing Pieces with an open mind, and was not disappointed.
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Film Review: To Live & Die In LA
A while back I watched and enjoyed William Friedkin’s The French Connection, and had seen, of his subsequent films, To Live & Die in LA come up a lot as other films I should watch, first just as Friedkin film in general, then in terms of crime films of the ’80s, and in terms of great films with Willam Defoe, then in terms of great movies with pop bands doing the score. So, eventually I decided that it was time to take this film off my watchlist, and onto my watched list.
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Film Review: Beep – A Documentary History of Game Sound
What is particularly significant about Beep: A Documentary History of Game Sound can be found at the end of its title – Sound. Beep is a documentary not on just game music, though that certainly would merit a documentary on its own – but on sound in games as a whole, from the rudimentary tones of Pong to modern game sound effects, along with music and voice acting.
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Anime Review: Synduality Noir Part 2
I watched Synduality: Noir in a previous season, enjoyed it, and was looking forward to the second season. The second half of the series does do a good job of changing up the dynamic, exploring a few more of the world’s mysteries, and bringing the series to something of a satisfactory conclusion.
There will be spoilers below the cut.
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Anime Review: Metallic Rouge
Metallic Rouge is Studio Bones celebrating its 10th anniversary by going back to its routes with an original anime series, with an action show about a pair of ambiguously lesbian characters going on a journey – in this case a science fiction trip through various planets in the solar system, in the process uncovering several mysteries about the world. The problem is that the series, at 12 episodes, doesn’t quite have the time to really do justice to all the themes that they want to cover.
Spoilers below the cut.
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Anime Review: Solo Leveling
Solo Leveling was one of the web novel titles that I remember seeing promoted heavily by Yen Press. It was one of the first of these Web Novel turned Light Novel titles that got an audiobook release in the US, and generally it had a fair amount of buzz behind it. So, when an anime adaptation came up on the Seasonal charts, I decided it was time to find out what all the buzz was about.
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Anime Review: Brave Bang Bravern!
I don’t know what I expected coming into this show. On one hand, I got drawn in by the Real Robots Meets Super Robot take on the show, combined with the involvement Masami Obari. Obari as a director is someone who I almost became more familiar with through his involvement on the Fatal Fury anime series, animating the Brave franchise, along with creating the Angel Blade franchise – putting him at the confluence of strongly choreographed action, spectacularly done super robots, and a lot of… actively heterosexual fanservice. So, I was a little surprised to see just how incredibly queer – and particularly gay, Bravern is.
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