Posted on by Alexander Case

Anime Review: Engage Kiss

Engage Kiss is one of the lighter fanservice series from the Summer 2022 season – there were much (*ahem*) harder shows (like Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World – which was borderline smut – and also leaned into some of the grosser elements of the isekai genre) – but Engage Kiss was more palatable about it. Even more, A-1 Pictures paired some of that fan-service with some gorgeously animated fight scenes, making for a series that, while flawed, was really enjoyable to watch. Some spoilers below the cut

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Anime Review: Tokyo Mew Mew New

Tokyo Mew Mew was an oversight in my anime viewing when I was growing up. When I was a kid and watched cartoons with any degree of regularity on Cartoon Network or on Saturday Mornings, the main Magical Girl Show was Sailor Moon. When I got older, 4Kids picked up Tokyo Mew Mew as Mew Mew Power – but by that point I was familiar enough with anime, but immature enough when it came to my opinion of my own taste to dismiss almost anything licensed by 4Kids by reflex. Switch to this year, when we get a remake of Tokyo Mew Mew, appropriately titled Tokyo Mew Mew New, released a little bit after the passing of the original manga’s creator – Reiko Yoshida – and I figured now’s as good a time as any to look into what I missed.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Birdie Wing (Season 1): Anime Review

One of the genres of anime I’ve spent the least time with is sports anime – where the number of titles I’ve actually seen is far shorter than the shows I intend to watch – only Magical Girl anime and Music series are lower on the list. None of this is necessarily due to a lack of interest. I’ve found that the sports shows I’ve watched I’ve generally enjoyed (with a few exceptions like Battle Athletes). So, in the Spring 2022 season, when I saw Birdie Wing was airing, I decided to give it a watch.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Tokyo Olympiad: Film Review

This is a review that is over a year overdue. I had fully intended to watch this movie leading up to the Tokyo Olympics and, I admit, I forgot. However, after over a year of waiting, it’s time to rip the band-aid off, and take a look at the (currently) only Olympic documentary to make it into the Criterion Collection – Tokyo Olympiad.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

The Connection (2014): Film Review

When it comes to watching movies based on historical events, occasionally you happen, by varying degrees of coincidence, into a narrative between multiple films all based on historical events that all tie together. Sometimes it’s deliberate, with different filmmakers being in dialog with each other, and sometimes it’s happenstance, and sometimes it’s even a combination of the two. The Connection from 2014 (released in France as La French) is something of a combination of the two, being in dialog with the 1971 film The French Connection, but also referencing the events covered in Ridley Scott’s film American Gangster, and in turn making Hoodlum something of a prologue.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Science Fell In Love Season 2: Anime Review

When I watched the first season of Science Fell In Love So They Tried To Prove It, I started out by binge watching the show, and I found the show was basically one joke repeated with some variations. Consequently, when I switched to watching just one episode or so a week, I got a lot more enjoyment out of it. When season 2 was announced, I decided to watch this week to week, figuring that that would be the optimal way to get the most enjoyment out of it. It was – but this also lead to me running into a tonal shift brick wall on the last episode of the series, and without any significant foreshadowing. So, this review is going to have to get into some spoilers for the last episode.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

In The Line of Duty 4: Film Review

I’m not a fan of Auteur Theory. Movies, television, and video games have so many people involved in the process of creating them that putting all the weight of a work’s success on a single person weakens the contributions of everyone else in the project. That said, a good director can make a world of difference on a film, not because of their sole artistic vision, but because of the other contributors who they can ask to take part in the project because of their own past experience. Such is the case with In The Line of Duty 4, which has Yuen Woo-Ping in the director’s chair, which in turn makes a world of difference.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

In The Line Of Duty 3: Movie Review

The In The Line Of Duty series of films is kind of odd as far as film series go. It’s not like the Zombi or the Italian House series – where you had a bunch of directors taking a bunch of desperate films with common elements (zombies or horror films regarding a house respectively), and sticking the label of an existing series of films on them, making for a bunch of films based around a thematic link instead of a narrative link. The first two films in the series – Yes, Madam and Royal Warriors had a thematic link (women police investigators), and a cast link (Michelle Yeoh), but no character linkage, and otherwise did not share a common brand. However, over the course of re-releases and alternative titles, both of those films were re-branded as being the first part of a series of films known as “In The Line of Duty” – with In The Line of Duty 3, from 1988, being technically the third part of that series, but the first to codify the “brand”.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

River of Death: Movie Review

River of Death is a movie Cannon films picked up in the very late ‘80s, when they were kind of on their last legs, and trying to get by through doing the things that made them successful – capitalizing on other studios successes with low budget films (or optioning films at low cost) that had a similar vibe to them as other successes. In this case, going off of the success of Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, by optioning a movie that was already under production that had a similar adventure theme. Instead of returning to the Allan Quatermain well that they’d visited twice before, this time they went with a jungle adventure film based on a novel by Alastair MacLean, the author of Guns of Navarone.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Spider-Man: No Way Home: Movie Review

While Spider-Man: No Way Home was intended to be released after Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness, it did ultimately come out before that movie, so I felt it was probably a preferable idea to watch this movie before the next Doctor Strange solo film. So, now that I’ve done that (and just after Sony has announced that an extended cut of the movie will be getting a theatrical release in December), it’s time to give my thoughts some. There will be spoilers for the film’s conclusion.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Ya Boy Kongming!: Anime Review

I have generally avoided doing a lot of Isekai anime. I’ve watched and reviewed the first season or so of Sword Art Online, and all of Log Horizon and My Next Life As A Villainess to date. However, otherwise, this means that the closest I’ve come to Reverse Isekai has been Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, which is using that particular genre definition loosely. So, Ya Boy Kongming! initially slipped under my radar… until I heard the OP – and then I had to see it. I made the right decision.

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Posted on by Alexander Case

Den-noh Coil: Anime Review

Sometimes you stumble across an anime that makes you realize that if more people had watched it the genre it’s a part of could have become tremendously different. Den-noh Coil is one of those anime series. If this show had gotten a better release when it came out, if it had gotten better exposure, this could have been a show that redefined the perception of the cyberpunk genre the same way that Bubblegum Crisis, Ghost in the Shell, and Akira did. Sadly, because of the issues with its original release, it hasn’t really hit an option for mainstream visibility until now. Hopefully the authors who need to see it will get a chance to, and will be equally inspired.

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