Anime

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

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

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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Anime

Anime Review: Frieren – Beyond Journey’s End

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End was the anime series in the Winter season that was most able to make me ugly cry. It starts off with some heavy reflections on grief and mourning and every few episodes it manages to slip in another shot in the feels. That said, this isn’t a depressing show – instead, it’s a bittersweet reflection on the fact that we and the people we know will eventually grow old and die, so we should value our time with them while we can. It then proceeds to do all of this interspersed with some tremendous fight scenes.

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Podcast

Anime Explorations Episode 18: My Love Story With Yamada-Kun at Lv.999

Video

We discuss the current anime we’ve watched, along with the recent passing of Akira Toriyama, before getting into our March Rom-Com, with My Love Story With Yamada-Kun at Lv.999

Episode 18: My Love Story With Yamada-Kun at Lv.999

We discuss the current anime we’ve watched, along with the recent passing of Akira Toriyama, before getting into our March Rom-Com, with My Love Story With Yamada-Kun at Lv.999 My Love Story with Yamada-Kun at Lv.

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film

Film Review: Horror Express

Horror Express is one of those public-domain horror films that comes up a lot in collections, but I think is sadly overlooked in favor of films that kicked off a genre, like Night of the Living Dead, or The Last Man On Earth and Vincent Price’s performance in that film. This is a damn shame – as Horror Express has Sir Christopher Lee and Sir Peter Cushing sharing a tremendous amount of screen time, with the two actors getting to play off each other in a way that they never got to with Hammer, and rarely got to with Amicus.

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film

Movie Review: Mission Impossible (1996)

When I first watched Mission: Impossible, and Tom Cruise’s first outing as Ethan Hunt – I was much younger – still in High School, with a degree of familiarity with the TV series from watching reruns on TV on Saturday mornings, or on cable on TV Land, and with a limited degree of familiarity with the spy or the suspense genre as a whole. So, I don’t think it worked for me the way that Brian De Palma intended. However, the passage of time has lead me to have more experience with thrillers, the spy genre in its multiple flavors, and some of De Palma’s other work (such as The Untouchables), which has lead me to a place where I think I’m able to re-appraise this film on its own terms – and I think it fares much better in this re-appraisal.

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