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What's the rest of the series like?

I'm not sure exactly where you stopped, but I highly, HIGHLY recommend finishing the season. The last episode carries a very unique moral message about Kaneki that I think many people can relate to. Also, this is probably a spoiler, but the story goes into the "Seras Victoria from Hellsing" direction in which Kaneki tries to exist without eating people. Also, there is quite a bit of the usual awesome anime fights.

Like Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan weird/creepy?

There's a lot a that.

I've only heard of that anime and no that actually sounds like one I wouldn't mind. I'm talking about ones like... I think it's called Kodomo no Jikan? That kind of creepy. My friend showed me the first episode one day and I was like "Dude. Never again."


Oh... Berserk. That was just... the worst ******* cliffhanger I've ever seen from anything in my entire life.

Oh yeah, it's one of the only animes along with Claymore where I started reading the manga after seeing the show. The manga goes soooooooo much more deeper into the world/lore than the anime does.



SHOCKINGLY good. The worst part is the anticlimax, but I've got the second series in my queue and it's literally the only one I've been procrastinating on because I have such high expectations for it.

It's been so long since I've seen it that I only remember bits and pieces, but yeah it's good and gets really trippy storyline-wise.



Naruto's tough. It's good, no question, but it goes on for so long that for time's sake you're probably inclined to pick just the anime or the manga. The manga is much better paced and perhaps it's best incarnation as a whole, but while the Naruto anime suffers from severe inconsistency in animation quality, worthless filler episodes, and "Believe It!", it's hard to put it down when it kicks it up for some of the most spectacular fight sequences I've ever seen. Lee vs. Gaara and Naruto vs. Sasuke are some of the greatest fight sequences I've ever seen hands-down.

Much like Yu Yu, I never finished Naruto due to it being so long. Obviously I have a lot of trouble finishing those long-running animes.



Was just watching that recently. It gets surprisingly dark, but unlike something like Higurashi, it utterly fails to maintain it's dark tone and just pleasantly bounces back to it's painfully-plain-as-day slice-of-life harem scenario too frequently.

I like the gay guy though, that's a switch. You don't usually get those in "Dating Sim" plots.

What surprises me about it is how it goes Game of Thrones and actually kills off some of the major characters. (hopefully that didn't spoil anything)


I have not seen that, nor am I entirely sure of what it is.

It's apparently a recent anime-adaptation from a manga that came out in the 80's. It comes on Adult Swim, I wouldn't call it a spectacular anime but I enjoy it when it comes on.


It's one hell of an anime.

And that will pretty much conclude my reasons for dropping it as well.

Ha yeah. I actually have only finished the first season. I really like it but feel like they could sooo much more with many of the characters, mainly the 3 servants.


Thank you, hopefully I didn't irk you with my criticisms, just my thoughts.

Not at all!
Responses in the quote!



Originally Posted by MovieGal
Hell Girl
Getting big Paranoia Agent vibes from this. The voice acting is pretty egh..., but definitely more interested in it now.

Originally Posted by MovieGal
Mushishi
I'm not sure what to say other than... that's a terrible explanation of what Mushi are. o_O

Originally Posted by MovieGal
Not really.. Im more into drama than action when it comes to anime.
Understandable. You're not likely to get any emotional connection out of a straight action anime, however drama is a lot easier to screw up, so it's tough find good ones.

I'd recommend the Black Rock Shooter anime if you haven't seen it already (not the OVA). Basically all of the action that takes place serves as a visual metaphor for all of the drama that happens in the real world, so real-world relationship drama actually drives the conflict.

Originally Posted by False Writer
I'm not sure exactly where you stopped, but I highly, HIGHLY recommend finishing the season. The last episode carries a very unique moral message about Kaneki that I think many people can relate to. Also, this is probably a spoiler, but the story goes into the "Seras Victoria from Hellsing" direction in which Kaneki tries to exist without eating people. Also, there is quite a bit of the usual awesome anime fights.
Damn. Well, I guess I got I gotta watch it again, don't I?

Originally Posted by False Writer
I've only heard of that anime and no that actually sounds like one I wouldn't mind. I'm talking about ones like... I think it's called Kodomo no Jikan? That kind of creepy. My friend showed me the first episode one day and I was like "Dude. Never again."
Oh, you're talkin' about obvious loli romance crap. I gotta see that still if only to say I've seen it.

The only loli-esque anime I've seen that I've actually liked is Mitsudomoe. If any genre-savvy person is looking over your shoulder while you're watching it, I wouldn't be surprised if you got a "Dude. Never again.", reaction, but despite a LOT of adult themes, Mitsudomoe is all about the comedy. It's basically, Horrible Misunderstandings: The Anime.


They're talking about a hamster.

There's one memorable sequence in which one of the character's is embarrassed to admit to her teacher that she also like Gachi Rangers (Power Rangers) and confides in an eavesdropping classmate about her problem. What comes across is a horrible masochistic relationship between her and her teacher. That's when he walks in.

One of them wants to admit she likes a TV show he likes,
he thinks she hates the TV show, and
the classmate thinks they're into clandestine sadomasochism and on the verge of a love confession.

Hijinks ensue.

Originally Posted by False Writer
Oh yeah, it's one of the only animes along with Claymore where I started reading the manga after seeing the show. The manga goes soooooooo much more deeper into the world/lore than the anime does.
Ironically, they rebooted as a series of movies.

And they end at the exact same place.

Originally Posted by False Writer
Much like Yu Yu, I never finished Naruto due to it being so long. Obviously I have a lot of trouble finishing those long-running animes.
At least Yu Yu Hakusho makes sense in it's pacing. It's largely composed of the Dark Tournament where each match is one episode, or occasionally two.

Naruto is just godawful in this regard. That friggen' Zabuza fight on the bridge was what, 3 EPISODES? Pumped full of flashback, I don't care if it's the first reveal of Naruto's nine-tail form, that fight didn't warrant a longer run-time than the series finale!

Originally Posted by False Writer
What surprises me about it is how it goes Game of Thrones and actually kills off some of the major characters. (hopefully that didn't spoil anything)
Oh REALLY...? That would have been welcome sooner. Madoka Magicka was more tone-sensitive than that.

It's strange to think of Game of Thrones as the go-to reference of TV shows where everyone drops like flies. Is it really that much more frequent than in something like Lost, Heroes, or 24?



Ironically, they rebooted as a series of movies.

And they end at the exact same place.
Yeahhh, I've seen all 3 of them, and I am super freaking pissed that they're not coming out with the 4th one which would go beyond where the original anime ended.

I mean seriously... all the first 3 films did was re-tell everything that already happened in the original anime. I was really excited to finally see a lot of the events from the manga in anime form and then after the 3rd one was released just... nothing. Nothing has been announced, no news about the 4th one even though they promised that there would be more films. It's been like what a year or 2? Now all we're left with is disappointment.

Oh and the Game of Thrones thing, I think it's not so much that it was the originator of it but the fact that it's the most recognizable name in regards to that kind of plot twist.



Yeahhh, I've seen all 3 of them, and I am super freaking pissed that they're not coming out with the 4th one which would go beyond where the original anime ended.

I mean seriously... all the first 3 films did was re-tell everything that already happened in the original anime. I was really excited to finally see a lot of the events from the manga in anime form and then after the 3rd one was released just... nothing. Nothing has been announced, no news about the 4th one even though they promised that there would be more films. It's been like what a year or 2? Now all we're left with is disappointment.
How are they compared to the anime? The anime could have been made a lot better for what it was, I thought.



The anime was a lot better I thought. The films went through the story wayyy too fast imo. Remember that the first film was only like 70-80 minutes. Many events that were really fleshed out in the anime series were zoomed past in the movies with barely a mention of what was going on. Also, the CGI they put into the films for many of the battle scenes didn't look very good. I thought the fully animated battles from the series that came out like 20 years before looked much better.

The only thing you could really give the films over the series is that it does have more of the manga's style. It's much more violent, gory and the nudity/sex scenes are much more graphic as well. Like I said, it would have gotten SO MUCH BETTER if they just went beyond what the original anime series already covered; just stopping where the series from before left off made me so mad!

I heard that the biggest reason is because the films didn't do well money-wise. Well maybe if they actually came out with the fourth one—which is one that doesn't just re-tell for a third time what the manga and series had already covered, then maybe more people would be interested and spend money on it.



Yu Yu Hakusho (Dub) Status: INTERESTED
Episodes: 52-53
In Episode 52, Genkai dies following a brief showdown with Toguro and it's appropriately given a lot of weight. Lighting changes, animation changes, sound changes, and all of the major characters become aware of her death simultaneously. This is the death of the single best female character in the entire show, so she ****in' deserves it.

Even more so, as flashback reveals to us that she used to be partners with Toguro, who used to be human, and they were the winners of the last Dark Tournament. Considering the power level it's taken to get this far, it's probably safe to say that if Toguro is the most powerful character in the entire show, then Genkai is second, or at least used to be second.

Apparently as victor of the last Dark Tournament, as his prize, Toguro traded his human body for the highest possible level of demon body which confers an immunity to age and incredible regenerative powers. We're also told that while humans use spirit energy, demons use a separate power called demon energy, which Toguro prefers.

Yusuke shows up just in time to see her die of course, and Genkai warns him not to become like Toguro, in essence, criticizing him for his arrogance. I really wasn't expecting this, and the anime doesn't really spend any time trying to ram it home, but it really manages to attack Yusuke's biggest flaw, his pride. Since the very beginning of the series, Urameshi's positive aspects have outweighed his negative aspects, but his negative aspects are still there. He's still an arrogant character. I'm glad that her final words were something relevant to the series as a whole.

Yusuke obviously retaliates against Toguro and while we're shown that he still manages to cripple one of his hands even at 80% of his full power, he still gets punched through half a forest. 2 days left to the final round, and I suppose I'm just not supposed to question his ability to heal what should be a pulverized skull at this point. Anime physics, right?

Episode 53 resumes with Urameshi meditating and we see Hiei discover one of the craters Toguro made with a punch at 80%. Hiei, in the simple and logical fashion I still appreciate from him, attempts to recreate the crater and discovers he can't even accomplish one a third of the size.

Meanwhile, Kurama is puzzling over the Toguro team member who could cause explosions on contact and it becomes brutally apparent at this point that while Urameshi has absorbed Genkai's spirit ball and Hiei is performing demon rituals, there isn't any way to rationalize Kurama tapping into his demon fox form or Kuwabara becoming more powerful in a matter of two days.

Surprisingly, the answer to that question arrives in the form of the clown from earlier who's somehow managing to just walk-off a fractured spine. He was previously revealed to be the creator of the exceptionally powerful demon tools his team possessed, and in turn offers them new versions of the age-reversal toxin and Double-Ahoge's demon sword.

That works for me, but why's he doing it? He explains he hates them, but hates Toguro more. Apparently Toguro emasculated him with only 3% of his power, so now he's trying to strike back as a bright neon colored flamboyant clown. Okay. That works for me. I suppose since Toguro is the go-to example of steroid-level testosterone, it makes sense for him to... hate old people? ****, whatever. It's a much better excuse than I was expecting at this point.

Anyway the evil executive guy who Toguro's working for reveals we wants to create a bridge between the demon world and human world. I guess that's suitably evil as grandmaster villain schemes go, but there's no apparent motivation behind it. I don't see what he has to gain by any of it. He says it will cost him an ungodly amount of money, so what's in it for him?

Koenma gives some "message" to Yusuke from Genkai which seems pretty unremarkable and Yusuke just... gets over his grief. That... really sucks. The message could have been something other than a casual insult and it seems blatantly obvious to me to be the kind of thing that Koenma would simply lie about just to motivate Yusuke. Who's to say he's not lying?

The last episode took great pains to emphasize Genkai's death, but the message here seems to simply be, "Get over it."

That's pretty ******. I understand the point of keeping the series fast paced, but you wouldn't have had to extend this episode to give Yusuke a better message than that or make it tougher for him to get over her death.

At least in the Japanese dub, Koenma doesn't sound like a total ass when he delivers Genkai's message.

In the English dub he says,
"-In other words, dimwit, go win that battle. Sounds just like her, doesn't it?" AMIRITE????

In the Japanese dub he says,
"-There was one final thing. 'Win', she says."

I think Koenma's English voice actor just has a habit of making all of Koenma's dialog seem irritable. I'm not a fan of it, and while the Japanese dub may not have been ideal, it frankly ruins this scene for me.

Honestly, save a couple very small scenes, this episode was pretty crummy. And I'm still annoyed that they never explained why Genkai went out to go get killed by Toguro. It's suggested multiple times that the moment she passed her power to Urameshi, it was her "destiny" to be killed by Toguro. WTFWHY. SERIOUSLY. WHY.

Next episode teases the missing 5th person issue (now that Genkai's dead it's even 4v4, see? It's perfect! That's why Toguro's team only had 4 members. DYUHGETITYET).


Kimi ni Todoke (Sub) Status: LOSING INTEREST
Episodes: 17
This episode was pretty good for the most part, it gave me a few laughs, but apparently the whole Sawako and Kazehaya being on the same page thing has just been handwaved with an "it's not official unless they say 'I love you'", which... is pretty crap.

We get a REALLY awkward ending in which Sawako takes some skeevy advice from Pin where she grabs him and then closes her eyes for 5 seconds. Pin accurately concludes that this would provoke Kazehaya to try and kiss her, but he takes too long and Kazehaya blurts out some unintentionally horrible dialog:

Originally Posted by Kazehaya the Rapist
"Don't blame me.

Seriously... if you do it again, you can't blame me if I do something.

There's no knowing what I'll do!"
That's... porn dialog. Like that's literally the same **** you'd see in rape manga.


...


How about NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.


That's legitimately the worst exchange in this entire series so far. What the hell were they thinking with that crap? Well, obviously they thought it was friggen' romantic because the soft piano kicks in and the credits roll.


Dirty Pair: Flash (Dub) Status: LOST INTEREST
Episodes: 1
I'm... impressed.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a stupid character cause so much trouble in so short a time.

The whole episode opens on the Dirty Pair running into a man who's bleeding and begs them to take a swipe card and run before he keels over. A large group of uniformed men show up, approach them, and politely ask for the card.

What would you do in this situation?
A. Hand over the card.
B. Ask them why it's so important.
C. Ask them what happened to the man.
D. CONFIRM THE MAN IS STILL ALIVE?

If you selected any of these answers, you are a terrible trouble consultant. Tho REAL answer is:

E. Immediately trust the man was a good guy and the card is worth the trillions of dollars of collateral damage you will cause immediately after attacking the group and running away.

Literally what ensures is a messy, difficult to follow, catastrophic snowball effect of vehicle chases, shooting, explosions, robots, bazookas, property damage, both intentional and unintentional, all centered around the Dirty Pair.

It might sound funny and ironic, but the voice acting is annoying, the two main characters refuse to get along for no perceivable reason, and despite some very brief moments of self-awareness it's honestly just difficult to follow what's going on.

Prior to the title drop we literally just sit through over 3 minutes of one guy sitting at a desk and babbling out boring-as-hell exposition at us.

The best part about the whole episode is the totally 80s future visual aesthetic and backing music, unfortunately I feel like this whole episode would have worked better in the original Dirty Pair when we still had Rumiko Takahashi character designs and a more mature sense for characters, pacing, and story.

In the original Dirty Pair all we had were these two characters who simply had a reputation for causing a lot of destruction in their work, and we see from their exploits that they just get embroiled in massive conflicts. I like the idea of an opening episode presenting us with a spectacular mess that they caused or were in some way a part of, but in the original series I wasn't annoyed by the characters or lost in the action, even if I wasn't necessarily impressed by it.

I think I'll just check out Project Eden and see if that does the concept any better.



Well maybe if they actually came out with the fourth one—which is one that doesn't just re-tell for a third time what the manga and series had already covered, then maybe more people would be interested and spend money on it.
If the film doesn't cover something in the manga, people will be disappointing too. The point is to adapt the manga to a video medium.

Frankly, having read some of the manga, I don't think the anime contributed a whole lot to it. Unlike something like Soul Eater where the animation studio took the original art above and beyond it's source material, everything I've seen from Berserk on-screen looks worse than it's manga counterpart. Plus, I wasn't blown away by any of the music or animation.

I think the oddball voice acting is probably the best part of the anime adaption:



Those opening and ending themes aren't bad either.





Kara no Kyoukai/Garden of Sinners:
Overlooking View

Drama / 2007

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
n/a

WHAT'D I THINK?
Kara no Kyoukai is a series of movies related to Type-Moon I’ve been meaning to watch.

Having now seen the first of the movies released out of chronological order, my impressions are heavily mixed.

Firstly, the movie looks fantastic. The gross majority of the budget seems to have been pumped into the background artwork, each of which could stand alone as an attractive illustration. The lighting is moody and appropriate and it combines well with fantastic animation which is consistent all throughout.

We’re introduced to the character, Shiki, who lives in an empty apartment, has a fridge consisting only of water bottles, wears unusually traditional clothing, and can apparently see ghosts. It’s revealed halfway through the movie that she also has a false doll arm, which appears to be part artificial and part organic tissue, which we’re informed can only move with the power of her soul. This character design is very interesting to me, and is honestly the whole reason I wanted to see these movies in the first place.

We’re offered two action sequences, the first in which Shiki wrestles with a ghost, and the second in which she kills a group of spirits with a dagger. The animation in these scenes, especially the latter is truly excellent and easily some of the most impressive I've seen considering it’s combination of camera angles, lighting, and water effects.



That about concludes my praise for the movie. Everything else about this movie is confusing, left intentionally vague, or just outright obnoxious in how meaningless it feels. At times it’s even insulting.

For the first third of the movie, Shiki is merely loitering around two characters who we’ll never really learn anything about while one of them pukes out exposition in riddlespeak and the other sits comatose for apparent lack of a soul.

As good as the animation is, very little is spent on these scenes, and most of what we learn about the plot comes from what little dialog we can divine from the characters and the plainer talk we get from overheard broadcasts. Apparently a series of suicides have occurred from a specific abandoned building in which young girls have, without apparent warning or connection to each other, jumped off the roof to their death.
We’re told this occurs no less than 8 times by the end of the movie, and yet this building is still left abandoned? Wouldn’t police be specifically staking out the roof by at least the third death by this point? We’re shown Shiki gets attacked when she wanders into the building, but it’s never mentioned on the broadcasts.

Shiki goes in, fights a ghost that possesses her arm, then she cuts off her arm, after which we watch stand around as the exposition fairy talks about dolls, arms, souls, emptiness, and whatever you think she might be talking about.


We have a scene in which Shiki eats Haagen Daz stawberry ice cream.


Very.


Very.


Slowly.


Shiki returns to the building, kills all the spirits with a dagger, because daggers can hurt spirits, and then suddenly some girl who looks like the main ghost wakes up in a hospital bed somewhere.

The exposition fairy visits her and they spend an insufferable amount of time talking back and forth in riddlespeak during which they conclude that “her soul was split into two bodies”, whatever the hell that means. There’s a LOT of dialog using very meaningful words like “floating”, “flying”, and “falling” to describe what I can only assume are things that makes sense in the context of the world they’re in, but not to the viewer.

The girl who we discover is blind (get it? OverLOOKing VIEW? GET IT? HAHAHAHA), goes up to the roof the abandoned building, where there are still no police and she presumably kills herself.

Shiki returns to the studio/apartment/place/location where the other two characters seem to just inhabit for no particular reason and we see the male character wake up, get the plot explained to him, say he doesn’t understand and then gets brushed off for not getting the “SIMPLE STORY”, which even after abbreviating makes no ****ing sense since we have no firmly established concept of what “floating”, “flying”, or “falling” are supposed to mean. I might attempt to extrapolate that these terms refer to different stages of death, such as limbo, heaven, or hell, or some such equivalent, but it wouldn’t explain the totally dead sections of the movie we waste on talking about “dolls”, “emptiness”, “souls splitting into two containers” or whatever the hell that was supposed to be.

You might think the movie ends here, but instead it just uselessly drones on for several more minutes while Shiki talks to the male character and we get spoonfed some really stupid message about suicide.

The beginning of the movie has the female character other than Shiki casually claim that suicide is selfish, and the end of the movie has the male character admit that suicide is a sign of weakness because it’s the easy way out and “requires less courage”. This altogether rubs me the wrong way even understanding Japan’s history with suicide.

To broadly paint suicide in such a manner oversimplifies any situation that may involve it. The given example even contradicts the message because it suggests that if you had a virus which would KILL EVERYONE AROUND YOU, the moral thing to do would be to NOT KILL YOURSELF.

What the hell kind of message is that? By no means am I suggesting that people are obligated to kill themselves if they get a deadly pandemic-level virus, but it blatantly says that it would be wrong for you to kill yourself if it would spare everyone. Isn’t that, in a word, SELFISH???



Of course, it would also be unfair to say that Spock was in any way obligated to kill himself to save the ship, but to suggest that it’s IMMORAL to do so just spits in the face of what few people who have committed suicide WITH GOOD ****IN’ REASONS.

The most transparent commentary this movie makes is simply that suicide is selfish, and that the girls apparently couldn’t be bothered to kill themselves in a way that didn’t wind up on the news is evidence of that. EVEN THOUGH it’s made pretty obvious they didn’t kill themselves, they were thrown off the roof by a friggin’ GHOST.

I get it, there are people who go out of there way to make a mess of things and take the easy way out because they don’t have the guts to deal with their trivial life problems, BUT THAT’S JUST THEM, that’s not everybody who’s ever killed themselves.

And I’m rather sick of having this argument with people in real life too. Whatever, where was I? An anime? ****, why the hell did this crap come up in an anime? Why couldn’t this movie have just been some badass anime version of Ghostbusters, huh?

Whoa, wait. That’s a thing?


The very last scene of this movie ends off with the male character delivering this profound bit of wisdom to our protagonist:

Originally Posted by Character Whom I Can’t Be Bothered To Remember The Name Of
“Please do something about your crude language.

You’re a girl after all.”
Excellent. Sexism. Roll credits.


What’d I say about this anime, I had “mixed feelings”? Screw that, I don’t like it. It’s slow, it’s boring, the only real fight scenes in the whole movie are one-sided, and it’s insulting.


Final Verdict:
[Just... Bad]
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Yu Yu Hakusho (Dub) Status: INTERESTED
Episodes: 54-56

Episode 54 is just an interim episode during which everyone gathers in the arena. All that's revealed is both Team Urameshi and Team Toguro have Koenma and the evil CEO join their respective teams just to fill out their required 5-member count (a rule that still doesn't make any real sense). It's made apparent that neither are intending to fight.

An odd rule is established that the first team to 3 wins is the victor, which is was definitely never an exercised rule up until now, and only justifies each characters' one-on-one matchup if at least one person loses. Urameshi vs Toguro will obviously be the last fight, but if the rest of Urameshi's team wins, then that fight will never happen, so one of the good guys HAS to lose, either by death or technicality. That or Toguro and Urameshi fight in spite of the rules.

Honestly, the "rules" in this tournament have been so loose, it's just annoying to hear any be enforced at this point.

Episodes 55-56 is the two-part bishie showdown between Kurama and Toguro's explosive expert who plants invisible mines around the field. The limit of his abilities is never fully explained, and the distance at which he can deliver his bombs seems to arbitrarily increase as soon as Kurama can see them, which is obviously annoying. Other than that, it's a decent fight that damn nears kills Kurama if not for a, "when I turn into my demon fox form, my life energy increases!" excuse. Feels weak. Hiei's next against the axeman.


Kimi ni Todoke (Sub) Status: LOSING INTEREST
Episodes: 18

This episode is entirely dedicated to taking a glimpse into Yano and Yoshida's romantic relationships. We learn Ryu's love for Yoshida is unrequited because Yoshida likes Ryu's older brother, and Yano is getting out of an increasingly dangerous relationship.

It's a decent little sidelook into things going on elsewhere outside the world of Sawako, but it feels a bit late considering we already know Sawako and Kazehaya's attraction to each other is mutual. I think it would have served better to have it appear earlier so Sawako could use these new experiences to inform her approach to a then-still-uncertain Kazehaya.

*shrugs* It still feels like we're loitering.


Cross Ange (Sub) Status: INTERESTED
Episodes: 1

Holy hell, how do I describe this... thing.

Alright, imagine if you will, a protagonist that's a princessHOLD ON LET ME FINISH.

Now, imagine that this princess is living it up in the lap of luxury in a technologically advanced kingdom where her every need and whim is met. Pretty unrelatable so far, right?

Now, also imagine that we learn that this princess happily enforces a law that dehumanizes and authorizes the systematic extermination of humans called 'Norma' who are randomly born with an immunity to the technology that society is based on. Imagine that she pleasantly advises a grieving mother on the street who's having her baby forcibly taken away that "her baby is a monster, and she should just get over it and get another one".

Now, I'm not done, imagine if you will that this same piece of **** is publicly revealed in a political takeover that SHE's in fact one of these NONhumans, after which she becomes immediately loathed and hated by the general public, before she's shipped off like cargo to a military base to be stripped of her rights, kicked in the gut, humiliated, and ruthlessly trained to become a grunt in a military that forces her to pilot TRANSFORMING MECHAS to fight DRAGONS.


Now... that sounds friggen' AWESOME, doesn't it?


Well, I have one more hypothetical for you.

Imagine for a moment that the studio that created this instant classic had absolutely no confidence in their product whatsoever and so completely redesigned it to target the hardcore heterosexual teenage male otaku demographic.



I... I have no words.


The sleaze in Freezing was there to distract from the terrible plot, but the sleaze in THIS!?

How...

But...

Why...

It's not like I'm exaggerating either, the anime opens up with needless close-ups of ass and cleavage, teases lesbianism at least twice throughout, and the ending sequence shows the primarily female cast in skimpy outfits and centerfold poses! They even pull a Freezing line and say, "We may never know why only women are born Norma."

No! No! No! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOf course I've got to keep watching.


But WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY






Kara no Kyoukai/Garden of Sinners:
Murder Speculation (First Half)

Drama / 2007

WHY'D I WATCH IT?
n/a

WHAT'D I THINK?
After the obtuse riddlespeak and pretentious diatribes of the first movie, where do we go from here? A completely coherent crime drama, apparently.

We rewind time to a sort of origin story set several years prior to the events of the first movie to find Shiki still attending school alongside the soulless male character of the first movie, who we can now remember was named Kokutou.

While Shiki is obviously our main character, Kokutou is unfortunately our viewer surrogate. I say 'unfortunately', because he's completely identical to any other given lovestruck dumb everyman character who winds up in these kinds of anime. If he appeared to have any kind of personality or interests outside of Shiki, I might have cared about his character more, but her interest literally extends to the plot and no further.

Anyway, yeah, Kokutou has taken a weird romantic interest in the introverted Shiki who largely just ignores everyone, but it doesn't take long to draw some genre savvy conclusions considering the ongoing murder spree going on in the streets.

If you saw it coming, then you too will be subject to this movie's biggest fault which is simply that it takes Kokutou too long to realize what the viewer is already lead to suspect. Obviously Shiki is the one killing people, the movie doesn't shy away in the slightest from showing one particularly creepy scene of her using blood for lipstick VERY early on in the movie, but the effort is clearly there to emphasize that the mystery isn't the purpose of the movie.

The movie wants to endear us to Shiki, who reveals that she has split personality disorder.



This is perhaps the movie's biggest lapse in judgment by simply having Shiki explain her circumstances in such a lucid matter-of-fact way. Split personality, or "dissociative identity" is usually characterized by lapses in memory or attention which compartmentalizes the person's personalities. It's not "dissociative" otherwise if the subject is fully aware of their association.

This probably would have been pulled off significantly better if instead of using a well-known clinical term, it simply stating that she was possessed of two different spirits or something. Unlike the first movie, there are no supernatural elements here, but it could have used them to explain away this stumbling point.

Actually, Murder Speculation serves as a prime example of the psychological concept of Anima and Animus, with Anima representing Shiki's emotionally expressive and peaceful side, while Animus represents her cold and repressive violent side. I think it's kind of strange that as a sequel to Overlooking View, it never even attempts anything as analytical as this.

In fact, Murder Speculation is surprisingly simple by comparison.

There's no message,
there's no waxing philosophical,
there doesn't even seem to be any sort of underlying subtext.

It's just a short story about a guy who meets a girl who he soon learns has a violent side and he does what little he can to wedge himself into her little world.

It's honestly not bad.

It could be a hell of a lot better though.

For one, after Overlooking View, I was hoping for MORE action, not less, and was disappointed by how many more static shots there were of just locations. I get it, your locations are pretty, DO SOMETHING with them.

Actually, for the most part, for what little the movie does, it's just very slow and... boring.

If the movie withheld it's reveals and presented it's narrative as a more heavily edited slow burn in the style of Blood: The Last Vampire, it would be a FAR more watchable movie.

As it is now, it's just a boring prologue for world-building.

We come away from this knowing only a few select things:

Kokutou has a crush on Shiki, Shiki has a violent alter ego, she comes from a wealthy family who teaches her combat, and she's the sole heir to her family name because she was the only one of her siblings to be born with "the attribute" which is probably in reference to her ability to see ghosts from the first movie which is never shown or explained in this movie.


Final Verdict:
[Meh...]
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I'm not sure what to say other than... that's a terrible explanation of what Mushi are. o_O
How can you not understand what Mushi are??? its a life in its purest form... it stems from the heart or main source of life (according to what it shows)..

Just watch one of them.. I think you might enjoy it if you enjoy drama type anime.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ency...me.php?id=5923

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807832/awards



How can you not understand what Mushi are??? its a life in its purest form... it stems from the heart or main source of life (according to what it shows)..

Just watch one of them.. I think you might enjoy it if you enjoy drama type anime.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ency...me.php?id=5923

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0807832/awards
Oh, I'll watch it. I just think that whole analogy of "if plants are your thumb and animals are your middle finger, and they all come together in the blood vessels in your arm" thing was... bizarre.



That sounds like it was explaining that every facet of life is one.
Exactly and it all goes back to the purest form.... a cell



That sounds like it was explaining that every facet of life is one.
Alright, let's analyze this step by step...

Firstly, "there's no simple way to explain what they are", which means this is the least complex description of what 'mushi' are:

Your four fingers represent animal life and your thumb represents plant life.
Why? Do animals dwarf plants 4 to 1? If we're describing life, why don't your fingers and thumb just represent the 5 kingdoms of biology?

Humans would be at your middle finger, the furthest from your heart.
Suggesting that humans are the least... alive? Hearty? Spiritual? What the hell does this mean?

The lower palm of your hand represents lower animal life.
Lower than humans? Humans are only represented by one finger. What are the other higher forms of animal life? What constitutes higher or lower?

Your wrist and combined blood vessels represent fungi and micro-organisms.
So animals + plants = mushrooms. Ahhh... I think I'm starting to ge-wait no, I don't understand.

There is still life beyond this point.
What point? The point at which a mad scientist merges with an oak tree to become mold? Are we talking about ancestry? What we were before micro-organisms?

The creatures past your shoulder to the point closest to your heart are the mushi.
I totally get it now. That sequence definitely cleared up any confusion I might have had.

Next time I would probably just as abbreviate it as, "mushi are the most basic forms of life", or "mushi are life essence", or "Look at this teapot. The lid represents animal life and the steam represents a convoluted explanation."



I hope you took Biology in school... every single thing on this planet including the planet itself came from a 1 cell organism.... perhaps this is what they call Mushi?



I hope you took Biology in school... every single thing on this planet including the planet itself came from a 1 cell organism.... perhaps this is what they call Mushi?
I'll be honest, I don't recall the class that was supposed to tell me that the planet used to be a micro-organism.

I seem to recall a distinction between cells and atoms.



I'll be honest, I don't recall the class that was supposed to tell me that the planet used to be a micro-organism.

I seem to recall a distinction between cells and atoms.
Just watch.. I think you will understand...

sorry dont mean to be a b*tch.. .but yeah you should watch....