Omni's Daily Dose of Anime

Sword of the Stranger sets itself up as the perfect prototypical story of the nameless wandering veteran master samurai who's sworn himself to pacifism in the wake of war and once again becomes embroiled in a conflict that inevitably forces him to break his oath and demands his full and incomparable skill with a katana.

It's an extremely over-used and predictable story arc for anime, but this time we got Bones out in full force to reinvent the wheel with their own badass take on it.

I'm all for this and I've no complaints about the fight scenes at all, they're excellent, exceptforthebloodgeysers, but they're separated by the most BLAUGH boring narrative it's no wonder I've seen it twice and still have no ****ing clue what it's about.

Basically a kid steals something, so these Chinese guys attack him and get destroyed by the Ronin which is investigated by the local authorities who also go after him and yadayadayada some big fight in the snow on a wooden platform, I don't remember, I DIDN'T GET THAT FAR.

I simply couldn't stand to finish it this time. The fight scenes are cool, yes, but they're not groundbreaking or worth the slog through the bad guys' exposition or The Kid and The Ronin's pained development dialog. The Ronin's there just to be a Power Fantasy, but the Kid is there as a Viewer Surrogate excuse to learn about the Ronin and how he's and even cooler than what it says on the tin. Ooooh... he has scars... ooooh... he won't draw his sword... ooooh... he's actually got red hair which earned him scary nicknames.


This'd all be fine if I gave a **** about either of these characters, but The Kid is really The Brat, and The Brat is an insufferable character in all but comedy roles and EVEN THEN he has to be done well. The Ronin might be likable if not for the fact that his only means of bonding with The Kid, and thereby offering a chance to be likable, are through abhorrent dialog exchanges in which he explains how riding a horse is wonderful and "like flying".

You know what? That's ********. 'Cause I've ridden on a horse and it feels like a pogostick making a permanent bedmark in your groin. If anything it makes me WILDLY MORE AWARE OF GRAVITY, not the least of which considering how the horse most definitely does not share that sensation of flying with some selfish bag of skin uselessly flopping around it's back and kickin' it in the sides. **** YOU.

And then... we bring up "gelding", ooooh... just a pretty way of saying "castration". "Oh, it... makes the horse more placcid."

Yes, how normal and casual it should be that we discuss the merits of destroying genitals, I'm just being nitpicky and weird, this shouldn't REALLY bother me, I should just focus on the totally forgettable story and the fight scenes involving characters I should like because what's not to like about a stock anime archetype who's totally chill with just walking away from a dog that got poisoned taking a knife for him unless someone BRIBES HIM to give a ****. Oh, and he slaughters children.

Nah, I'm being unfair.


Final Verdict:

[WAT]

Oysters, Lobsters, Fish, Redline has the high level of animation and clean consistent art style to set it well above most other anime in pure production value.

Unfortunately, that's where I draw my praises. The visuals are far outweighed by on extremely ugly approach to design, featuring heavily detailed nonsense aliens, in high contrast, with desaturated neon colors. The look is awful and as pretty as the visual effects on the race cars may be, the racers themselves are given one too many close-ups on their unattractive mugs making clenching faces into the camera.

I think this would all be pretty easy to overlook if these characters were portrayed humorously, but Redline takes Nth Degree space races and Ryunosuke from Shaman King, mixes them together with a blitz of bright colors and cooky animation and comes out DEAD SERIOUS.

This isn't a comedy, but it looks like one. In every way. Or rather if it IS a comedy, it's extremely poor. About the only vaguely humorous thing is simply the absurd visuals themselves, but these are not visual gags, these are "Holy ****, he's going faster!" and "Aren't aliens WEIRD?", it's shallow as all hell.

The plot itself gives away the apparent twist at the very start showing that JP's mechanic, voiced by the awesome, but unfortunately inconsistent Liam O' Brian, is backstabbing him by literally rigging his car to blow up so he'll lose and he can collect on gambling debts.

We know this mere minutes into the movie and yet the rest of the movie sees fit to idle around, develop nothing save some flimsy prospective love interest, and have us simply wait for the characters to press the garish visuals before finally learning what we, the audience, already know.


It doesn't feel like there's a story so much as it feels like the characters are just kicking empty conversations around to fill time. It's boring and for a movie this visually striking and begging this hard for you to like it, it makes virtually no effort to win me over.

Visual quality is not enough to sustain my interest in an anime, especially when the visual DESIGN is this unpleasant.

I got almost 40 minutes in and expected no gold at the end of the rainbow.


Final Verdict:

[WAT]

Eggs.

Running at only about 40 minutes, the plot is brief and straight to the point, it even ends rather abruptly: *missile lands harmlessly* "We win!" *credits*

It's pretty true to the source material, taking place after the first season of the show, but it really only features Agumon and Gabumon's respective digivolutions. This time around a virus digimon randomly pops up on the internet and because everything from price stickers to stoplights to apartment building power is inexplicably wired heart and soul to the internet (that's the failure of technology for you) the virus begins to spread causing chaos and even manages to launch a US missile at Japan.

Thanks, US, you just keep your nuclear missiles on an internet server do ya?

Children's War Game falls into some common Digimon trappings, but it's rushed plot also brings new problems. Early on the virus actually attacks Agumon while he's digivolving AND THAT'S JUST WRONG.

You don't interrupt transformation sequences EVER, because the second you do you ruin all previous and future transformation sequences in canon! They're supposed to be eye candy simply abstracted out for Rule of Cool's sake, but here you've actually made a point of drawing attention to the fact that NOT ONLY can this digimon interrupt your fancy "look at me, I'm leveling up" montage, but you've also drawn attention to the fact that EVERY DIGIVOLUTION EVER COULD HAVE BEEN INTERRUPTED and considering that this **** only happens in extreme scenarios where there's someone to fight you IMMEDIATELY drop the facade and raise the question "WHY DOESN'T HE JUST PUNCH HIM???"

Oh no, Agumon's digivolving. *punch* Problems solved, I can end the world now.

THIS EVEN HAPPENS LATER ON IN THE SAME FRICKEN' MOVIE! Agumon and Gabumon combine to make Omnimon and yet despite and extreme and overwhelmingly damning threat the virus doesn't attack them while they're digivolving. PLOTHOLE! You dug yourself a PLOTHOLE!

There's also some subplot about Tai and Sora being at odds as the popularly shipped love interests, but when it's eventually revealed that Tai gave her a hairclip and she took it as an insult to her hat which warranted a big enough argument to completely disassociate with the other person and insult them behind their back it's just another instance of a movie going,

"Women, huh? Bitches be crazy."

**** you.

Also what's the deal with Omnimon anyway? I mean, I like him, I think he's probably one of the cooler Digimon out there (total inspiration if you couldn't guess) what being just a straight mix of the two strongest Digimon the protagonists have, but his conception?


Tai has some stuttering emotional breakdown in front of his computer, FALLS INTO IT, hugs Greymon and magically he digivolves.

*sigh* You know, the TV show itself was pretty contrived at points too, but AT LEAST there was a strong undercurrent theme about the Digi Destined necessarily having to achieve some sort of specific personal virtue or learn a moral lesson before they could digivolve to a new level, remember any of that "Friendship", "Courage", and "Love" stuff? Sure it was feeble, but at least it was THERE, at there's was an unexplained motivating factor beyond DRAMATIC CONVENIENCE.

Finally, I got pretty sick pretty quick with the obvious setup in this movie. You got Izzy inexplicably collecting countless emails worldwide which somehow slows down their computer and Digimon- wait, I thought the Digimon were in the internet, why are they affected by computer speeds? IS IT BECAUSE YOU'RE STREAMING VIDEO!? GODAMMIT, TAI, THIS IS NO TIME FOR A FOUR-WAY CHAT.

Or I dunno, CLOSE your email application?

They drum it up for so long I'm just sitting there goin' "forward them to the virus".

Does that make any sense? No. How would they know the virus's email address? WOULD a virus have an email address? How do the millions of kids around the world know Izzy and Tai's email address? It's as contrived as anything else... okay maybe not as contrived as FALLING INTO YOUR COMPUTER AND CRYING YOUR DIGIMON INTO A TRANSFORMATION SEQUENCE THAT THE ENEMY ARBITRARILY DECIDES NOT TO INTERRUPT ****, but that's all the more reason, so yeah that happens.

All in all? Kinda cruddy. Not terrible... at least by Digimon standards or what I come to expect. The animation was pretty good quality and naturally there were none of those... "Americanisms" that were dubbed into the English localizations. I'm not sure what I feel about that, the English dub could actually be really funny, but then it also came with McDonald's references and crap and I don't want nunna that.

There's also the biggest loss of course...



Final Verdict:

[Meh...]

The visual style of Hells Angels is a big plus for me and it keeps me absorbed if nothing else. It's the best thing going for it which is to say the movie has almost nothing else going for it.

This movie has one of the trippiest, WHAT-THE-F*CK PLOTS I'VE EVER HEARD OF, so lay up your kicks, cause I'm about to tell you, in chronological order, the tale of Hell's Angels.


Way back in biblical times, God created the first man, Adam. This took a lot out of God so it took a bit more effort to create the first woman, Eve. After Eve, God was tired as **** and decided to **** around as a cat.

Adam and Eve were cool biz and when they ate from the forbidden tree of knowledge God was real chill about it. He was probably too tired to do anything and honestly keeping knowledge to himself is a pretty selfish thing to do.

Adam and Even had sex and gave birth to Cain and Abel. When Eve was breast-feeding Abel, Cain asked to suck on her boobies and Eve said no, he was a big boy.

THAT'S WHEN IT ALL WENT WRONG.

Cain became booby-jealous and developed incestuous thoughts about his mother. In anger he killed his little brother Abel who went to Hell for some reason, changed his name to Kutou for some reason, and created a place called Destinyland for some reason.

Eventually Cain also died, went to Hell, and established a Japanese high school in Destinyland which he presides over as Headmaster Helvis, an evil version of Elvis.


Untold years later, Adam goes to Destinyland, changes his name to "Who" and becomes a frighteningly muscular skinny man with 4 feet of aerodynamic super saiyan hair.

Eve dies and is reincarnated into the body of a Japanese schoolgirl named Linne who meets God ****in' around as a cat in traffic and gets hit by a truck which sends her to school in Destinyland, Hell.

God apologizes for not being able to do anything.

God doesn't do anything for the rest of the story.

In Destinyland it's revealed that Helvis has heel-face-turned into a good guy and Kutou has face-heel-turned into a bad guy who attends Helvis's school as a student for some reason.

Helvis throws a volleyball tournament.

After the volleyball tournament Kutou reveals his master plan to...

something. It's a very nasty evil plan whatever it is because it traps Linne in Destinyland.


Linne, partnered with a dorm mother, a panda, God in the form of a cat, and some random one-armed dude named Mario go to confront Kutou.

Kutou's minions reveal to Linne that she's secretly Eve and everyone starts calling her Mom. They then reveal Linne's mom named "Mom" and kill her (their mom's mom) by throwing her into a Sphere of Annihilation.

After the biblical mind**** that is the reincarnated first woman's mother dying, Linne loses all her happy thoughts and immediately kills herself in the Sphere of Annihilation.

Everyone inside the Sphere of Annihilation survives with the power of friendship believing. Suddenly everyone has the power to do anything, "It will happen! Definitely!"

Kutou challenges everyone to life or death bucketball.

Everyone completely accepts the challenge.

Linne instantly makes the bucket and decides not to use her super powers to stop the game.

One person is eaten by the bucket. They never come back. They're like the one character that actually dies and stays dead.


In a rambling monologue Kutou explains that Hell doesn't even exist and that he personally manufactured the concept somehow through art and religion. Everyone totally forgets about bucketball.

Kutou explains that everything in Destinyland is controlled through will (remember, God's still here, he's just not doing anything) and suddenly everyone can fly.

When they fly too high, they get scared, fall down like that ran out of fairy dust, and their unhappy feelings turn into word bubbles which coalesce into a giant tentacle monster which skull****s seven women representing the deadly sins turning them into fat ugly monsters.

People start fighting with word bubbles.

Linne shoots love out of her mouth, Kutou suddenly gives up on his mystery plan in despair, and Stealer, a character with no biblical analog whatsoever, apparently "made from Abel's darkness" collects all of the unhappy thoughts and explodes.

Now finally EVERYONE CAN GO HOME and despite the fact that anyone can do anything as long as they believe, everyone's too negative to revive Stealer so she's dead for reals and Linne cries at her tree-body where Kutou heel-face-turns back into a good guy.

Thousands of people hear Linne's quiet platitudes from nearly a mile away and emotionally swayed, they all choose to stay in Not-Hell and rebuild their school.

Now that their school is rebuilt Linne can graduate and with Helvis's permission, NOW ONLY HER AND HER MOM CAN GO HOME.

Mario is left behind. And he says "I love you".

Linne returns to the real world, EVERYONE ELSE IS ALREADY THERE, STEALER IS ALIVE, WHIMSY OVERLOAD, CREDITS.



Final Verdict:

[Meh...]