Spring Season Anime

Here’s what I’m watching so far…

 

Gundam Build Divers

I know I’m not the target demographic for this show, but it’s Gundam and gunpla. It’s nice to see Gundam 00 mechs again and amusing cameo appearances of Patrick. It would be hilarious if he became the new Ral of the show. This is a great show for a new generation of kids to start getting into the franchise.

 

Hinamatsuri

This is my most highly anticipated of the season. Hinamatsuri was one of the funniest seinen manga I’ve read and it got me excited that the anime adaptation was announced. While some parts of the story was cut off from the manga based upon the first couple episodes, I’m still having a great time with the show.

 

Megalo Box

I’m no fan of sports anime, but when Megalo Box was described as boxing in a cyberpunk world, how can I ignore it? The premise is rather typical but the world building and music is great. The animation is retro style but the video quality is oddly low as if I was watching an upscaled 480p.

 

Persona 5 The Animation

I no longer have the time to play 40+ hour RPG games so hopefully this 24 ep adaptation will do the trick. But wow, the visual have quality written all over it. I’m not sure what to expect other than super stylish aesthetics which the Persona franchise is known for.

 

Steins;Gate 0

The first show took a while for me to get into, but the payoff was excellent. This semi sequel wastes no time getting into the thick of things thankfully. It’s gonna be quite interesting where this show goes. Of course, I’m expecting more time travel stuff.

 

Still watching…

DARLING in the FRANXX – My goodness. This show loves to take its sweet time. It took 4 episodes for the main dude to pilot the mech! But now the show has gotten much better, until the most recent ep. Now I so dislike Ichigo with a passion. How could this reject be so selfish and ruin relationships that was so close to being established?

Record of Grancrest War – This is one entertaining fantasy war anime despite of its flaws. Aside from Berserk, this comes close 2nd if Game of Thrones were to become an anime. It’s surprisingly quite violent. The show sometimes rushes things too much for its own good. I’ve heard this is related to the Record of Lodess War but no idea in what way.

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What Happened?

What up yall? I’m still here.

I know I’ve been less active more than ever here but updating stuff has been a much lesser priority to me these days. Most of the time, I tend to forget anyways. My time has been spent on mostly on reading books based on theology and apologetics. The one social site I’ve been most active on is twitter. Sometimes instagram but I rarely take worthwhile pics.

Anyways, this is just an update post showing I’ll be continuing this blog, just not in a the pace I would like to.

movie review: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

If I could sum up this movie in one word, that would be polarizing. I saw this movie on the debut weekend Friday morning. Surprisingly, the theater room was half vacant for a movie that was highly anticipated. So after viewing it, I thought it was pretty enjoyable and slightly better than Force Awakens. However, the more I think about it, the more criticisms I notice.

Last weekend, I had to see it the 2nd time due to unforeseen events, but this time in Imax 3D. As someone who wears glasses, this was not a good experience. Upon watching it, it was on analysis mode. I have to say that my impressions got worse. Pretty much everything I thought was wrong with this movie has been confirmed. Now I realized that I enjoyed Force Awakens more than Last Jedi.

By the way, spoilers obviously.

Starting off with the obvious problem, the pacing. The scenes with Fin and Rose were so unnecessary that it made the movie felt like 2 hours and 30 min. As much as I like Fin’s character, I think he’s wrongly placed in side mission roles. Every scene where Fin and Rose were searching for that Code Breaker was dragging down the film. Rose setting those weird horse creatures free made no sense logically because they’re going to be captured again when they’re only a couple miles away from the city. Whatever Fin and Rose were trying to accomplish failed and even worse, created terrifying after effect. The most pointless character introduced has got to be that alternative code breaker. Rose comes follows closely since her existence adds nothing productive to the story. When Fin was about to sacrifice himself on the ice planet, that would’ve been quite emotionally impacting, but too bad it was ruined by Rose going in giving a cheesy line. Also, I see a forced chemistry between Fin and Rose. I felt nothing between the two. Some minor complaints I had were the beginning space battles where the slow clunky space bombers were deployed. What happened to the Y wings? Around the 3rd act, the sub admiral lady took way too long to think about a hyperspace ram. Plus the rebellion coup d’etat was such a waste of time. Just tell Poe what the plan is so there won’t be any trouble.

Now for the stuff I liked. All the scenes with Luke and Rey. Luke’s past with Kylo Ren. Yoda making a brief return as a force ghost. Rey teaming up with Kylo during that lightsaber battle scene. It was nice to see the elite guards take action. Luke going out on his own terms looking at the 2 suns making it the best death in the franchise. Luke confronting Kylo near the end there. The hyperspace ram was incredible. The silence after that was pure gold. Liea using the force was nice to see, although I wish the delivery wasn’t cheesy. Kylo Ren’s complexity as a villain remains interesting. Music is still a strong point.

For the next movie installment, there poses a huge issue. Carrie Fisher is dead, but Liea still lives. What are they gonna do? They could probably kill her off off-screen during the movie, or was probably killed in between the two films. But after seeing this movie, my anticipation for the next one is very low.

Rating: 5/10

anime review: Fate/stay night: Heaven’s Feel – I. Presage Flower

Here’s are some quick thoughts on the movie I saw last Thursday. (Also for the sake of keeping this blog updated.)

Good:

• Visuals. Absolutely gorgeous art. The action scenes are very well animated. It’s what you expect from a studio reputable as ufotable. My favorite fights have to be Saber vs Berserker and Lancer vs Assassin. This is probably the best non-Shinkai animated film I’ve seen.
• Sound effects. This made the scenes so much more immersive. I don’t know who did the sound design, but the action scenes were amplified by the incredible sound effects. This can only be experienced when watching it on the big screen.
• Darkest route of Fate Stay Night yet. This is right on par with Fate Zero with its dark overtones. The violence however maybe worse here.
• Quite lengthy for an anime film. Felt like more than 2 hours. This could either be a good or a bad thing depending on the pacing.
• Next movie preview after the end credits.

 

Bad:

• Awful pacing in the beginning. The intro spent too much time showing the school life, and that’s from point A to point B which lasted like 30 min. The intro credits come immediately rushing point B to point D within a min which is a detrimental part of the story. During the intro credits, it was a short montage of Shiro getting attacked and summoning his servant not giving the audience enough time to process what happened, recycled footage straight from Unlimited Blade Works. Not cool ufotable, for a quality animation studio like them, this is straight up lazy.
• Not friendly to viewers who aren’t familiar with the franchise. Because of the weird direction in the beginning, first timers won’t understand the catalyst behind the conflict.
• Shiro is still annoying and Fuji sensei is as unbearable as ever. Sakura’s constant notion of saying “senpai” throughout gets annoying. Is it that hard to say his name after all those years?
• Very little of Archer.

 

Thankfully, this movie of Heaven’s Feel route is the first part of the trilogy, otherwise I would totally rip it apart for its abrupt ending. This flick alone is better than the original Fate Stay Night series. So it’s a start.

 

Rating: 7/10

Google Pixel XL Impressions

My Nexus 6P had a defect battery where it would randomly shut off around 30%. I contacted google about the issue, surprisingly, they sent me a Pixel XL as free replacement. Over a month of owning the device, here are my impressions.

Good:

• Has a headphone jack. Yes I bring this up first cuz of the trend that going on right now.
• Slightly smaller than my Nexus 6P.
• Though dated by a year, still blazing fast.
• Great camera!
• 4 gigs of ram helps most of my mobile gaming run smooth.
• Timely android updates.
• Very simple to transfer data from my previous phone.
• Battery life is fairly decent.

 

Bad:

• Bottom firing speaker, one is disguised as a mic. I so miss the dual front facing speakers on my Nexus 6P. The ringtone volume is awful on the Pixel XL. To reach my 6P’s level of mid volume, I have to crank up the Pixel’s volume to 90%.
• Dangerously slippery. Case is absolutely required.
• Android O not having a dark mode.
• No micro SD card slot. Stop forcing us to use google drive google! Unless if data plan isn’t included in that, I ain’t doing it.
• Quad HD display is still pointless and a battery sucker.
• Phone boots up slow with a blinding white screen.
• Not water resistant.

 

Ugly:

• Google Now story feeds can’t be disabled permanently. Even with the options disabled, google programmed this to use your data. Sneaky greedy bastards.

Best Anime From Summer Season

Made in Abyss

What I expected from this show judging by the promo art came out to be something unexpected. At first, I thought this was gonna be some kiddy fantasy adventure anime. However, as the show gets through half way point, it becomes shockingly disturbing. Honestly, it was really unsettling watching the last few episodes due to some certain scenes which I won’t mention here. The disturbance factor was like an appetizer to Berserk. Aside from that, what drew me in the show was the mystery surrounding the depths of the abyss. The further you go in, the more unexpected dangers you encounter. Our 2 main leads, Riko and Reg, goes on a journey in search of Riko’s missing mom knowing she might be at the bottom of the abyss. No one on the surface has ventured passed the first several layers of the abyss because of the negative effects it will have on the human body. Another mystery is Reg. He’s a half robot half human who doesn’t even know his own origins. Made in Abyss ends with a very good season conclusion, but the overall plot has yet to be concluded. I strongly recommend this show if you’re itching for fantasy adventure. It’ll shock you and emotionally wreck you and leave you wanting more. Will there be a season 2? Who knows. I guess that depends on the reception of the show or the increase sales in the manga.

 

Princess Principal

Now here’s an interesting one where it’s moe steam punk Victorian age spy thriller anime. What I love about Princess Principal is the well written individual episodes and some of the twist & turns in the overall arching story. Most of the episodes aren’t in chronological order, so you’ll have to pay attention to the case# if you’re really bent on that. Basic plot is a group girls doing espionage things such as assassinations and infiltrations. By the way, don’t be fooled by the moe character designs because this show pulls no punches. There are plenty of nicely choreographed action scenes from car chases and sword fights. Music is by Yuki Kajiura who does a fantastic job here. The best episode to me is 6. It reminds me of an Outlaw Star episode where Jim Hawking is unknowingly fighting his love interest but ends up killing her without ever finding out the truth. My biggest complaint here is the rushed final episode. Many plot threads are left hanging, and it’s practically begging for season 2. Unfortunately, nothing is announced. So like Made in Abyss, it depends on the reception. Except in this case, Princess Principal is an anime original.

Titanfall 2 GMV – STIMULI

It’s been a while since my last video edit. Titanfall 2 is one of my favorite games of the year and I wanted to give it a proper tribute to this underrated product. So I picked Circle of Dust’s song, Neurachem, which fits so well considering the tone and energy. I hope this video will get you pumped!