Unstoppable: Mini-Review Rampage #3

So being summer, I find myself without any way to "productively" spend my time (emphasis added by parents) which results in a majority of my time still be spent in the consumption of media, which once again means I have a large back-log of things I've watched and want to write down my thoughts of.

I keep saying I'll make some posts that aren't reviews... but then I keep losing the motivation. I still have high hopes, though. Until then, though, enjoy my opinions on the following ten works. Pictures provided for your visual pleasure!

Extras

I'll admit up front why I became interested in that show, and that's because after finishing Portal and completely enjoying Steven Merchant Wheatley's hilarious dialogue, I became very curious in seeing him in a normal acting role. Also given that I generally like British comedy, the show definitely sounded like it had potential, and also on it's side was the fact that, being a British show, it was incredibly short at 12 half-hour episodes.

The first two or three episodes were a bit rocky, in my opinion. There were definitely funny moments, but also parts that dragged to a small degree, although never to the point that I didn't want to keep watching. The characters are hilariously, painfully awkward at times, but nonetheless seem pretty realistic. Part of the best part of the overall show is the cameos by famous actors/actressess, all of whom play ridiculous caricatures of themselves. Part of the problem with this is, if you're unfamiliar with the actor in question (as was the case with a couple of British personalities) it felt like I was missing the joke, and it was only after I wikipedia'd the person that I retroactively understood the humor. Nonetheless, when it works, it works, with excellent performances by people such as Daniel Radcliffe, Samuel L. Jackson, and perhaps my personal favorite, Sir Patrick Stewert. And as I hoped, every moment with Wheatley was fantastic.

Once the overarching plotline kicks in, around episode 4, things start going a lot more smoothly. The transformation of Ricky Gervais' character is excellently done, and the multiple levels of irony and parody that show up as begins to direct his own comedy show inside his own comedy show works wonderfully. The show ends at a pretty good place, but an additional movie adds a different but also good ending to the series.

I could definitely see this show not being for everyone, and it definitely has its flaws, but if you're into the humor style and appreciate the light it throws on the entertainment industry, it's definitely worth a watch. Just be prepared to cringe occasionally.

Ouran High School Host Club

I will once again admit that when this show was recommended to me and the plot described to me, I was less enthused. A reverse harem about a bunch of snobby rich kids in a high school? If it had merely been something I read about in passing, I definitely would have ignored it without a second thought, but given the high recommendation given to me I decided to give it a try.

For better or worse, the first episode pretty much lived up to my expectations and didn't exactly impress, with the single unexpected moment of Haruhi being revealed at the end of the first episode--something I had assumed would be the focus of the entire show. In fact, this would be the first of many surprises the show had in store, and after a few more episodes I was really getting into the series (as well as greatly enjoying the soundtrack, as the opening and closing themes as excellent).

What was entirely unexpected is that Ouran is actually much more of a focused character drama than a romantic shojo-type anime, to a certain extent. The show itself contains quite a bit of parodical elements regarding itself and its type, perhaps best illustrated when around episode 8 a little girl walks up to the host club, points at them, yells out "Reverse harem!" and proceeds to explain which "type" each of the members is (the later catch being her caretakers started reading her shojo manga when they ran out of regular bedtime stories). The focus isn't really on Haruhi and her romantic entanglements, since she isn't interested and 3 of the guys don't seem to be either. Instead as the show progresses we begin to explore the backgrounds of the guys, whether it's the twin's antisocial groundings, Kyoya's ridiculous pragmatism, or Tamaki's odd history. 

Overall I'm finding the show is quite hard to explain, in a certain sense. I found myself gradually growing fonder of it despite a lurking feeling that I shouldn't, but the show really does manage to surpass the genre stereotypes and deliver a solid, enjoyable show. By the end, I was crushed that a second season hadn't been made, and had to content myself with reading the manga. I had actually planned on waiting to finish this review till I finished the manga, but I'm 2/3 through and don't feel the need to wait. While the anime is very clearly drawn directly from the manga in some cases, for whatever reason it personally was not nearly as compelling as the anime. I will likely continue it just to see how it ends, but if I had not seen the anime I likely would have dropped it a while ago.

Also in a fun note, in the Japanese audio Tamaki is played by the same person who does Light in Deathnote

Can't you see the resemblance?

Again, this show is probably far from being for everyone, but if you can enjoy a more laid-back, lighthearted story, Ouran is one of the better ones I've come across. A couple episodes are not perfect (the Alice in Wonderland episode in particular is skippable) and occasionally it gets kind of ridiculous, as results from a show about the super-rich, but overall it's a very enjoyable journey that I'm glad I took, despite the silly premise.

[Edit: After starting this post and ending it, I realized I didn't want to read the next 1000 pages of the manga so I read the wikipedia summaries and skipped to the final chapter. My general impression was the anime is far superior to the manga, and while the series manages a lot of interesting and unexpected turns, the ending is what I would have predicted after the first couple chapters; in other words, it's pretty predictable and stereotypical for shojo manga. So while it's not bad per se, it's a bit disappointing in its anti-climaticness, in that they built up a lot of tension and interesting character development and then just kind of dropped it. Ah well. The anime is still great though, although perhaps it's good it didn't get a second season if it would have continued to follow the manga plotline.]

Paranoia Agent

This was another show I was slightly weary of, but being only 13 episodes I figured it was something that even if I didn't like it, it would be over very quickly. 

The show deals with a series of attacks that begin in a Japanese prefecture, as people on the verge of nervous breakdowns are suddenly assaulted by a young boy in golden roller skates and a bent bat. A pair of detectives begin investigating, trying to find the link between the increasing number of victims. The show definitely lives up to its title, as it has a lot of unsettling moments and managed to give me some very odd dreams the night after I started watching it. 

The progression as hysteria begins to mount as the attacks continue on unabated is done very well, as well as the desperation of all the characters involved. The show also takes a kind of 3-episode break, after the set-up and before the beginning of the resolution, to showcase some standalone episodes. I definitely understand the point and reason behind the episodes, but I felt like they detracted from the flow of the series (especially one that is entirely women gossiping about the attacks). In fact, that's probably my biggest complain with the series; while it didn't drag, except for the one episode mentioned above, something about the pacing just felt weird to me. I can't help but wonder if some other format may have suited the show better, like 40 minute OVAs instead of 20 minute episodes. Nonetheless, the show comes to a satisfying conclusion, given its set-up, and was definitely interesting if nothing else. I would probably only recommend the show if you're into somewhat murky, unclear anime with a slightly weird bent, but if you are, it's definitely well-done.

Boardwalk Empire

I'm generally a big fan of gangster films and shows, whether it's the classic Godfather trilogy or something more modern like the Sopranos or the Departed. Thus when my dad highly recommended the recently finished season one of Boardwalk Empire, and told me he had it all saved so I could also watch it, it was  hard to say no. Not knowing much more about it, I dove in with no real expectations. 

Boardwalk Empire tells the tale of Atlantic City at the very beginning of the Prohibition, and more specifically the small number of crooked politicians who profited from the act. Steve Buscemi plays the lead role of "Nucky" Thompson, a real-life figure whose life was somewhat fictionalized for creative freedom, but still strongly rooted in fact. Behind the scenes the show features a large amount of talent, including Martin Scorsese and the lead director from the Sopranos. It also currently holds the record for the most expensive TV Pilot, in large part because rather than renovate a boardwalk or work in a soundstage + green screens, the producers chose to build an entire boardwalk in the style of the 1920s to get true authenticity for the look. 

All of this effort and money definitely shows, as the show looks fantastic. I obviously don't know what that time period was actually like, but it feels very real, from the cars and clothes people wear to the slang they employ. All of the actors do a fantastic job, and particularly the lead female role does an amazing job at portraying her character's growth as the series progresses. Matching her is Steve Buscemi, whose performance of a crooked politician trying to justify his actions and ignore the more "gangster" side of his lifestyle deserves great commendations. The story is interesting and well told, and juggles the tales of a handful of characters very well.

 Just overall the show has great production values, a remarkable cast, and very good entertainment value. What's perhaps more impressive is the writers actually ended the series not on a cliffhanger, despite the second season already secured, which was a very nice change of pace. With that said, I am now very much looking forward to that second season when it begins later this fall, and would encourage anyone with interest in this genre to catch up by then.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

This show began with almost the opposite of all the others, in that it was explicitly not recommended to me. I knew that it was highly influential, and that of my favorite shows (Gurren Lagann) was in certain sense Gainax's counterpoint to their own well-regarded work, but nonetheless my friends suspected I wouldn't enjoy it. However, eventually curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to settle down and watch the series that has affected all giant-robot shows since. 

The show started off in a fairly stereotypical style that was nonetheless enjoyable: young boy finds himself the only person able to pilot giant robot, must fight enemies for mankind while supported by some goofy adults and fellows child-soldiers. The show alternates between comedy moments, action, and intensely serious questions in the beginning, and the occasional complete randomness (see: Pen-Pen the penguin roommate). The series gets progressively darker as it progresses, and the lighter aspects become less and less frequent. Surprisingly, some of the things I had been noting as genre stereotypes began to start being pic Evangelion ked apart in ways that were pleasantly surprising-- for instance, the actual idea of child soldiers and its ramifications.

I don't really have too much more to say about the series without delving into spoilers; I can however say that I think deserves its reputation and has a lot to offer. It manages to be interesting, and despite a somewhat trippy ending, delivers pretty spectacularly on the promise in the initial episodes. I feel like if you're into the giant robot-genre or just action anime in general, it's a must-watch at some point; it offers a very different perspective on anime in general, and is a very enjoyable ride along the way.

Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt

This was another series that my friends actually believed that I would not enjoy, and I went in with very mixed expectations. On the one hand, it's Gainax doing it's version of a parody of the American cartoons I grew up watching, like Dexter's Lab and the Powerpuff Girls. On the other hand, Gainax went into this  show attempting to make the most vulgar show possible, and in general I tend to extremely dislike that type of lowbrow humor and avoid it whenever possible. But, at 13 episodes, I figured I should try it out.

The first episode pretty much delivered as expected; the parody aspect was great, and it was somewhat ironic to see the American art style drawn about 50x more gorgeous because of the increased budget available to Gainax. On the other hand, the first ten minutes dealt with a giant Poop demon, and Stocking's obsession with sweets is only matched with Panty's insatiable sex drive. Together they combined to make a kind of neutral opinion. I wasn't enthralled, but neither was I completely turned off. I continued on.

What happened is that show gradually began to grow on me, and towards the end I was enjoying it quite a bit. I think what helped is that, given Gainax went in trying to make the most vulgar show possible, it came out on the parody side and ended up being SO over the top it became acceptable, in a way; kind of similar to how Gurren Lagann's over-the-top-ness goes all the way around and comes out completely awesome. 

I think in general if you're a fan of that humor, and/or appreciated the source material cartoons growing up, Panty & Stocking actually has a lot to offer. It had two very clear goals starting off: homage and parody of American cartoons, and be incredibly vulgar. It accomplishes both of these task incredibly well, so if that sounds good to you, check it out.

Another thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack to the show. I didn't notice it so much during the show, except for the fact that the opening sounded better than it had any right to and that the ending theme was pretty catchy, but I ended up finding the OST for the latter reason, and listening through it was quite impressed. I've been recently experimenting more in the electronica field, and although I'm obviously no expert of the genre, the album is a great little album filled a quite a few good songs, and I would say is worth checking out regardless of whether you watch the show.

Black Swan

I'm obviously quite behind the times in reviewing this; a bunch of friends highly recommended it to me when it came out, but for whatever reasons I never got around to seeing it while in theaters despite wanting to. Thus I was quite pleased to finally get a chance to sit down and watch it.

I actually don't have much to add to discussion, but suffice to say I was blown away. The tense, gritty atmosphere that is perfectly suited to any thriller is pulled off amazingly well without any of the tropes normally associated with thrillers, instead relying primarily on a mind-blowing performance by Natalie Portman, for which she completely deserved the Oscar. If a psychological thriller sounds up your ally and you have yet to watch this film, do yourself a service and do that posthaste. I literally have no criticism for this film.

Blackadder (Seasons 1 & 2)

As I stated in the Extras review, in general I tend to like British comedy, so after hearing high praise and recommendation for the Blackadder series, I was at least mildly intrigued. Being the completionist I tend to be with these kinds of things, I ignored warning to a certain extent and started from the beginning.

Unfortunately, I probably should have listened, as Blackadder season 1 is by far the worst thing I have voluntarily watched in recent memory. Rowan Atkinson's character is incredibly annoying, the plot lines are stupid, the canned laughter infuriating, and the humor not only bad, but cliched and insulting: for instance, the start of episode 3 contained a fart joke, and poop joke, and an extended dildo joke within the first 5 minutes, I kid you not. I couldn't bear to throw myself any further, and on recommendation skipped to the second season after taking a brief break.

I will give season 2 its credit; it's much much better, almost to the point of being unrecognizable as the same series. Rowan Atkinson almost doesn't look himself, and thankfully his character is much improved. The jokes are overall better, although not entirely consistent, and values overall rise to match (although the canned laughter is still annoying, but then again there is only a select few shows that I think it doesn't detract from).

The main problem with season 2 that I have is that, even trying to be objective and forget season 1, while it's good, it's only good. The pacing is a bit slow, and many jokes miss their mark, and I found myself browsing stuff on the internet while watching, which is never a good sign. My other, bigger problem is that I feel that Atkinson is trying to do his version of Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers, with similar joke style and delivery, anyway. However, the imitation or whatever falls somewhat flat; Atkinson is definitely not Cleese, and while his attempts sometimes work, they sometimes also don't.

I did finish season 2 to completion, and while I didn't dislike it in any particular way, it was far from compelling enough that I actually felt like watching any further, especially given the person who recommended it to me said season 3 wasn't quite as good as 2. Based on internet reviews, there are people who love the series (although there are also people who like season 1, so take it as you will) and thus I won't say the show is universally bad, but my personal take is there is much better comedy to be found elsewhere to bother giving this much time.

Summer Wars

Summer Wars is a critically acclaimed film by Madhouse, and quite an interesting one at that. It takes the idea of the current meteoric rise of websites like Facebook into every aspect of our lives, and does a traditional sci-fi "what if" of a real e-world where one account lets you do practically everything you could do in real life. Thus, while most of the film takes place in the "real world" scene depicted in the photo above, a good portion of the film takes place in the e-world of "Oz," pictured below

The film is a bit hard to describe, but I will attempt. A young boy who fulfills the anime trope of being a bit shy and geeky gets dragged off by the school idol to her family's estate, where the boy is immediatelly surrounded by the girl's large, tight-knit family. Then suddenly, the supposedly unhackable world of Oz gets hacked, and Bad Things start to happen. As the family bands together to try to save Japan and the World, the characters learn important lessons yadda yadda yadda.

To be blunt, the plot isn't really the selling point of the movie. I'll admit it's a bit generic, and that weakens the overall film to a small degree (alongside of having a lot of very silly tech assumptions, by far the most amusing of which is the way Oz's security is theoretically set up). However, the film more than makes up for it in a number of ways. The movie is quite pretty, especially with the shifts between the more traditional looking art style of the real world segments and the more CG Oz, where for once the difference is actually intentional and serves a cool purpose. The sci-fi question is also very interesting, and while talking to a friend we concluded is not that outside the realm of possibility, to a certain degree. And while I did just state the plot is somewhat generic, some of the steps they take to get to the endpoint are actually interesting and well done, and the movie utilizes the large cast of the family quite well and manages to differentiate them pretty impressively for a movie that's a bit under 2 hours. 

I think overall my impression walking away from Summer Wars is that, if you break it down into individual components like I just did, you can find plenty of examples of things that do any one of those things better (Kara no Kyoukai is prettier, Full Metal Alchemist asks more interesting questions, Macross Frontier has cooler CG, etc), but Summer Wars does all of these parts at least better than average, the parts come together to make a work greater than the sums of its part. It's quite an enjoyable little ride, and while it's not the best anime movie I've ever seen, it's definitely worth a watch and shouldn't be passed up if the chance is given to watch it.

Game of Thrones

And at last, I get to the series I feel like everyone has been talking about, and for good reason. The most expensive TV show yet produced, the ten episode series that encompasses the first volume of George R. R. Martin's fantasy masterpiece A Song of Ice and Fire is easily far and away one of the best TV shows I've ever had the pleasure to watch, bar none. It has a lot of things going in favor for it: a large budget, excellent writers, the direct help of Martin himself, fantastic actors, and the fact that it's on HBO, which allows it a ton of freedom.

For people who have read the books like me, it's a dream come true in terms of adapting a book to a television series. Every actor choice felt startlingly spot-on, and the roles came to life exactly as I imagined them in the book. Adapting a 800 page book across 10 hours isn't easy, but they made fantastic choices of what to cut, what to keep, and what to adapt via new scenes. Speaking of which, scenes which came across as incredibly awesome in the books got their full respect in the show, all of which came across as brilliantly as I had imagined them in my head. Even the few minor changes the series made felt in then spirit of the book, and didn't bother me. Having been disappointed by many, many book-to-film adaptations (to the point where I once believed a movie could never surpass the origin book material) I am now completely happy to state I've been proven wrong; this series fulfills the book's potential in every way. The only downside is I feel in the future I will only be that much more disappointed in other adaptations.

Of course, my opinion was all  based on someone who was familiar with the source material, so I was curious how someone who wasn't would take it. Fortunately, I suggested the series to my dad, and he actually took to it quite quickly, and I ended up watching most of the series with him. While I'm sure there are many minor points of which the significance was lost on him, overall he seemed to have no problem following the multiple storylines, keeping track of the characters, or understanding the various turns and twists the story takes. He tended to have the same reaction to on-screen events that I had to the same events in the book, and I take this to mean that the show also does a fantastic job of presenting its tale to a brand-new audience. I think any show that manages to please an old fan and a new initiate to equal degrees is considerably impressive, to say the least. (Note: I use the adjective "old" loosely, since to be up-front I only finished the first book a few weeks before the first episode aired).

To summarize, it's just frickin' great. It was the kind of show that felt like it lasted 10 minutes per episode instead of 60, where I would tense up even when I knew what was coming, that kept me spellbound and empathetic despite knowing what would eventually happen. It is another one of those rare works where I cannot muster up a single complaint. I am incredibly glad this show is already confirmed for a second season, and it's already #1 on my list of most anticipated things of 2012. In fact, I do have one complaint: that the follow-up is not coming any sooner.

I was also considering reviewing the first three books of A Song of Ice and Fire here, but considering this post has already spiraled way out of control in terms of length, it's probably best to wait for now. I seem to be currently on a bend of wanting to write more, so there's a half-decent chance I'll go back to writing individual posts for each review, but we'll see how long that enthusiasm lasts. Until then,

-HTMC