Categoria: Animation

[EXPRESSO] Gamera: Rebirth (2023) | Stand By My Gamera

Lil G is back after 15 years of official silence… and it’s a Netflix animated series by the co-director of the Godzilla anime film trilogy, with similar 3D CG animation, despite being handled by ENGI (Kemono Michi, Uzaki-chan Wants To Hang Out) and not Polygon Pictures.

We’re not starting on the right foot, but it’s not like Gamera fans can be picky, this is the first official anything since 2006’s Gamera The Brave, though the premise gave me ‘Nam flashbacks of Gamera Super Monster, since it has my boy face off against 5 old foes, including his arch nemesis Gyaos, over the course of 40 minutes long 6 episodes.

The series is set in the summer of 1989′ Japan, with a group of young boys (six-graders) that have their savings stolen by a bully nicknamed “Brody”, the son of an American army commander, confront him, then a giant monster, Gyaos, attacks Tokyo, but the children are saved by another giant monster, dubbed Gamera.

It’s basically a kaiju gauntlet of sorts, with the human side of the story feeling very Stand By Me-ish but also fitting in theme of Gamera being linked to children, proposing a reinvention of the character and franchise that mixes elements from the old Showa era films with the beloved Heisei trilogy, meaning it’s not actually intended for kids at all, as the plot unfolds more in the ways of conspiracies and dark secrets.

And both the plot and characters are surprisingly compelling, making for a good series in spite of studio ENGI trying to emulate Godzilla Singularity Point’s animation as well… but with lesser results of awkard, stiff looking animated 3D CG humans, when the monsters do look good, sport some great redesigns, and their fights – even if often brief – are indeed quite good.

Interdit Aux Chiens Et Aux Italiens (No Dogs Or Italians Allowed) AKA Manodopera (2022) | Piedmotion Animation

A french-italian stopmotion animation, already a white fly, and for less than 4 bucks due a nationwide italian & european cinema initiative? Say no more, i’m so gonna see this, even more as it won a prize at Annecy 2022’s edition.

This is basically the director, Alain Ughetto, tracing back his italian ancenstry, depicting the lives of his grandfather and family of farmers that back in early 1900’s moved from their small mountain village in Piedmont (dubbed affectionally as “Ughetterra”, the land of the Ughettos), crossing the Alps to start a new life in France, in search of any menial or dangerous labor that they could do, their eventual rise to small land-owners, and their nomad lifestyle due to labor but also – among other things – the rise of the Fascism in Italy.

This is told in an amusing and wholesomw fashion, that not so much breaks the fourth wall but use it as a “portal” tool to deliver the narrative, as the director-animator narrates and creates the stopmotion sets, its characters, directly interacts with them (like letting his hand into frame to hand a character a tiny hammer), but frames it as a dialog with his grandmother that recounts the chronicles of the family through the decades, encompassing many heavy subjects as wars, epidemics, racism, clerical hypocrisy, but also the joyful moments (and some fun meta gags).

It’s a really intimate, charming and emotional portrait of turn of the centhury italian immigrants bound to a rough life of difficulties, of split loyalties and fractured national identities due to family always living – often literally – on the borders, malincholic but also fond of having a few laughs and exactly as long as it needs to be, even if that means on the shorter side of things.

Warmly recommended.

[One Piece Film Retrospective] #15: One Piece Film Red (2022)

Yeah, bringing back the One Piece retrospective…. kinda, more like continuing it, with a full, detailed review of the last released One Piece movie, Film Red, that hit theathers in 2022, after the EXPRESSO review done at the time it released in theathers here.

For context, that year i was able to see the tie-in episodes of the series during the yearly Lucca Comics & Games convention in Italy, sadly i missed the early projection of the movie itself, but i did see the aforementioned episodes meant to tie-in to Film Red that detailed a young Rufy meeting a young Uta in Fusha Town when Shanks and his crew set anchor there.

Which are cute but as you would expect they’re not mandatory viewing in order to understand the plot of Film Red, it’s a big popular franchise, they’re not gonna risk alienating people who don’t watch or follow the TV series but do follow the manga, for example.

Who’s Uta, you might ask? But she’s the new character and protagonist of Film Red, a world famous livestreamer and renowed singer that is finally having a concert on the island of Elegia, ammassing a huge amounts of fans coming from all walks of life, be it Goverment soldiers, Navy officers or pirate ships, and of course the Straw Hats come too, as Luffy arrives there and reveals he and Uta were childhood friends.

And then he drops the bombshell that Uta is Shanks’ daughter.

Continua a leggere “[One Piece Film Retrospective] #15: One Piece Film Red (2022)”

One Piece Odissey PS4 [REVIEW] | Cube Memory

One Piece might not be a franchise that you would immediatly associate with RPGs, but like Dragon Ball its surprising how the genre is represented in their many videogame iterations, especially if we’re talking about older systems, and even more so if we’re talking about Japan-only releases, as the first One Piece videogame was a RPG on the old black-n-white WonderSwan, and more came out for both the Wonderswan family of consoles as wells as for Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and even on the original Playstation.

But sadly most western fans are not familiar with some of these quirky GBC One Piece RPGs where (among other things) the Straw Hats are turned into animals, no, most likely you’ve yearned for years for a localized One Piece RPG, only to find out that it exists, One Piece: Romance Dawn, and that it’s sadly a very shit game, even worse as it’s a port from PSP to 3DS, and a cheap one too, because knowing this it makes all sense for the game to look that much like old ass.

I reviewed that one as well, but today we’re here holding hope to finally retire this status and have a big budget mainstream RPG that can make the series some justice instead of wishing they wouldn’t have bothered to begin with, with the long anticipated One Piece Odissey, developed by ILCA and published by Namco Bandai (who else?) in January 2023 to celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary.

Available pretty much on all the platforms, old gen and new…. but not the Nintendo Switch.

For the record, this review is based on the PS4 version played on a PS4 Pro.

Continua a leggere “One Piece Odissey PS4 [REVIEW] | Cube Memory”

One Piece (Shonen Jump’s) GBA [REVIEW] | USA Piece

There are many One Piece videogames, even on the GBA, most RPGs or fighting games, but there is a notable exception, even weirder than usual since it out came out in North America, and North America only. Yep, despite being developed by Dimps (the Sonic Advance series, Draglade, many Dragon Ball and Shaman King licensed games… and shit like Seven Samurai 20XX), it was never released in Japan or Europe, only in the US as simply “One Piece” (also listed as Shonen Jump’s One Piece for cataloguing needs) in 2005.

As of why i’m not sure, sure, it was based/dependant on the 4kids butchered version of the TV anime series, but the same was true for the first OP: Grand Battle PS2 game and that had an European release… so it basically means most people experienced it via emulator, i first did too, until i did found a cartridge for an “okay” price, but unless you’re a fan of the series and-or a dedicated GBA collector, i wouldn’t bother searching for an used copy, since it’s quite pricey today.

I’m not even gonna suggest waiting for a rerelease because it more than simply “unlikely”, unless it randomly pops up on Switch like that Macross GBA game, or Badnai Manco makes a complete One Piece videogame collection in the future.

Regardless, it’s also odd how this was the only One Piece GBA game that released outside of Japan, maybe due to the licensing as the time, most likely the same legal bullshit that saw the first Unlimited game never released in Europe, while the Unlimited Cruise titles never arrived in the US.

Continua a leggere “One Piece (Shonen Jump’s) GBA [REVIEW] | USA Piece”

Futurama PS2 [REVIEW] | … With Blackjack and Hookers

To celebrate the second return of Futurama on TV (even if i’m not expecting much given how these modern resurrections-continuations of beloved animated TV series-franchises, but who knows, i’m remaining cautiously semi-optimistic), time to take a look at its forgotten – and by now quite rare – PS2/X-Box tie-in videogame, simply called “Futurama”.

And what it might as well be the only Futurama videogame, since there’s not much to say about the mobile only Futurama: Worlds Of Tomorrow, besides it being a cheap and shallow cash grab akin to many other free-to-play tycoon simulators, like Simpsons Tapped Out, maybe a little more complete since it had a combat system in it from the start, but still, mostly a shallow time waster very heavy on aggressively try to make you fork out cash for anything of “substance” available.

Then again, it’s not like you can play it anymore, the servers were closed for real (as in they were announced to be closing in 2022) this year on the 9th of March.

Continua a leggere “Futurama PS2 [REVIEW] | … With Blackjack and Hookers”

Pirate Warriors 4… New DLC characters?

honestly can’t believe i’m talking about Pirate Warriors 4 again, but suddendly, out of nowhere, a week ago, there was a tweet announcing that One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 would receive more DLC characters in the near future, and info would be revealed during One Piece Day 2023, meaning the 22th of july, as in a couple days after the announcement was made.

I tuned it, and among other many announcements and stuff – including a new trailer with new footage for the Netflix live action One Piece series, which seems less awful than expected as we see more of it, but i’m reserving judgement for when the series drop at the end of August – and yep, it’s definitely what was reasonable to expect.

Yep, after 3 years of when the game launched (and all the DLC characters, which were released in 3 waves, the last one in December 2020), 3 years of what i guess now can be called “inactivity”, there’s new paid stuff coming for Pirate Warriors. As in a new Character Pass has been announced, with 9 new playable characters for PW 4 , divived in 3 packs that are gonna be released over time, each including 3 characters that are tied by a theme.

Continua a leggere “Pirate Warriors 4… New DLC characters?”

Future Shock: No Sleep From September (and Summer Plans) (UPDATED)

So, let’s not wait around more to lay out what’s coming in July and August for Wise Cafe International, and what will change from this September onwards.

July will have another round of killer croc AND killer sharks films, Sharks N Crocs Part Deux, alongside some timely videogame reviews to tie in with upcoming releases (aka – pardon me for the disgusting thing i’m about to say – trying to milk some “SEO juice” since this time i could plan ahead something reasonable).

August won’t have a One Piece retrospective per sè, but will have some One Piece videogames’ reviews, plus a newly written full lenght review of Film Red, and hopefully some fittingly summer themed posts about stuff that maritime or whatever.

From September instead – after thinking about it for months – i’ll have to slow down the posting significantly, so instead of a review or piece every 2 days, i opted for a weekly basis, since i will be taking a master’s degree this year, so yep, even less time on my hands since i will be hitting the books, attend and most likely still continue the dayjob.

So instead of shutting it down or opting for a “whenever i can” posting schedule, i feel this it’s a reasonable compromise, even more since i guarantee a review every 7 days, meaning there could be more if i can squeeze in some EXPRESSO reviews or something on the quick, i will try.

Meaning EXPRESSO won’t be retired, it never has been and that won’t change.

Continua a leggere “Future Shock: No Sleep From September (and Summer Plans) (UPDATED)”