[EXPRESSO] Dangerous Animals (2025) | Three On A Sharkhook

New shark movie with a big budget, a widespread cinematic release and it’s not a Jason Staham trashfest romp, another gonzo shark movie about an Esper Shark (TM) or something done with lunch money-allowance budget?

What has the gone world to?

Apparantly something good and conceptually simple, i guess that’s why it took so long for someone to make a good shark movie that also plays the “Uno reverse” card on the concept without overcomplicating it or being outlandish.

Meaning that Dangerous Animals is about a serial killer that hides his murderous calling by posing as a shark cage experience activity for tourist in Australia (which fittingly all good modern shark movies seem to hail from), killing people and filming as he feeds them to the sharks.

His next victim is a surfer girl, Zephyr, living a nomadic sort of lifestyle, whom finds herself kidnapped by the killer in preparation for his macabre rituals…

it’s so simple that a shark movie like this hasn’t been made before, but on the flipside it’s actually pretty good, thanks to a good budget, very solid acting and good characters, with a resilient leading lady/final girl and a good psychotic villain that does have a humourous side that actually makes him more believable as he use it alongside some charm to better camouflage his true self, without going overboard and making him feel cartoony or excessive.

It’s also pretty gory without going into full splatter territory, going for a more realistic tone to the chases and attempts of his victims to escape his grasp, making for a very tense film that is less predictable than one would expect, yet very satisfying even when it hits the expected notes, one also basically devoid of filler, exactly as long as it needs.

Pretty good.

One Piece: Grand Adventure PS2 [REVIEW] | Grand Battle Rushed

One Piece videogames were actually quite wild in terms of what got released out of Japan during the PS1 and PS2 era, with a very inconsistent series of releases outside of Japan, some esclusive to North America, some to European countries, some like One Piece for the GBA being the weird case of being regionally exclusive to North America, as in, there doesn’t exists a Japanese GBA cart of that game because it was never made in the first place.

One Piece Grand Adventure also falls into this category, as it was never released in Japan but made esclusively for North America and Europe, still by the same developer of the Grand Battle series (and behind a lot of One Piece games over the years), Ganbarion, to profit off the good sales for One Piece Grand Battle Rush (just One Piece Grand Battle in NA and EUR territories) on PS2.

I said PS2 as in the Gamecube version is a NA exclusive, in Europe we just got it on PS2.

But yeah, keep in the mind the “to profit off” part, which will also explain why this review might be shorter than expected.

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Pirate Warriors 4 and The DLC-enening, Part 3 [The Endurance] (UPDATED)

Yesterday was One Piece Day, so as expected and announced, they revealed the winners for that poll/survey for characters fans would like to see as future DLCs for Pirate Warriors 4…. well, indirectly revealed some of the winners.

As in, they announced the third Character Pass, which this time is gonna be made of 2 character packs instead of 3, with the second (technically DLC Pack 8) being a “Legends” sort of deal, since it has fan favourite Enel back into the fray (being one of the characters culled from the roster despite being in Pirate Warriors 3), King, which was basically a given due its popularity, and Zephyr, from One Piece Film Z, this not a given at all, i was kinda expecting Shiki to make the cut, but i’m glad because Film Z is one of my favourites of the OP films, and my boy “Z” deserve some more representation.

As for the other DLC pack that is slated to released first this fall (with DLC Pack 8 instead having a “Early 2026” release date as of now), DLC Pack 7, they just revealed that the first of the batch will be Rob Lucci in its CP0-Egghead version, as in with the Awakening form and all of that.

The other two characters will be revealed later as the release window for the DLC pack approaches, and i would love to see Kaku (damn he loves giraffes) but i doubt it, same for Vivi, playing as her with Karoo as the built-in mount would be funny, but i think Baby 5 could be more interesting to play as given her literal “weapons morphing” Devil Fruit.

Honestly a bit miffed this is just 6 characters instead of 9, you can pre-order the Season Pass itself and the bonuses are 3 bonus costumes (not sure for whom) and a new special ability/move for Shanks, that both his base and Film Red versions can use.

No word on that next-gen versions they announced on upcoming, not here anyway, but i would be surprised if it’s not out by October.

(also, damn, that new trailer for the second season of the Netflix live action One Piece show looks good)

So see you for the eventual reviews of both DLC packs, bye!

UPDATE: the PSN store page for the Character Pass 3 is up in my region…. and it’s still 30 euros, like the other Character Passes, which had 9 characters.

This has 6. And i’m NOT ruling out the other two undisclosed characters of DLC Pack 7 being more new/slighty revised updated version of already playable ones, like Egghead versions of Zoro and Sanji, especially since i assume that’s the theme they’re gonna go with.

Jesus Christ, Namco Bandai, wanna make the next character pass even more famished of content? Fuck’ sake.

One Piece: Grand Battle/Grand Battle Rush PS2 [REVIEW] | “Chaser”, the other White Hunter

No i didn’t review this before, it just happens that Bandai “did a Konami” and released this new entry in the Grand Battle subseries as One Piece Grand Battle…. yes, with the same exact name as the first PS1 game that launched what it is now an established subseries of One Piece videogames.

Then again, this is technically Grand Battle 4, they never released Grand Battle 2 (which was still rocking that 2.5D gameplay) or Grand Battle 3 but when they started selling the anime with the 4Kids license/treatment i guess it was time to resume locazing these again, and keeping the original title of “One Piece Grand Battle Rush” must have made too much sense… but then again this time around we have a Power Stone clone.

As in, a proper one this time around, Grand Battle 3 did go full 3D first, but unless you lived in Japan or imported it at the times, you wouldn’t know (plus the more i find about GB3 the more GB Rush seems more like a Turbo Edition than a proper sequel).

So i’ll chalk it up to the localizers not giving a shit and just reusing the title of the series because who cares, after all this is first One Piece game of this sub-series to even reach North American lids.

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One Piece: Grand Battle PS1 [REVIEW] | East Blue Smash Stone Brothers

As announced, we’ll be reviewing a handful of One Piece videogames this August, basically the entire Grand Battle sub-series… at least the games that got localized or released westward as well, so logically enough we’re starting out with One Piece Grand Battle, the first one, released for the PS1 in 2001 and brought to Europe in 2003.

It’s so early that it’s ALMOST the first game ever based on One Piece (that would be an action RPG-card thingie for the WonderSwan, never release outside of Japan, like the console itself), but it is the first game ever developed by Ganbarion, which will be handling a majority of the One Piece videogames for more than a decade (and also come back to developed One Piece World Seeker), alongside other anime related/based project for Namco Bandai, like the beloved Jump Super Stars for DS, Dragon Ball Fusions for the 3DS… and also Pandora’s Tower for the Wii.

Being this early in the One Piece anime it means it mostly depicts the “East Blue Saga” ensemble of arcs and basically the prelude of the Alabasta one, though here it stops even before Whisky Peak (due to some characters appearances), hence before Little Garden, so it’s kinda of tease, not gonna lie, but what can you do, it was pretty early in…

At least it has the classic “WE ARE” opening from the anime (kinda), might as well since the original japanese titles puts the “From TV Animation” well before the actual name of the game.

I didn’t play this one until i finally was able to find a copy for a reasonable prices years ago, i did actually play the PS2 game also called “One Piece Grand Battle” well before, so i was expecting a Power Stone clone, just less refined since it’s obvious a far earlier iteration on the idea…

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(Mini) One Piece August is coming back, baby!

Yeah, that is pretty self-explanatory, since i’ve done this before, many times, but yeah, we’re back to a (mostly) One Piece exclusive August, as the first half of it, i’m gonna review One Piece media, in this case videogames… though it will have to happen in “redux” form since IRL events and academic endeavours are kicking my ass harder than planned.

So we’re gonna basically look at the One Piece Grand Battle games released westward for PS1 and PS2… and i was gonna do more but it just ain’t happening, as i realized bitterly.

And FIY , this has been planned in mid-January 2025, with the idea of finishing up the collection for One Piece videogames… as in, the ones that were released in Europe or globally, this time around.

Minus the VR one since i still don’t own a PS VR.

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Kancolle 1944: Itsuka Ano Umi De/See You Again On Another Quiet Blue Sea (2022) [REVIEW] | The Real Fleet Girls

So yeah, that “season 2 which it’s actually not a second season” of the Kancolle anime did happen, i wasn’t able to re/write any of my old pieces on the first season and the follow-up movie, but we can actually do that next year, since this – let’s make it EXTRA clear – this ain’t the continuation/second season, but a completely different Kancolle anime project that had been years in the works without any info or proof it wasn’t scrapped… until it resurfaced in early 2022 as Kancolle 1944: Itsuka Ano Umi De, translated/localized “Kancolle 1944: See You Again On Another Quiet Blue Sea”.

And by “years in the works” i mean that there was enough time for rival series Azur Lane to make its own anime series with Azur Lane: The Animation, and then adapt a spin-off 4 panel manga into animation with Azur Lane: Slow Ahead… so much time that i did review that!

Look, i’m sure Kancolle still has its fans (me included) and a decent player base in its original browser game iteration, but even when this new anime series eventually surfaced… it did so to a dead fanbase, as the franchise was basically “dead” in terms of international appeal, with most people moving on to either Azur Lane, give Arpeggio Of Blue Steel a rewatch, or moving on to other gacha (or gacha adjacent) games with a similar theme, a healthy playerbase or some other anime-multimedia franchise that had content and had become popular, like Umamusume Pretty Derby, with the anime series and its seasons managing to keep interest even when the main product (a F2P smarthphone game) was delayed for 3 years before even just Japanese players could get their hands on it, alongside the spin-offs, related projects, even a brand new feature film.

Sometimes there’s taking so long that the fanbase dies in the meantime in terms of “being late”, as Kancolle 1944 demonstrates, but let’s get to it!

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Shark Warning (2024) [REVIEW] | #sharkapalooza

Due to rescheduling issues i noticed Sharkapalooza was one movie short, so i figured i’d review one of my recent “sight unseen and cheap” DVD pickups, Shark Warning, from last year….

…..and it’s an Asylum joint.

I literally paused my Donkey Kong Bananza game to see this, no that i expected this movie to be good.

The odds were never on my favour, i guess this one of their generic shark films since there was no big budget shark film released that year… was it? I mean, we got Under Paris via Netflix, but this is not a mockbuster of that, and some other shark movies (like No Way Up) but nothing big budget or cinema bound for the Asylum to try make some cents out of its reflected glory.

Doesn’t matter anyway, so what kind of shark movie are we getting?

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L’Ultimo Squalo AKA Great White (1981) [REVIEW] | #sharkapalooza

Having mentioned this before at least twice, i feel this year is the one we finish off the vintage italian Jaws ripoff, after reviewing Cruel Jaws before, it’s time to tackle Enzo Castellari’s L’Ultimo Squalo (literally “The Last Shark”), released in 1981 but better known in the US and internationally as Great White. … or it was until Universal slapped the filmakers with a lawsuit on grounds of it being too similar to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.

So it was pulled from cinemas in North America, and this is way it gained this mystique, even more because it was never released on home video there until 2013’s RetroVision DVD release, which is Region 0 and comes with the documentary featurette as an extra. Obviously this wasn’t the case here in Italy, as we did get the movie rereleased, but we didn’t get much better treatment, as the latest Italian home video release is a 2007 DVD one that doesn’t even have the full cut of the film, as the usual versions going around doesn’t have 5 minutes of – mostly – gore.

So AS USUAL we gotta import a UK or German Blu-Ray edition of our own genre films because they’re better in every single way.

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[EXPRESSO] Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025) | Site R

5 years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion, dinosaurs didn’t quite adapt too well, with the surviving ones now living in remote off-limits islands with equatorial style climates.

A pharma company tasks a mercenary unit to visit one of these remote “dinosaur islands” in order to retrieve blood samples from 3 apex dinosaurs and helping further a medical research on preventing heart diseases… pity is that the island was also one of the lab sites for the original Jurassic Park where they tested hybrid dinos.

It’s kinda telling that they can’t-wont let of the Jurassic World name even when doing such an obvious “soft reboot” that mentions some things from previous Jurassic films but otherwise it’s a pretty straightforward self-contained story that aims to “go back to the basics”, “return to form”….. but actually pulls that off in pretty much regard, managing to get a good sense of adventure, of actual peril going on, alongside solid characters.

Having an actual renowed director and bringing back the screenwriter of Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park II helps too.

There’s nothing new that hasn’t been done before in basically any dinosaur media, but its familiar without feeling dull, and i do like some of the hybrid mutant dinos inhabiting the island.

It’s more than a notable improvement over the enjoyable but basically big budget Asylum affairs that were the previous JW films, undeniable…. but just “not being Jurassic Prey” doesn’t necessarily make Jurassic World Rebirth “good”, even if now for dino film is either this or way too homegrown shit films with a budget of 30 bucks and a ham sandwich.

I did quite like it personally, but it is kinda a curated “best of” that doesn’t adds anything new to the formula, maybe due to overabundant reverence to the source material.