One Piece TV Specials Retrospective

An entire retrospective on One Piece films is coming, but since i already reviewed them all (expect for Stampede, which was due in Japanese cinemas by the end of the retrospective) for the italian Wise Cafe just 2 years ago, and we already covered the OVAs & featurettes last year, i thinked about it and figured making more time pass would lead to better material, instead of me just translating and partially rewriting the old pieces. I want to, but not yet. Not yet.

This retrospective will only consider the 13 TV Specials considered as such, you could argue a lot of special episodes (like the Romance Dawn version 2 anime remake or the Chopperman episodes) also fit, but then i would have also to consider the crossovers episodes with Toriko and Dragon Ball Z, and i’ll come clean: i considered doing them as well, but i simply don’t have the time right now. Sorry.

Look forward to those and an extra One Piece videogame review as well!

Upcoming Attractions: Sharks und Pirates

(Source) https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/4273516?q=sharknado+

(no, a Girls Und Panzer retrospective isn’t afoot… YET)

Just a quick overview of what’s coming for the rest of the summer on the blog.

July will be Shark Month. Usually it is anyway, but this year i actually have managed to pile up enough material (despite everything), so there will be a shark movie review out each day, and maybe some EXPRESSO ones too, depending on when i can get to some releases in theathers.

August will yet again be a One Piece retrospective…. of the TV specials.

Last summer we did go over the featurettes, and it’s still too early for me to properly re-assess all the One Piece movies. Like i said before, i’d prefer some more time to pass,, in order to avoid some lazy rewrite-recycle of the old reviews i made in italian years ago.

Also, i’m gonna take a break from the 15th of August (included) until the 1st of September.

This doesn’t mean i will stop posting at all, since EXPRESSO reviews will be made and published, but any time consuming form of review or retrospective will go on hiatus.

That’s about it, so look forward to another summer of sharks and anime pirates!

Some (mostly) SPOILER FREE words about Castlevania’s Season 4 and the series as a whole

Since i don’t have time to review the whole series right now (maybe for october), i’ll just talk about Season 4 of Netflix’s Castlevania animated series in a less composed and more “first thoughts” kinda way.

One season with the tall task to basically undo the damage the crappy (and honestly problematic in handling its themes and issues) third season did, and keep in mind i didn’t even know of the allegations of Warren Ellis (the writer) being a sex pest when the third season hit, i found out a bit later, and sure as shit it didn’t make me like the absolute trainwreck Season 3 was.

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Welcome friends, Iam Tomato

Please watch Yuru Camp Season 2.

Also, i wanna review the two “camp simulators” that were already released, waiting for a sale because they’re described as “long as an episode of the series” and made for VR (which i don’t have), looking forward to the other Yuru Camp game in development by Mages anyway.

The Killer Shrews (1959) [REVIEW] | Dogs & Rugs

Since i’ve more than mentioned this movie during the review of Deadly Eyes/Night Eyes, what the hell, let’s pay some respects to what it’s now a cult classic, especially for the more seasoned cinema buffs from the U.S. Side, as the movie was featured on Mistery Science Theather 3000 (alongside his double-feature debut companion, The Giant Gila Monster, also directed by Ray Kellogg), becoming one of the favorite episodes from the fans, and it can’t be denied this movie had some impact, as it was also featured or referenced in some way in other shows about bad movies.

It also managed to spawn a direct sequel in 2012 (63 years after the original came out), Return Of The Killer Shrews later with James Best reprising the role of Thorne Sherman, and a remake/parody in 2016, Attack Of The Killer Shrews. A lot for a movie made on a very low budget and serving as a perfect example of the decline of the “nuclear era” monster movies, because even for the time the idea sounded silly, and showcased how desperate you must have been to go with “shrew” as the scary mutant killer animal for your monster movie.

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EX-ARM anime (2021) [REVIEW] | Make the bad guys cry like….

I knew of Ex-Arm before the series was announced, as in i red the first volume of the manga, and thought that was.. alright.

Then in early november 2020 i discovered there was an anime planned for it, and apparently it was supposed to launch earlier, but got delayed a couple of times, post-poned until its January 2021 release on Crunchyroll, as one of their “Crunchyroll Originals” exclusive projects.

I heard about it on Twitter, alongside many baffled comments on why the hell is a live-action director with no experience in anime directing a 3D CG anime and also tasking a production company that also has no experience in anime… and i immediatly knew i would just “have” to review it, to witness the monstrum and write a report about what could be found in its wretched bowels.

Get confortable, as this autopsy-review will examine all the guts and decomposed organs, and there’s a LOT of those to rifle through with this one!

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Yuru Camp/Laid Back Camp (Season Two) (2021) [REVIEW] | A Comf Supreme

I’ve been waiting for a second season of Yuru Camp for 3 years, like most fans of the series, and i was ready to “jump on it” as soon it was announced, Room Camp was nice and served its purpose, but my lust for more comforting camping and anime girls being cozy in a world where you still can.

Not that i was gonna go camping anyway even without the pandemic thing, at least not in the japanese mountains, probably i would have stayed at home and catched up with the episodes late at night after work, with a blanket and hot cocoa, just to enhance the experience. 🙂

Given the nature of the show and the fact i “recently” reviewed the first season and the short spin-off series, i won’t be going over what the series is about in detail or attempt a plot summary because i would need to describe what happens in every single episodes, and still, it wouldn’t work because it’s a slice of life about camping, with 5 young girls going around and “relax to the max” with said outdoor activity and all that it entails.

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Cells At Work – BLACK (2021) [REVIEW] | Defective Form

I planned to review this TV adaptation of the Cell At Work spin-off series Black Code, as i heard the second season was delayed to summer 2021…. but clearly i was wrong, as both the oddly short second season of the main series AND the spin-off series started airing back to back in early January… so that threw me a curveball, as i was planning to revisit the first season of Cells At Work before the second one hit, but still, i’m reviewing this in detail, i’ll get to the main series eventually.

Regardless, it’s even better, since using anime to guilt-trip people into having a more healthy lifestyle is a proper “thing”, and it’s beautiful.

I loved the first season, it was absurd but also a very fun way to combine the old french edutaiment series “Once Upon A Life…Time” (or Micro Patrol, if you lived in an European country in the 90s you mostly likely have seen or heard of it at some point, it’s quite famous even in Italy) into a shonen manga format, so your body is basically a city-temple where every cell exists for a purpose, be it carrying packages of oxygen to the lungs, keeping track of information, and each episode it faces a new treat, usually viruses that are quite stabbable by the white blood cells, as they lunge with knives at the bacteria like a fuckin Hellsing villain. Gotta love how the violence is basically pardoned by the educational facts about cells, how the body deals with extraneous material, etc.

And how you basically have plenty of antrophormic Amazon delivery people taking drinks from the vending machines that are inside of you. Lucky bastards?

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Azur Lane: Slow Ahead (2021) [REVIEW] | Slice O’ Boat

Might as well, since that second season or second adaptation of the Kancolle anime is still nowhere to be seen, so once again Azur Lane will outright “eat its lunch”.

And i did already review the previous Azur Lane anime adaptation, so i feel kinda obliged to cover this one as well. Not that it shares a direct connection, as it adapts an on-going Azur Lane 4-koma slice of life manga, Slow Ahead, which omits the whole “kriegsmarine” (and annexed wave ruling) aspect of the franchise and just focuses on the daily lives of the shipgirls living in the Azur Lane base, taking as main characters the girls’ quartet of Laffey, Z23, Ayanami and Javelin.

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[EXPRESSO] Pacific Rim: The Black (Season One) (2021) | Netflix Kaijus

For whatever reason, Netflix perseveres in commissioning 3D CG anime based on popular franchises, despite them often not looking good and anime fans notorious knee-jerk reactions of disgust towards 3D CG anime.

So while we wait for Godzilla Singularity Point (which looks notably better), let’s give Pacific Rim: The Black a shot, because Legendary really wants to make this one a franchise. This specific entry (written by Greg Johnson and Craig Kyle but co-directed by Masayuki Uemoto, Susumu Sugai and Takeshi Iwata) follows a couple of siblings that find a Jaeger called Atlas Destroyer and go on a journey with it, after their parents never came back and kaijus destroyed Australia.

And you know what, an anime series spin-off is a shoe-in for Pacific Rim, but once i saw the PV, i realized why most people won’t bother… and yes, it’s animated by Polygon Pictures, which means the robots and monsters look fairly good, but the animation for the people – sporting nicely drawn character models – also has this stiff, uncanny, robotic feel to it. And this honestly doesn’t look much better than the Blame movie or the Godzilla anime trilogy Polygon Pictures also made for Netflix, while this style of “3D anime” has vastly improved in quality over the last few years.

Shame because the giant mecha battles against monsters look good and are fun, but the humans characters or the plot surrounding them aren’t that interesting, and sometimes their animation is just crap. The script, while unremarkable, tries to add something new to to the Pacific Rim universe, but it’s kinda of half baked attempt as it starts getting better only at the very end of this very short first season. Overall, it’s… alright.

A second season has already been greenlit… but i still wonder for whom exactly.