Avatar The Last Airbender: Quest For Balance PS4 [REVIEW] | Sokoban Benders

Cards on the table: i’ve never seen the Avatar animated series, always heard it pretty good, i know it had/has a big following, enough for a reviled live action film to exist, but i simply didn’t care too much because i didn’t grow up watching that, and i never felt like i needed to later, i mean, i spent my teens watching anime, why bother with a western cartoon (that wasn’t Samurai Jack) tackling asian inspired stories and themes, when i can read Naruto directly?

Can’t really say i learned much about the series through osmosis, as i’ve seen people discuss about it, and since i guess it didn’t grab much European markets, some of the games based off it did reach the PAL territories, but not when the series was wildly popular and discussed about, i feel, back then we also got the shitty Legend Of Korra game Platinum Games made, which i did play and review on PS3 but has long been delisted and never received a physical release.

So i’ve figured i’d grab this last one, as it was actually released in 2023 by Gamemill, got in a bundle with the infamous Rise Of Kong, because why not? Might as well stick my entire head into the garbo bin, to see what foul creatures are lying in wait below the surface.

And to my understanding, the games based around this beloved Nickelodeon show (and the spin-offs) are mostly crap or disappointing at best, and this i feel ain’t gonna be the exception.

This is to say i don’t know the story in any detail, but i know the gist… and i feel the people that developed the game did know less than me, and just skimmed some summaries online in order to write the story and dialogues..

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[EXPRESSO] The Colors Within (2024) | Catholicspotting

From Naoko Yamada comes The Colors Within, which in many ways looks kinda basic, especially compared to the director’s previous, more well known film, the “A Silent Voice” film adaptation. This one it’s just about Totsuko, a music loving girl that has the capacity to see the people’s emotions emanating as “colors”, and when searching for Kimi, a girl whose “colors” dazzled her before but isn’t showing at their catholic all girls school anymore, he meets with a young boy, Rui, also into music, and on the spurt of the moment, they “decide” to form a band, practicing in an abandoned old church on a island.

There is a bit more to this, but that’s about it, being a fairly straight story about teenage friendship through the love of music, there’s no supernatural horror or sci-fi twist, or any nasty bullshit, you know where it’s going and there is no deep focus on the “process” for example, because it centers mostly on the friendship between these 3 characters (with some LBGT undertones), it wants to do that, to depict the teen awkwardness of many istances as well as the genuine passions, troubles and tribulations, which include religion, as Totsuko especially is fairly devout, but the catholic theming isn’t criticized or promoted, it’s just a part of the characters lives in one way or another.

It’s incredibly wholesome without being gratitously saccharine, it doesn’t feel the need to justify being this jovial and earnest tale of friendship and music by being gritty out of nowhere, and the execution (alongside the excellent animation handled by Science Saru) it’s great, it’s hard not to be engaged and share in its the movie sweetness

Also, gotta give props for the wholly unexpected, cute and non random as it seems instrumental rendition of “Born Slippy”.

[EXPRESSO] The Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim (2024) | Anime Lord Of The Mononoke Rings

Disclaimer: i haven’t really followed/properly engaged with the Lords Of The Rings IP basically since… the original film trilogy.

But yes, when WB puts out in theathers an animated feature lenght Lords Of The Rings movie directed by Kenji Kamiyama (GITS: Stand Alone Complex, Eden Of The East, Napping Princess, GITS Stand Alone Complex 2045, Blade Runner: Black Lotus) in anime style, my interest is EXTREMELY piqued.

Taking place 183 years before the original film trilogy, the story concerns the destiny of the Helm House, as Helm Hammerhand suffers from internal strife and is then attacked by the wild tribes in the region, united by a vengeful man named Wulf, that leads them to war, with the Helm princess Hera at the forefront, eventually forced to hole themselves in the fortress of Hornburg, that would become known as Helm’s Deep.

It’s a weird combination because there’s a lot of might and barely any magic or fantasy stuff in this LOTR animated film, the animation by Sola Entertaiment (a not so random but still weird choice) it’s honestly kinda lackluster, as they have 2D animation overlayed on CGI backgrounds that opt for some kind of high fidelity “realism”, when it’s not just cheap 3D CG, or 3D CG passing as 2D animation, with a very inconsistent quality and the feeling this was kinda rushed.

The characters being so and so and the story having to retrofit and connect with later LOTR events don’t help, but i will say direction is quite solid, even with the animation issues and uneven quality it does deliver on the spectactle and pomp, it’s still enganging and very entertaining that its long runtime doesn’t bog it down.

A decent movie, even if it’s a weird yet familiar attempt to mine the LOTR IP to the bone.

12 Days Of Dino Dicember #48: I Am T-Rex (2022)

Time to close off this year’s 12 Days Of Dino Dicember with a family/children dinosaur movie, one ailing from mainland China and also fairly recent, as in released originally in 2022 as “Wo shi ba wang long”(which i assume translates to “The Tyrannosaurus Rex”, as can be seen in its original Chinese theathrical poster) but localized/released online with the “I Am T-Rex” title.

It’s also a CG animated film, because we already had plenty of no budget puppet dinosaurs, some high quality (and some low ass quality) dinosaur stop motion animation, caveman boning of the implied kind, cannibal movies sold as dinosaur flicks, pseudodocumentaries, dinosaur comedies with yellowface or comedy bits that aged like the reptiles themselves, so for the sake of variety, let’s move away from all that shizzle.

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[EXPRESSO] Sonic The Hedgehog 3 (2024) | Chaos Control(led)

Time for Shadow to enter the fray, in the third live action Sonic The Hedgehog film.

The plot sees Sonic and his friends Tails and Knuckles summoned to fight a new menace, Shadow, a nother powerful alien hedgehog that was sealed away for the last 50 years in a remote prison, until someone freed him, framing the defeated and basically retired Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik as the culprit, so the trio has to team up with the “Eggster” to find what is going on..

The first one was ok, the second i liked more and felt was a step up from the previous one, and once again this is an improvement, upping the stakes, introducing new characters , managing to pick up the right/good elements from the videogame series (Sonic Adventure 2 in this case) and use them well in this new narrative, committing to its 90s ‘tude even more by having Jim Carrey go full Dumb And Dumber as he plays two characters, both “Eggman” and his grandfather, Gerald Robotnik, doubling the slapstick ham and sillyness, for better or worse.

Honestly, i do enjoy Carrey doing some of his old schtick, even if it’s a bit too much at times.

Also, the effects and CG for Sonic and friends are top notch, arguably the best they’vee ever been, seamlessly blended, he action delivers some fun corny “DBZ but even more for kids” fights, and it does manage to be silly and referential but without being grating, even for adults.

While i find it to be a quite decent kids film, honestly it’s about as good as a Sonic live action filn could have been, in both spirit and form, and while the post ending credits scenes tease of more, it is the cap of a trilogy, providing some closure indeed.

[EXPRESSO] My Hero Academia: You’Re Next (2024) | Mafia Might

Ok, that was fast, i didn’t heard any marketing for this new My Hero Academia film, but i guess its hitting theathers internationally and simultaneously this 10^th of October onwards (after its Japanese premiere in early August), so let’s go!

I wasn’t exactly too excited about this one, as this is the 4^th MHA movie, the premise screams of “taking time” until the TV series catches up, but then again the manga actually concluded and this released in Japan precisely close to the last chapter’s publication, which means this is the last MHA film, ever, and is set chronologically at the start of Season 7 of the anime.

This time we have Dark Might, an impostor italian mafioso willing to forcefully “carry on All Might’s will” by replacing him, using his mysterious powers and his Quirk enabled mafia goons to engulf anyone into his giant flying fortress, including the 1A students and a lone assassin, Giulio….

Minor villains are forgettable, and even the better of the movie’ original characters, Giulio, even he is a bundle of cliches, and while Dark Might as the main villain has some potential, the script never explores any potential themes that would naturally come with the “Dark Might” concept or character, so he ends up being… basically a less interesting Gild Tesoro from One Piece Film Gold while also doing the “villain posing as the superhero” sthick, and yet he’s not the worse of these sadly lukewarm MHA movie villains.

Animation is pretty good and more consistent than in WHM, and let’s be clear, MHA You’re Next it’s far from bad, it’s quite enjoyable, it’s not even the worst one of the films, heck, it might arguably be the second best, it’s decent overall, but its disappointing for the final film bout of the series.

Resident Evil: Death Island (2023) [REVIEW] | Code Vendetta X

Since it’s still summer-ish and we won’t have time for it this october, i feel it’s time for me to complete (until a new one comes out) my coverage of the Resident Evil CG films, after tackling the Netflix CG series and then doing a retrospective on the previous CG animated films.

From the title i’d assume its either based on Code Veronica or RE Revelations 2, but nope, there are echoes of that, but this is actually a direct sequel of the last, Resident Evil: Vendetta.

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Suicide Squad Isekai (2024) [REVIEW] | Through The Unlooking Glass

Why i am reviewing this, you may be asking yourself.

Just for the trash factor? Just because its seems like “easy prey”?

Not quite, it’s more due to how since its debut (and even then, i learn this was gonna be through the collaboration with V-tuber and singer Mori Calliope, as she composed the ending theme) i never heard a single peep online about it, not even to shit on it, which worried me even more.

Also i learned after searching that it was being streamed in my region via a sub-channel on Amazon Prime Video, absolutely zero marketing had been spent to even make people know it was legally available on a commonly used streaming platform (FIY, there’s no HBO Max or Hulu here).

But still, this looked and sounded like like the kind of trash Twitter (not calling it X) loves to shit on weekly, just for the hell of it, but the only thing i saw on there was someone else befuddled by how the internet decided to skip having any discourse on it all together, that it was likely not even worth that kind of engagement, as nobody bothered, not even for the finale…..if anyone knew this series was a thing to begin with, that is. No one using the new Joker and Harley designs for their profile pictures, it was THAT much ignored or just never actually marketed properly after its announcement.

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Parasite Dolls (2003) [REVIEW] | Bubblegum Boomers

Wanted to get around to this for years, as i distinctly remember its cover displaying in the anime section of pretty much any video stores here in “Da Boot” back in the 2000s, and also being pretty featured or sold online. The power of anime cyberpunk and early CG.

Curiously, i’m not really familiar with the series this being a spin-off for, Bubblegum Crisis, which may sound sacrilegious to many, but i never saw as it was distributed on VHS at the time here too, but it was never pushed as much as others, at least as far i remember, i was a more casual anime fan back then and i would have been busy catching localized broadcasts of Dragon Ball, Hokuto No Ken/Fist Of The North Star and -especially – Ranma ½ anyway.

Parasite Dolls does feel immediatly like a product of the late 90s early 2000s, as in it’s not a feature film per sè, not a compilation film of 3-4 episodes, but an anthology/mini series of 3 stories set after the events of the original Bubblegum Crisis OAV series.

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[One Piece: Side Pieces | Retrospective] Dream 9: One Piece X Toriko X Dragon Ball Z Super Collaboration Special (2013) [REVIEW]

Oh yes, this one, i held back on tackling it while i covered the One Piece TV Specials also because i never read nor did know much about Toriko as a series… that has changed, as i’m almost halfway through and quite liking it, and yes, i’m aware of Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro “canon event” that happened in 2002, but unlike Oda’s other acquaitance, Watsuki, an actual pedophile that had terabytes of child pornography (and suffered for it just a hiatus for its Rurouni Kenshin follow-up series, after the charges in 2018, which is even more insulting since recently the author of The Apothecary Diaries got punished far worse for tax evasion), it seems to have been a mistake he owned up to, he really paid for it in terms of being ostracized by the industry, actual consequences of his actions, plus it been 22 years, so i feel it’s pointless to still hold it over the man.

Had to get this over with because i didn’t want to talk about, you didn’t want to learn about that for a review of a special crossover about 3 popular Jump anime series (which already appared together in some of the Jump crossover videogames but not in anime form) colliding in a TV special, many couldn’t care less either way, but some might not have known or still held some incorrect info on the matter (like i did myself), so i had to make things clear(er) and to address the question.

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