Tag: Anime

One Piece: Jango’s Dance Carnival (2001) [REVIEW] Obey The Dance Commander

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Director: Daisuke Nishio
Writer: Hiroshi Hashimoto

The first One Piece featurette, shown alongside the theathrical release of the second One Piece movie, Clockwork Island Adventure, and never re-released outside of Japan (even thought it was included in the japanese DVD release of the movie, if the wikias are correct), for reasons that will become clear, outside of its 5 minutes runtime.

Like the title “implies”, it’s a mainly a musical number featuring Jango, the secondary antagonist in the Syrup Village arc, a pirate hypnotist with passion for dancing and a very minor character overall. The plot sees him seeking refuge in Mirror Ball Island (which is actually kinda canon, as he had a mini-arc told via chapter cover pages in the manga, the Jango Dance Paradise cover arc, like the one narrating what happens after Ener reaches the Moon), but he gets so into the island’sgroove he ends making a fuss and attracting Marines. Continua a leggere “One Piece: Jango’s Dance Carnival (2001) [REVIEW] Obey The Dance Commander”

One Piece OVAs and featurettes Retrospective coming soon

 

HelpfulExemplaryGoosefish-small.gifLast year i did a full retrospective of the One Piece movies leading up to the release of One Piece Stampede in theathers… all in italian, and while i plan to eventually do a reworking/redo of the retrospective in english (including Stampede, of course), and to cover all the TV specials, for this summer i’ll just cover the featurettes and OVAs.

NOT the live-action stage shows. Yes, even before the announced One Piece live-action Netflix series will actually show what’s its gonna look like, One Piece had more live-action adaptations, mostly as theather plays, hell, they even did One Piece Kabuki…

That’s about it, see you soon!

Hentatsu (2020) [REVIEW] | A Cat And Oni Walk Into A Bar

Hentatsu TV 2020.png

This late june, i was on a kick to discover/watch what else director TATSUKI made after the first season of Kemono Friends, and among them Hentatsu felt in that category of “i’ve seen some images time ago of this, but i have zero idea of what it’s about”.

And after watching the whole series, i still don’t fully know how to answer the implied question, it sure wasn’t what i expected from studio Iroiro and TATSUKI – as you can tell immediately they made it – but it isn’t the usual ensemble of weird animal people or “humans” fighting against weird misterious enemy in the backdrop of a vague post-apocalyptic setting. Continua a leggere “Hentatsu (2020) [REVIEW] | A Cat And Oni Walk Into A Bar”

[EXPRESSO] Helltaker STEAM | Best Grills

Helltaker STEAM

So, there’s this new game on Steam, describing itself as “a short game about sharply dressed demon girls”, with promise of anime harem (but again it points out “Suggestive clothing and poses. Don’t put your hopes too high though – it’s all tame.”), and it’s free. You can already see why it’s become somewhat of a sensation in the community. Which leads us to this question: are the demon girls cute? (YES)

As far as gameplay goes, it’s not what you might think given this premise, a puzzle game where you (as a sharply dressed and shades wearing badass) kick blocks, skeletons, get keys, avoid traps and proceed through Hell in a turn based fashion, with a turn limit to reach the end of the each level, where you meet a different demon girl in a visual novel-esque segment where you choose from a couple of replies and hope you charmed and/or convinced the hell cutie to join the harem. Otherwise they’ll stab you to death or give you a bad end of some kind.

Fairly good puzzles overall, but the game lets you skip them if you just want to get to the demon girls, with great character designs and very good music.

My main gripe isn’t the short lenght (you can finish it in 1, max 2 hours), is that the multi-stage boss fight at the end requires really fast reflexes and to keep moving around really fast… in a game that’s 90% turn based puzzle game without timers or urgency. It comes out of nowhere and feels more frustrating than it should, since the game doesn’t prepare you for that in any way. It’s like if at the end of a Dynasty Warriors battle you were forced to play a long RTS style map.

Still, quite good and quite the treat!

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[EXPRESSO] Sol Levante (2020) | 4K Anime Fireworks

Sol Levante 2020 poster

Ok, apparently this arrived at the beginning of April on Netflix (Netflix Exclusive), and more than wonder how i missed hearing anything about it despite being quarantined at home, this just shows how much i use Netflix overall. I never even saw even a mention of this one on social media, so i’m gonna do what i can to help.

And yes, this is more of an announcement than a review, because Sol Levante (italian for “rising sun”, despite being a japanese production) isn’t or wasn’t meant to create an interesting story or world, but to test what exactly can you do with animation designed for 4K and HDR displays, with detailed hand-drawn animation produced by Netflix in collaboration with Production I.G, directed and conceived by Akira Saitou.

So the plot is vague at best, concerning a young female warrior (with fantasy ninja outfit) on a quest to reach a sacred place that is said to fulfill any wish, but she has to fight off the mystical and magical guardians of the Sanctuary, who vary from magma dragons, magic trees, sea monsters, etc. It’s good the summary tells you that, because there is no dialogue or text to explain anything, because the budget was already astronomical and the workload (2 years of work) insane, so you don’t get any context, even if the narrative is mostly self-explanatory, despite being bland and barely there.

But – again- Sol Levant was made to be a huge technical exercise, and it delivers with great animation, really detailed and incredibly colorful visuals, spectacle at its finest. It is truly impressive, while it lasts, but even so, this 4 minute short does sells you on the idea that this could be a new starting point for the future of animation overall.

Definitely interesting and worth a watch, regardless.

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Houkago Teibou Nisshi / Diary Of Our Days At The Breakwater [ANIME FIRST IMPRESSION] | Fishing Anime Girls

Houkago Teibou Nisshi

Yeah, time for another anime series first impression based on the first 3 episodes, which won’t change for a while because from the 4th episode (included) and onwards, the series is on hiatus until further notice, like many other anime suffering delays (rightfully so, because i don’t like people dying in order to get anime out faster) due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Let’s be patient, alright?

It is law that if you have cute anime girls, you can pretty much make them do anything and receive success, especially is a slice of life series. Doesn’t even matter if they actually get around to do something specific, but it helps, so after anime girls camping, anime girls going to Antarctica, anime girls doing rock climbing, anime girls lifting weights, we have anime girls gone fishin’, with Houkago Teibou Nisshi, based on the eponymous manga by Yasuyuki Kosaka. Continua a leggere “Houkago Teibou Nisshi / Diary Of Our Days At The Breakwater [ANIME FIRST IMPRESSION] | Fishing Anime Girls”

[EXPRESSO] Mass For The Dead iOS | Bossing Lich Mobile

Mass For The Dead iOS logo.PNG

Anime licensing is often weird as hell when applied to videogames (see the Attack On Titan or My Hero Academia releases for recent examples), but like that Overlord themed Picross game, previously release as “Lords Of Nazarick”… it was kinda necessary, since this popular light novel/anime/manga isekai series has one of the most generic titles ever, and there already was a a videogame series called Overlord (beloved if fairly forgotten nowadays).

Despite this, this new adaptation it’s well presented, with even an original animated opening by MADHOUSE and a track by MYTH & ROID to make it feel like the anime, with redrawn background, some good Live 2D sprites and decent 3D in-game models. The game start off with the general premise of the protagonist, that find itself stuck in the fantasy world of the VRMMORPG he was playing as his lich avatar, but offers an original story with some new characters.

Gameplay wise, it’s a RPG, fittingly so, but more like a proper turn based rpg, with some convenient options (and a mostly useless autobattle function) AND some actual tactical nuance for when enemies become more powerful than a fly…. which will take a while, and even so, you will be a bit too prepared for the boss battles, until they start using way specific “almost instakill” moves. Then you grind or just use premium currency.

To be honest, i arrived at the second part of the story just for the sake of review, it’s kinda boring, and doesn’t have any peculiar “hook” to make you come back to it (outside the usual ones, anyway), the gacha differentiates between paid and free/in-game earned premium currency, there’s VIP/battle pass equivalent, etc.

It’s.. alright, ok, honestly.

It’s something for Overlord fans to do until the 4th season of the anime, at least.

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[EXPRESSO] Bleach: Immortal Soul iOS | Soul Whales

Bleach Immortal Soul iOS

As you may know, Bleach is coming back, with serialized and animated versions of the one-shot Burn The Witch, created by Tite Kubo and taking place in the Bleach universe, and the anime returning with the adaptation of the final arc, The Thousand Year War, expected for early 2021.

So time to milk this renewed interest in the franchise as soon as possible, like with a mobile free-to-play gacha game live service. Another one, Bleach Brave Souls (which is still going) was a hack n slash, this is one of those extremely basic kind of anime rpg for smarthphones, turn based, with most of the challenge and “strategy” being on timing attack to create combos… until the game itself points out the auto-battle function.

Then it becomes just a matter of upgrading stats and letting the way too efficient auto-battle do its thing, since the usual“rock-paper-scissors” system of types weaknesses and strenghts works only on paper, and the repetitive battles lack any depth, so they just become a formality, like how you can technically decide where to proceed in story stages… despite being no reason to do so.

All made worse by overly busy menus bursting full of things to “engage” with, in the hope of making you spend actual money on this cheaply cobbled together cash grab, that on top of recycling frames from the anime series and – somehow – managing to have typos on dialogue cribbed word for word, has laughably cheap and amauterish scene transitions.

At least it serves as a decent cliffnotes refresher for Bleach’s story from the beginning, but even so, a lot of the manga it’s available for free on the Shonen Jump app.
Complete waste of time and data.

I do hope we get a new proper Bleach videogame later, a musou, maybe?

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Azur Lane The Animation 2019-20 [REVIEW] | The Bone Of My Boat

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Ah yes, one more for the evergrowing subgenre of “shipgirls military slice of life”, less Arpeggio of Blue Steel, and more Kancolle/Kantai Collection, which is obvious as hell as Azur Lane (by chinese companies Manju and Yongshi) came out to fight Kadokawa’s browser game, but actually bothered to give it more actual gameplay, implement less taxing gacha elements (which is akin to say “less rusty gambling hooks piercing my flesh”), and actually made it easier to access worlwide without any need to know japanese, use google translate constantly or set a VPN, just released an app for smarthphones.

And given it performed quite well (even in Japan), it was just a matter of time to see an anime adaptation of sorts, which came out in late 2019…not fully, as two last episodes were postponed to march 2020 after concerns on animation quality. I thought it was due to fans expressing criticisms on social media, but it seems it was mostly the staff itself’s decision in order to deliver a better and satisfying ending to the series instead of rushing it, which is commendable, and gave me time to catch up. Continua a leggere “Azur Lane The Animation 2019-20 [REVIEW] | The Bone Of My Boat”