Tag: studio BONES

[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 10th 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 4th 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.

[EXPRESSO] Josee, the Tiger and the Fish (2020) | and the Andersen

Eventually anime is coming back to cinemas here as well, starting with 2020’s anime adaptation of the short story Josee, the Tiger and the Fish by Seiko Tanabe, already adapted in live action form both by japanese and corean production, here with animation curated by studio BONES.

It’s a romantic drama about Tsuneo, a university student working a part time job that one day stumbles upon an old lady carrying a big wheelchair for a girl with cerebral palsy, calling herself Josee, after the heroine of a Francois Sagan’s novel. He starts frequenting “Josee” as her attendee for hire, and as time goes by he learns more about her, etc. I don’t think i have to explain how romance 101 work, so i won’t.

So, it’s a fairly common setup for an anime romance film with actual ambitions to drama, with the girl suffering from a disability or disease of sorts, i can’t really claim this movie does anything new never seen before in any way, it’s definitely what you think it’s gonna be, so don’t expect to be “surprised”, even though people don’t see romance movies for Shaymalan style twists.

But it’s honestly fairly good, definitely good enough to have it nominated at Annecy last year, fairly well executed, good animation, decent to good characters and – yes – good romance, actually surprisingly quite funny as well. What stops it from being great is that it basically does the usual framing of “disability” as some sort of “personal extra hurdle” situation to the romance, touching upon the themes that come with it but not exactly in a nuanced way, most likely because they mean well but don’t know or want to know much, resulting in a less impactful execution.

Still, it’s worth seeing, just don’t expect A Silent Voice.