Brief Summary: A terrible virus, Medusa, spreads around the world and turns people to stone. The creators of the virus (unbeknownst to the rest of the world) create a cyrogenic sleep center to protect 150 people from the virus. They will awaken in 100 years.

Sounds like an exciting sci-fi movie, right? Wrong. This description is barely even incidental to the plot of the movie, which is about dreams and fairy tales. Well, saying it is about dreams and fairy tales is quite generous. Really, it’s about running away from monsters. I don’t know why, but the creators start with this fairly interesting premise and completely toss it out. The virus is basically a plot device to make people go into the cyrogenic sleep center and to kill people at convenient times so that they can die “tragically.” All but seven or so of the sleeping people die within a minute of waking up. Maybe this was supposed to be shocking but it was really just pathetic. The cyrogenic sleep lasts for two days instead of 100 years, and this is discovered after about twenty minutes of being awake, so it is not like they are concerned about it at all. Plus, the creators of the movie seem to completely forget the plot thread about the creation of the virus about halfway through the movie, for no apparent reason. It is never mentioned again.

I had high hopes for this movie for approximately the first two minutes, when it started out with one of the only semi-realistic settings in America I have ever seen in anime (the other being being Red Garden). This was coupled by a quote from Romans on the side of a bus for bonus points. Unfortunately, once people came into the movie everything went downhill. The setting was a European castle, supposedly in the middle of the US, next to an ocean with windmills. Why did they show New York at the beginning?

In an even more egregious move, the movie drops the Christian mythology we were expecting from the quote from Romans and random talk about Noah’s ark, along with the religious cult hiding in the shadows which controls the corporation (as far as I can tell, they are never mentioned after the first ten minutes). This is exchanged for the story of Sleeping Beauty. Now, I may be biased because of the Disney movie, but Sleeping Beauty is one of the most boring folktales ever told. And they start off with Christian mythology and crazy evil cults and drop it for this. Disappointing, to say the least.

King of Thorn also did a very poor job at explaining the plot. This may have just been me (the attention I paid to the movie decreased exponentially over time as my interest waned) but by the end of the movie I was even more confused than I was at the beginning. A good mystery should reveal the answers to previous questions as it asks new ones. This movie asks new questions as it forgets about the old ones. By the end of the movie I barely had any idea what was happening anymore. And not in a good, mindfuck kind of way. In a “they fail at explaining” kind of way. I didn’t even realize that the main character and the person who came to the cyrogenic freezing center with her at the beginning were twins until halfway through the movie. And I’m pretty sure this wasn’t supposed to be one of the “twists.”

Looking on the positive side, one of the bright points was the musical soundtrack. All 30 seconds of it. By the twentieth time through I had had about enough. As for the characters – they weren’t interesting at all because all of their actions were reactive. The entire movie was them running away. What will we do next? Uh oh, monsters. Run! More monsters?! Run! The castle is flooding? Run! This is most of the plot.

• Plot / Script – 4 / 10 – Horrible / no resolution, forgotten questions, unfulfilled premise.
• Characters – 4 / 10 – The characters’ entire personalities were merely occupational. Mother. Soldier. Mad scientist. Ex-KGB. RPG player. Police officer. None of the characters really took any steps outside their assigned role, with the possible exception of the main character.
• Production – 7 / 10 – It did look nice, I’ll give them that, but work a bit harder on the music, ok?
• Overall – F

How it would be Worse Better under Director Draggle – Maybe try doing something with the premise involving cyrogenic sleep instead of forgetting about it after ten minutes. Try something involving the characters performing some activity other than running away from monsters. Make the plot at least mildly coherent. But seriously, I would just pretend this never happened.

Recommendations – Princess Tutu (any arbitrary episode tells a better fairy tale than this), Shangri-la (for same kind of sci-fi / overrun cityscape setting)

As a fan of the Tales series I was looking forward to this movie, and was not disappointed. Production IG decided to toss out the plot of the game and make a prequel, with Yuri and Flynn’s adventures in the knights before the start of the game. It worked out quite well, with a story that could conclude in a single movie but has plenty of room for sequels. I’m curious how faithful the sequels will be to the game plot though – especially those two twins, they were never in the game at all but were two of the main characters in this movie. Perhaps we can look forward to an untimely demise?

The characters are great and well developed, which is unsurprising since they have great material from the game to work with. The characters and their interactions are really the strong point of the Tales games- all those side dialogs as you’re walking around through the overworld make for some great development. I wish more RPG makers would realize that this is what makes a great game and not fancy graphics and fast-paced real time battle systems (*cough* *cough* FFXIII).

But back to the movie – my only issue with the characters was that I couldn’t tell the two twins apart. I didn’t realize their physical differences until the captain pointed it out. As a unit though they worked well. And baby Repede was so cute! Also, Yuri looked less feminine than I remember him being in the game. I think it’s because he’s wearing his knight uniform instead of that low-cut shirt. We can probably look forward to his fashion sense degrading in the next movie.

The plot of the movie was fairly typical – man vs. nature (evil monster in castle), the villagers band together to defeat it, the monster’s master is revealed to be the evil sorceror. But I didn’t mind, it’s typical because it’s proven to work. The movie is light-hearted and doesn’t take itself too seriously, with humorous, well spread out jokes.

• Plot / Script – 8 / 10 – A typical fantasy plot, but done well.
• Characters – 9 / 10 – It’s Tales.
• Production  – 10 / 10 – It’s a movie by Production IG, what do you expect? The CG for the monster in the castle was only a little bit out of place
• Overall – B+

How it would be Worse Better under Director Draggle – More Rita. Also more people who mistook Yuri for a girl.

Recommendations – Tales of Phantasia, Miyazaki movies, Book of Bantorra

I’d forgotten how much fun this show could be. And with the improved animation used in a movie, it’s only better. The movie continues the same level of ridiculousness as the television show, and it’s not recommended for those who haven’t seen the original show and aren’t familiar with the characters. The movie is similar to a single episode from the TV series – a villain shows up, Vash attempts to stop them, massive destruction ensues. Unfortunately the destruction in this movie was more limited than I would have preferred.

My biggest complaint about this movie would have to be that the plot is a bit too predictable. You can see the “I am your father” coming from a mile away.  Amelia’s backstory in general was painful and slow to sit through, but the scenes where she was beating up the bounty hunters and interacting with Vash managed to make up for it.

• Plot / Script – 7 / 10 – A plot has never been Trigun’s strong point. Most of the jokes had me laughing, even though there could have been more.
• Characters – 9 / 10 – Vash in particular is fun to watch.
• Production –  9 / 10 – A marked improvement from the TV series.
• Overall – B+

How it would be Worse Better under Director Draggle – More jokes, less tragic pasts. Replace moral lessons with extra explosions. More Meryl and Millie… it really seemed like they only made cameo appearances.

Recommendations – Black Lagoon, Full Metal Panic, Cowboy Bebop

Shiki (屍鬼) is a horror show set in a remote village where Shiki, a hybrid of the living dead, vampires and werewolves, slowly overtake the village. A personal disclaimer – I used to think I hated horror, when what came to mind was mindless zombie fests and serial killers with chainsaws. But after watching Higurashi, it’s now one of my favorite genres. A good horror show, in my opinion, isn’t about loud noises that make you jump out of your seat or gratuitous, bloody violence which makes you look away. Horror is about the atmosphere – you can sense the fear of the characters and the knowledge of impending doom. Shiki is excellent in this area. For about the first 15 episodes, there isn’t even any substantial resistance to the Shiki as they slowly overtake the town, and a sense of complete hopelessness settles in. Then the tides turn, and the same hopelessness and terror are transferred to the Shiki themselves as they are murdered and driven from the town.

Shiki has a large cast of characters, all of which are well developed, but in my opinion the focus was spread a bit too thin at times. Particularly with Natsuno, Kaori and Akira – at the beginning, they were the only ones resisting the Shiki, but in the last half they more or less completely disappeared from the story. It would have been nice to see Kaori a bit after her breakdown. Also, this may be an effect of watching only one episode per week, but there were a few characters who seemed important but hardly showed up at all. I saw that werewolf girl with freckles a few episodes from the end and couldn’t remember seeing her before. Also the shiki from the funeral parlor and the creepy little kid who came to Natsuno’s house – whatever happened to them? I couldn’t really follow / remember Seishin’s story from week to week either.

Overall, Shiki does a great job at building a dark, tense atmosphere and follows through on this to a suitably terrifying conclusion.

• Plot / Script – 9 / 10 – Great at building a horrifying atmosphere.
• Characters – 9 / 10 – Very well developed for such an ambitiously large cast.
• Production – Visual – 8 / 10 – Great use of light to build atmosphere, gore is intense but not distracting (except when it should be… i.e. the doctor’s wife)
• Production – Auditory – 9 / 10 – It isn’t Ghost Hound, but the sound still serves to build the tense atmosphere.
• Overall – B+

Voice Actor of the Show Award – Haruka Tomatsu (戸松遥) – Megumi Shimizu – Her character is annoying as hell, and the voice is a perfect fit.

How it would be Worse Better under Director Draggle – More follow up on Natsuno, Kaori and Akira. Also, vampires shouldn’t be able to cross running water or enter churches. 🙂

Recommendations – Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, Ghost Hound

The main character of Kuragehime (海月姫 – Jellyfish Princess), Tsukimi, is a young, nerdy woman who is obsessed with jellyfish, her fellow dormmates with equally esoteric obsessions. It follows Tsukimi’s relationship with two brothers in a neighboring rich famil: Kuranosuke, a popular high school transvestite, and Shuu,  thirty year-old virgin, on a course to follow his father and uncle’s footsteps into politics. Tsukimi’s house is going to be shut down for redevelopment, and loosely follows their attempts to prevent their eviction.

With this setup, I was expecting lots of drama / romance combined with crude crossdressing humor and a supporting cast of single joke caricatures (Tsukimi’s nerdy doormmates). I held out some hope since the show was in the noitanimA timeslot and and was pleasantly surprised. The romance is nice and subtle, eschewing the usual over-the-top confessions and misunderstandings for a slow, understated development between the three characters. There’s sufficient drama to keep the show going (I especially enjoyed Shuu’s “affair”). There’s no real conclusion, since the creators only had ten episodes to work with, but I considered the ending satisfying, aside from the romance angle. Kuranosuke’s cross-dressing is done quite nicely and actually didn’t bother me- it is well explained and the reactions by the other characters are quite believable (well, except for the prime minister).

Some of the shoujo / josei cliches which annoy me the most did make their way into the show though. Namely the Cinderella effect, where Tsukimi changes clothes and puts on makeup and is suddenly the most beautiful woman in the city. It is believable; since she literally puts no effort whatsoever into her appearance most of the time, and Kuranosuke is an expert in dressing up. It still annoys me though. Actually the entire subplot about dresses and making the jellyfish dress bored me. But, I suppose I’m not the target audience. Also, the supporting characters are not well developed, especially Tsukimi’s dormmates and the prime minister. Every time the prime minister showed up I just hit myself on the head. But these single jokes were used quite well, especially the girl who liked old men and the one with the afro. And I think I probably would have appreciated Maya more if I actually knew anything about the Three Kingdoms.

• Plot / Script – 8 / 10 – Simple and to the point story with good use of humor.
• Characters – 9 / 10 – The main characters are well flushed out along with a few side characters (the redeveloper who tricks Shuu, Shuu’s driver).
• Production – Visual – 6 / 10 – Consistent and acceptable, but nothing special.
• Production – Auditory – 7 / 10 – Nice OP.
• Overall – B

Voice Actor of the Show Award – Takehito Koyasu (武人子安) – Yoshio Hanamori (Shuu’s driver). I just can’t get enough of his deep, full, indifferent voice.

How it would be Worse Better if I Were the Director – Less Maya, more of the afro train girl and the old men girl. Less dresses and tragic flashbacks about mothers.

Recommendations – Nodame Cantabile, Honey and Clover