King of Thorn Review – F

Reviews,

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)

First Impression – Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka

Impressions,
Ayumu is delusional.

I should apologize to walking corpses, whom I insulted in my last entry by associating with the main character of Dragon Crisis. Walking corpses, as seen in Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka, are awesome. We finally have a main character this season, Ayumu, who isn’t a complete wuss and doesn’t spend half the show whining. Even when he is turned into a zombie he just invites the necromancer who resurrected him to live in his house and begins to search for his murderer.  The two female characters are quite entertaining as well – Eu because of Ayumu’s delusions, and Haruna because, well, she is a magical girl with a chainsaw. All of the zombie jokes so far have been hilarious as well, although I could see how if they keep repeating them it might get old. The jokes in this show were great, coming fast and unpredictable. The transformation sequence at the end was especially great. Let’s hope that the creators can keep up this pace.

Chainsaws make everything better.

Based on the description, I was fully expecting this show to be a complete disaster. It goes to show that you can never really tell how something will turn out before watching it. This season I thought that this show and Onii-chan no Koto would be completely unwatchable, but it turns out they’ve been two of the best shows so far. Still, you can’t really judge by the first episode, comedies always seem to taper out by the end, where non-comedies build momentum towards the end. We still have the two noitanimA shows to look forward to, hopefully they won’t disappoint!

It's a trap! It's a trap! It's a trap!

First Impression – Dragon Crisis

Impressions,

This episode was downright painful to watch. A useless douchebag’s cousin returns from studying abroad (like all Americans, she has a disturbingly large chest, wears a tanktop and has brownhair with twintails). She brings him along to rob the mafia equivalent, and a little girl comes out of the suitcase and can only say the main character’s name.

We’ve only seen a sudden girlfriend appearance before. And every person in the show is a walking caricature (well, aside from the main character, who has the personality of a walking corpse).  Rose (the dragon) is not going to do anything but look cute, the cousin is never going to have the camera centered on her face, and glasses girl is going to be a glasses girl. Looking on the bright side, the music was somewhat decent.

First Impression – Level E

Impressions,

In Level E, a baseball player moves from Tokyo to the countryside, to find an alien squatting in his apartment. This wasn’t particularly bad or anything, but I just found it boring. The story seemed to move really slowly and there was hardly any development in the characters to justify this. The alien shows that he really is an alien – great. And he and the main character seem to have some homosexual tendencies. Unfortunately, said main character is apparently not into tentacles. How will they overcome this wedge in their relationship?

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya Review – 9.25 / 10.0

Reviews

I found the first season of Haruhi decent, but definitely not as great as everyone made it out to be.  I’m not entirely sure why, since I don’t remember it that well anymore. But last week, I finally got around to watching the second season. The endless eight arc is less painful if you can go straight to the next episode. Even ignoring the endless eight, I didn’t find the second season all that great. After the endless eight it was just four more episodes of Haruhi bossing everyone around.

I think this may be part of the reason I disliked the first sesason- the main characters just annoy me. Haruhi is a popular character for some reason, but I personally think she is a complete jerk. Kyon is a good match for her, on the opposite end of the spectrum – instead of bossing everyone around, he’s completely apathetic and doesn’t care about anything. Sure, his monologues are amusing but his complete lack of any willpower whatsoever puts him below even the generic harem lead in my estimation. Asahina is nothing but a moeblob, and Koizumi talks too much. Nagato is fine – probably because she doesn’t say anything.

Anyways, I finally got around to watching the movie today. And it was amazing! I could hardly believe it was from the same show. Basically it is a coming of age story for Kyon and, to a lesser extent, Nagato. Finally Haruhi begins to wear off on Kyon and he becomes motivated enough to actually do something on his own – search for Haruhi after she disappears. He is a much less annoying character after this movie. Nagato begins to develop emotionally as well, and Kyon has his moment of awesome when he attempts to blackmail the Integrated Data Entity. (Kyon is wrong though – glasses are better, but he can’t be perfect, can he?)

The time travelling was quite well done in this series as well. I especially liked how a third Kyon came from the future as well, although now I have to hope they make another movie. I was actually expecting them to do this earlier, when the adult Asahina fell asleep on the bench just like the younger one did. I fully expected grandmas Asahina to come walking out of the forest, but was sadly disappointed.

Overall, this movie did a great job in addressing some of the flaws in the original series – namely lack of growth in the characters. Make sure you are caught up on the TV series before watching it though – some things would have passed by me completely if I hadn’t just watched the second season, and I’m sure I still missed things. When Asakura (the blue-haired girl) showed up, I wasn’t sure who she was and had to look it up. But man, she was awesome, especially at the end! Now I have to rewatch the first season just to see her try to kill Kyon again. It must not have been as great as this time though or I would have remembered it.

  • Plot / Script – 9 / 10 – Good pacing, actually develops the feeling of horror that something is wrong with the world. Also good use of time travel. (although, is there a bad use?)
  • Characters – 10 / 10 – They are all much more interesting than they were in the TV series (well, except Asahina).
  • Production – 10 / 10 – Amazing visuals from KyoAni. Bonus points for girls in snow.
  • Overall – 9.25 / 10

Voice Actor of the Show Award – Tomokazu Sugita for his role as Kyon. He is a master at sounding cynical.

How it would be Worse Better under Director Draggle – To nitpick, it could have used some more buildup for Asakura’s attack. It kind of came out of nowhere – I guess she is Nagato’s stalker?

Recommendations – The Girl who Leapt Through Time