Still pretty generic. Some hints of intrigue, but it ain't promising that episode 2 is essentially an excuse to put the girls in bikinis. The shoddy character introductions in episode 1 also mean I don't know who anyone is. (They just put up everyone's name really quick during a meeting, which doesn't really help the viewer remember who people are at all. "Show, don't tell," and all that.)
You know what every idol show needs? A villain who hides in the shadows and plots to destroy the group. iM@S totally needed it, and so does B-Project. /s
After such a strong start in the first episode, the second backed off a bit. Still held my attention almost all the way through, but this week's plot was somewhat less compelling than the experience of watching it.
WELL then. Given what I thought of last week's episode (https://trakt.tv/comments/89881 for those who haven't read that review), I didn't expect to like the very next one. But I did.
What we have here is actual character-building. What this week's episode did was actually leverage µ's and the events of the previous Love Live! anime to motivate plot, rather than copying the plot wholesale.
I won't go too high with the rating still, because there's still copying going on (most notably the Aqours practice outfits; and even Hanamaru playing a tree in the school play is something of a nod to Yui from K-On!). But there's more than enough original development here. This is the first episode of Sunshine!! that hasn't left me angry at nobody in particular because it felt like I'd seen it before.
More of this, Sunrise. Keep it up.
As has been typical of this new BattleBots series, the hype is real but the matchups aren't. I immediately predicted three of the four winners, despite claims that these 12 bots were fighting because they were all "so evenly matched" that the selection committee couldn't agree which ones to put in the final field. There were some spectacular moments along the way, but for the most part I was completely unsurprised by who got knocked out and when. I mean, come on: did they really think Creepy Crawlies stood a chance against any bot in the entire field? No way. No combination of 50-pound bots with anemic claws on the front could possibly stand up to even one half of Gemini (125 lbs), let alone Son of Whyachi.
However, I do have to give this special an extra rating point for the one match that saw the bot I predicted as the first loser (Black Ice, driven by former astronaut and bot-battling rookie Dan Barry) come out on top—the arena proved to be hazardous even with the hazards turned off, and that took my predicted winner (Skorpios) completely out of the running.
Needs more world-building. I suspect some of that will come in the next episode, based on the closing narration. But just as a premiere episode, it's just a generic high-schoolers-fight-never-ending-waves-of-aliens show.
Finally. Over.
series deleted from hard drive
As a first episode, this really worked well. Got me wanting to watch more.
I mean, I was going to anyway—it's a noitaminA show, after all—but I'm looking forward to it.
The first episode got me pretty interested. The second got me hyped. That paved the way for this, the third episode, to fall short of my expectations. Somehow this plot felt more cookie-cutter than before. Not much depth. Which isn't to say that there's a ton of depth in the earlier episodes, but they don't feel shallow like this one does.
I'll still keep going.
Ugh, some cute moments between Reina and Kumiko ruined by drama nobody asked for.
OK, so I love the Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso vibe here. Not so amused by yet more ripping off of the first series, in the form of Sunshine!!'s ED matching a lot of the shots from Love Live!'s ED. (Who needs Rin with maracas when you can have all nine main characters holding pompoms?)
It's getting better, though. Dia schooling Chika in the history and pronunciation of µ's was pretty great, and there was some neat intercutting between scenes. Still kind of disappointed. Episode 3 airs pretty soon, and whenever FFF catches up I'll have at that. (It's FFF, though, so about 4 days after airing amirite?)
Ugh. I was so hyped for this show and so far it's just the same plot as Love Live! all over again. Orange-haired girl wants to start an idol club. Student council president says no. Kawaii red-haired girl can write songs, but doesn't want to.
I have literally watched this before. There's a not-so-fine line between referencing the original series—paying it homage—and ripping off the plot and character designs.
I hope Sunshine!! moves on to original ideas soon. (I know the original didn't have a chuunibyou archetype, but frankly they should have left it out of this.)
Pfft, continuity is hard. Door halfway shut, cut SLAM. And why are they just ignoring Parker's changing voice?
As for the writing…did they really not have enough material to fill the last few minutes? So they resorted to stretching out gags that weren't even that funny in the first place? Sigh.
No. NO. You can't just magically sink the Harekaze in the harbor after everyone disembarks without any explanation. It doesn't work that way!
Some great stuff happened in the rest of this episode, but oh, that terrible ending. Absolute bottom tier writing.
Completely unnecessary hot springs setting. I hate when studios do this, especially so early in a series.
Great premise, great execution, great writing. There were a couple of bits that could have been done better, but if Trakt offered a 9.5 rating option I would use it.
I guess first episodes are really hard to get right…so I'm hoping at least some of the things I disliked will be ironed out.
If not…well, there are two more episodes before I decide whether to finish or drop.
Beautiful story, let down a bit by production limitations (mostly music—synthesis in places where real instruments were called for). Worth a watch, though. It's Ghibli, so you really can't go wrong.
Anyone else find it concerning that the interview clip used from ABC 7's coverage of the new FCC rules for cell phones features a woman sitting in front of a computer clearly running Windows XP? John wasn't kidding about outdated technology, man. Those new rules are from last year.
Apparently bias is an emotion now? But still worth it for the comparison of tomatoes and Judaism.
Feels flawed, but it'll hold your attention even if you're thinking "That's not right!"
Almost worth watching just for Sean Connery's off-and-on Scottish accent. The effects are a bit dated, but it is almost 13 years old… and I've seen worse in blockbuster films from last year.
Pretty much everything I want to say has already been laid out quite eloquently by Abstractals (spoiler tagged): https://trakt.tv/comments/80896
But in summary: There is a lot of technically impressive work in this film, especially the long takes with tons of extras and action in the background. But dramatically, I don't think this film is there. The aspect ratio and narrow depth of field feel like gimmicks, like the screenplay was written entirely to enable their use, rather than making those choices based on a fleshed-out story. I was entirely done with Saul's head being constantly in frame within five minutes, only to be stuck with it for most of the rest of the film. Everything we see (with exceptions covered in Abstractals' review) is either around Saul or through his eyes, and that forced perspective dramatically limits the story. The blurred backgrounds detach the action, making it seem less real. I still have no idea what Saul's motive was. I'm not even sure I care, sadly.
Maybe showing the viewer a Holocaust story that they can't connect with emotionally was the whole point. But if it was, I would have been happy to pass on this.
The setup is a high school concert band that wants to get to nationals…and there are maybe two pieces of music in the entire show? This was not good. The whole thing is focused around mysteries that the main characters get distracted by when they're supposed to be making music. They're not even interesting mysteries. Every one is the same: Stump the two self-appointed detectives until some deus ex machina reveal lets them solve it. Character development is mostly nonexistent.
I'd award an extra point for having a queer MC, but the show never actually does anything with that fact after establishing a love polygon in episode 1 (which persists for the rest of the series, unmentioned except for a couple throwaway comic bits).
I watched the first half of this season in 4 days, and then stalled out for 5 months. Something shifted in the tone of the show that made it suddenly a lot less interesting around halfway through. There's a bit of a resurgence during the Awa arc, near the end, but it's still a mixed bag at best.
I'm not sure if I'm interested in a second season, should this get one, or not. It's certainly scripted to set up for continuation—and there are plenty more manga volumes to adapt—but the anime might or might not continue. Maybe it will, and maybe I'll watch it. Dunno yet.
Random HTML code as an access log? I could make some joke about Japan being Japan, but the same kind of thing happens in American and British TV too. Ah, well.
It took me (checks MAL) 486 days to force myself through this series. I have not watched the OVA. I don't need an extra 11 minutes† to know that I don't care for this show. Allegedly it still has yet to be either renewed or cancelled, but I hope that Studio 3Hz will move on and leave this behind. It really shows that production values alone cannot make an anime good. The writing in Sora no Method just isn't there, and no amount of moe can hide that.
Up next from Studio 3Hz is Dimension W, which will hopefully be better. (Yes, I'm way behind on anime.)
† - The OVA shows as 25 minutes because no metadata source that Trakt pulls in allows overriding episode duration. It's set at the show level, and that's what you get, period. It's too bad.
Florida to Texas by bus? That's a 12-hour car trip, and at least a full day by Greyhound. Houston to "Pittsfield, New York" (not a real place)? It's a 21.5-hour drive from Houston to the New York state line, and presumably a few hours more to wherever Pittsfield is allegedly located. There's some serious time compression in this movie!
I'm not normally one to complain about slow pacing, but it's warranted in this case. This story could have been told in half the time. Not that it's anything to write home about. There's some potentially interesting backstory that gets no screen time whatsoever. The only interesting part is about ten minutes in the third episode when we spend some real, quality time with the Overlords.
Granted, I haven't read the source material. But given that this miniseries' contemporaries include The Expanse, I know that good sci-fi can still be put on TV in the mid-2010s. This just…isn't it.
This episode spends most of its time very slowly unfolding the events that happen to characters I quite honestly don't give a shit about. Nothing of consequence is revealed.
No Quidditch for years, and suddenly we get tryouts and snippets of a match because it's plot-relevant again. I know there's only so much that can be packed into a movie series, even one with such long installments as this, but a little backstory on how Harry got to be team captain and what happened to Wood would have been nice.
