A very moving drama about a little girl who suffers an abusive family home, and is taken under the wing of her substitute teacher who kidnaps her and takes on the role of her mother (with the child's permission).
It's great how the human emotion between parent / child / teacher / friend is explored within a story where the protagonist is in fact breaking the law, always needing to be cautious and keep avoiding suspicion due to circumstances. It raises some good moral questions!
Not bad at all! Definitely need a second season.
Also I would love to see more of Alice Hirose. She seems to have a lot of potential.
As a "made for TV" production with limited budget and time, created by junior staff of animators and creative folks, Ocean Waves is not a typical Studio Ghibli production.
The animation is still very good, with great set design and character animation. But it lacks subtle details that makes our jaws drop. Music is another casualty, unmemorable synthesizer score that I found distracting.
But to me, the most important things are the story and voice acting. And they are fantastic with a great deal of realism. It's Truffaut's Jules and Jim meets From Up On Poppy Hill. Due to short runtime (a barely over an hour long when you exclude opening and closing credits), each character is not as richly developed as I wanted. And the conclusion is rushed, leaving me wanting more. But what's on the screen works exceedingly well and I really felt for 3 principle characters.
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.
It was another great Slice of Life. On first look it seems a bit childish but as you go further you'll see it's definitely not.
All the CGI were very well developed and animation was top notch. Story is a bit weird though.
I'll definitely recommend this one.
Edit: Season 2 was a bit on the down side but it was still entertaining.
Oh. Yes. Sir. One can never have enough Reigen in any episode. Fact. And now, my body is riddy for the final episode. This is my favorite portion of the buildup to the final confrontation where everything turns to pure awesomeness in the finale. Bring it on, Mob.
Even for someone like me, who has no real clue about manga or does not read any at all, this is a wonderfully entertaining celebration of the art and artists. A fine movie with some terrific and imaginative sequences, a neat cast and story and a completely amazeballs soundtrack by sakanaction which should be worth to watch this alone. Also Nana Komatsu is always a wonderful sight to behold.
Loved the coronation scene! Is that Eren's father at the end? :o
I felt sorry for Kenny , nonetheless this episode was so good to the point i couldn't felt time passing ...
This episode was definitely different! Weird style and storytelling, and it is a little bit confusing. On the other hand, who is that man at the end? Is that Erin's father, I am kinda lost???
From a certain aspect it is a fable about every coin has two sides or in other words nothing is fully black or white. The members of this family make dubious things in order to be able to eat, drink, wash themselves etc. or shortly to survive.
The perfect example which embodies this theory is the stoyline of Yuri. On the one hand, we can look at this like they kidnapped a child and later on taught her how to steal. On the other hand, they took a little girl in who was neglected by her parents. They looked after her, nurtured and cared for her and she became a member of this family who has nothing much but thenselves and they appreciate that little what they got. As Yuri was got back to her birth parents by the authorities she is treated like a pain in the ass by her mother. So, I ask the question: which family made her bad example exactly?
They give each other home, love and eventually an opportunity to the children to break out from that poor life situation.
Having finally finished my slow burn of this series all I can do is agree with other comments here. This series offers a sense of tranquillity when watching that I have rarely seen anywhere else. You just get absorbed into sometimes dreamlike atmosphere of it all. Each episode is somewhat self-contained and you really never know how it will end. Some end on a happy note, some on a sorrowful one, some are more ambiguous or bitersweet.
The message throughout is very much that Mushi are not malevolent or evil, they are just like forces of nature, and can be harmful or helpful to humans. Each story is more about how people deal with these things, with Ginko travelling around and helping where he can.
With a second season just around the corner all I can really do is repeat other people's recommendations - if you haven't already, watch this series.
Just a spectacular, beautiful and mesmerizing anime. I was initially hesitant to start this because it seemed like it wouldn't be too exciting and able to hold my interest well but I instantly became addicted. It's a very easy show to watch as each episode is a story contained within itself, has its own theme, and you really don't encounter the same thing twice. Also, not all the stories end up happily and some are just heartbreaking which lend to keeping everything fresh. The creators masterfully created this world filled and thriving with mushi that just immerses you completely. Ginko is the perfect MC for the tone and themes of Mushi-shi with his calm, gentle and understanding nature. The only complaint I had was that literally every main male and female character looks the same (I honestly couldn't tell anyone apart between 75% of the different episodes). This is definitely up there on my list and a very relaxing and magical journey that is a very easy watch.
I don't know how I exactly feel about this.
On the one hand, as a Muslim, you want a major Muslim-themed show on a major network to be something positively Muslim, because there's so much on american TV already that portrays Muslim in a negative image. But also you don't want another Little Mosque on the Prairie because it's too schmaltzy and nobody really watches it or is interested in it. So is Ramy negative? hard to say from one episode, but Ramy is clearly not THE model Muslim, and from the get go we are introduced to him having sex out wedlock, which is way more of a big deal than drugs or alcohol. So from the get go, Ramy is not alright neither by the standards of the whites (who see him as a hypocrite) or the Muslims (who see him as a stray), maybe this is intentional from the writers but I feel it could've been executed a little bit better without losing your audience from the first episode.
On the other hand, there's a lot of good things in seeing a story of a Muslim trying to grapple with his faith in a modern world trying to lead him astray at every corner, and all the struggles that come with it. Muslims are not saints, we lies, steal, masturbate and sin on a daily basis like any other person, we are human after all.
I would have liked it more if they didn't start the show with the topic of sex straightaway, because it's kind of a big deal and it is not to be taken lightly, but maybe lead to it gradually so at least it feels like someone is struggling with his faith rather than someone who is living life on his own rules and his faith is only an afterthought. If you watch Crashing, you can see what I'm talking about, it's a show about someone who is trying to reconciliate between his faith and his environment, it's done in a way that it doesn't feel like his faith is just a character trait but a journey you take with the character as he is trying to find out who he really is and what he wants out of life.
With that being said, I will be watching the rest of it and hopefully it will get better, because there is a lot of humour to be found in being Muslim, and having a TV show explore that and make it relatable is something beautiful to experience, and hopefully Ramy could contribute in educating a wider audience about how similar Muslims are to everybody else, but we are just slightly better. :wink:
Enjoyed this show right up until the last episode... can't say that for very many TV shows these days. 10/10
The ending with Dwight was super cute
This is such a powerful and moving anime that deals with the effect of the loss of a loved one and how much it can deeply change us, young or old. In particular, the anime focuses on the effect of Menma's death as a young child on the 5 remaining "Super Peace Busters" group and it's very interesting to see how much her death has and, more interestingly, not changed this once close group of friends. There is an incredible driving force of guilt and jealously that permeates throughout the show, and so this anime is ultimately a story about the journey to resolve these emotions in order to let Menma rest in piece. A lot of the characters may not be completely likable in certain ways due to each one having every obvious flaws, but all those serious flaws interacting with each other are the times when the anime shines best. This is definitely a roller coaster of emotion (perhaps some tears along the way) but I loved the ending which resolves things very nicely. This is a touching story and a can't miss if you're interested in a more dramatic and moving anime. Watch it!!
I’ve known the evenings, mornings, and days alone,
I have measured out my life in Mesa Verde awards and burner phones.
[8.7/10] With my sincerest apologies to T.S. Eliot, it’s amazing how Better Call Saul can move so slowly, and then so quickly, without missing a beat. It’s hard to know how much time has passed up until this point in the show, but season 4 picked up right where season 3 left off, and has more or less crept along in the aftermath of Chuck’s death and Hector’s “accident” ever since.
Until now. I spent a great deal of time talking about how the last episode set Jimmy and Kim on diverging trajectories, to the point that it was even occasionally literal. “Something Stupid” takes that idea up a notch with a cold open set to the titular crooner melody. The show’s unrivaled montage abilities depicts the passage of time with unwrapped statuettes, file cabinet labels, and holiday sale signs. But Better Call Saul once again gets a little formally creative, using a well-placed split screen to show how both Kim and Jimmy are flourishing in the new lives each has embarked upon, but also how those lives are slowly but surely pulling them further and further apart.
It’s an interesting choice, since Better Call Saul is very much about the slow burn. But it’s part and parcel with one of the most noteworthy creative decisions the show consistently makes -- how Jimmy and Kim are meant to be a real relationship with slow ups and downs rather than the constant shocks and fireworks of romance on a standard network drama. When this season started, I feared for Kim, because the show seemed poised to concoct some grand accident, some big mistake on Jimmy’s part, that either scares her away or worse.
Instead, “Something Stupid” gives us the death of a thousand cuts, and it gives us small scenes and the changing of the seasons to make it happen. The show may still be building to that grand incident and gesture, that will sever the only couple it’s ever truly put together. But Jimmy and Kim didn’t start with fireworks on this show, and rather than end them with something explosive, Better Call Saul is content to just show them drifting apart, more and more living separate lives, until that division just happens without either of them realizing it, or wanting to admit it.
Because “Something Stupid” isn’t just about the passage of time. It’s about the little signs that things have changed or are changing, the ones that are almost imperceptible but nevertheless tell the story. That comes through in our glimpse of Hector. Time has been kind to the old man after the incident with Nacho. During some rehabilitation exercises with the expensive doctor Gus provided, Hector knocks over a cup of water. The medical staff writes it off as an involuntary reaction from a man still trying to regain control of his motor functions. But the perspective shots and editing let the audience know otherwise -- that this was a minor stunt from Hector so he could leer at his nurse.
Gus, observant man that he is, sees it too. He recognizes more than that his longtime foe is still a lech. He recognizes that Hector, the awful man Gus wants revenge, is still in there. Vengeance is no good if there’s no one but the shell of a man to appreciate. Gus too has his own almost impercetible moment, a slow malevolent smile, that conveys his recognition that the man he wants to punish is still awake and aware enough to appreciate it.
So Gus turns the knife a little. He sends the doctor onto her next assignment. In effect, he halts Hector’s progress, despite the doctor’s protestations that there’s more recovery to be had. Hector has recovered enough to appreciate what Gus has done, while still being limited enough to hate it. The simple flick of a cup sets in motion a series of events that changes Hector’s life, and lays the groundwork for Gus’s death.
That’s the interesting thing about the passage of time in “Something Stupid.” It can either elucidate how much progress has been made and imply the trajectory that’s being halted, or it can show how much things have deteriorated. When we see Mike and the Germans, it’s very clearly the latter. The crew that Werner the engineer hired have made great strides in constructing Gus’s underground meth lab, but there’s miles to go before they sleep, and it’s starting to get to the workers.
When an accident on the job sets them back months, on a job the whole group knows won’t be finished anywhere near on schedule, tempers flare, scuffles break out, and it becomes clear to both Mike and Werner that things can’t continue on as they have. There’s more suggestion than development here, as we see more of the restlessness bubbling under the surface for the workers than anything actually coming to a head. But we see a growing camaraderie between Mike and Werner, a shot down suggestion that things might flow easier without Kai that feels portentous, and the slightest change in expression from Mike to show us his acceptance of the idea that the workers need some “R&R”, lest things spin out of control.
But bad feelings are bubbling under the surface for Jimmy and Kim as well. Jimmy and Kim have growing resentments about one another, but are either too ensconced in the status quo to rock the boat or, more charitably, care about each other too much to make an issue out of them, so they come out in odd ways.
When Jimmy tags along with Kim to a Schweikart office party, he can’t help taking a powder in her office. And there, he starts to get a little jealous. He walks the floor and finds out that her office is almost twice as big as his. He looks at a framed note from a pro bono client, and sees that Kim has already had more success, engendered more appreciation, in her spare time as a substitute public defender, than he had when it was his regular gig. Jimmy is scraping by and seeing his partner soar. It bothers Kim, but he loves her, so he lashes out in other ways.
That means causing trouble at Schweikart, using his small talk expertise to “spitball” a fantastical company trip to Mr. Schweikart himself, with all the employees in eartshot. After Jimmy finishes laying out this extravagant ski trip and creating expectations, Schweikart will either have to break the bank to pull it off or disappoint his employees when the real trip fails to live up to the image of a winter wonderland that Jimmy creates. It’s Jimmy’s way of stomping on the Schweikart sandcastle that Kim’s helped to build, a quiet little F.U. and “you’re not so big, huh?” His little conversation has plenty of plausible deniability for the trouble it’ll cause, but Kim knows better, even if she’s unable or unwilling to call him on it. The icy trip home says as much.
But they’re still a team. So when a misunderstanding with a bag of sandwiches, a pair of headphones, and a plainclothes cop leads to Huell facing jail time, Jimmy goes to Kim for help. It’s a well constructed conundrum because it has good and bad elements to it. There’s some real injustice in Huell potentially having to go to prison because of a legitimate misunderstanding as regards a less-than-legitimate business. But there’s something questionable at best about Jimmy’s wilful blindness and obstinance to the cop about his burner phones, and something mixed about Jimmy’s motives, even if it seems unfair for Huell to have to take the fall.
And then there’s Kim’s role in all of this. The most striking reaction, in an episode full of them, is Kim practically suppressing a gag reflex when Jimmy suggests solving this problem by making the policeman crack on the stand. It’s too close to what she helped Jimmy do to Chuck, too much like the sort of life destroying ploy to save one’s own bacon that she’s been trying to make amends for since. So she takes the case but rebuffs Jimmy, resolving to do it her way -- with facts and precedents rather than hustles and manipulation.
But that fails. The prosecutor not only rejects Kim’s tactics, but questions why Kim’s even doing this, and unwittingly slags Kim’s partner in the process. It’s a tense scene, of Kim trying to do everything in her power to make this work, the right way, to help Jimmy even as she’s seeing more and more the ways that he is not the kind-hearted soul with rough edges she once thought. The edges are starting crowd out the parts of Jimmy she always appreciated, even as, in true Breaking Bad fashion, the show puts her in a tight spot and dares the audience to find out whether and how she’ll escape it, and what it will cost her and Jimmy, to do so.
The close of the episode seems to be setting up the sort of dramatic, high stakes moments that drove Breaking Bad. But Better Call Saul has been a show about slower burns, about more gradual, softer transformations than the collection of inflection points that pushed Walter white from “Mr. Chips to Scarface.” And it’s taking the same tack with Jimmy and Kim. Even as the seasons shift, there’s not some big moment that changes everything. There’s just a gradual winnowing of the trust and mutual admiration they once shared, until the image each had of the other is too tarnished to go on.
Hirokazu Koreeda's work has been recommended to me by a few people, and I'm ashamed to say this is the first of his movies I have seen. Based on 'Like Father, Like Son' I am now in a rush to see a few more. It is an excellent film that deals with raw human emotion. But the genius is the way Koreeda shows us that emotion. There are beautiful looking films and then there are just beautiful films. This falls into the latter category.
This story centres around receiving the inexplicable news that your child was swapped at birth and your real child lives a few miles away ion the next town. That's a horrific thing for anybody to deal with but Koreeda doesn't show us the hysterical scream fits that both mothers would have no doubt had, he instead deals with the inner turmoil and pain that anyone in this position would no doubt feel. Questioning yourself to understand if you could have done something different. Examining your morals and your judgments on others.
The main protagonist is Ryota, expertly played by Masaharu Fukuyama. Through his journey we see that he has to learn alot about his role in the family even though he thinks he has made it as the main breadwinner with a high powered job. The use of pianos, kites and robots are all fantastic mechanisms to enable us to see how he views his "son", and the level of expectation placed upon him. In one scene towards the end in particular (you could very loosely call it a reveal scene) the emotions become too much for Ryota and we finally see him learning and accepting what his role in the family should ultimately be. How Koreeda manages to weave this into the plot is just masterful film-making.
It's such a simple concept - child swapped at birth = tragedy. But not many people could write a screenplay and direct a 2 hour feature on the turmoil and upheaval of family life based around it. Koreeda manages it, and also enables every single actor in this movie to nail their roles. Great film
I have yet to be let down by a film from Koreeda and if you have seen some of his works you will know what to expect.
It's an interesting contrast of two families and their ways of raising a child. The dilemma of switching your child or not is rather complex and interesting to watch. The whole story is supported by competent direction and great acting. What more do you want?
A far more heartwarming story than one might expect from the premise. It ends up as a sweet film that, while the ending is pretty apparent right from the start, proves that it's the journey, not the destination that's important.
This movie really surprised me. I thought it would be really odd but in fact it was quite sweet and highly enjoyable.
I can only think of one thing when the great series Nodame Cantabile pops up into my mind... "GYAAAAAAAAAAAABO!" This is one of the finest animes that I've watched and if you have any interest in slice of life, romance/comedy and music, this is a no-brainer. You'll instantly fall in love with all of the characters, and the ever-developing dynamic between Chiaki and Nodame is truly a joy to behold. I can't get enough of the comedy in this series with the goofball Nodame anchoring it all down. The story is very well-done following the journey of these two through their college lives, with their love toward each other and with music. And my god. The music. If you have any interest in music, you'll be floored by all the spectacular classical pieces that they've worked into each episode. Time after time, the creators interweave a character's real-time analysis and feelings/emotions about a piece being played almost as a substitution for direct dialog to progress through countless critical scenes. You'll truly find depth in the pieces that could take an individual a life-time to notice. This is without a doubt one of the most fantastic romantic comedy animes out there (right there with Toradora although with less drama). Do yourself a favor and watch this ASAP.
A stunning and carefully crafted story, superbly and respectfully acted/directed by a relatively little known cast together with a sublime visual feast. I truly believe this is at the peak of television even with such competition in this so called golden age of the craft. a slow burn certainly which appeals to me between episodes of GOT for example. this should be the water cooler subject of the moment and deserves much more love. a truly emotional, at times even heartbreaking journey but one with much to love.
This show is absolutely amazing. I loved it from the very first episode. I've heard about it before but i was a bit skeptical because i didn't really know what is it even about, until i decided to check it out. Season 3 finale left me on the edge of my seat, especially last minutes. A MUST WATCH.
Whenever I think of Martha I get sad. But I get even sadder when I think about the fact that Allison Wright (Martha) didn't get an Emmy nomination for this episode
Really going to miss this show. Despite a rocky start, it turned out to be great. I aspire to be a Swanson!