Forget about dumb isekai and overpowered anime with convoluted power systems, Frieren is the opposite, a calm slow burn slice of life. It's everything you need from a fantasy adventure.
I am editing this review after finishing season 1. It went from being something I really enjoyed to one of my all-time favorites and something I consider a genuine masterpiece. This is a story about looking back by looking forward, about understanding the importance of living in the moment, about the importance of the little moments. Each arc, whether it goes by within a single episode or lasts multiple episodes, is suffused with emotion and impact, with an intentionality that is almost surprising considering how effortless and cozy the show feels. The animation is stunning, especially the visualizations of the magic, and Evan Call's soundtrack is top tier. It has been a privilege to watch Frieren's journey and reflection on her past, obvserving both unfold simultaneously as we learn the way she learns about the importance of small details she originally ignored. Honestly, everyone should watch this beautiful and poignant anime.
Original Review: This is ongoing, but I am really enjoying it. I appreciate how it takes a fantasy setting and the concept of an elf who outlives all her companions to explore how and why relationships between people matter. Using her unique perspective, the story is able to help accentuate humanity from the outside looking in. The side characters also get focus, so we get to see their character growth juxtaposed against the initial companions and Frieren. Sometimes the episodes feel inconsequential or too subdued, but they all have such a gentle and cozy feeling to them that I do not mind.
If Stephen King and Steven Spielberg had a baby, this is EXACTLY what it would look it.
[9.5/10] They got me. They really did. I believed that Saul would do it, that he would find a way to lie, cheat, and steal out of suffering any real consequences for all the pain and losses he is responsible for. I believed that he would trade in Kim's freedom and chance to make a clean break after baring her soul in exchange for a damn pint of ice cream. I have long clocked Better Call Saul as a tragedy, about a man who could have been good, and yet, through both circumstance and choice, lists inexorably toward becoming a terrible, arguably evil person. I thought this would be the final thud of his descent, selling out the one person on this Earth who loved him to feather his own nest.
Maybe Walt was right when he said that Jimmy was "always like this." Maybe Chuck was right that there something inherently corrupt and untrustworthy in the heart of his little brother. This post-Breaking Bad epilogue has been an object lesson in the depths to which Gene Takovic will stoop in order to feed his addiction and get what he wants. There would be no greater affirmation of the completeness of his craven selfishness and cruelty than throwing Kim under the bus to save himself.
Only, in the end, that's the feint, that's the trick, that's the con, on the feds and the audience. When Saul hears that Kim took his words to heart and turned herself in, facing the punishments that come with it, he can't sit idly by and profit from his own lies and bullshit. He doesn't want to sell her out; he wants to fall on the sword in front of her, make sure she knows that he knows what he did wrong.Despite his earlier protestations that his only regret was not making more money or avoiding knee damage, he wants to confess in a court of law that he regrets the choices that led him here and the pain he caused, and most of all he regrets that they led to losing her.
In that final act of showmanship and grace, he lives up to the advice Chuck gives him in the flashback scene here, that if he doesn't like the road that his bad choices have led him, there's no shame in taking a different path. Much as Walt did, at the end of the line, Saul admits his genuine motives, he accepts responsibility for his choices after years of blame and evasion. Most of all, he takes his name back, a conscious return to being the person that Kim once knew, in form and substance. It is late, very late, when it happens, but after so much, Jimmy uses his incredible skills to accept his consequences, rather than sidestep them, and he finds the better path that Kim always believed he could walk, one that she motivates him to tread.
It is a wonderful finale to this all-time great show. I had long believed that this series was a tragedy. It had to be, given where Jimmy started and where the audience knew Saul ended. But as it was always so good at doing, Better Call Saul surprised me, with a measured bit of earned redemption for its protagonist, and moving suggestion that with someone we care for and who cares of us, even the worst of us can become someone and something better. In its final episode, the series offered one more transformation -- from a tale of tragedy, to a story of hope.
(On a personal note, I just want to say thank you to everyone who read and commented on my reviews here over the years. There is truly no show that's been as rewarding for me to write about than Better Call Saul, and so much of that owes to the community of people who offered me the time and consideration to share my thoughts, offered their kind words, and helped me look at the series in new ways with their thoughtful comments. I don't know what the future holds, but I am so grateful to have been so fortunate as to share this time and these words with you.)
EDIT: One last time, here is my usual, extended review of the finale in case anyone's interested -- https://thespool.net/reviews/better-call-saul-series-finale-recap-saul-gone/
I hope Ford faked his death with a Host version of himself.
William: Please Logan, even though I'm engaged to your sister, please help me take my sex robot home with me.
9.5/10. If you'd said to me, "Hey watch this short film that's a cross between Lost in Translation and the opening act of Wall-E," I'm pretty sure I would just look at you funny. And yet that's pretty much what this was, and it worked beautifully. The undersea world BoJack found himself in, where he couldn't eat the food, couldn't engage in his usual vices, and most of all couldn't speak or understand the local dialect, captured the experience of isolation and confusion that can come from visiting a foreign country through a distinctively BoJack lens.
But it also created a great atmosphere for a format-bending episode. Offering a nigh-wordless half hour of comedy in a show that makes its hay from its dialogue could either be gimmicky or bold, and thankfully this episode tended toward the former. It helped to put the viewer in BoJack's shoes -- only able to communicate and express mood through non-verbal cues like gestures, body language, and the score.
And in the absence of dialogue, Bojack Horseman reverts to a certain Looney Tunes-esque vibe where BoJack finds himself inadvertently responsible for an adorable little seahorse moppet. (I had flashbacks to the "Buttons and MIndy"segments of Animaniacs and a dozen other classic cartoons.) The design and personality of the seahorse baby struck the right balance of adorable and mischievous, and it created a nice opportunity for BoJack to be caring, brave, and as always, eternally frustated.
But this being Bojack, of course there's a quiet strain of melancholy through the whole thing. When Bojack returns to the seahorse babe to its father, the dad is mildly grateful, but mostly blase, and the baby doesn't even wave to him when it's time for BoJack to say goodbye. They went through this experience together, through shark attacks and taffy explosions and being stranded, and the moppet is too little to even look up for his soup or appreciate what his equine friend did for him. There's an emptiness there, a sort of existential realization that all that effort, which was quite noble in and of itself, feels a little hollow without someone to share it with or to appreciate it.
So through this experience, BoJack finally finds the words to apologize to Kelsey Jannings, noting that grand acts are nice, but that accomplishments, even ones far more important than winning and Oscar like returning a child to their parent, can seem like building a sandcastle, inevitably fleeting and meant to be washed away with the coming tide. But that those connections between individuals are what sustain us and give us life and reason to go on in a world of sandcastles.
Again, this being BoJack Horseman, those words too are washed away before he can get them to Kelsey in any sort of readable fashion. To add insult to injury, he realizes in the end that he could have talked this whole time, which is the right combination of sad and funny. But overall, this is a wonderful episode that uses some great Warner Bros. silent capering to further the show's project of examining its lead's attempts to find meaning in his life, and finds an inventive way to convey that experience.
I thought that the movie was just alright until the last third where shit just went crazy. Just like Mima, I couldn't tell what was real or not. This was definitely a unique and awesome mindfuck. Satoshi Kon (Paprika, Millennium Actress, Paranoia Agent) is without a doubt a master of the psychological thriller genre. I just wish that he could have gotten the chance to create many more films.
Belle... A collection of music videos glued together by a really badly written narrative.
Belle is one of the weakest animated movies i have seen in the past few years, and that makes me really sad, as a fan of the director i went into this expecting an 8 or an 9, but what i got is a 5 at best.
Belle has a interesting idea, with its reworking of the "beauty and the beast" and its child abuse themes... But it fails to build on its characters and to explain basic premises of its own world, making it for a very boring and bland experience.
Most of the things we thought would be relevant were completely ignored and absolutely useless, we asked ourselves watching "did she get some disease and now is unable to sing in the real world and that is why the U is an escape?" No, they never address this, she just fails to sing and vomits once because the movie wanted to i guess? They keep all her "friends" completely irrelevant and underdeveloped until the last quarter of the movie, so i basically don't care about any of them in the end, they never explain the socio economical structure of the U world... How does this work? They say the avatar is made automatically based on people physiognomy, but the avatars are crazy different in form and species, how can that be made from ones physiognomy? How is the invitation system decided? Who is invited and why? Why even have an invitation system instead of selling the app or freely distributing it if that ends up irrelevant to the story? Why show us a very interesting singer character on the start that rivalizes our belle if you are just going to forget her for the whole movie? How to know which avatars are AI controlled and which are actually people? Is it possible do die in U? If not, what is the relevance of all the conflict we see?
Belle raises too many questions and answer very little, it presents us with an beautiful and interesting virtual world but tells us NOTHING about it and how it all works, it presents us with futuristic technology in a world that seems stuck in the 2000s, it gives us many bland and uninteresting characters with only one personality trait each and develops none of them... There are so many problems, so many drawn out scenes... That it all gets boring and tiresome...
And.... That makes me really sad, the music is GREAT, the visuals are BEAUTIFUL, the music scenes are AMAZING... But they are few and far in between and the rest of the movie... Is not interesting, they present us a nice duality of belle and the beast, but their interest in one another is so out of nowhere and forced that it doesnt feel even a little bit real or natural... There is a great scene that develops the characters and emotional connects, but it is only in the last quarter of the movie... When it has already lost all my interest and attention... and the plot of child abuse is ok and very important... But it feels shoved in... The main plot... Feels shoved in... Oh, and how they find the boy... Well, that was just the worst "investigation" bit i have ever seen...
I really wanted to like this movie, but there are just too many unanswered questions, just too little character development, and a plot that is just generic and bland enough to lose my attention... The visuals and music alone are not enough...
At the end, i feel like they made some really great music videos and didnt want to release it as just animated music videos, so they wrote a really bland movie around it and shoved a controversial and important theme(child abuse) to appeal to peoples hearts in an effective but kinda cheap way.
This Anime is just like watching a beautiful poem unfold and progress. Reminds me a great deal of the famous works of Miyazaki.
Oh god. This show is so amazing. Right in my feels...
Mumen Rider... You had me at "Justice Crash". You had me at "Justice Crash"...
oh my god it was amazing!! mumen rider is so innocent and saitama is so humble i love them all so much
The best new Star Wars film in three decades and one of the most satisfying films of the year.
The whole theatre burst into spontaneous cheers several times, and the whole theatre completely went silent - people literally stopped chewing their popcorn - on numerous occasions.
Like you've probably already heard, the movie REALLY is a phenomenal throwback to the original trilogy, with an extra oomph and insane amounts of creativity and new found inspiration that will take the franchise to a whole new level.
The characters are three-dimensional, it's nowhere near as strictly black and white, good vs. evil like in most of the previous movies, and Adam Driver as Kylo Ren is the best example of that. Hands down, the best villian to appear in the Star Wars franchise other than Darth Vader.
Daisy Ridley & John Boyega are thrilling to watch, the old cast members, popping in during the movie were just as fun to watch.
J.J. Abrams and the writers somehow managed to create a plot that was very confined in space and time, yet they effortlessly captured the grand universe that is Star Wars with some pretty great throwbacks to the old trilogy plot-wise. Some might argue that it's lack of creativity and unnecessary repetition, but I thought it was a wonderful homage. It flowed naturally and there really was no dull moment.
Absolutely phenomenal. :)
This show ruined television for me. Any other show and all I can think is Why am I not watching BoJack instead? It took me about half a season to start enjoying it, but once it hit me, it hit me like a long, hard kick in the urethra. Really, this is the only TV show that regularly brings tears to my eyes. I've become completely obsessed with it.
What do both The Wall and Jon Snow have in common?
They both got "blown" away at the end ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I just got back from a preview showing for the new Spider-man movie, and WOW. It is LIT (pardon my language). Soooooo funny with tons of personality and a surprisingly great depth of emotion in quite a few scenes (some tears may have been shed). I love this new take on the comic book hero origin movie and the entire film just screams originality. I wasn't 100% sure on the animated look before, but it really fits into the entire setting and "alternate dimensions" premise of the movie later, which injects a ton of creativity and potential into this new film.
After Sony released Venom, I thought that they should just stop trying with the Spider-verse. However, this new film and universe gives me a completely different perspective. I can't believe something like this came from Sony...
"It's just a flying saucer, Ed. We gotta go." lol, Peggy kills me.
Quite possibly one of the most important sci fi sitcoms to date. Really paved the way for stuff like Rick and Morty.
I absolutely loved the movie. The plot holes were almost negligable and as a whole it seemed to be.... realistic! This movie is Cast Away meets Gravity meets McGuyver.
"in this terrifying world, all we have is the connections that we make".
☼ a masterpiece ☼
someone: what’s up?
me: thinking about The Korean Gothic Lesbian Revenge Thriller That’s Captivated Cannes
beautiful acting, great directing, astounding writing, i simply love being slapped in the face by plot twists and this was an especially amazing movie because it not only had one twist but two!
i mean i had to take a fukcing step back because that shook me in the best possible way god bless you chan-wook
This wasn't a very funny episode. Most of this was straight up, if occasionally lighthearted, drama. There is something unbelievably sad about seeing someone be both self-destructive and hurtful to the people they care about in the choices they make. From the second BoJack took Penny on a driving lesson, I was convinced they would hook up. It's kind of how television works and he already sort of pulled this trick with Sabrina from Horsin' Around.
But the show convinced me that's not where they were going, and then yes and no and yes and no that by the end of it, I was not only convinced that BoJack and Penny weren't going to hook up, but I was actually proud of BoJack for turning Penny down, not only when he was still fairly right-minded and knew she was feeling weak after the prom, but then again after he was feeling down and vulnerable after being told to leave by Charlotte.
But that just made the finish, where Charlotte finds them about to go at it, all the more horrible and disappointing. The last five minutes or so of the episode, where BoJack and Charlotte seem so close and he seems so happy, transitioning to Charlotte's inevitable realization that it's not good for him to be there, on to the terrible betrayal of finding him in bed with her daughter, was powerful and dark and--to use a word I keep coming back to when talking about this show--devastating.
It's devastating to watch someone burn their own life, their own chances for happiness down. BoJack was never going to get back together with Charlotte. She's right to point out that she doesn't know him anymore, and that BoJack's idealized something as a salvation. She's also right that he's trying to run away from deeper problems when his real issues are internal. But he could have had support. He could have had friendship. He could have had the real connections with other people, albeit platonic ones, that help make a person feel loved and whole. Instead, he not only couldn't sustain that, but he had to sabotage any chance of that with Charlotte and her family, hurt a friend who's shown him nothing but kindness, and try to exorcise the demons of his past with a young woman whom, he admits in his more clear-headed moments, doesn't know what she wants.
It's not comedy. It doesn't have to be. To be frank, a lot of the comedy doesn't really work in this episode. The jokes about Trip's boner are pretty lame. Kyle is basically a non-entity. The sitcom-esque intro to Charlotte's life was just kind of there; the high school drama element is fairly cliche, and really only Maddie's delivery of the word "society" gave me a chuckle. But the character work, and the dramatic elements in the episode's close really carried the day. It's not the last minute gut-punch of my favorite Futurama episodes; it's a core of sadness that runs through BoJack and eventually dissolves into wherever he is and whatever he touches.
It's sad. It's really sad. And the episode's final moment that juxtaposes him with an equally sad Dianne isn't promising for BoJack not making any further bad decisions. But it's still damn good.
for me, this film felt the most like the original series out of the rest in the AOS series! having the crew stranded on an unknown world, separated, and trying to find their way back to each other - nothing feels more 'star trek' to me!
Inception can suck it
Fun fact: The names Frieren, Himmel, Stark, Fern, Eisen, Heitel, and Flamme are words taken from the Scandi and Germanic languages (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and German) which represents their character's traits.
E.g., Fri(eren) is loosely translated as "The Free" or "The Frozen" in German, Himmel is "The Sky", Stark (or Stærk) is "The Strong", Flamme is "The Flame", Eisen is "The Iron", Heitel is "The Cheerful", and Fern can be translated as "The Detached" or Remote.