Julia's Reviews on Various Media

[Juliko]

My first completed review of the new year!

Rating: 75/100

So, let's talk about Hello Kitty! Even if you don't know her name, you've definitely seen her at least once in your life. The official mascot of a company called Sanrio, Hello Kitty is the second most financially successful franchise in human history, only beaten by Pokemon. First created in 1974, Hello Kitty has won many hearts with her cute design and wholesome innocence, and even now, merchandise of her and her family, friends, and cohorts continue to line shelves, as she's one of Japan’s most beloved cultural symbols, an emblem of creativity, community, and yes, cuteness, that has joined the pantheon of global pop culture. But would you believe that it actually took a while for her to start appearing in anime and cartoons? Many think she made her animation debut in the 1987 American cartoon Hello Kitty's Furry Tale Theater, but that's not true. She did make some non-speaking cameos in Sanrio's early movies like Nutcracker Fantasy, the first Unico movie, and Journey Through Fairyland, but her true animation debut was through a rather...odd stop-motion short film called Kitty and Mimmy's New Umbrella, which was bundled with one of the Unico movies for home video.

I say odd because the summary for Kitty and Mimmy's New Umbrella makes it seem like its titular characters are just spending the episode playing with new umbrellas that their mother buys them. That is a good chunk of the movie's plot...but it also happens to come with weird musical sequences involving talking bugs, flying flowers, puddles that transport the girls into the sky, and scenes involving a mole constantly getting stepped on. No, really. This Hello Kitty movie is weird in the same way that Sanrio's other stop motion movie Nutcracker Fantasy is weird, and I mean that in a positive manner. Then again, the two properties have the same staff working on them, which doesn't surprise me one bit. Kitty and Mimmy's New Umbrella is one half Kitty and her sister just playing around, and the other half is eerie, ethereal, almost psychedelic stop motion animated sequences that I'm pretty sure is a result of the animators being self-indulgent and having fun just because they can.

And really, the animation by itself is really good, especially by the standards of the eighties. Sure, the stop-motion isn't Laika level quality, but it does have a lot of charm to it that you can't easily find in most productions like this anymore. The actual animation is fairly smooth, and the musical sequences are lively and whimsical as they should be, even if the sequence with the dancing bugs feels rather superfluous. There's also some neat little details that add to the experience, like how when Kitty cries, her bow randomly disappears and reappears when she makes her cartoony crying face, among other things...though why is there a bell ringing sound whenever their tails wag? There is one point where Kitty and Mimmy read a letter that's written in rather fractured English, complete with Mimmy's name being misspelled. But the set pieces are really nice for what they are, and it's clear that the animators really put a lot of care into bringing these iconic characters to life.

Speaking of the characters, don't go into this movie expecting there to be a lot of character development. This is clearly aimed at toddlers and preschoolers, and the movie just consists of Kitty and Mimmy playing around and having weird adventures involving dancing bugs, that's it. The other characters are just kind of...there, not really doing anything besides sing or take up space. Or in the case of the mole, being stepped on by the girls all the time. Poor guy. One character only appears at the very end of the movie and doesn't do much, but with the film being as short as it is, it can't really afford to do more than it really has to. Yeah, the characters are kind of vanilla, but sometimes vanilla can be good once in a while. The soundtrack and songs are very nice too, as is the voice acting. This is the first time Hello Kitty has ever been given a voice, provided by the late Fuyumi Shiraishi before Megumi Hayashibara would be cemented as her primary voice actress.

For a short movie that marks Hello Kitty's first full appearance in the animated medium, I say Kitty and Mimmy's New Umbrella managed to hit a home run on that front. It's not going to bring the house down, as it's very clearly a cute movie aimed squarely at preschoolers, and it's content to be just that. I certainly don't mind it, as not only is Kitty and Mimmy's New Umbrella a cute, wholesome, whimsical kids movie, it laid the groundwork for Hello Kitty's animated appearances in the future, so Kitty fans owe the movie that much.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on September 15th, 2024. Uuuugh.



Rating: 44/100

Man, why the hell did I ever force myself to watch this trainwreck of a show? One of three anime produced by PA Works for the summer 2024 season, Nanare Hananare, or Narenare for short, is a "cute girls doing cute things" anime focused on...cheerleading? We already had an anime about cheerleading, Anima Yell. Remember that show? I only checked out Narenare because it looked cute, but man do I regret it. I'm not going to mince words here, I haven't seen many anime that PA Works have made, but out of the ones I've seen, Narenare is the worst thing they put out. No, I haven't seen what many consider to be their actual worst work, Glasslip, nor do I want to. Why would I want to subject myself to that disaster? And before anyone says anything, no, I don't have anything against the whole "cute girls doing cute things" genre. There are quite a few shows I like that fit into that bill, but many of my favorites tend to have more to offer than just "hurr-durr, look at these cute anime girls." Narenare is a show that claims it has more to offer than just CGDCT, but every attempt it makes to be something meaningful or interesting completely falls flat and is completely, horribly mediocre.

Normally I'd give a summary of what a show is about, but in the case of Narenare, I'm not quite sure what it's supposed to be about, really. It claims to be about a girl, Kanata, who is struggling with something called yips, resulting in her being booted out of her school's cheerleading team, but then she meets a Brazilian girl who browbeats her and other girls into forming a cheerleading group focusing on making videos for her channel. Actually, Narenare as a show can't seem to figure out just what its end goal is supposed to be. To have the girls be their own cheerleading group? To make some sort of viral video? The whole show feels directionless, like nobody on staff has any real idea of what they want the show to be about, and what few plot points it does focus on only come up when the show itself thinks its convenient. Even the cheerleading in this show just feels like it was thrown in just to give the characters something to do, like "We're cheerleaders, and we're gonna go around cheering on random strangers over really stupid stuff to make them happy, even for something as unnecessary as using eyedrops!" Like...I'm pretty sure that's not how cheerleading works. If some group of girls went around butting into people's business with cheerleading, they'd just be seen as annoying rather than endearing. So not only does Narenare not know how cheerleading works, they try to shoehorn it into literally everything, even when it'd be completely pointless to have it be there.

Furthermore, the characters are little more than one-note moe stereotypes with squeaky voices who never evolve past their main archetype, and even when the show TRIES to develop them, every attempt it makes at doing so completely botches any potential they could have utilized with them. Narenare's biggest problem with handling both its story and characters is that it thinks it's doing a good job at getting you to care about them, but not only do its attempts at developing them come off as shallow and surface-level at best, any kind of arc they get winds up getting resolved in the very next episode. And seriously, the show pulls neat and easy resolutions to literally everything from out of its ass, and does this for EVERY. SINGLE. PLOTLINE. Kanata has yips and can't go back to her cheerleading team? That's fixed by her going to a whole new team and abandoning her old one! A shop that Anna has an emotional attachment to is about to be shut down? Let's have everyone perform a cheerleading routine and have Anna be friends with super famous musicians who conveniently stop by and save it at the very last minute, with a dollop of emotional blackmail and stupidity on top! Kanata is lambasted by everyone for going behind their backs doing solo cheer routines and hurts herself? Let's have Megumi, the local walking-talking inspiration porn, perform a physically daunting cheer routine in the rain and milk as much sympathy from the audience as possible! There is one segment that TRIES to be more dramatic and not have an easy solution, the aforementioned episode about PomPoms cutting back on cheer routines but Kanata doing solo ones without their permission, but not only do the show's staff ignore the more obvious, helpful solution by having everyone talk things out, what Kanata did in the grand scheme of things isn't even all that bad, but everyone around her acts like she committed a fucking murder, devolving into the kind of insipid, ridiculous melodrama you'd find in Elsie Dinsmore.

But its lack of scaffolding, scattershot narrative, and stereotyped characters aren't Narenare's only problems. Take for example the visuals. The animation by itself is fine, though I really don't like how literally every single character has two-toned hair. However, there is one thing about the show's art style that really bogs it down: Who thought it was a good idea to have colored border lines on literally EVERYTHING? Seriously, this makes what should be a normal, pleasant artstyle akin to Aquatope and Sakura Quest look absolutely gaudy and eye-straining. These are used on not just the backgrounds, but the characters, I mean it when I say this is used throughout the entire show, and unfortunately, it's a feature, not a bug. I don't know if this was a deliberate stylistic choice, but it's one that really doesn't work, because it makes everything look radioactive. Seriously, it says a lot when another show PA Works made in this same season, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, looks way better than this and is easier on the eyes due to having regular black outlines on everything. Oh, and do I even need to mention the bad CGI for the cheerleading performances? I have even less to say about the soundtrack, as it's just your usual bland, squeaky J-pop that I'm pretty sure rips off other OSTs from other shows. Speaking of audio, by God is Kanata's voice annoying as hell, especially when she screams.

I'm not going to waste more of my time on this show. Nanare Hananare is dull, annoying, gaudy, cloying, has absolutely no idea what it wants to do with itself, and is pretty much corporate shill that think it's good when it really isn't. PA Works, I know you can do much better than this. How in the world did you manage to mess up a show like this so badly?! It's so easy to fix this show's many mistakes! If you wanted to do a CGDCT show, this is NOT the way to go about it. Seriously, skip Narenare for all it's worth. There are many shows out there that are just way better than this, like A Place Further Than The Universe, Laid-Back Camp, Do It Yourself, Sakura Quest, Shirobako, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, Super Cub, Bocchi The Rock, Girls Band Cry, and so on! Spare yourself the eye-searing inanity that is Narenare.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on December 26th, 2024.

Rating: 94/100

(According to MAL, this is my 600th completed anime!)

Hell yeah, more Natsume Yuujinchou! You guys know by now that I absolutely LOVE this series, and will gladly inject more of it into my veins like heroin any chance I'm able. And finding out that a seventh season of the show was going to be made? You bet your ass I was hyped as hell! Unlike with seasons 5 and 6, where I was deep in anime burnout and didn't get around to watching them until this year, I actually watched season 7 as it aired this time, and am gonna watch the dub when I have the time. All of this was awesome in and of itself, but it was just announced that Bushiroad is making a video game for the series set for consoles such as PC and Nintendo Switch! I hope to God that gets an English translation (And a good one at that!) or a physical release in the US, because I will eat that shit up! Man, we Natsume fans are eating like kings and queens!

Like with my review for seasons 5 and 6, I'm not gonna go into a plot summary, as you already know by now what Natsume Yuujinchou is about. Why belabor the point? The animation and soundtrack are great as ever, a testament to how consistent both have been since the series' inception. There's really not much I can say about them that I haven't already said in my previous reviews of the last six seasons. I do like both the opening and ending songs, which are well sung and do a great job of conveying the series' atmosphere and aesthetic. Like I mentioned in my previous reviews of the series, Natsume as a series has always put a lot of focus on its characters, but it's only recently that it's started doing more with already established ones, like Taki, Nishimura, Kitamoto, and even Natori. Episode 7 reveals that Taki has an older brother (Who honestly looks like he could be her twin) and is focused on his issues regarding his relationship with their grandfather. The episode after that is told entirely from Nishimura's point of view and shows him dealing with a shapeshifting yokai disguising itself as Natsume while examining what their friendship means to them. Remember that mustache yokai with the big head who's always hanging around the Dog Circle? Episode 5 is an entire episode dedicated to him, giving it a surprising amount of character considering he's normally relegated to being the comic relief.

In my opinion, this season's absolute best episode is the second-to-last one, where one prominent character gets some much needed background: Reiko. The series always established her as being a loner who made the Book of Friends, jump-starting the entire plot, but fans like myself have always wondered just how Reiko even started collecting yokai names, or why her modus operandi is challenging them to games or fights. Not only does this episode heavily expand on Reiko as a person and show how a misunderstanding caused her to become the person she was, that single event singlehandedly started Reiko's whole crusade of collecting yokai names and making the Book of Friends. Not only is it an absolute masterclass in terms of writing and character development, it actually made me tear up quite a bit, on par with earlier episodes like Hotaru's episode in season 1, or the episode in season 3 showing how Natsume came to live with the Fujiwaras. Consistency has always been Natsume's strong point, and even after almost two decades, it never lost its subtle touch and "less is more" philosophy. I mean, what other anime can you think of it that manages to make you care about an origami spirit?

If I could name one issue I have with this particular season, it'd be that it didn't follow up on a pretty big reveal at the end of season 6. I won't spoil what that reveal is here, but if you're going to drop a big revelation like that, at least follow up on it! Though this season did make up for it with explaining why Reiko decided to gather youkai names in the first place. Plus, there is going to be another episode bundled with a blu-ray volume that's due to come out this April. But come on, you know me, that's not enough to kill my love affair with this series. I've been a Natsume fan since 2008, and that's not going to change any time soon. Although now I wonder: Is the series ever going to have a definitive end? The manga's been running since 2003, and from what I've researched, there's still some material left to cover should the anime decide to greenlight an eighth season. I'm more than happy to have my fill of more Natsume's Book of Friends, but as much as I adore the series, I don't want it to be one of those series that just goes on and on forever and overstay its welcome, even with the breaks between anime seasons. And again, you can't jump into this season without having seen the previous six, as it continues to build on what those past seasons established, so you'll be lost if you jump into the middle or end.

But I'm not here to be a negative Nancy, and I still love this series all these years later, this season included. If there's ever more Natsume on the horizon, you can bet I'm ready to chow down!

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on January 5th, 2025.

Rating: 81/100

In the year 2000, a man named Kaz Ayabe and his team at the company Millennium Kitchen released an...interesting game for the PlayStation that was unlike anything that had come out before, called Boku no Natsuyasumi. The game was all about a little boy spending his summer in Japan's quiet countryside in the year 1975, and you could do things like explore, catch bugs, go fishing, hang out with family and friends, and so on. It wound up becoming quite popular, and Ayabe-san decided to try his hand at the concept again with Boku no Natsuyasumi 2, for the PlayStation 2. It would go on to outsell the first game and become quite popular in its own right, with two more sequels to follow. Having only just discovered the Boku no Natsuyasumi series thanks to Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid, I actually do want to check out more of Kaz Ayabe's portfolio, as I really enjoyed Natsu-Mon. But the BokuNatsu games have never been released in English, probably for a number of reasons I don't have the time to go into here. Luckily, a group of fans made their own fan translation of BokuNatsu 2, which they released last year, and I got to play it now that I've learned how to set up emulators on my computer. Yeah, I can see why people want the BokuNatsu games to be brought to America, because BokuNatsu 2 is a really cute, wholesome, charming game, even if I feel Natsu-Mon is better.

Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 follows a little boy named Boku (Yes, really), who is sent to live with his relatives, the Arase family, in the seaside town of Fumi for the summer because his mother is in the hospital to prepare for the birth of his new sibling. His uncle Genta and aunt Mitsuko run a popular seaside lodge alongside taking care of their sons, fifth grader Takeshi and first grader Shigeru. Life in the country is very different from the city, but there's always something new to discover, and Boku is more than happy to make the most of his summer vacation, doing all sorts of things like catching bugs, going fishing, watering the morning glories, and getting to know the townsfolk. Similar to both the first BokuNatsu game and Natsu-Mon, there isn't a real objective to pursue, and the game allows you the freedom to do whatever you see fit, although some events are locked behind specific dates, times, and events.

One thing BokuNatsu 2 carries over from the first game is the visual style, which is a juxtaposition of 3D character models against pre-rendered, hand-painted 2D backgrounds, which really give it a unique look. It helps that the backgrounds themselves are beautiful, looking like they came straight out of a Ghibli movie or an episode of Natsume's Book of Friends. The very cartoony, dot-eyed character designs were done by illustrator Mineko Ueda, who never worked on video games before, and her only claim to fame was designing mascot characters for a soap company. The character designs themselves are cute and work well against the backgrounds, but they tend to look proportionally off when they raise their arms in the air, which was present in both this and the first BokuNatsu game. But that's my only real complaint about them. The game itself never cuts corners when it comes to environmental details, such as the bug designs, characters leaving ripples when they run across puddles, or shadows when they're in dark areas like a cave or a part of the house that doesn't get as much sun. Ayabe and his team did an amazing job at truly making this game feel alive on that front.

Gameplay mainly consists of exploring, interacting with objects or people, and a new mechanic that the first game didn't have, swimming and diving. I admit, I had trouble with the controls at first, because BokuNatsu doesn't let you walk if you just press the D-pad or joy stick. You have to press the X button to move, and use the D-pad to change directions. As someone who never grew up playing games that had tank controls, which is the control scheme used in BokuNatsu, it took me a bit to get the hang of them. I actually found swimming to be rather hard to deal with, as the controls for that aren't all that smooth. It doesn't help that early on, you can't stay in the water too long or you'll run out of oxygen and pass out, and in order to increase your oxygen meter, you have to find these things called Jet Cider caps, which are basically soda bottle caps, and the majority of them are in the ocean. Granted, this was the first BokuNatsu game to implement swimming, so it's inevitable that the controls would be rather unwieldy, but if you know what you're doing, you should be fine. If there is one mechanic I really didn't like in this game, it's bug sumo. Like in the first BokuNatsu game, you can pit bugs against each other in fights, but here's the thing: The fights themselves are automatic, and you can't control the bugs' actions. I cheesed a lot of fights by catching a red beetle, but one of the most frustrating things about the bug fighting is that an area of town is only accessible by beating your cousins' strongest bugs, and the requirements for unlocking them, from what I can see, are...really annoying. I couldn't unlock this area in my first playthrough and still haven't. I can't seem to figure out the rules for unlocking it no matter how many walkthroughs I read. I'm so glad Natsu-Mon did away with this mechanic.

However, what BokuNatsu 2 lacks in gameplay polish, it more than manages to make up for with the strength of its characters and their writing. BokuNatsu 2, by and large, is a very quiet, down-to-earth game, and thus, it's lacking in any kind of melodrama. No dark secrets are hiding in the wings and there's no painful love triangles to get caught up in. There are no moments where the characters scream and cry as the music swells in an attempt to drain the audience of their tears. The characters are presented as normal, likeable people who have their own unique quirks, strengths, and weaknesses, but are good-hearted without leaning too hard into being saccharine, sentimental, or too perfect. The kids act like any kid that you'd see in the neighborhood, and Boku encounters plenty of eclectic people who have their own stories and colorful personalities. The characters by themselves are great in that their personalities can't simply be summed up in just one sentence, and their writing is careful to make sure they're as down to earth and relatable as humanly possible, behaving like normal people you'd see walking down the street. The only issue I have with two of the characters is that the whole reason for their conflict is just...ridiculous. I won't spoil it here, but the reason for them not talking to each other for almost a decade is just so overblown and unnecessarily exaggerated. Natsu-Mon had a similar thing involving two characters not talking to one another before reconciling, but their reason for doing so is much more down-to-earth. Thankfully, even that gets resolved if you put in the work to activate the events in question, and the characters involved are still decent people even with that. There are also some characters I wish had been expanded upon more, such as Yasuko's mother and Taniguchi, but that's about it.

Another thing BokuNatsu 2 uses very sparingly is its soundtrack. Music doesn't play a big role in setting BokuNatsu 2's atmosphere, and the only times music plays is when something important happens, like when you unlock a new area or if there's a significant event happening. Or if you're diving to the bottom of the ocean. Then again, BokuNatsu as a series has always made it a point to empathize the sounds of nature, like bugs screeching, trees rustling, or the sound of the waves, all of which really bring the setting to life in ways other games haven't done. The game's theme song (Used as both the opening and ending) is very nice and soothing, and I love the singer's voice. BokuNatsu as a whole prides itself on ambience and relaxation, with a lot of lingering shots of landscapes, buildings, and the backgrounds. Ayabe mentioned in regards to the first game that one of his inspirations for the game and its overall style was the works of Yasujiro Ozu, and having seen a few of Ozu's movies, that makes so much sense. BokuNatsu also succeeds in not cutting corners on its story or setting. Like the first BokuNatsu game, 2 is also set in 1975, complete with referencing various points in history such as World War II or the popularity of Ben Goto's The Prophecies of Nostradamus.

If I had discovered Boku no Natsuyasumi as a kid, I probably wouldn't have given it a second glance because it wasn't Pokemon or Kirby. But as a woman in my thirties whose tastes in games have expanded quite a lot, I wound up finding it thanks to having tried out Natsu-Mon: 20th Century Summer Kid on a whim, and I'm really glad I gave Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 a chance. While I do feel Natsu-Mon is a better, more refined game, I really enjoyed BokuNatsu 2 for what it had to offer. It's a sweet, relaxing, wholesome game that does an amazing job at harkening back to a bygone time in Japan's history, and I would love for it and the rest of the BokuNatsu series to be officially ported to the States in some capacity. I mean, considering we're getting remasters and remakes of games like Another Code, the Lunar series, the Suikoden series, Atelier Marie, Famicom Detective Club, Legend of Heroes: Trails In The Sky, and so on, I think Boku no Natsuyasumi might have a shot at some success in the US since these days, more relaxing, down-to-earth games have become increasingly popular since the Stardew Valley and the onset of the pandemic. Seriously, just check out Boku no Natsuyasumi 2 if you have a PS2 emulator, because it's a cute game that deserves more love!

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on June 2nd, 2024.

Rating: 74/100

Man, Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning has me so conflicted. I've grown up with the series and have a strong attachment to it, even though I do feel Digimon Adventure 02 is one of the weaker seasons for a variety of reasons. I will admit that I've only seen the first two Tri movies and haven't seen the Kizuna movie, mainly because I hear those movies really screw around with the lore that the TV series established, made the cast act really out of character, and didn't treat the 02 cast well. So when it was announced that the 02 kids would get a third movie dedicated to them, Digimon fans were pretty hyped, seeing it as the producers apologizing for how badly they shelved the 02 cast when the Tri movies were being made. But I started to get worried when it was announced that the movie would focus on a new character who is apparently the actual first official DigiDestined. How would that even work? Didn't Tri already do that? But Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning was released into the wild, and...it's better than I expected it to be, and I did enjoy it quite a bit, but it's really held back by really questionable decisions.

After the events of Kizuna, the cast of Digimon Adventure 02—Davis, Yolei, Cody, TK, Kari, and Ken—are going about their lives and following their passions. One day, a gigantic DigiEgg appears at the top of Tokyo Tower, and a mysterious message appears all across the world: "May everyone in the world have friends. May they each have a Digimon." Other than that, it doesn't do anything over the course of the week, so the public considers it pretty harmless. Later, a mysterious man tries to climb Tokyo Tower to make contact with the egg, only to slip and fall. After he's saved by the kids and their Digimon, the man in question, Lui Ohwada (Yes, his name is actually spelled that way), explains that the giant DigiEgg is actually his old partner Digimon, Ukkomon, and that he is apparently the very first human to ever officially partner with a Digimon. The revelations and potential crises that follow will put everyone's relationships with their Digimon to the test, especially since Lui doesn't believe that humans and Digimon can ever truly be friends after what he himself has experienced.

Okay, I'm going to get the positives out of the way first, as I actually did enjoy this movie quite a bit. Way more than I expected considering all that I've heard about both Tri and Kizuna, so don't take this or my rating to mean that I hate this movie, because I don't. Even though 02 isn't one of my favorite seasons, I did enjoy seeing the cast again, and it helps that Davis has become a lot less obnoxious and actually develops in this movie! The animation is great and I really appreciated that ExVeemon and Stingmon's DNA digivolving sequence—which had always been done in 3D in the series—was done in traditional 2D animation here. The music was really nice too, and even though I haven't heard the 02 music much since I haven't seen that season in Japanese yet beyond Hurricane Touchdown, it was used to great effect. And I enjoyed Lui and his story! I liked that The Beginning wasn't about saving the world from getting destroyed by a Saturday morning cartoon villain and that the villain in question isn't even a bad Digimon, just someone who didn't realize why their way of going about things was bad. I loved all of that, I liked Lui's character writing and his backstory, and the psychological and horror themes were also really well done!

Seriously, I want to rate this movie so much higher than I am, so much higher...if it wasn't for the fact that The Beginning seems to be on a mission to completely ignore/retcon every single rule that the first two TV series established in regards to its lore! For one thing, Ukkomon is somehow able to give Lui one of his eyes, and this should not be possible because Digimon are not flesh and blood beings, just packets of data, and if Digimon die in the real world, they cannot be reborn. This was already established with Wizardmon's death in the first Adventure anime! But my biggest beef with The Beginning is that it claims that Ukkomon alone is responsible for not only the creation of Digivices, but the existence of DigiDestined as a whole, which is also not true. One of the episodes of Adventure established that a group of humans created the Crests and Digivices when Homeostasis scanned the data of the children who saw the Greymon/Parrotmon fight years before the events of the series. Hell, there was a group of DigiDestined that came before the Adventure cast, two of which were prominent characters in Tri, yet this movie tries to claim that Lui is somehow the very first DigiDestined, which completely goes against continuity! Like...why ignore the series' most basic lore? Why couldn't Lui just be a regular person who just happened to have problems with his Digimon, like with Willis in the Golden Digimentals movie? Willis didn't need to be made into this super special DigiDestined kid in order for his story to be compelling. Say what you will about Golden Digimentals' own continuity issues, at least you can chalk that up to having different staff from the TV series that didn't realize certain events in the movie would conflict with the TV series. Seriously, the whole movie could have been just Lui asking the 02 kids for help with Ukkomon and it would have been better off.

It sucks that I can't like this movie more than I do, because there is a good story in there that has a lot of potential, but it's completely bogged down by the creators' attempts to completely ignore already established lore and continuity to make Lui more special than he really needs to be. Not to mention poor Angewomon gets completely nerfed and she doesn't get to do anything for the rest of the movie. My only other issue with the movie is with its English dub, which for the most part is good...but who the hell thought it was a good idea to make Robbie Daymond give Armadillomon a voice that makes him sound like Donald Duck?! I don't know if this was their attempt to be more faithful to Armadillomon's Japanese voice, but it really doesn't work here, and I say this as somebody who is a huge fan of Robbie Daymond! It really says a lot when Wayne Grayson of all people somehow manages to do a better take on Armadillomon than this English dub did, and Grayson's only in the recent re-dub of Golden Digimentals! Poor Robbie Daymond, you deserved so much better.

Overall, Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning is an interesting experiment that I actually did enjoy to an extent, but again, its complete lack of interest in respecting its own lore and established continuity results in it being a very flawed experiment at best.

 

[Juliko]

I attempted to start this review on October 25th, 2024, but didn't manage to finish writing it until today.

Rating: 60/100

Okay...who was expecting this? Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is a video game that came out in 2020 and became surprisingly popular. I bought the video game at a random GameStop because it was on sale for cheap, though I haven't gotten around to playing it yet. I really ought to remedy that. But the game was so popular that PA Works decided to adapt it into an anime, which aired from July to September of 2024. Hell, the game was successful enough that there's not only going to be a second anime season, but a whole new sequel game that's currently in production. But this review is just going to be for the anime. I figured I'd watch this as a means to familiarize myself with Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin before playing the game, and...it's alright. I like the anime okay, but like most game-to-screen adaptations, it suffers from the fact that it's a 12-episode anime trying to adapt a game that's 30-50 hours long.

In the far eastern corner of the country of Yanato, it has been believed since ancient times that there are two worlds in this land: the world at the top where the gods live and the world at the foot of the mountain where humans live. Princess Sakuna, a high-ranking deity who lives in the world of the summit, was born to a war god and a fertility god is a spoiled brat who would rather spend her days lazing around and drinking than doing any work herself, wasting the grains her parents had stored like a trust fund kid. One day, due to some strange circumstances involving a group of humans that wandered into the Lofty Realm, she is banished from the city of the gods and sent to Hinoe Island—an isolated island inhabited by demons—accompanied by the humans in question. In a barren land where there is barely enough food for the next day, she cultivates the soil, grows rice, and sets out to defeat the demons. The humans who have stumbled into the world of the gods and the novice fertility god begin their rice-husk-filled communal life together.

As far as its production values go, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin's anime is fine. The backgrounds are detailed, the character designs are faithful to their game counterparts, the fight scenes are well choreographed, and the actual animation is decent. It'd be pretty hard to adapt the game's thick linework and unique style into animation, but for the most part, it does its job well with what it has. Honestly, compared to another PA Works anime, Nanare Hananare, Sakuna's production values are far superior. At least Sakuna doesn't go the route of giving everything and everyone gaudy colored outlines that make everything look radioactive and a literal assault on the eyes. The execution of stuff like that really makes a world of difference in either making or breaking a show. Yeah, I couldn't resist taking the potshot at Narenare. I have even less to say about the soundtrack. It's fine, it does its job, I don't know if it reuses BGM from the games or not, but I did like what was there. I like the ending theme better than the opening theme.

Speaking as someone who hasn't played the game, I'm sad to say that the characters definitely suffer from the transition from game to anime. Honestly, the characters are pretty bland and are only memorable because of their character designs rather than their personalities, and even when they do get development, they stop being relevant after they change a little bit and don't get to do anything anymore. Now, to be fair, it's impossible to compress a several hour long game into a 12-episode anime, so of course a lot would have to be left on the cutting board. But the writing around the characters sometimes feels so haphazard that it feels like they change personalities whenever the plot feels its convenient. For example, at one point, Sakuna finds Kaimaru nursing a demon's injuries, and she gets angry and tries to kill the demon...and seconds later she's like "Nah, I won't kill you after all because I forgive you and don't want to continue the cycle of hatred." Even though beforehand there was nothing that indicated that hatred was even a running plot thread, so it feels less like Sakuna is actually developing as a character and more like the writers putting stuff in her mouth because they wrote themselves into a corner and hastily slapped a random Deus Ex Machina together. Even without knowledge of the game, the characters' development feels really rushed. I like that Sakuna is forced to grow from being a spoiled brat to someone more capable, that's actually one of the anime's strengths, but the other characters are made to be bum rushed through their development, making any growth they receive have less impact. Oh, and the villains are so generic and laughably cliche that I can't even remember their names.

That's not even going into how strange the plot gets, and I don't mean that in a good way. One episode goes into Yui's backstory...and suddenly introduces aliens that come right the hell out of nowhere, contribute absolutely nothing to the narrative, disappear, and nobody so much as comments on it, or they only mention it nonchalantly and move on to the next thing. I'm sure the game goes into it, probably, but the anime treats this whole thing like a Big-Lipped Aligator Moment and makes no effort to actually explain just what the hell these aliens are! Plus, their whole existence just raises a ton of questions that are never answered: Are all the demons on the island just weird aliens? Is the “Lofty Realm” not a divine realm for gods but just some advanced civilization posing as them? Are these places even on the same planet?! You can't dump aliens into my medieval fantasy farming show without some kind of elaboration! This whole bit was just so baffling and out of nowhere that it made me wonder just who the hell thought that was a good idea. Speaking of, the second half of the anime starts to go off the rails as it rushes through important plot points and doesn't really try to give them any real gravitas whatsoever, cutting out important bits from the game for the sake of getting through the story. For example, at one point Sakuna finds out that her friend Kokorowa has been conspiring against her and confronts her about it. The anime just has the two of them talk and it's played for some needless comedy, while in the game, it's a full-on boss fight. There's also all the later reveals about Kaimaru, which just absolutely scream Deus Ex Machina, and they're just as bad as they sound. Also, the anime has a pretty huge continuity error that I'm surprised nobody caught: One episode states that it takes three years for Sakuna and her friends to rebuild their destroyed home and fields...yet the characters are never shown physically aging. For Sakuna this makes sense since she's a goddess, but everyone else is human, and you'd think they'd physically grow up a bit, with their designs changing over the course of those three years, but nope, they look and stay the same, even Kaimaru, a toddler. Like...what? How did this get past quality control?

In the end, Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, for all its effort, is yet another addition to the pile of middling to bad video game adaptations that don't manage to do its source material justice. That said, it did get me curious about the game, so it's got that going for it. But I recommend skipping this one, especially if you like the game in question. It's still better than the incoherent mess that is Nanare Hananare!

 

[Juliko]

Hey, some more short reviews on books I've read!

Sit, Stay, Love by J. J. Howard
Rating: 5/10
Not as boring or ham-fisted as the author's previous book Pugs and Kisses, but it's still pretty boring and bland. Girl wants a dog, dog gets adopted by boy who she thinks is arrogant even though he's nothing like that, and stuff happens until girl gets rewarded with dog she wants. The main character Cecilia is pretty judgmental and self-important and while she does change over the course of the book, I just found her arc to be predictable. All the other characters are stock stereotypes, with Cecilia's aunt being the most one-dimensional in that she's the judgmental rich aunt who does nothing but gripe at Cecilia over everything. I'd skip this one, if only because it's boring and cliche.

Walkin' The Dog by Chris Lynch
Rating: 2/10
Good lord. What should have been a cute story about a kid making friends through starting a dog walking business is completely botched by both the pretentious writing style and its utterly stiff, nonsensical dialogue. Seriously, everyone talks really weird, the kids don't talk like kids their age should, and the prose is really stiff, disjointed, and lifeless. It's like the whole book was written by ChatGPT or something. As a result, there's no cohesive flow to literally everything, from scene transitions to conversations between the characters, what little plot there is makes no sense, and it made it really hard to care about the characters. Man, this book is a great example of how terrible prose and dialogue can utterly ruin a good story.

Heartwood Hotel: A True Home by Kallie George
Rating: 7/10
Eh, this was cute. Definitely a children's book, what with how simplistic both its story, characters, and prose are. This was pretty predictable, and all the plot beats and character beats went exactly as you think they would. But I did enjoy reading it, and from what I hear this is the first book in a whole series. I might read later books if I feel like it, but I don't know when that'll be.

 

[Juliko]

Just finished this review today. God, why did I waste my time on this?

Rating: 51/100

Oh, Trapezium, you could have been a much better movie. Trapezium is based on a 2018 novel by former Nogizaka46 member Kazumi Takayama, about a young girl, Yu Azuma, who wants to become an idol so much that she decides to manipulate three girls from different schools into being her friends and making an idol group. Now, the fact that the original story was penned by a former idol does give the movie a lot of necessary context for its background, premise, and overall approach, with her experiences influencing the story quite a bit, especially in regards to how Yu, the main character, drives the entire plot. It also raises the question of what kind of behind-the-scenes behavior Takayama may have witnessed during her idol tenure. On the whole, Trapezium as a movie is really compelling in that it doesn't go for the tried and true method of selling you on how great idols are and going for an uplifting story. Instead, Trapezium explores both the good and bad of the idol industry and how it can both positively and negatively affect the people in and out of it. It even takes a huge risk by having its protagonist be unlikeable and even a manipulative little brat, which you don't often see in most anime. On one hand, this is a ballsy movie, and I respect the movie for going against the grain.

Unfortunately, on the other hand, its whole scaffolding completely falls apart at the end, completely ruining what it had established, reducing it into just yet another idol movie that plays it safe. But before I go into detail on this, I'm going to talk about the positives first, as I don't want to be a purely Negative Nancy. Being a movie, the animation budget is put to good use here, and is beautifully grounded. Characters move like real human beings, CGI is used sparingly, the backgrounds are detailed but not cluttered, and the character designs are a nice mix of realistic and the moe art style without leaning too hard on the latter. The music is nice too, though I really have to question why the movie needed a whole-ass anime opening sequence. Like, was that even necessary? Furthermore, out of the four girls, I liked Kurumi the most, because not only was she the most relatable and interesting, the movie does a great job at selling you on her plight, though that's not to say the other girls are poorly characterized.

Plus, for 90% of the movie, Trapezium's exploration of the idol industry and how it metaphorically uses and abuses idols is interesting and compelling. A large portion of it focuses more on the journey to getting there, such as how most idols get exposure through comedic variety shows. Unlike most idol anime, Trapezium doesn't put as much focus on music and dancing, but the snippets of it we do get do their job and don't overstay their welcome. I actually think it does a better job at exploring the perils of the idol/entertainment industry than Oshi no Ko, if only because the latter's take on it feels more performative and tactless in that it's more interested in shock value and easy solutions than actually doing anything meaningful. Yeah, I said it, I don't like Oshi no Ko. Sadly, this is all the praise I have for Trapezium as a movie, because like I mentioned earlier, its ending completely ruins it.

What do I mean? Yu, the story's main character, is both Trapezium's greatest asset and biggest weakness. From here on, I'm going to go into a ton of spoilers because I can't adequately explain my thoughts on the movie without doing so, as the context is really important.

Spoiler: Spoilers

The story is about her recruiting three girls into forming an idol group with her through extremely underhanded, manipulative tactics, made apparent during Mika's segment. Mika is a girl who loves doing volunteer work because she loves helping people, not doing it to boost her ego or for ulterior motives. Yu only sees doing volunteer work as a tool to get the girls on TV, seeing it as performative and a stepping stone to success. In that same scene, Yu balks at the idea of being in a separate group from two of the other girls, and spends the whole sequence being a spoiled brat about it, which, on one hand, is a great set-up for the drama that comes later because it establishes her self-centered nature, and her selfishness and hubris ultimately proves to be the group's undoing. In one scene, when Mika is revealed to have a boyfriend, Yu acts like a total bitch to her, showing a disturbing lack of empathy for her situation, which the other girls are similarly appalled by. Yu loves being in the spotlight, whereas Kurumi doesn't, and at one point, Kurumi has a full-on meltdown because she can't handle both being on TV and the stringent expectations idols are expected to uphold, which results in the girls falling out and disbanding.

Normally, drama like this is great, because the movie shows how Yu's manipulative nature, lack of empathy, and using people for her own ends causes problems for everyone, and the scenes where she's made to face the consequences of her actions are a great culmination to her arc. Her drive to become an idol resulted in her exploiting the other girls and giving them a big helping of psychological trauma. However, the thing that completely ruins the movie for me is how it decides to wrap things up. Even after all that Yu has done to them, the movie decides to have them all suddenly become friends again, with them even praising Yu for bringing them together in the first place. Sure, let's completely ignore the fact that Yu basically used them and gave Kurumi psychological trauma, she feels bad about it, so it's okay! I'm sorry, but no, Yu should not have been forgiven. The ramifications of her actions should have been far bigger than the movie actually showed. Kurumi wouldn't have had her breakdown if Yu hadn't dragged her into idolatry in the first place and forced her into a position that she wasn't comfortable with, and the damage this could do in real life would probably be irreparable. The other girls have every right to not want anything to do with Yu after all the shit she pulled on them, Kurumi especially, because Yu is responsible for all of their suffering...and yet the movie wants to sweep all that under the rug in favor of wrapping things up in an overly saccharine, cheesy, mealymouthed ending where everything is all hunky-dory and the girls are still friends? Fuck that! If I was in Kurumi, Ranko, and Mika's positions, I'd completely drop Yu as a friend because I would not want to be anywhere near the person who caused the level of suffering that she put them through! I feel like a better ending for the movie would have been if the girls stopped being friends, just went their own ways in life, and Yu would have to live with the fact that she made the girls suffer because of her selfishness. It would have not only accentuated the movie's themes of how exploitative and stringent the idol industry can be, it would have added another layer in that not everyone comes out of the idol industry unscathed. The logic behind this movie's decisions at the end just baffle me.

But not committing to its premise isn't the only problem it has. For one thing, how the hell is Yu able to get away with getting into different schools, while in uniform, without getting kicked out? Shouldn't a staff member or security guard have spotted her and made her leave? Plus, Trapezium's pacing is rather rushed, especially in the beginning. Yu tracks down the girls she wants to manipulate/recruit, talks to them for a bit, and then boom, suddenly they're buddy-buddy, which totally isn't inorganic and suspicious in any way whatsoever. Not to mention a lot of plot beats are just summarized by voice over narration rather than actually being shown, because fuck meaningful character development and showing over telling, am I right? Also, who the hell thought it was a good idea to have two elderly men be voiced by women?! I'm not even exaggerating, there's two old men who are VERY CLEARLY voiced by women who are trying to make their voices sound elderly and failing miserably at it, because not only is it completely obvious that their voices are female, they can't even manage to sound convincingly elderly, especially since they're trying to play men. Like, how hard was it to get more than one elderly male voice actor to voice an elderly man? I mean, Akio Ohtsuka, Kazuhiko Inoue, Kazuhiro Yamaji, and Yoku Shioya are still working! Why not hire them to do it?! It's better than forcing two women to play a role that they're clearly unable to pull off!

Bottom line, Trapezium had an interesting premise but completely botched it by choosing to suddenly play it safe at the very end, ruining what came before. It could have been a great movie had it gone all in on what it wanted to do, but instead tripped over itself for the sake of wanting a sloppy happy ending. I wouldn't recommend this one, even for fans of idol anime. If you do plan on watching it though, don't watch it on Crunchyroll. For some reason, the audio mixing on that version is atrocious. Like, the volume level is so low, I have to turn up the volume to the highest level and it's still hard to hear anything, whether it be a PC or a TV! Just wait for the Japanese blu-ray to come out or something.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on February 3rd, 2025.

Rating: 87/100

Unlike most people I know, I never played the Persona games, and that was because I never owned anything besides Nintendo handheld consoles until I started working. I never got a PS4 until 2021, and I only made my parents get me that for my birthday so I could play Tales of Arise. My main exposure to Atlus as a company was mainly through the Etrian Odyssey games, and I only played those in 2020 to get through the pandemic. But the sheer success of Persona 5 catapulted Atlus to unprecedented global fame and acclaim, so much so that some Persona staff decided to try their hand at making their own studio, along with a brand new game. It was announced back in 2017 alongside Shin Megami Tensei V, but new information on it wouldn't come out until June 2023, and a demo was dropped at the beginning of October 2024. The game in question, Metaphor: ReFantazio, released less than two weeks later. I didn't think I'd be able to own the game physically, as I only own a PS4 and can't afford a PS5...until I found out the Japanese PS4 version of the game actually has English audio. I ordered it off AmiAmi as soon as I found out I could. Metaphor: ReFantazio has received massive acclaim since its release, selling a million copies in one day, becoming Atlus' highest selling title ever, even winning three awards at the Game Awards. After playing it myself, yeah, it absolutely earned the awards and praise it got. Metaphor: ReFantazio is a fantastic game that people need to play at least once.

The United Kingdom of Euchronia and its many tribes of diverse races have been thrown into chaos. The king has been assassinated, leaders of the Military and the Sanctist Church vie to fill the void of power, and the crown prince has been locked away in hiding after being put under a sleeping curse. Suddenly, the cracked stone visage of the dead king appears in the sky and announces that a new king will be chosen through a strange ritual of rite and rallying, where the true desires of the kingdom's citizens will be gleaned to determine the inheritor to the throne. In an effort to save the prince from his curse and restore order to the land, an Elda boy and his faerie companion, Gallica, have been tasked with teaming up with wanderers and warriors from Euchronia's tribes and climbing the ranks of the king's tournament. Not only that, but they have been granted access to the mysterious powers of the Archetypes, spirits of mythical warriors from the stories of legend, and their new fantastical abilities might be their only hope at winning the throne.

It's easy to see that Studio Zero leveraged all of their artistic skills and the experience they accummulated over the years to make Metaphor: ReFantazio look as great as possible. Is it any wonder it managed to win Best Art Direction at the Game Awards? The fantasy world you explore is absolutely gorgeous, with a whole litany of painterly landscapes and biomes to explore. The whole of Euchronia feels like a Western fairy tale being filtered through the fractured lens of a dozen different shifting interpretations all at once. Since the game is mainly a road trip plot that requires you to travel all across the continent, there's a lot to see, though the plot's urgency and time limits make it so that you can't stay in one place for very long. Not to mention the monster designs are ripped straight from the nightmarish bowels of Hieronymous Bosch's paintings, if you want to eat your fill of surreal horror imagery. Even the menu screens are given a stylish, painterly flair that make interacting with them a real treat without sacrificing readability or utility, not to mention the beautifully animated 2D cutscenes and character sprites that are full of personality and detail. Granted, this doesn't quite translate to graphical strength, with the game having quite a bit of aliasing at times. I played this on my PS4, and the game on that format does suffer from a few frame rate dips and stuttering, usually during transitions when you're traveling from one part of town to another, but other than that, Metaphor runs fine.

Similarly to Persona, Metaphor opts for turn-based gameplay where you have the characters channel Archetypes, which are basically job classes, and the main objective of battles is to target enemy weaknesses. Metaphor encourages you to mess around with every Archetype and upgrade them. Not only do you learn new abilities every time you level them up, but Metaphor adds some additional incentive in that even if you max out an Archetype's level, if you continue using it, you receive magla, which is this game's equivalent of job points. You can also unlock new Archetypes by going through the characters' bond ranks, which are Metaphor's equivalent of Persona's Social Links. Outside of battles, the game hinges on you meeting deadlines or completing important events under strict time limits, so there's a lot of time management involved. Luckily, Metaphor gives you a lot to do, such as increasing your royal virtues (The equivalent of personality traits, some of which are important for progressing bond ranks), side quests, optional dungeons, activities on your Gauntlet Runner (this series' main mode of transportation) which can increase one of your stats, bond ranks, and so on. As someone who's never played any Persona games before this, I found the time management aspect of Metaphor to be pretty doable.

Throughout your adventure, you will be treated to the sounds of Shoji Meguro's soundtrack, which is very different than anything you've heard in a Persona game. Again, as someone who's never heard his work before this, I was hooked from the first opening theme. From the light, airy tribal music that plays when you're in Virga Island to the sweeping, epic, orchestras backed by Buddhist chanting done by an actual Buddhist monk, this soundtrack absolutely slaps. Not one piece of music felt out of place, and a lot of the BGMs wouldn't feel out of place in something like, say, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End. Hell, Warriors In Arms is such an absolute bop that I would deliberately initiate battle with enemies without getting the first hit on them just to hear it as much as possible. On the subject of audio, I also really want to talk about the voice acting, mainly the English dub as I played that first. It's pretty common to hear American voice actors in video game dubbing, which isn't a bad thing, and from what I've heard, Atlus' dubs for their games have ranged from good to fantastic. Like with everything else, Atlus decided to outdo themselves with Metaphor: ReFantazio's dub by hiring a whole litany of British voice actors with many different accents from all across Europe, many of whom have never done voice acting before this, and it absolutely rules. Seriously, all of the performances in the English dub are utterly fantastic, with tight scripting that never feels clunky or overwrought, and the voice cast consists of almost entirely of unknowns or people who don’t usually work in anime, which I think always adds a really interesting texture to the vocal performances. I never would have heard of people like Stewart Clarke, Philippe Spall, David Monteith, Joseph Tweedale, Kristin Atherton, and so much more had I not played Metaphor, but hot damn, after this, I want to hear more of them, especially Stewart Clarke and Joseph Tweedale! There's been a push for more games with British voice acting, and I'm always happy to see more new talent on the dubbing scene. Oh, and between this and Pokemon Horizons, Alejandra Reynoso is really making a name for herself, and I'm so glad she's getting into the spotlight because she is a joy to listen to. The British cast also introduced me to a lot of British slang and colloquialisms that I never would have heard of before this, such as cannae, dinnae, winnae, shite, bally, knackered, belt up, and the context clues absolutely helped with figuring out what they meant.

Man, all this praise for Metaphor and I haven't even gotten to the actual characters yet! I loved following the main ensemble on their adventures throughout Euchronia, and found them to be a believable, loveable cast with great chemistry between them. Their bond ranks also expand on them and develop them further, making them feel like people with their own goals, strengths, weaknesses, and idiosyncrasies. I would die for Strohl, Heismay, and Maria in particular. It helps that the characters in question are adults and that Metaphor as a game avoids a lot of the more stereotypical anime tropes that did plague some of the Persona games, like sexual fanservice and hot spring pervert antics. This also applies to the different fantasy races that populate Euchronia. Trying to tackle themes of racism and oppression in the realm of fiction is tough, because you have to be really careful to not reduce made-up fantasy races to just stereotypes or draw problematic one-to-one parallels to real world minorities, where “X-tribe equals X-country-from-Earth” or you run the risk of coming off as tone deaf. Luckily, Metaphor doesn't take the cheap way out and actually takes great pains to present the different races as human and complex, managing to echo the tribal conflicts and political strife that real-world cultures endure without falling into the pitfalls I mentioned above. Plenty of side characters you run into throughout the game have their own fun, interesting personalities that reflect this, though admittedly, some don't get as much to do as others (Poor Lina. I wanted to see more of her, and not just because of her cute design). Also, Louis is a fantastic villain who manages to carry the game on his back, and I'm glad Metaphor both manages to make him have feasible, understandable reasons for his whole campaign and not excuse his villainy. Though honestly, in light of current events, having him be a cliche Saturday morning cartoon villain would probably be more prophetic and topical, though I'm glad Atlus didn't go that route, relevant as it would be.

Any criticisms I have for the game are few in number, and fairly small. The overall story, while complex and interesting, does start to get predictable near the end, and there's one scene in that same area that doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you think about it. Secondly, there is one character who I feel was given way too much sympathy in light of her numerous crimes, though I do appreciate that the game forces you into that dilemma and makes you analyze and think about it. Shame that media literacy these days is at an all time low. Thirdly, while I adore Gallica as a character and will defend her to my dying breath, the game gives her the really bad habit of constantly stating the obvious during battle and with no way to turn off her constant talking. I'll still take her over Morgana any day of the week. Like I mentioned before, some side characters don't appear or get fleshed out as much as they should have. Also, don't expect this to be a short game, because Metaphor is looooong. It'll take up a LOT of your time. I personally put about 75 or so hours into Metaphor alone, so you better have a lot of spare time to sink into this. I personally loved sinking so much time into the game, but I know not many have that same luxury.

Overall, Metaphor: ReFantazio isn't just a great game on its own, but the culmination of all of Atlus' experience. Metaphor absolutely deserves all the praise and acclaim it gets, and if it opens doors for more new stuff from Atlus, then that's all the better. In my opinion, this is one of the best games that Atlus has ever made, and I honestly can't wait to see what Studio Zero has in store next! It's going to be hard to top Metaphor: ReFantazio's quality. I really hope this game becomes a revered classic that's remembered decades later in the vein that Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and Tales of Symphonia are, because Metaphor: ReFantazio absolutely deserves to stand among them!

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on March 10th, 2025.

Rating: 81/100

Man, where are all these Korean comics and webcomics coming from? In years past, they were pretty hard to find, and the only one I knew about was The 11th Cat, but now they're practically everywhere, and many of them are full color long strip webcomics with a lot of empty space between panels, called webtoons, that are gaining as much popularity as anime and manga are. I have read a couple of webtoons by now, such as The Monster Duchess and the Contract Princess and Bloody Sweet, but I admit, the long strip format is a little hard for me to handle. That said, there was one webtoon that caught my interest right away, Hyeon A Cho's Your Letter, and I only learned about it because Yen Press announced they had licensed it via their Ize Press label. The premise seemed interesting, it's short, and it was going to be made into a regular comic book format. I did find out that there was an already existing fan translation of the long strip version beforehand, so I decided to read it and see if it was any good before buying it. Man am I glad I did, because Your Letter is a really cute, heartwarming manhwa that I wholeheartedly recommend to everyone.

Middle schooler Sori Lee is going through a rough time. An attempt to stand up to bullies harassing her friend goes awry, resulting in Sori being bullied, ostracized, and targeted instead. Her school life has been a living hell since. When the friend she stood up for transfers schools, Sori decides she's had enough of school and decides to do the same. But even after transferring, Sori can't help but feel like nothing has changed...until she finds a mysterious letter taped underneath her desk. This discovery leads to her on a scavenger hunt that she never could have imagined. Sori follows the trail of clues to try and uncover the identity of her benefactor. As she does so, she ends up befriending Dongsoon Park, a quiet and broody schoolmate who seems to be intimately connected to the one who left her the letters. With Dongsoon at her side helping her collect the rest of the letters, she is able to not only explore this new school but meet new people easier and find new curious and fantastical sights around her. The previously sullen and emotionally beaten girl starts opening up more and more with each new letter she finds as she is reminded why kindness is perhaps the best weapon against a heartless world.

As someone who has read very few manhwa and webtoons, the art style for this one was definitely a highlight, with subdued, down-to-earth character designs against beautifully colored backgrounds. Hyeon A Cho really has a knack for visual storytelling, with masterful use of composition, coloring, and split panels and pages. The coloring is also used to reflect a character's mental state in some scenes, such as one spread showing Sori walking in her classroom shown in two different ways: One in her new school, where she's nervous, looking down, and the colors are bright, and one in her old school, where she's defiantly holding her head high and fists clenched, with the other characters being faceless and sporting evil grins as they laugh at her in a darkened classroom. One other scene I liked is where she's offered tea by the school's security officer, one panel shows her drinking it as she's colored blue, the next one shows her turning pink as she revels in how delicious the tea is. This is the kind of visual storytelling I'm really into, not to mention Hyeon A Cho's usage of subtle facial expressions and lighting. Furthermore, even in book format, Your Letter's paneling is easy to follow and flows well, and in my opinion it reads better in this regular comic book style as opposed to the long strip format, though that's just me.

The manhwa follows three characters total, though one of them isn't even really present in the story, and since Your Letter is only ten chapters long, it really needs to deliver on its characterization in that short amount of time. Thankfully, Your Letter manages to do that with Sori and Dongsoon quite well. They're not the most three-dimensional duo I've seen, but the development they do get delivers quite nicely, and fits the themes the story is trying to convey, and I appreciate that Hoyeon is a constant presence throughout before his connection to both characters is officially revealed. I do think Sori's name is funny, especially since it sounds just like the word sorry. I do feel the story could have benefited from showing what the characters are like outside of school, and since Your Letter is so short, it doesn't have the luxury of meandering or fleshing out its side characters, such as Ji-Min or the trio of kids Sori befriends later on. There is one thing about Dongsoon that I didn't like, but that's a spoiler, and it's not a huge dealbreaker. Your Letter also mentions that both Sori and another character have health issues, but doesn't elaborate on them beyond showing them in the hospital at times. There's also a random supernatural bit that just occurs without any real explanation, even though 99% of the story doesn't have anything like it.

So yeah, other than those complaints, I can wholeheartedly recommend Your Letter without hesitation, not just as a great manhwa overall, but it might even be a good way to introduce someone to manhwa or Korean comics in general. It's a sweet, hopeful tale of healing, friendship, and the value in kindness in a cruel world that doesn't feel saccharine or trite. Hell, I'm only just now finding out it was adapted into an animated movie not too long ago. I hope that gets brought to the US in some capacity, or even fansubbed, because I'd totally watch it! Get on that, GKids or Discotek! Whether in book format or its original long strip version, check out Your Letter if you want a short, sweet read that won't take up too much of your time.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on January 7th, 2025.

Rating: 70/100

In 1998, after the release of One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e in Japan, the staff responsible for making the game decided to leave Nexton in favor of a company that would give them more freedom. That company was Visual Arts, where on July 21st, 1998, said staff would form the company Key under Visual Arts' banner. A year later, Key would put out their very first visual novel that they made themselves, called Kanon. The original visual novel was a huge success when it first came out in 1999, as it was the first 18+ game (or one of them, probably) to prove that a visual novel that focused more on plot than porn (While still having the latter) could be commercially viable. At one point it was the second highest-selling PC game in Japan, even staying in the national top 50 several times afterwards. Granted, nowadays it's seen as nothing special, as later games such as Clannad and Little Busters would improve on everything Kanon started and receive more acclaim, but those games wouldn't be here if not for Kanon. But even with its fame and significance in the visual novel community, Kanon had never gotten an official English translation. There were fanmade ones, sure, and a majority of Key's titles have been brought to the US since 2015, but Kanon wasn't among them. Many thought that it would never get a legal English localization because of its dated visuals and therefore didn't look as nice as later games. A remake seemed out of the cards since Key isn't known for just remaking their games from the ground up unlike other companies, so it seemed like Kanon would never officially come to the US in any capacity and be left in the darkness forever.

OR WAS IT?!

Against all the odds, in May of 2024, Key announced that an official English translation of Kanon would be released on Steam on June 4th. Not only that, the existing Switch port would receive a patch implementing English and Chinese translations, which would officially come out on December 5th. Seriously, was ANYONE expecting this?! I know I sure wasn't, and I don't think the visual novel community was expecting it either. But with this, we're that much closer for seeing official English releases of all of Key's games, and hopefully Air will come next. But what's Kanon actually about, you're probably asking. High school student Yuuichi Aizawa used to visit his aunt Akiko Minase and her daughter, his cousin Nayuki, in their quiet little town every holiday, but one year something happened and he left for seven years. When he transfers to Nayuki's high school, his memories of that time remain a blur. Upon his return he encounters a number of mysterious girls from his past who all need his help. Energetic taiyaki thief Ayu Tsukimiya is searching for a precious lost item she cannot describe. Quiet and serious Mai Kawasumi hunts demons in the school after dark. The childish tsundere Makoto Sawatari suffers from amnesia and has no place to go. Elegant, demure Shiori Misaka is estranged from her sister and never present at school due to a sickness. Finally, there's Nayuki, perpetually sleepy and cheery yet weighed down by rejection and tragedy. Yuuichi resolves to help them, but as he gets involved in their affairs, he discovers that there is far more to the girls than meets the eye. Mystical happenings lie hidden in this strange town, tied to Yuuichi's forgotten past. In assisting the girls with their problems, Yuuichi must face his lost memories. What happened seven years ago, and why can't he remember any of it?

I've made mention multiple times that I've never had a problem with Itaru Hinoue's over-the-top moe art style, and she's vastly improved since her first go-arounds with the VNs she worked on with Tactics/Nexton. That said, I will say that I prefer her later art styles, and even the style she used for the original One: Kagayaku Kisetsu e as opposed to the one she uses for Kanon. The characters' eyes are big and cover the majority of their faces, that's a no-brainer, though here they make the girls look a bit more...bug-eyed or alien. It's easier to see if you compare screenshots from the game to later promotional artwork. But honestly, I have more issue with the general anatomy of the characters sometimes. There's one CG where the perspective on Nayuki's face looks really off, and one CG featuring Mai in her ballroom dress has her looking towards the camera, but one of her boobs is angled in such a way that it looks like its sandwiched over the other one. These moments aren't all that common, thankfully, and even by the standards of the nineties, the overall artwork and art direction is solid, from the backgrounds to the CGs. There are a lot of little details in the backgrounds, like in Makoto's route where she's actually shown sleeping in Yuuichi's bed, but she's far in the background as opposed to being in the forefront. So what the art direction lacks in polish, it manages to make up for in charm and character. The soundtrack is nice too...though I will admit, as someone who never heard the ending theme in full until last year, I was NOT expecting it to have a rap component...and I also admit that I don't like said rap because it consists of really bad English.

Remember how I mentioned in my review for the Air visual novel that the anime adaptation got rid of a lot of the more problematic aspects of some characters, thereby improving on them? Kanon is another case of this. Now, their overall characterizations are unchanged from the game, with the exception of one: Yuuichi. In the game, he's much more smug and cynical, even rather mean, which the anime removed while keeping his sassy and sarcastic personality. I think this was for the better, because some of Yuuichi's actions in some routes run the gamut of being mean-spirited, as there's one point where he straight up takes Ayu's bag of taiyaki and throws it into the snow for no reason. Dude, the hell? And at one point in Mai's route, you're presented with a scene where one of the choices involves...touching Mai's boobs. Yeah, no. Anyone who talks to me at all knows I hate that so much, and I'm glad that here it's an optional choice you can avoid. I will say this though: Even in light of all that, Yuuichi is vastly improved from the piece of human garbage that was Kouhei Orihara from One. What, I wasn't going to miss a chance to take a potshot at Kouhei Orihara. Any chance I can find to dunk on Kouhei Orihara, I will.

As for the other characters, the girls are...still rather stereotypically moe even with their backstories, with the writers trying way too hard to force them to be cute, and it doesn't work. One thing I think the anime improved upon was Sayuri's characterization. The game and anime's depictions of Sayuri confronting the student council about Mai's actions at the school ball are very different. In the game, Sayuri is surprisingly naive in that she knows the student council doesn't like Mai, yet she still tries to convince Kuze to rescind Mai's expulsion and thinks everything will be hunky-dory, which ends about as well as you'd expect. In the anime, Sayuri shows no such naivete and calls out the student council for their antagonism of Mai, pointing out the discrepancies in what happened that night. I also appreciate that the anime gave Kitagawa more to do, including having him successfully cover for Mai and making him more than just a put-upon butt monkey. In this house we stan Kitagawa. That said, I forgot to mention this in my review of the anime, but if I had one complaint: Akiko is way too blase and permissive for her own good. Seriously, why is this woman okay with some kid doing stuff like setting off fireworks in the middle of the night and filling a bath tub full of miso? If I did stuff like that, my parents would ground me forever. Akiko feels more like a fantasy of a mother who will unconditionally love you no matter what and never get mad rather than a three-dimensional person. The only time in the game she ever shows any emotion besides blase happiness is at the end of Makoto's route, that's it. Granted, later games would get better in terms of character writing and improve on what Kanon started, so there you go.

There is one thing I can say Kanon managed to do right, and it's that none of its routes feel bloated. What I mean when I say this is that in my previous reviews of Air and One, I mentioned how there were parts of those games that went on for way too long, either feeling like filler shoved in for the sake of dragging the game out or repeating previously established information over and over, like the writers don't trust the audience to remember what happened previously. Luckily, Kanon doesn't have this problem, and every route's pacing is tight yet leisurely. Even scenes where it seems like nothing is happening is either called out as such (Usually by Kitagawa or Kaori) or lampshaded. Also, unlike Key's later games, Kanon doesn't have a true route to unlock, though since Ayu is the poster girl for the game, she's technically the main heroine by default. Plus, repeating my points from my review of the anime, I feel Makoto's route was the best out of them, and the air of mystery was also pretty well-executed, along with all the other positives I mentioned earlier. I do feel Makoto, Shiori, and Ayu's routes were the strongest out of them, in that order, and feel Nayuki's is the...least good, though that's mainly because I don't like the idea of romance between cousins. Y'know, incest and all. Ew.

So yeah, Kanon as a game is fine. It may have set the world on fire once upon a time, but nowadays it's considered just a nice little time capsule that laid the groundwork for Key's later games, and if not for its existence, we wouldn't have stuff like Clannad and Little Busters. I'm glad to have finally gotten the chance to play Kanon in its original form (And I don't mean the 18+ version. I'm perfectly happy not having to look at sex scenes involving minors, thanks), even if I think other games and even other visual novels are better. However, before I end the review, I would like to pass on a warning: For anybody who is even remotely interested in playing this game, DO NOT BUY IT OFF OF ANY ESHOP THAT'S NOT JAPAN'S. Apparently, the Western release of Kanon has been subject to...quite a lot of alterations and censorship, for reasons unknown. A simplified list of what's been cut out can be found here, and...good lord. I have no idea who thought doing this was a good idea, especially since the version that's been translated is already censored from the original 18+ release. There hasn't been any concrete reason given as to why this is happening, though Kanon isn't the only game to have gotten this treatment. English Switch ports of the Neptunia trilogy and the recent Death End Re;Quest game were both cancelled for Western release, and apparently Nintendo of America has updated their guidelines to become much more strict in regards to content regulations, even though they were previously rather lax before. There's also some weird debacle going on with Visa and Mastercard banning purchases of any kind of 18+ content in Japan, with visual novels being the most affected. Again, there hasn't been an official, concrete reason given for why Kanon has been subject to this...frankly 1950s Comics Code Authority level of censorship. THAT SAID, there is a way to play an unaltered English translation of Kanon. Three ways, in fact: Getting it off Steam, buying it off the Japanese eShop, or just buying a physical Switch cartridge. I can confirm that those versions of Kanon have not been subject to censorship, so if you ever plan on buying or playing an English version of the game in any way, you have those three alternatives if you want the authentic experience with it.

 

[Juliko]

This review was started on January 19th, 2023, but not finished until a few months ago.

(Yeah, I'm using a random Korean poster for the series I found on the net, because honestly, it looks amazing)

Rating: 90/100

I've already mentioned my history with Anne of Green Gables in my previous reviews of both the books and the Before Green Gables anime, so I won't repeat myself here. But I will gladly go on and on about how much I love the World Masterpiece Theater and their adaptations of various Western children's literature every chance I get. Several of my favorite anime come from there, and sure enough, Anne of Green Gables was one of many books that Japan decided to adapt into an anime in the year 1979. Anne as a series actually has quite the history when it came to being brought to Japan, which this article here goes into great detail about. Not only that, famous anime director Isao Takahata was head director of the series, with Hayao Miyazaki doing layouts and scene designs for a good chunk of episodes and animated the opening sequence. If you're interested in a deep-dive history behind the anime's production, I highly recommend you read this article about Anne on AnimeTudes. There's a lot of interesting things in there, such as why anime Anne looks the way she does, behind the scenes woes, and additional history on why Anne as a character was so fascinating to a Japanese audience. Anne of Green Gables has had many adaptations across its lifetime, from the earliest movies, the 1979 anime, the famous 1985 Ken Sullivan mini series starring Megan Follows, Netflix's Anne With an E, and a new trilogy of films from 2016-2017 (Which from I've heard, that film trilogy is...not very good).

The story centers on two adult siblings, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, who live in a farm on the beautiful Prince Edward Island in the late 1800s. Matthew is getting on in years, so they decide to adopt a boy from an orphanage to have him help around the farm. Yeah, this was apparently a common practice in late 19th century Canada. But a miscommunication has them wind up with a girl, instead, and this girl—Anne Shirley—isn't any ordinary child. She's an outgoing, talkative, energetic red haired kid who loves to imagine things and is a romantic idealist despite the bad life she had up to this point. Although Marilla and Matthew do their best to bring her up, they can't contain her wild energy, and Anne finds herself in a variety of situations, like making friends, dealing with boys, learning things in school, wishing she could follow current fashion trends despite Marilla's distaste for anything extravagant and fashionable, and so on. One thing's for sure: the town of Avonlea won't be the same with her around, and maybe this will prove to be a good thing for everyone involved.

For an anime that was made in 1979, Anne of Green Gables looks absolutely amazing. The hand-painted backgrounds are a feast for the eyes, using earthy tones and soft colors that really make Avonlea come right to life. You could take a single screenshot and put it in a frame, they're that good. It helps that the team that worked on this anime took care to do all the research they could to depict everything from the house architecture, the rolling prairies, to life in 19th century Canada as accurately as possible, even visiting Canada itself to really get the details right. On that front, they succeeded with flying colors. Of course, the actual animation is no slouch either, with equally down-to-earth, realistic motion that favors naturalism over exaggeration (With the exception of scenes where we get to see Anne's imagination go into overdrive), with the character designs also reflecting this. I've heard some reviewers complain that Anne looks weird here, but that's the point. She's described that way in the book as well, so it makes sense that the character designers would make Anne look gangly and not pretty like her peers. Then again, there were plans to make Anne look more like a shoujo anime protagonist, in line with translator Hanako Muraoka's interpretation of the character, as detailed in that AnimeTudes article I linked, but that idea got scrapped because Takahata wanted her to look more realistic, a decision I feel was the right one.

Speaking of realism, Anne of Green Gables is a series that lacks much in the way of conflict and is mainly a slice-of-life series. The characters actually behave and feel like real human beings, whose problems and daily lives feel real and down-to-earth rather than exaggerated just for the sake of milking drama like in a soap opera, and engage in all sorts of situations that people can relate to. I mean, what kid hasn't experienced dealing with the antics of rambunctious boys, trying to convince your parents to let you go to a late night event like a concert, dying your hair for the first time, or playing games involving daring people to do ridiculous things? Takahata and his team did an amazing job in developing the characters and showing them changing and growing as the series goes on, like with Anne going from an energetic, talkative kid to a more mature, restrained 16-year-old at the end of the series. Though because the series is 50 episodes long, and what few conflicts it shows are very far apart from each other, it can be very easy to dismiss the show as being boring and dull. You really need to be able to enjoy slice-of-life if you want to enjoy this series. But overall, the character development and writing here is master class.

Even the soundtrack is quite lovely. Both opening and ending songs by Ritsuko Ohwada are all beautiful, swelling orchestral numbers that manage to both encapsulate the series' tone and Anne's moments of whimsy. The insert songs and background tracks are nice and have their own unique, rustic charm, whether it be soft oboes, bouncy violins, or even Japanese renditions of actual Victorian era songs like Nelly In The Hazel Dell. Every piece of music fits like a glove, and there were never any points where it felt out of place. The voice acting is also stellar and wonderfully down-to-earth when it needs to be, with Anne's voice actress, Eiko Yamada, making her voice acting debut here, which would cement her career for years to come. Don't expect Anne to sound like a high pitched cutesy moe girl here, because this isn't the series for that. I admit I still find it hard to believe that Kazuhiko Inoue plays Gilbert here, as you would not be able to recognize him whether you're familiar with his work or not.

If you're interested in watching this adaptation specifically, the series has received complete fansubs twice, so it's not hard to watch in its original form. But one interesting thing about this series is that back in the eighties or nineties, it actually received a complete English dub which was produced in, of all places, South Africa, using an all-British voice cast. You can read more about its history here. It was posted on YouTube a few years back, and later someone spliced the English audio with higher quality footage from the Japanese blu-ray. I've been watching it quite a bit, and...surprisingly, it's a LOT better than I initially thought it'd be. Considering how dubbing was still a new concept, especially in other countries, most dubs from that era tend to...not be very good, especially ones not specialized in their native language, and I was honestly worried that this dub was going to be terrible. While I do question why the dub decided to hire British voice actors for a series that's clearly set in Canada, the dub itself is really good. All the actors put on fine, down-to-earth performances fitting their assigned characters. Even the narrator sounds like he wouldn't be out of place doing stuff for National Geographic. The only noticeable problems it has are the lip sync being slightly off at times and getting some names wrong (Anne's imaginary friend Katie Maurice is referred to as Kathy Morris, and the song Nelly In The Hazel Dell is referred to as Nelly In The Hazelnut Bush, though those got rectified in later episodes), though I've heard the latter is because the English dub used the German dub as its basis and not the Japanese version.

Overall, I really love this series, flaws and all. The only real complaint I have with it is that when Anne is 15 years old, she comes off as a little too perfect, but that doesn't last for very long. The 1979 Anne of Green Gables anime isn't just a fantastic adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's novel, but an amazing series that truly understands what it is and isn't afraid to be what it is, a quiet, wholesome, down-to-earth coming of age tale about a girl's life on a Canadian island. I know most people generally prefer the 1985 Kevin Sullivan movie, and I like that one too, but I find myself gravitating towards this series for its willingness to expand on the source material and truly make the most of it. Plus, Anne is becoming relevant again in light of the fact that there's going to be a new Anne of Green Gables anime adaptation due to air in spring of 2025, titled Anne Shirley. On one hand, I'm really interested in seeing how that adaptation tells the story, as there have been multiple anime adaptations of Western kids books before (Little Women and Dog of Flanders being two examples), but on the other hand, I really hope the staff on that series don't screw it up somehow, and there's already debate on whether it'll even live up to the legacy that the 1979 series established, or even respect the original book. I'm going to watch it regardless and see what it's like on its own merits. But whether you're an Anne of Green Gables fan, a World Masterpiece Theater fan, or somebody who is just sick and tired of all the isekai anime that get churned out every season and want something to watch that has more meat and substance to it, check this series out if you ever get the chance.

 

[Juliko]

Man, I haven't done these short book reviews in a while. I need to get back to that.

Scattergood by H. M. Bouwman
Rating: 6.5/10
Ehh, this was alright. World War II stories are always interesting because there's so many different things to learn about that particular time period. Thanks to this, I learned about the Scattergood Hostel (Which is an actual place). But for a story supposedly about that place, I wish it had been actually focused on the people living there instead of the characters the book actually focuses on. I didn't find Peggy or her friends and family that interesting, and the story itself just seemed to meander. The only thing I remember about this book is Peggy getting called out by the professor she visits for being insensitive and seeing him and the other hostel people as exotic creatures rather than people with their own problems going on. It's fine for what it is, but not very memorable.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Rating: 7/10
Ah yes, the ever so famous story that apparently saved Christmas, and the one that popularized the term Scrooge. I remember seeing a movie adaptation once when I was young, but I can't remember which one. It's your archetypal "Be nice to people in your life or else you'll die alone and forgotten" type of moralistic story, probably the progenitor. As somebody who really struggled with reading Great Expectations in high school, I did find I was able to understand the prose for this one just fine, even if at times it still didn't quite make sense. Characters are fine for what they are, Scrooge's development is fine, the story's messages are fine, that's about it.

The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
Rating: 2.5/10
I think at this point I need to accept that John Steinbeck's work just isn't for me. I picked this book up on a whim years ago and I just never got around to reading it in full until now. I regret reading it. The writing was fine, but the story is really just a bunch of episodic vignettes. That'd be fine if the characters were interesting and likeable, but they range from either bland to downright cruel and psychopathic. The main character is an annoying brat who likes torturing animals, the ranch hand is a loser who's treated as an expert but can't do his job properly, Jody's father is a jackass who does nothing but berate everyone for stupid reasons, and there's so much graphic animal death in here that I wouldn't blame anyone for not wanting to read it. Don't bother with this one. It's a depressing slog to read.

Light and Air by Mindy Nichols Wendell
Rating: 8/10
In contrast to Scattergood, Light and Air is much better. Focusing on a girl who spends time at a sanatorium after she gets sick amidst the tuberculosis epidemic of the 30s, this was a pretty decent, wholesome story about healing and family. I liked Halle and the development she and her family got, and learning about how people initially dealt with pulmonary tuberculosis at the time was interesting. I do wish some of the characters Halle meets in the sanatorium got fleshed out more, especially Vivian and Rita, but that's about my only gripe with the book.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on March 7th, 2025.

Rating: 52/100

Oh, Love Live Superstar, how far you've fallen. As someone who's not normally into Love Live, the first two seasons of it at least, I actually enjoyed both Nijigasaki and Superstar. The first season of Superstar was a nice, refreshing, adorable little schoolgirl series, even if it made the mistake of retreading old ground the original series and Sunshine already tackled, and actually managed its cast of characters quite well. The second season was a little weaker and didn't have as much of a handle on its new characters as it would have liked, but I still enjoyed it. Unfortunately, the third and final season should have ended this iteration with a bang, but instead ended it with little more than a pathetic whimper. Superstar deserved so much better than this, and the problems season two had are multiplied tenfold here. I don't know what in the world happened, but they really dropped the ball with this final season.

First of all, you know that whole cliffhanger at the end of season 2 that everyone made out to be this super sad, melodramatic thing? Season 3 decided to completely cop out on that, keep Kanon in Yuigaoka for absolutely ridiculous, stupid reasons that just scream contrived plot convenience, and then try to make Margarete into an ally! Like...what? Actually, this whole thing sums up the biggest problem behind Superstar's third season: It's writing. The whole season feels completely and utterly directionless, like it wrote itself into a corner by trying to send Kanon to Vienna, but then went back on that and now they don't know what to do with the series anymore. Their whole solution was to drag out the series by having Kanon, Margarete, and another girl, Natsumi's sister Tomari, form their own idol group to compete against Liella, but why even do that if you're just going to have them rejoin Liella again anyway? The whole idol group vs idol group thing feels less like a compelling plot and more like an excuse to drag the series out for longer than it needs to. Furthermore, the whole setup completely gets in the way of fleshing out the rest of the cast, especially the second years, who get almost nothing to do here. Writers, you could have used this time to flesh out the other characters but instead wasted your time on a cheesy, mealymouthed redemption arc for a pink-haired brat who honestly had no business being in Superstar in the first place.

Speaking of unneeded characters, Tomari. I'm sorry, but I don't know why the creators bothered to even put her here as well. She honestly feels completely superfluous, has no real purpose for being here, and her whole characterization makes absolutely no sense. She doesn't want Natsumi to be hurt, but she decides to hurt her the second she decides she wants to do something meaningful with her life? Consistency should not be this hard, people! Tomari, to me, represents this season's lack of direction, because just like the season itself, it feels like she was just shoehorned into the show because of executive mandate. Then again, I still don't like Natsumi because she's still a brat who got off way too easy for trying to break Liella up and sow conflict between them for clout and views in the previous season, and this season did nothing to change that for me. Not to mention Margarete still being an emo brat whose redemption arc feels in no way earned, sincere, or even natural whatsoever. Everyone deserved so much better. Even the whole plot about Keke having to choose between staying an idol or staying in China feels so half-baked because previous seasons made it into a huge deal, only for everything to be magically resolved by the power of idols, thereby undermining any tension or personal stakes it could have had. Gag me.

The animation and music are fine, not much to say there. I still think season one's songs are better, but the ones here are fairly good by themselves. Actually, going back to the results of last season's cliffhanger: What school would reach out to a random student in Japan and ask her to come to Vienna, only to suddenly back out of it at the last second?! Isn't that, like, super unprofessional? Wouldn't that break a ton of bureaucratic rules or something? God, you know the writing in this season is bullshit when none of its established plotlines make any lick of sense! Seriously, Superstar seemed like it was going to really experiment with the Love Live formula, only for it to just go back to playing it super safe because it's afraid of alienating its audience. I mean, there is going to be a new series called Love Live Bluebird, implied to be going in the direction of Bang Dream: It's MyGO or Ave Mujica, and for all I know, maybe that one will be better. I don't know. I'm just mad that Superstar, a season that started off strong and had a lot of potential to learn from the mistakes of its forebears and do something new, had to end in such a pathetic, unsatisfying manner.

I'm not gonna waste any more time on this. Poor Love Live Superstar. An utterly lackluster, poorly executed season 3 served as its death knell, bogged down by haphazard writing and a lack of care for any of its characters. God, Superstar deserved so much better than this!

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on March 31st, 2025.

Rating: 79/100

Man, I remember when Yuri On Ice was popular. It singlehandedly convinced people to try out ice skating and inspired other creators to make their own stories centered on ice skating. Too bad MAPPA, in all their wisdom, decided to cancel the Yuri On Ice movie. Well, at least we have Medalist now. I actually don't remember how I first discovered the manga for Medalist. It might have been through some random Twitter post praising it. I did check it out after that and found that I enjoyed it, even if the chapters ran rather long. I was super hyped to learn it'd get an anime adaptation, as were other fans...until it was revealed that a company called ENGI would be making it. Now, I haven't seen other shows ENGI worked on, but from what I've heard, they've acquired a bad reputation for botching their adaptations of several shows. Having seen the entirety of Medalist now, while I wouldn't call it a perfect adaptation, as it leaves quite a bit out from the manga, among other things, I think ENGI finally managed to get their act together and did the series justice as best it could.

11-year-old Inori Yuitsuka is having a terrible time. She struggles in school, is bullied by her classmates, and the one joy she has in life, ice skating, is out of her reach because her mother won't let her partake in it, convinced she'll only fail at it. She wants to become a professional ice skater, but kids are expected to have started by 5 years old, and she's one year away from the cut-off date, considered too old to start, preventing her from fulfilling her dream. An incident leads her to meet Tsukasa Akeuraji, a former ice dancer on the edge of giving up competitive skating himself. After hearing her story, he agrees to become her coach and help her fulfill her dreams. Those around Inori soon learn she has immense natural talent for the sport and, together, the two strive toward Inori's ultimate goal of winning an Olympic gold medal.

So when ENGI was announced to be producing the anime for this, many were understandably worried because Medalist is a beloved sports manga known for its detailed artwork and strong character writing. ENGI apparently made a lot of questionable decisions in adapting a lot of properties which made fans of said properties very angry. Not to mention their animation quality was often known to be subpar. Like I mentioned before, I haven't seen any other shows ENGI worked on besides this, so Medalist is my first exposure to them, and for the most part, Medalist's animation is pretty okay. Not the best I've seen, with a lot of limited start-and-stop animation, but it's certainly not bad, and the CGI ice-skating sequences look decent and are well-choreographed. Some of the models did look rather uncanny at times near the end, and it's easy to tell when the CGI ends and 2D animation begins and vice versa, usually in how rubbery the arms look, but they're certainly not the worst 3D CG I've seen. I do personally wish they had animated them in 2D animation, and there is one skating sequence that is animated in 2D, which looks amazing. Unfortunately it's reserved for my least favorite character in the show.

But you obviously can't have a good ice-skating program without good music backing it, now can you? For the most part, the soundtrack is pretty good. I will admit, I wasn't a fan of both the opening and ending songs, if only because both singers' voices grated on my ears, but that's more a me problem than anything. Actually, I have less to say about the actual soundtrack and more about the various insert songs, all of which are sung in extremely good English by singers I've never even heard of. Honestly, I want to hear more of their work after this, because the English insert songs made for this show are fantastic, and are the best part of the entire soundtrack, especially Inori's skating number in the final episode. I hope there are more songs like this in the second season, because I want more of them!

Now, one thing you need to know in terms of the characters is that because the anime cut or rewrote some things from the manga, probably as a way to make things easier to fit into a short TV anime with half hour long episodes. Inori's mother is much nicer here compared to how harsh and stern she was in the manga, and even the bullying Inori experienced early in the manga is downplayed a lot by having her classmates be a lot less overly mean. None of this hurts Inori's motivations for wanting to skate any, but the anime does cut back on Tsukasa's background a bit by introducing certain characters in his life a lot later than they were in the manga. As far as the anime's actual characterization goes, it still manages to retain everything that makes its cast of characters so good, such as Tsukasa's wish to support Inori while respecting her wishes, and Inori's own growth from a scared, insecure girl with zero self-esteem to someone more confident in herself and with actual skills she can put to use. It also makes sure that the kids actually behave like kids and not like caricatures of what people THINK kids act like. I will admit though, I really don't like Rioh. He made a very bad first impression via yelling at Inori and putting her down for literally no reason, and even though he does get called on it and does get better as the series goes on, he never faces any real punishment for it other than Hikaru slapping him in the face, nor does he ever apologize. Since the anime is only 12 episodes long, there's only so much it can cover, and I have yet to read more of the manga, so maybe he'll get better later on. But as it is right now, he's my least favorite character in the series.

Obviously, since Medalist's first season is only 12 episodes long, it can't cover the entirety of the manga, and even within that restriction, it had to cut several events out, the very things I mentioned earlier. One character's introduction didn't translate very well to the silver screen, and his behavior made him come across as being very petty, pathetic, and edgy, which was absolutely not how he was in the manga. The manga only covers up to a certain point, so it can feel like it ends rather abruptly before anything really happens, but the fact that there's a second season confirmed to be in production means there's more to come. Hopefully, ENGI can actually hold themselves together and make sure it doesn't devolve into a trainwreck. It may have succeeded so far, but who knows whether they'll either keep it up or crumble under its weight? For now, I'm happy we got an anime adaptation of Medalist, and you can be sure I'll read more of the manga when I get around to it. If you want to actually watch the anime, it's available on Disney+ and Hulu...unfortunately, Disney+ is infamous for not doing anything to promote any of their acquired anime in any capacity whatsoever. At least their English dubs have gotten a lot better, Medalist's dub included. So yeah, if you like sports anime and strong character writing, give Medalist a shot. I'm not even a fan of sports anime yet I enjoyed this a lot, and yes, I'm definitely gonna watch the second season when that drops.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on May 16th, 2025. Man, you have no idea how much I've been wanting to rewrite my old review for this show, and now I get to shill it again!

Back in June of 2010, when I was in my junior year of high school, Anime News Network announced that they would be streaming an old series from 1977 called Ie Naki Ko, or Nobody's Boy Remi, alongside many other shows. ANN would put up five subbed episodes every week, and it was their first license directly from Japan. Back then, I was still forging my tastes in anime, but thought this seemed interesting, as its premise reminded me a bit of Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette. Let me tell you, I was hooked from the first episode, and absolutely DEVOURED this series every time episodes were dropped each week. It really struck a chord with 16/17-year-old me. Sadly, ANN is no longer streaming Remi, or anything else. I didn't learn of the existing home video release it had until much later, and by then it was long out of print. Luckily, fansubs were easy to come by, and in 2025, AnimEigo (The new iteration of it, that is) released it on blu-ray. I bought that blu-ray set as soon as the MediaOCD store got early copies in. Seriously, rewatching this show has been a really sobering experience in the best way possible, and I still love it now as a 32-year-old adult woman as I did back when I was in high school. But you're probably wondering why I'm making a second review of this, as I previously reviewed it back in 2010. Honestly, that review was one of my first attempts at seriously reviewing/critiquing something, and re-reading it...yeah, it's rather slipshod and overly gushy and fangirly, so like with my reviews of AnoHana, Les Miserables Shoujo Cosette, and Digimon Adventure, I'm rewriting my review from scratch so it'll be up to par with my current stuff.

Based on the 1878 French novel Sans Famille by Hector Malot, the story centers on an eight-year-old boy, Remi Barberin, who lives a happy life in the tiny French village of Chavanon with his mother. His father, Jerome, is away at work, so he does his best to help his mother run the house. When Jerome is suddenly dismissed from service due to a work injury and returns, Remi is in for a shock—Jerome scathingly reveals to him that he is not their biological child, and has no obligation to keep him. In spite of his mother's protests, Jerome drags Remi away and sells him because he's in dire need of money. Remi is purchased by a circus performer named Vitalis, accompanied by his three dogs Capi, Zerbino, and Dolce, and a monkey, Joli-Coeur. To his surprise, Vitalis turns out to be the kindest and warmest father figure he's ever had in his life. He teaches Remi how to read and write, dotes on him to no end, and disciplines him when needed. Remi becomes part of the Signor Vitalis Troupe and they hold shows all over France, with Remi becoming an expert performer under his new adoptive father's tutelage. As Remi crosses paths with many enigmatic people both cruel and kind, including a feisty violinist named Mattia, a former student of Vitalis named Marcano, a cruel caretaker named Garofoli, an unscrupulous gang known as the Driscolls and the aristocratic Milligan and Acquin families, he strives for one thing: to find his true family.

At this point, I haven't read the original novel, so I can't comment on the show's faithfulness to the source material, but from what I've heard from other sources, this series is noted to be pretty faithful, albeit with several significant changes. It helps that with the series being 51 episodes long, it makes optimal use of its time to flesh out the story and characters, resulting in a series that is pretty well-paced for a show of its era. It probably expands on a lot of events and characters too, for all I know. I need to get around to finding an English translation of the novel some time, if I can find one. Oh, and I should probably warn you that if you ever plan on watching this, let me tell you, Remi is dark. Remi has to deal with being sold off by his adopted dad, having several friends die undignified deaths, facing abject poverty, hunger, wild conspiracies, and so on. Don't worry, it's not dark to the level of, say, Magical Girl Site or Platinum End, where everything is completely mired in misery porn. I'd argue Remi's level of darkness is akin to Digimon Tamers or the Fuga: Melodies of Steel games, having its dark moments be appropriately serious, but still having plenty of levity and humorous moments when needed, so it's not all doom and gloom. But the drama in the series is pretty immense, and you have to be able to tolerate some level of 70s melodrama if you want to enjoy this series.

But simply dismissing Remi as a dark children's anime would be doing it a massive disservice, as there's so much about Remi as a show that really allows it to shine, starting from its animation. For a show that was made in 1977, it had a pretty high budget for that time period. We all know that Osamu Dezaki, who directed this, really loved experimenting with all sorts of animation techniques, often on a tight budget, from his favorite elaborately drawn freeze frames to having certain scenes repeat several times in a row. The actual animation is almost theatrical quality, which is rare for a 51-episode series like Remi. Backgrounds are immaculately painted, really capturing both the pastoral countryside and the dirt and grime of the cities and slums. Actual character motion is snappy and smooth, sometimes deliberately jerky or slow depending on the scene and context, and because Dezaki and his team made constant use of multi-plane animation, pioneered by Disney in the 1930s but seldom used in anime at that point, everything is constantly moving even when there's very little animation. But the anime has a unique style all its own when it decides to go all-out with surrealist imagery and psychedelica, usually used to show how a child Remi's age views a world that he has no frame of reference for. Colors are more vivid, dangers look more menacing, and strange things are downright creepy. Speaking of the backgrounds (Courtesy of art director Shichiro Kobayashi of Angel's Egg, Utena, and 90s Berserk fame. Yes, really), the layered backgrounds aren't just to give Remi its unique look, as I recently learned that Remi was actually the first and only anime series made to be viewed in 3D, but not the type of 3D you're thinking off with the red and blue 3D glasses. There's this concept called the Pulfrich effect, a weird optical illusion involving the different processing times between both eyes, induced by dimming one eye, resulting in anything that moves horizontally given the illusion of depth, which is why the multi-plane animation is used. Copies ordered from the MediaOCD website contain specialized 3D glasses that you can wear and see this in effect, if you want. Not sure if I recommend watching the entire series like this.

The soundtrack is also pretty good, if a bit dated, and it leans much more into the series' French setting, with a lot of accordions, strings, and percussion. Given that the music is done by Takeo Watanabe, who previously made the scores for anime such as Heidi, Dog of Flanders, Candy Candy, Rascal, and Perrine Monogatari, he definitely manages to bring his experience here, knowing how to utilize the different sounds and instruments to achieve their intended effects, and it works really well here. The opening theme is nice, though I do feel the ending theme is a bit too peppy and overly cutesy for the series considering the show's tone is much darker than it, which results in quite a bit of mood whiplash at times. There are times when the voice acting can lean a bit too theatrical, but I never found it to be too annoying. All the voice actors do great in their respective roles. It is kinda funny learning that the late Masako Sugaya, who would go on to play Uran in the 1980 Astro Boy anime, a character who I've made no secret of the fact that I don't like, voices Remi here with the exact same tone of voice.

Speaking of the characters, let's talk about them! Remi as a series has no shortage of characters to follow, even if the main cast is relatively small, especially for a 51-episode series. If you ask me, all of them are wonderfully well-written and developed, constantly evolving as the show goes on, and are consistently engaging throughout. Even characters you don't expect to receive much in the way of personality, such as Vitalis' dogs, are given unique strengths and flaws that are used wonderfully. One example of this is Zerbino, a dog who steals food on a regular basis. His actions create a lot of tension throughout the series, and it forces Remi, Capi, and Vitalis to really develop and grow up when trying to deal with him. Not to mention that Zerbino's gluttony results in a pretty significant event, which I won't spoil. Remi himself starts out as a naive, sheltered 8-year-old dealt a bad hand, and in my opinion, his growth and development is easily the best part of the series. We get to see Remi grow and mature into a more well-rounded person thanks to Vitalis and all the people he encounters throughout his life, even when things are at their bleakest. It's especially noticeable when you compare how he was with Vitalis in the first series to his interactions with the street urchin Mattia, who joins him in the second half. Actually, one big change the anime made compared to the novel is Mattia's characterization. In the book, Mattia was a more passive, weak-willed character, and the anime decided to completely change his characterization, making him more of a scrappy, sassy, intelligent Artful Dodger-type kid. I haven't read the novel yet, but I do think this was a good move, as Mattia's different personality from Remi allows them to have a fun dynamic and stronger chemistry with one another.

Remi is a story that doesn't pull its punches when it comes to its themes, exploring the highs and lows of what life could be like for traveling entertainers in 19th century France, from things like police brutality to showing how prejudice can affect those on the receiving end. Unlike most sad stories nowadays, which seem to revel in their misery and milk it for all its worth when they don't need to, Remi's treatment of its themes and overarching messages comes through better, done with subtlety, never resorting to beating you over the head with them, even if the acting and Dezaki's usual stylizations can make it seem more theatrical than it should. Granted, I did learn recently that the ending is drastically different from that of the book, which supposedly misses the point that Malot was trying to make in the original. Again, I haven't read the book yet, but I'm honestly not sure why Dezaki and his team decided to change the ending. There's also one instance where a 1976 roadmap is used in the series, which is really weird when your series takes place in 19th century France.

However, for all that I praise Nobody's Boy Remi, it does have a pretty big flaw, and my feelings on it are the same now as they were back when I first watched it: The narrator. Good God, this damn narrator just won't shut up! Seriously, this narrator goes on and on and on in just about every episode, from voicing Remi's thoughts, to describing the geography of France, to, most egregiously, spoiling big reveals and plot twists before they're set to actually happen in the show! Granted, I do feel Lady Georgie's narrator is much worse in this regard, in that the narrator in that show was much more obvious in spelling out the characters' feelings and thoughts in a way that came off as really condescending to its audience, like the show felt it couldn't trust its audience to remember what happened literally seconds ago. That said, the narrator in this show is still really annoying in how much talking time he takes up compared to the characters in the show. Seriously, show, trust your damn audience!! Thankfully, Osamu Dezaki and his team seemed to realize this, as when they went to work on Treasure Island after Remi wrapped up, the narration was significantly dialed back, and the few times there was narration mainly consisted of just Jim voicing his own thoughts.

But you know what? After all this time, I'm so glad Nobody's Boy Remi is coming back into the limelight, and we all have Justin Sevakis to thank for it. I don't know what kind of person I'd be now if I hadn't seen Remi on ANN back in 2010, and I don't want to even imagine it. It's a well-crafted anime that absolutely resonates as much now as it did 48 years ago, and honestly, I wish more anime like this were made these days, because there's a startling amount of people who think "Why would anybody want to watch anime that's super depressing? We don't need that downer stuff nowadays, we need more happy, wholesome, and uplifting stuff!" To that I say, if you don't like sad anime, that's fine, you don't have to watch it, and your reasons for refusing are valid. However, to simply dismiss shows like Remi as just "child suffering fodder" is doing them a massive disservice. I don't watch shows like Remi because I enjoy watching animated children suffer. I watch them because they're amazingly crafted, made by people who have care and passion for what they're working on, and actually care about stuff like character development and intelligent storytelling while respecting its child audience. It's honestly both sad and kinda disturbing to me that people are treating anime that are even a little bit sad, uncomfortable, or disturbing like some kind of radioactive substance. Hell, Remi's whole message is about overcoming impossible odds and not losing yourself no matter how bad things get, and really, shouldn't that be what we need now, in these troubled times we're living in? Seriously, this new purity culture we're living in is starting to get ridiculous. I mean, we're living in an era where people are not only actively campaigning but actively erasing literally any LGBT media or history ever just because they don't want it to exist. So yeah, Nobody's Boy Remi is one of my favorite anime ever (And I love the 1997 version just as much), it's still just as good now as it was when I watched it at 17. If you want a genuinely awesome show that won't pull its punches, give Remi a shot, especially now that AnimEigo's blu-ray is out.

Old review under spoilers below, first written September 12, 2010.

Spoiler: Old Review

This anime was made in 1977. It's quite hard to believe that when anime was still in it's adolescence, the world of anime still had masterpieces for it's time. When you think of 70s anime, you probably think about Anne of Green Gables, 3000 Leagues In Search of Mother, Candy Candy, etc. But I believe that Ie Naki Ko belongs in that category too.

This story is based on the French novel by Hector Malot. I haven't read the novel (though I do have an interest in doing so, but I have no idea where to find it in English)l, but when I saw that it was being streamed on Anime News Network, it really got me interested...and I'm glad I watched it! The story for this is just nothing short of amazing. Remi and his comrades endure hardships, receive few joys, and sometimes get totally crapped on by life. But even so, I couldn't help but both cheer for Remi and encourage him to go on as I was watching the saddest parts. This anime has made me cry more times than any other anime, and that has to mean something, right? There's no point in which the anime feels too fast-paced, too slow-paced (admittedly though it is, in fact, slow paced), and even though there's fillers, they serve their purpose and never deviate beyond that.

I feel the best thing about the anime were the characters. They're all endearing and unique, and they're portrayed as actual people instead of all the gunked out stereotypes you see in most modern anime nowadays. Remi is by far my favorite out of them all. His courage, strength, and determination really struck a chord with me, but even he understands his own limits (such as trying to get food for the animals by himself though failing miserably). The animals in the show were great too, though I admit I don't have much experience in seeing real life animals perform tricks like that, but I guess that's just me. I also liked Mattia. He was a cool guy and a great friend despite his slight complacency. There were a few characters who annoyed me a bit, but they were brief and didn't last long in the show.

And I haven't even started talking about the production values yet! Osamu Dezaki really knows how to direct and pick the right company because the way he made the setting (France) come to life is just unbelievably great! Even though the show was produced in 1977, it doesn't look like that at all! The budget for this series was pretty gosh-darn high for it's time. It almost looks modern, though constant multi-plane animation was used for this anime instead of computer generated animation, and the former animation was commonly pioneered by Disney when they produced Snow White in 1937, but no anime used it until Remi came along, which was probably a big achievement in the anime world.

Of course, there are some things in Remi that did seem to irk me a bit. I remember in one episode Remi and Mattia dressed up as girls with really heavy make-up in order to escape from people who were chasing them. I absolutely hated how they looked, and I didn't think they actually did that to anime characters in the 70s (except in maybe budding shoujo manga like Rose of Versailles or anything of the like). A lot of people are gonna hate me for saying this, but I also felt the music was a little passe too. I mostly hate the ED sequence for the show. It sounds way too bouncy and cheerful for such a dark and vivid series! Even the World Masterpiece Theater version of Ie Naki Ko had better music that caught the atmosphere while not trying too hard to get all preachy about courage and survival! There's another thing that irked me, but I don't feel like saying it in fear of getting yelled at.

But despite it's minor flaws, Ie Naki Ko is an absolutely wonderful 70's anime series. It really shows you first hand that life is tough, harsh, and even cruel at times (which Disney always tries to hide from it's audience practically 99.8% of the time), but it also encourages you to believe that once you overcome those obstacles, they'll all be worth it and you do, in fact, achieve happiness in the end. It tells us that life is meant to be lived, not wasted, especially if you have something to live for. I thank this anime for teaching me that!

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on May 11th, 2025.

Rating: 75/100

It's funny how things we now see as cliche, generic, or overdone were once novel and completely new. Such was the case for a little game called Lunar: Silver Star Story. Previously released on the Sega CD as Lunar: The Silver Star, the game was famous for its litany of 2D anime cutscenes, amazingly adapted songs, generally bright and colorful anime artstyle, which back then was unheard of for games that came out in America at that time, and for its script having a lot of 90s pop cultural references and slang thrown in. It got a Playstation 1 remake a few years later, which is the version many fans grew up on. I've mentioned before that I never grew up with home consoles such as the Playstation or Nintendo 64, so I never even heard of Lunar back then. I did dabble in it a bit via watching some videos of HCBailly's Let's Play of it and playing a bit of the PSP remake, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, but I didn't get very far with either. I should really get back to playing Harmony on my PS Vita. But in September of 2024, GungHo Online Entertainment announced that a remaster of both this game and its sequel were due to come out in April 2025 on modern consoles. I managed to snatch the Switch version as soon as it was available. As someone who didn't grow up with Lunar but did grow up on a lot of anime during the 2000s, I certainly do enjoy it, even if nowadays it's nothing really special. I can definitely see its charms and why people like it so much.

The story centers on a teenage boy named Alex Noah, who dreams of going on adventures and becoming a great hero just like his idol, the Dragonmaster Dyne. But that's not quite possible in a small, humble town. At the behest of his friends—aspiring merchant Ramus, snarky dragon companion Nall, and childhood sweetheart Luna, Alex decides to travel the world alongside his friends to become a Dragonmaster. But in the process, he and his friends get roped into a conflict caused by the evil Magic Emperor, who plans to ascend to Godhood and kidnaps Luna for that purpose. It's up to Alex and his friends to save Luna, defeat the Magic Emperor, and bring peace back to the world before it's too late. Yeah, there's no beating around the bush here, if you're even remotely familiar with the classic hero's journey and all the tropes and story beats that are associated with it, you can pretty much predict how the entire game goes from a mile away. It's a wholesome, unambiguous tale of good versus evil lacking much in the way of narrative twists (Albeit, a certain character being a villain was considered one at the time of the game's creation), so it can come off as derivative to people who are more familiar with stories and games that did things differently later on. But in my opinion, for the most part, Lunar's story is still pretty good for what it is, and these days, it's kind of refreshing to just have a breezy, feel-good adventure story.

It helps that the cast of characters are pretty fun and likeable, predictable archetypes notwithstanding. Yeah, don't expect this cast of characters to be particularly deep and layered, especially since nowadays video game characters are allowed to have much more depth and nuance to them. But again, in this case, that's okay, and the characters themselves are still fairly memorable and interesting. Most of them, anyway. The eventual villain is pretty much a stock standard villain who wants to take over the world or become a God, I might as well call him prototype Sephiroth, and Alex is so vanilla and goody two shoes that he comes off as rather bland in the personality department. The rest of the cast fares better, though Luna gets completely benched in the second half and reduced to little more than a damsel in distress. The game does do some interesting things with having characters have personalities that differ from their expected job classes, such as Jessica, a healer, being a foul-mouthed, rough and tumble tomboy, whereas Mia, a mage, is a sweet, humble girl, whose personality would be considered more fitting for a healer. Sometimes playing around with job class archetypes can be fun, and Lunar seemed to have fun with it.

Which leads me into the gameplay. You can only control a total of five characters at a time, and the game isn't afraid to put handicaps or limitations on your party setup when it feels like it. There will be dungeons where you won't have a mage handy, or one where you have no access to your healers, or one where you can't use anything but magic, so on and so forth. With every enemy having their own strengths and weaknesses, knowing those and making do with your party setup is key. There's also an element of resource management as early on, defeating enemies don't give you a whole lot of money, and certain items such as Star Lights (Which restore MP) are hard to come by, not to mention the rather...annoying inventory system that not only limited how much items you could keep, but there wasn't a designated space for extra items, as you were limited to how much each character could hold. I know the original English PS1 release not only ramped up the game's difficulty by making enemies stronger and having some spells cost more MP, but deliberately changed the locations of items. Luckily, the remaster gives you the option to have an easier, more streamlined inventory system, which remedies this quite a bit, along with undoing Working Designs' changes to the PS1 version. Battles are also interesting in that your characters can move around the battlefield, and their positioning, along with paying attention to enemy animations to decide when best to reposition, attack, or defend, keeps things engaging. The remaster also has the option to fast forward the battle speed.

Man, all this time and I haven't even talked about the 2D animated cutscenes yet. Lunar became famous for having a lot of 2D animated scenes, usually used for either character introductions, new locations, or important story events. Most games that come from Japan have them, yes, but Lunar has about over an hour's worth of them, some of which you have to go out of your way to find, and are fully voiced as well. Not to mention they're all fluidly animated, the occasional rough early CGI for certain locations notwithstanding. I miss hand-painted cel animation. The graphics and in-game sprites by themselves are charming, cute, and full of personality on their own, and the dungeons have great designs and layouts. Some of the dungeons even have interesting gimmicks where, in order to progress to certain locations, you have to goad the monsters into attacking you, dodging, and having it so that they break the obstacles. Lunar is a game that rewards you for figuring things out and using your brain. The soundtrack is also very nice, both the background music and the dubbed theme song. The PS1 and PSP versions had their theme songs dubbed by a lady named Jennifer Stigile, a singer who worked with Working Designs back in the day, though the PS1 translation of the song, while famous and beloved, isn't an accurate one. The WD lyrics were used for the Remaster, though here it's sung by Luna's new English voice actress, Jackie Lastra, to mimic the Japanese version doing the same thing for Luna's seiyuu. I like the dubbed theme song okay, but I admit, I laugh every time I hear the verse "magical thoughts" because that's just such a clunky, stupid sounding line that it breaks the immersion for me. I prefer the 2009 version with its more accurate lyrics.

Speaking of voice acting, let's talk about that! Lunar: Silver Star Story has had three English dubs ever since its first release in the US, with the PS1 English dub by Working Designs being the first and most well-known. However, because the head of Working Designs at the time, Victor Ireland, owns the licensing rights to the original voice prints and requesting exorbitant royalties for them, any remakes and remasters of the game have opted to make their own English dubs, the other two being the 2009 PSP remake, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony, and the recent 2025 remasters. This also applies to the game's sequel Lunar 2: Eternal Blue. I played a bit of the PSP remake, but having watched some clips from HCBailly's Let's Play of the PS1 game...I'm gonna be honest here, I'm not a fan of most of the PS1 voices. I know, saying this is sacrilege to diehard Lunar fans who grew up with said dub, and if you like it, more power to you. But in my opinion, many of the performances for the PS1 dub are extremely uneven, running the gamut between too stiff and rigid or too hammy. It says a lot that all of them didn't pursue more voice acting work since Lunar. I especially couldn't stand Nall's voice, which is ear-splittingly high pitched and very clearly digitized. I honestly prefer both the 2009 and 2025 re-dubs, even if the 2009 dub made the mistake of casting Spike Spencer as Nall and making him sound too old and nasally. You'll have to forgive me for preferring Erica Mendez's interpretation of Nall, if only because it has neither of the problems I mentioned above and the voice she uses is closer to his seiyuu. As much as I like the 2025 dub for sounding more professional, I do have one quibble with it: There is soooo much double/triple/quadruple casting in GungHo's dub it's not even funny. I'm not exaggerating, Alejandro Saab plays a total of FIVE characters in this! Five! Granted, two of them wind up being the same person, but that's a spoiler. For as little as I've played the PSP remake, I know for a fact that dub didn't have that much double casting.

Actually, this does bring up a good question: What was stopping GungHo from putting the Silver Star Harmony voices on this remaster? The PS1 voices not being available is understandable because Victor Ireland is being stingy and wanting way too much money from licensors, but the PSP voices don't seem to have this issue. The mobile game version, Lunar: Silver Star Story Touch, was able to use the PSP voices and theme songs for their adaptation and spliced them into the PS1 graphics just fine. Did GungHo think just making a new dub straight up would be cheaper? This is just weird. I mean, it's not like the PSP version is inaccessible, as it's still available on the PS Vita store, though you can't use bank cards to buy games off there anymore. Plus, XSEED is normally pretty good about letting other companies use their stuff for the most part. Eh, I'm probably thinking too hard about this. Though fair warning: The 2025 remaster DOES...for some reason bring back Working Designs' heavily embellished and localized script, complete with all the old 90s jokes and dated references that made the developer both famous and notorious for back in the day. Not sure why they felt the need to re-use their script since while it may have been cute and funny back when it was first released, many of the jokes and references come off as really out of date now. The only really noteworthy changes GungHo made to the script is that they removed usages of slurs and some more problematic aspects that wouldn't fly today, though this is more obvious in Eternal Blue's script. There is one thing I wish they had changed, which is the name of a monster. Apparently, WD thought it a wise idea to give a monster the name...Nipple Yanker. The hell? Unfortunately, this is the only English script the game has, as while the game lets you play with Japanese audio, people who have an ear for translation will notice the discrepancies between both audio and adaptation right away. Kinda wish they gave us the option of toggling between the WD translation and a more faithful one, like what WayForward did with River City Girls: Zero.

But you know what? Lunar: Silver Star Story as a game is still a fun time, flaws and all. Sure, it's not going to bring the house down nowadays, and many aspects it revolutionized were improved and expanded upon by later games, but there are reasons why the game still has fans even now. The remastered collection is selling like hotcakes, and in an era where games are now expected to be massive, sprawling, 100-hour epics full of twists and narrative turns, Lunar: Silver Star Story offers a comforting, compact, mostly wholesome heroic adventure akin to a Saturday morning cartoon, reminding you that journeying across the land with your friends can still inspire wonder and joy. I wouldn't call Lunar: Silver Star Story the best JRPG ever, or even one of my favorite games ever, as there are other games I enjoy far more, but I did enjoy my time with it regardless, and with it and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue's re-release on modern consoles, more people can play it now than ever. Whether you're a diehard Lunar fan who's been there since the Sega CD days, or a new fan wondering what all the fuss is about or someone just wanting a break from all the massive epics, give Lunar: Silver Star Story a shot.

 

[Juliko]

This review was written on July 25th, 2025.

Rating: 82/100

We've all heard of Hello Kitty, she's basically Sanrio's mascot. But she's not the only character they created. Sanrio made a ton of them, and the second most recognizable Sanrio mascot is a little hooded rabbit named My Melody. Originally created solely to be Sanrio's own take on Little Red Riding Hood and Hello Kitty's best friend, she became a popular character in her own right, to the point where she got several TV series focusing on her, mainly the Onegai My Melody anime. I did attempt to watch that, but I stopped after a rather off-putting scene in episode 5 and haven't gone back to it. In 2025, her 50th anniversary, it was announced that My Melody would be getting her own Netflix series...a stop motion series made by the guy who made stuff like My Little Goat and Pui Pui Molcar. Was anyone expecting that? Sanrio fans, myself included, were looking forward to it nonetheless, and now that I've seen it...yeah, I agree. My Melody & Kuromi is great, and bringing Tomoki Misato and his team to work on this was an absolute home run.

In the magical world of Mariland, My Melody spends her days running a cake shop with her friends without a care in the world. Across the river, Kuromi is intensely jealous of My Melody's success and wants her sweets store to be just as popular. Too bad she absolutely sucks at cooking and hates being reminded of such. One day, My Melody finds a mysterious, sentient heart in a forest, which transports her to the Cloud Kingdom. My Melody takes the Heart back with her and goes about her days like usual, even preparing to enter a cooking contest judged by the supposedly world famous Mr. Pistachio. Neither My Melody, Kuromi, nor the residents of Mariland are prepared for the world-shattering events that follow, and the Heart's secret might just lead to the end of Mariland as they all know it. It's up to My Melody, Kuromi, and their friends to fix everything before it's too late.

Yeah, yeah, I know, this is your typical kids show plot where the world is threatened and the characters manage to solve everything with the power of friendship and cake. It's super cheesy, syrupy, and tooth-rottingly saccharine as can be, though not as bad as it could have been. My Melody & Kuromi could have easily gone the My Little Pony Newborn Cuties route where everything is all hunky-dory and there'd be no real conflict. But Tomoki Misato and his team knew My Melody & Kuromi needed that extra punch to it, taking the time to actually craft a simple yet compelling story that offers a bit more substance and conflict than just non-stop sweetness, exploring how unchecked greed can cause chaos. There's even some horror overtones thrown in for good measure, what with the citizens of Mariland becoming so addicted to the sweets magicked by the Heart that they become mindless zombies that consume everything in sight. I'll bet nobody was expecting to see that, and would you believe me if I told you that there's one scene involving cannibalism? The character in question gets better, so nobody dies in this or anything, but you definitely don't go into Sanrio properties expecting that level of darkness and scary imagery...though Sanrio isn't exactly a stranger to dark themes. Remember when they made stuff like Ringing Bell, Nutcracker Fantasy, and Ideon Be Invoked? Hell, Misato-san himself got his start doing horror films like Look At Me Only and My Little Goat.

But a lot of how those themes are conveyed are carried through the stop motion medium, mainly the usage of lighting and sound effects. Misato-san has always had a knack for great lighting techniques, even going as far back as My Little Goat, and he brings this experience to the table here. My Melody & Kuromi has a bright, pastel color palette, but Misato-san and his team often use pink and green lighting for parts where the show's plot gets progressively darker and more fraught, such as the aforementioned zombification of the Mariland citizens, which aren't normally colors you use for horror scenarios. I think it works well here, especially as things get further explained. Speaking of the stop motion, let's talk about it! Stop-motion is a very laborious process, where you have to manually move dolls bit by bit, and even adjusting them takes a long time, and you even have to have different dolls that use different expressions. My Melody & Kuromi's stop motion isn't to the level of say, Laika or Tim Burton, but it has its own unique charm that fits the cutesy Sanrio aesthetic, such as attaching tufts of wool to different objects to stand in for smoke and explosions, or faux fur to serve as trees and shrubbery, not to mention little details like how My Melody's ears always bounce every time she moves. There's a ton of behind-the-scenes videos you can find on Twitter that I highly recommend watching, as they really go into detail as to how Misato-san and his team managed to bring this show to life, showing all the different techniques they use to make everything work. Not to mention all the setpieces are well crafted and just amazing to look at.

The soundtrack is also a pretty big highlight. I never heard of Yutaka Yamada before watching this show, but after this, I want him to do more stuff because I loved his soundtrack for My Melody & Kuromi. It uses everything from oboes and wind instruments to full on brass and goes the whole gamut, while also throwing in stuff you'd never expect, like references to Mozart. Who was expecting a creepy vocalized version of a Mozart song in a Sanrio property? I sure didn't, and it worked so well here! I also want to highlight the various insert songs used here, all sung in English, and they're all really good and put to great use in episode 5. The song for My Melody's segment in the baking contest is a cute, saccharine girl pop number, even if it leans too hard on the moral of teamwork, and Kuromi's insert song is an absolutely killer slice of mid-2000s Hannah Montana cheese, and I mean that as a compliment. I should also mention that all the episodes are 15 minutes long, so it never feels like the series drags or overstays its welcome, and it makes great use of its time, something most series these days really struggle with.

As for the characters...yeah, don't go into this expecting all the characters to be super layered and three-dimensional. Sanrio isn't known for deep character development, and while My Melody & Kuromi is a smarter, more engaging kids show than most, the characters are still fairly predictable in terms of their personalities and growth. But what little they do get is still pretty good, so none of the characters come off as too perfect or too unlikeable, though I do wish Piano got more to do besides being overpowered and good at everything. I do think the series struggled with making My Melody more flawed because midway through the show, the series tries to claim that everything that happens in Mariland is My Melody's fault and that she was wrong to be nice to Heart or to use it to make her sweets taste good in the contest. But the problem with that is My Melody never knew Heart was with her at the contest and never asked for his help, not to mention the only reason the Mariland citizens got zombified was because Kuromi used Heart to enchant her sweets at Mr. Pistachio's behest, which he flat-out admits to, and Heart's powers responded to her greed. So Mariland was in ruins because of both Mr. Pistachio and Kuromi, and the revelation at the end cements that My Melody was right to reach out to Heart and be kind to him. Yeah, the show's plot doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, especially since it wants to convey one thing but did something else instead. If I'm being honest, I kind of wish the conflict actually was My Melody's fault, because it would have added more depth to her character and explored how sometimes extending kindness doesn't always work for certain people, which would have made her more compelling and interesting.

One other issue I have doesn't even have anything to do with the show itself. For some reason, all of Netflix's credits for all the dubs for this, English and Japanese included, only list the voice actors and not the characters they voice. The hell? It's especially weird because usually Netflix is really good about crediting their cast and staff for all their shows, barring a couple of exceptions. I don't know if this is some sort of mandate by Sanrio or what, because all the actors deserve to be credited for their work and to have the characters they play be known. As far as the English dub is concerned, the only reason we know for sure that Michelle Marie and Jenny Yokobori play My Melody and Kuromi is that anyone who's watched the YouTube webseries Hello Kitty & Friends: Supercute Adventures will recognize that they play them in that same series. The only other voice actor who announced they even had a role in the show was Bryce Papenbrook, who plays Baku, and only for one scene in the final episode. I know for a fact that Mr. Pistachio is played by Caleb Yen because the voice he uses for him is the exact same tone he uses for Will in Metaphor: ReFantazio and Ikaruga in Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, yet he hasn't announced it, I'm guessing due to NDA, and my word isn't exactly a source I can cite when adding him to Anime News Network's cast listing for the show. But if Bryce was able to announce that he's Baku just fine, what's stopping all the other actors from doing the same? There's something going on, probably on either Netflix or Sanrio's end.

That said, none of this killed my enjoyment of My Melody & Kuromi in any way. Sure, it has its issues, but it's still a really well made show that honestly has no business being as good as it is already. I'll even admit I cried at a few scenes, and if a show can make me feel for it emotionally, it has my seal of approval. Seriously, why can't we get something like this for Cinnamoroll or Wish Me Mell? I'd kill for a series like this for those characters! So yeah, if you want a genuinely good Sanrio show to introduce to your kids as a way to get them into anime or Sanrio as a whole, or just want to appreciate the art of stop motion and what it can accomplish without budgetary restraints, give My Melody & Kuromi a shot for sure.

 

[LightningTopaz]

Hello Kitty and friends have always held a special place in my heart, so this series was a no brainer--insta-faved it as soon as it was available on Netflix.

 

[Juliko]

Hello Kitty and friends have always held a special place in my heart, so this series was a no brainer--insta-faved it as soon as it was available on Netflix.

You have great taste, my friend.