I think I'm going to like Aria when I get around to it then,haha. I think I might take a look at Humanity has Declined first though just because it's shorter I think.
I can never quite get the linkage people try to make between
Aria and
YKK. Thematically there's so crossover but in terms of execution it's such a vastly different beast. While
YKK features Alpha doing to ditzy things, the overall tone of the show is a lot more laid back and has an almost countryside quietness to it while
Aria, despite have similar moments of quiet reflection on life and such, is handled a lot more in your face in the animation, giving it a far more rambunctious feel.
Just something look out for if you go into
Aria expecting more of the same!
Anyway, final day of Jeff's exciting trip to SLA which most of you will skim past.
Aura - Koga Maryuin's Last War
I'd forgotten the description for this beforehand so went in blind near enough. It's probably a cruel thing to say since I've never seen this and no doubt inaacurate but this is probably what
Chuunibyou should have been instead of what KyoAni produced.
Essentially new, first year high school student encounters a fellow (feamle) student wh o suffers the delusion of grandeur of being a witch from a different world.
The majority of the rest of the film is spent examining what would happen if there was someone like that in a high school situation and how the rest of the class would react. Johnathan Clements commented beforehand that Japanese critics had labelled this the most realistic portrayl of what it was like being on the low end of the scale of high school life and I can kinda see why. It's particularly nasty in parts but not overblown to the point of say,
Shigofumi.
A lot of effort is spent on the male lead of Ichirou and how he deals with what he finds caught up in but it's slightly disappointing to realise that the same kind of lavish development wasn't really spent on the female lead. By the end of the film, her motivations and reasoning are all fairly flimsy at best so it's difficult to see why the changes that happen are important. Additionally, a couple of the final scenes that are shown during the credits seem to be naive as hell in how the resolution is dealt with.
Visually, there's not really much to comment on but once again nothing particularly noteworthy as bad either. Some nice little cuts during dialogue as people were talking though.
Overall: A pretty good watch overall! Some elements near the start that may make you claw your skin and not quite an entirely satifying resolution to my mind but good nonetheless.
Steins:Gate - The Movie
I'll try and keep this short and sweet. Good news! For the first hour, this film is exactly what you'd hope the film should be to not make it a cynical cash in and provides enough Kurisu screentime to keep people happy. Then they realise they are running short on time and end in a ridiculously wishy-washy fashion so that the climatic scene ends up feeling less emotional than some of the scenes that have preceded it.
The idea of the plot is a fantastic one and one that would perhaps work well as an additional addon to the game or a little mini OVA series but unfortunately the idea it brings up is a bit too complicated to deal with all in the space of the time allowed and the conventions of the series already established so it's concluded in a rather trite manner which feels disappointing.
Visually, hmm. You'd think for a movie, White Fox would put something out which showed a marked improvement but while there were some nice cuts with the characters in places, some of the dodgy background CG rears it's head in places and a few of the mid-range shots suffer in poor detailing. Go in expecting something of the series' quality. Really dug the soundtrack for most of it though.
Overall: Pretty great first half (with the caveat that you found some of the timeline aspects of the series believable) but then peters down to a happy but disappointing conclusion.
Couple of points of order. Originally they were hoping to bring the
Harlock movie across this year but the asking price was £1,000,000 alledgedly so that idea was shelved. Also, regarding
Patema Inverted being picked up for licensing, it was hinted in a not-so-subtle way - the phrase "Hmm, I wonder who that could be" when asked about it - that one of Andrew Partridge's new myriad of companies (probably Anime Limited) has picked it up.
Final ranking:
Patema >
Yoyo =
Garden of Words >
Aura =
Fuse >
Steins;Gate >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Evangelion 3.0
Congratulations for anyone that bothered to read any or all of that shit.
Edit: Final, final point of order.
Patema won the viewers choice awards for the weekend with supposedly
Fuse being just a bit behind. Considering it was remarked that the audience was a fifty-fifty split of men and woman, it's interesting to that one film is more predominantly for males and the other for female when they share a few elements of theme in common.
