GM: Character name?
PLAYER: Kvothe.
I have always maintained that most men have at least one (and probably only one) "tournament" fighting anime in them. I am sure that the Japanese have a name for this sort of anime, where basically almost every single episode really centers on a fight between our protagonist and his enemies (or are they?). The story arc of these series involve out hero getting stuck in some sort of tournament where they have to defeat a sequence of lower baddies in order to face the big bad guy who is .... You get the idea.
This genre of anime is extremely repetitive. This genre is repetitive. Repetitive. Often a single fight pairing will take up the entire episode. A tournament will often involve 20 or so of these sequential fights. At the end of the tournament, our hero will usually either discover that this whole fight was just a scam for some even larger tournament he will have to fight in; wash cycle repeat. Over and over.
Eden of the East is responsible for introducing me to the notion of NEETs. At many points in my life, I guess I would qualify as a NEET myself. NEET is a person who is "Not in Education, Employment, or Training". The term evidently originated in the United Kingdoms, but really took off as a talking point in Japanese culture and politics.
Anyway, the anime.
I really liked the Watchmen movie, I was already a fan of the comic book beforehand. However, post movie, I could definitely see how the movie might not be as appealing had I not read the source material. Baccano! is based on a light novel series that I have not read. The anime felt like it was eliding over the source material. I enjoyed it, but had some real problems with the plot.
This anime had more loose threads than I could count. Almost none of the stories had a beginning or end. I get that the anime was going for that exact device, but it isn't personally something I am fond of.
Good Movie, executed well enough, just failed to catch me.
I was a bit disappointed in this. I was really looking for something that would catch me on a emotional (maybe even manipulative) level. Instead I got something that felt a little too rounded off, sharp corners removed. I wanted to be fished along by some emotional hook, doing my "Don't cry, that is just a frog in your throat" seat dance.
Meh.
Here is where I feel they really went wrong. They failed to connect me to the characters. Throughout the film, I had to be like "Oh, father/son, that is a relationship template . Oh, thick and thin best friends, I will fill that in for you." It was tiresome because if felt lazy, like your are just relying on relationship conventions rather than SHOWING me the relationships.
Wow, this was good.
First, lets get this out of the way. The animation is a turn off initially. You think it is cheap, but it is actually akin to impressionist art. They are opening up options by moving away from realism. Even if you don't like the art style itself, you will start to notice the framing, the transitions, the surrealism, the switches in style. It becomes obvious that it wasn't done this way because it was easier. It is more that the animators chose to forgo realism because they wanted the options that a more limited animation style would open up. This is true of all animations of course, they are abstractions of reality, but this series takes it so much further.
I know next to nothing about Spongebob et all. Previous to this, the most I had seen of this series was a few minutes at a McDonald's as I was waiting for my order.
The movie was funny. Filled with puns, visual site gags, play on words, sometimes just charming idiocy.
Odd. I was actually quite engaged throughout the entire movie. And yet, the lack of a climactic ending left me somewhat unfulfilled. It is funny. You can enjoy every moment, but if it is missing certain pieces, your memory of things will be one of disappointment.
SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOILERS The climax of having Elyes Gabel shoot himself was not much of a climax. The real ending was like "Ok, now we have the money because you have been squirlling it away. Thanks dear. Fin." It just wasn't that resolute or interesting an ending. Expectations of gangster movies are that there will be a giant shootout or something at the end. That never happened. Even though it was good, I was a bit of a let down.
Focus was an 80% in most dimensions. Unfortunately, this leaves you feeling that the movie was worse than the sum of its parts.
If a movie has something uniquely good to it, you can often overlook other elements that perhaps fell short. Focus has no obvious shortcomings, it is always on target, it is just that it never hits a bullseye on anything.