Reviews - Animefangirl!

Legend of Crystania anime movie review

“Legend of Crystania” must be Japanese for “Boring anime movie I didn’t bother finishing” because I watched the first 55 minutes and then skipped to the ending. That says a lot, because the movie is only 77 minutes long including credits, and usually when I get that far in I just finish it. This time I just couldn’t see the point.

Apparently Legend of Crystania is a spin-off anime of the Record of Lodoss War anime series, so maybe if I’d watched that first I might have been a little more interested. My basic research tells me that the only carry-overs from main series to spin-off is the presence of two characters, Ashram and Pirotess, one of whom spends nearly the whole show brainwashed and crazy while the other has supposedly been nerfed into a helpless damsel in distress. It should have been possible to make a good movie regardless, but the writers probably just put a check mark next to their ‘cameo’ quota and carried on with their own crappy story.

Said story is about a boy named Re-something whose father is killed in a power struggle. Vengeful and enraged, Re-something runs for his life and ends up wandering into Crystania, the Land of the Gods, where the resident evil god offers him power. Of course that’s just a pretext for evil god taking over Re-something’s body, so the rest of his party has to try to talk him out of the deal while simultaneously fending off attacks from the locals and getting involved in a local struggle to resist the evil god.

It sounds interesting on paper, but the 30 seconds you just spent reading that paragraph have given you the exact same feeling you would have gotten from spending 77 minutes watching it: “Ah. I see.” And that’s about it. The art is blah, the animation is TERRIBLE, a.k.a. ‘QUALITY’ with very washed-out colors, maybe because the movie is rather old (yes, 1995 is old now). The English dub voices were rather meh, but more or less okay except for some annoying little girl’s voice. Nothing too remarkable about the music.

I think the writers just automatically expected fans to care because “Hey, it’s Lodoss!” so if you don’t know/care about the world of Lodoss then tough luck. I suppose it would be like complaining because you picked up a random Naruto/other anime movie even though you don’t know or like that show. I honestly didn’t know it was based on anything else when I started watching it at random, so I’ll just have to be more careful next time I’m picking something to watch.

The other flaw on top of “automatically expected to care” is that there were just way too many parties and factions mixing it up by the end. It’s not exactly hard to keep track of, just hard to figure it who, if anyone, to root for. The evil god is evil, certainly, but the good guys are just a bunch of shrill people running around screaming their heads off. Like, okay?

And Sherru/Pirotess is trying to free Ashram from the god’s control, but Ashram and the god made a deal fair and square. He got what he wanted, the god lived up to his end of the bargain, what’s the problem now? Why are you trying to back out now that you’ve got what you wanted? What, it wasn’t what you bargained for? Yeah well you should have thought of that before you got into it. Go file a lawsuit or something. Nope, sorry, can’t sympathize.

And after all that fussing and screaming, sure Sherru/Pirotess manages to free Ashram/exterminate the dark god, but from what I could tell the rest of the guys are left high and dry. Re-something in particular is still on the lam from the people who killed his father and he’s still stuck in Crystania without a way home. Apparently there’s a 3-OVA sequel called Legend of Crystania: The Chaos Ring which may or may not address the issue, but fool me once… I’m done here.

The Star of Cottonland anime movie review

Known in Japanese as Wata no Kunihoshi, The Star of Cottonland is an anime movie from 1984 that tells the story of a little anthropomorphized kitten who is taken in by a young man named Toshi. The kitten, Chibi-neko, is never drawn as a cat but as a loli catgirl, which apparently helped popularize catgirls in Japan. *shrug*

Anyway, it’s a cute but rather bland movie that follows Chibi-neko’s adventures as she first learns the differences between humans and cats (and which one she belongs to) and then goes on a day-long adventure through the city looking for the mystical land of Persia, which is supposed to be one huge litterbox as far as the eye can see. Sounds like a dream, eh?

Chibi-neko is cute, and she does learn a lot about the harshness of reality and how much life sucks for a cat on the run so it’s not an entirely vapid show. But still I only finished it like 2 days ago and it’s already blurred in my mind. It’s too slow-paced to keep children amused and too dull to interest adults. And the kitty is cute, but not THAT cute compared to some of the critters that have come after her. I imagine the manga might be a better read since it’ll be faster-paced, but I don’t feel any compunction to read it, so… yeah.

Worth a try if you like old anime movies the way I do, just don’t be disappointed when it turns out to be meh, ‘cos I warned you.

Shingeki Bahamut Genesis + Kamisama Hajimemashita + Akatsuki no Yona, all dropped

Dropped for various reasons, but dropped all the same. I’ll explain why.

Shingeki Bahamut Genesis – Had the makings of a good show. In fact I suspect it is a good show. I watched the first episode and thought it had great potential, but then I dun goofed and waited about 2-3 months to watch the second. Somehow the magic had faded away, leaving me to make a (-_-“) face as I watched a naked redhead prance across the screen with a demon tail. Needless to say I didn’t make it through episode 2. This is one show I should have just marathoned, but it’s too late and I don’t feel like going back now.

Kamisama Hajimemashita – I wouldn’t necessarily not watch a show about the protagonist becoming the ‘god’ of a false religion, but everything else about the show would have to be really, really good and this was just meh. Ever since I watched Hayate no Gotoku, all deadbeat parent stories have paled in comparison. Besides, there’s so much crappy shoujo out there that my favorite way of weeding out the dross is to ask “Does the main guy treat the main girl like trash?” Here the answer is clearly yes, so dropping Kamisama Hajimemashita was a piece of cake.

Akatsuki no Yona – Twelve Kingdoms meets Harukanaru Toki no Naka de, except without the travelling from another world gimmick. Female character starts out naive and weak but gradually grows stronger but still needs the protection of various bishies to get anything done, blah blah. People who say it’s unique or unusual haven’t played enough otome games. I only watched one episode and didn’t really feel like watching more. If it had been a 12-episode series, or if the 24 episodes covered the full manga then I might have considered it, but 24 eps for only half the story? Eh, I’ll pass.

Ah, it feels good to whittle my backlog down like this. Now, what to tackle next.

Hotarubi no Mori e anime movie review

Story: A young 6-year old named Hotaru gets lost in the enchanted woods near her grandpa’s house. She is saved by a boy named Gin, but Gin isn’t quite human. He’s under a curse that means he will disappear forever if a human ever touches him. Despite this, Hotaru and Gin form a fast friendship that blossoms into love over the years. The closer they get, the harder it becomes to resist touching each other…

I was rooting for them to find a way to work things out, but… Should I spoil the ending? Okay, but not in detail: Gin disappears in the end, but the two manage to have one quick hug before he goes. On one hand I was like Noooo! but on the other hand there were signs that Hotaru had cut herself off from the rest of her family and friends and was just living for summers where she could be with Gin, a relationship which had no future. So it was sad that they had to part, but in the end it was for the best. And at least Gin got to feel some human contact before he passed away for good.

The art was excellent, as it tends to be in anime movies. Since Hotarubi no Mori e is a slice-of-life romance there wasn’t much action to animate, but the drawing and backgrounds were all fantastic. Though lacking a bit in variety, but that’s pretty much the whole point: Hotaru living for only one part of the year and pining through the rest. I watched it raw so I can’t comment on fansub quality. Voice-acting was good. Gin sounded a bit flat, but again that was the point. It all worked out very well.

TBH it does kind of show that Hotarubi no Mori e was based on a manga oneshot. I suspected either that or a short story, because it’s a bit thin on content. It’s something that could have been told just as well in 10 minutes as in 45 with little loss of impact, but whatever, it was nice to watch, and though the end was bittersweet it was still for the best. I probably wouldn’t bother watching it again, but it was a nice, short watch.

No Sweat Cantonese book review

I hadn’t read the AllJapaneseAlltheTime blog for a while, but I popped in about a month ago and one of the recent posts kind of pricked my conscience a little bit. Why Are you Acting like a Deadbeat Dad Language Learner? the title goes, and it talks about abandoning a language as soon as you’re halfway good in it. Th…that’s like me and Cantonese, I thought uncomfortably.

The truth is, I’d managed to get to a semi-decent point in Cantonese. I don’t have any language partners so I can’t speak a lick, but I’ve gotten to the place where I can get the gist and sometimes more than just the gist of what people are talking about on news broadcasts, in dramas and on RTHK 2 programs (off-topic, but does anyone else have difficulty live-streaming RTHK? I have to use the RTHK on the Go app on my phone to get the broadcasts.) Right about then I kind of ran out of Canto movies I wanted to watch and music I wanted to listen to, and it became a chore hunting for HK dramas that aren’t dubbed into Mandarin, so I just kinda threw the whole thing over and walked away. I still listen to RTHK a few times a week, watch Guangdong TV from time to time and listen to Cantopop quite frequently, but with nowhere near the energy I used to.

But since the AJATT post stirred me up, I decided to at least go through my bulging folder of Canto-learning material I’d always meant to read but never got round it. There’s quite a bit of, and I’ll try to tackle at least one or two sets a month but first up, No Sweat Cantonese: A Fun Guide to Speaking Correctly by Amy Leung. That was a long intro, wasn’t it? ^_^;; A-anyway, the blurb:

The long awaited textbook from one of the most popular and successful teachers of Cantonese. Amy Leung teaches Cantonese to managers of multinational corporations in Hong Kong in a fun new way. No Sweat Cantonese distils her approach, fulfilling the demand for an up-to-date textbook focusing on the practical needs of expatriates in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the Cantonese-speaking world. Like never before, Cantonese – “that impossible language!” is now easy and enjoyable to learn. Includes CD with pronunciation aid and full-length conversations.

The presence of audio was the selling point for me, because Cantonese is one language where it really helps to hear stuff spoken. There are sooo many homonyms in this language, it’s crazy. But anyway, since I spent so much time on the intro I’m going to put the actual review in point form to save time and hopefully stop myself rambling like I am so wont to do.

The good

Starts with a rather good pronunciation guide and using a romanization guide that makes sounding things out easy to do.
Vocabulary lists with hanzi at the start of every chapter.
Dialogues provided are short and easy to follow/repeat.
There’s a helpful appendix at the back with even more vocabulary, all voiced.
Lots of cultural notes and suggestions about places to go and things to do there, making this a good guide for people who intend to visit Hong Kong in the near future.

The bad

A bit too elementary for an intermediate learner like me. No Sweat Cantonese is better suited for those just starting out, preferably with the aid of a teacher.
There are a lot of careless typos, including one right on the contents page (see proof above).
Inconsistent typesetting annoys me. The typesetter will randomly change fonts on the same page and put accents on English words and numbers where they don’t belong at all.
The vocabulary comes with hanzi but the dialogues and chit-chat lines don’t, so there’s an extra step involved if you want to enter them into an SRS or put them on a card. It’s not too bad for an intermediate user because none of it uses complicated dialogue, but for someone just starting it out it can be intimidating. Again you’re better off working with a teacher.

tl;dr, I didn’t get too much out of it. The vocabulary lists are the best part, but I have an aversion to entering just words/characters into my SRS unless they’re in a sentence where they’re used in context, and the sentences in this book came without hanzi and I was too lazy to write them out from scratch so… yeah. At $30 on Amazon it’s a bit pricey for what you’ve get, but if you’ve got all the other Canto textbooks and need something to round out your collection and fill in a few vocab gaps it’s not a bad buy. Still, No Sweat Cantonese is probably most useful for current and future expats who have access to a language teacher and just need a structured textbook to help them through.