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elyusionFour days ago I started a really long post reviewing (badly, because I am a bad reviewer and critic) things I've finished in the past few months because I felt like I should. The post started like this:
Story: I agree with the assessment that the show isn't particularly smart or anything, but its sense of scale is huge. I can only imagine how many notebooks or corkboards were used up in the making of this story and setting. ... For some reason, I can't think of anything else to say. It's an epic about a perpetual space war, about democracy vs. authoritarianism, about how the people who create history are human who make choices influenced by their own trivial human reasons in case you ever doubted that for some reason, etc. I try not to overthink what the writer meant with the shadow cult puppeteering stuff from behind the scenes.
Art: Never bad; sometimes has really nice moments. The scenes with gore are used to great effect. War is hell, dying honestly isn't cool, etc. I think because the style isn't so classically "anime" you could show it to a non-otaku who really needs to watch an epic about war and political drama as their first anime, if they're okay with watching something somewhat long. (As I say later, the characters don't use extremely common anime tropes either. Safe show.)
Sound: Soundtrack is mostly known classical music, so the show is inoffensive in the sound department. Awesome, even, if you really like classical! It always fits or accentuates the intended emotional effect of the scene. Because there's so many characters, there's lots of voice actors that you may know (if you watch older anime), and they're all good. Good, down-to-Earth performances. No anime girl shrill here. (There's like 5 girls anyways......)
Characters: There's a LOTTTT of characters, but they're all pretty down-to-earth in a "this is a story about war" way. Don't expect crazy anime bullshit (/positive, we love anime bullshit) here. But they still do crazy soldier bullshit! Yayyyyy ๐๐พ I had trouble remembering names as usual, but I liked Yang (duh), Reinhardt (duhhhh), Oberstein, and in the end Mittermeyer and Reuenthal started to rub off on me. Not sure if this is my own internalized biases, but sometimes I thought it's :/ I liked watching the Empire characters talk more than the Alliance characters. Shouldn't democracy fans be just as if not more exciting to watch than dictatorship fans? But that's just how things went... Maybe the fervent dedication they had to one guy (flesh and blood person, Reinhardt) makes them more exciting to watch than those dedicated to a concept (not something you can visibly please or displease).
Enjoyment: I owe it a rewatch where I pay closer attention, maybe pausing after certain lines, because I had a tendency to forget what was said right after the subtitles disappeared. Starting to think I have memory issues. For a few days after finishing the show, every time I thought of (ROT13) Ervauneqg'f qrngu I would get kind of upset, but I'm fine now. I really enjoyed watching people sit and debate politics even if I repeatedly would forget what was said. More of this please. And, you know, the show is really long, but the ending was entirely worth it. I think it has the perfect ending. Many times I would wonder how or where this would end, considering the story takes place in the past of an unknown present. There's probably some loose threads that were never handled I don't know about because I can't remember them, but with a scope that big I'd expect that. It's not like we have all the answers from history in real life anyways.
I want to watch more things with Shiozawa's voice, but I'm busy with another anime project(?) right now. Clavis...
I wish I could remember more to say, but I finished LOGH two months ago ๐ฟ But I know it's really good! If you can watch something long and want to give something dramatic with a strong story a try, I recommend it.
Story: What if cockroaches were cute.... would you even care..... or would you walk away............
Art: Have you seen any moe anime from the 00s? Okay, now imagine the main girls are human cockroaches. Yup, that's the art. The animation is done with what looks like bones and motion tweening or something? I'm no animator, I don't know the words. But it's very low budget. But I don't think it's bad! I find it charming, even, and it serves its purpose. A two-episode comedy about cockroaches doesn't exactly require sakuga.
Sound: I don't remember what the music sounded like at all, so it wasn't bad or good. Voice acting was pretty standard too. Cutesy.
Characters: Completely flat characters. 2 girl cockroaches: a sweet one and a tsuntsun one. There's one-off characters for the gags. I think the main characters are pretty cute for cockroaches, so that's good!
Enjoyment: I watched this on Youtube. It's only two episodes, 15 minutes total. You could easily go watch this right now if you wanted.
I usually avoid comedy shows, but it was on my Watch Later and played on a device that's a pain to skip videos on (or do much of anything), so I was stuck watching it. It got some genuine laughs out of me, I'm sad/mad to admit, so it's good. -_- I hate laughing... I hate joy... *flips my emo bang and huffs*
I beat this just 2 days ago!
Story: I don't want to just say "it felt like an anime," because almost any good JRPG does, so instead I'll say... It was presented in such a way that I felt the same sense of curiosity about the world as Justin, our protag. It really feels like a grand adventure. The story isn't game-changing or crazy, but the vibes were great. It had a sense of romance too. Such a sweet game.
Gameplay: Fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I liked it. It was like the FF thing where you're kept on your toes with that filling meter that determines turns, but 1. it paused when it was time to make a choice, and 2. you have to keep track of your position on the field too. Attacks had ranges that made you try to make it so you don't have all your party grouped together like sitting ducks and stuff. The dungeons were creative, but I can't say if they were awesome or trash because I'm not really a dungeonโข๏ธ guy.
One thing: when I first played the game, I got violently ill because I would turn the camera to keep Justin's back to it, meaning I was turning it constantly, and I got soooooooooo dizzy. So if you get sick like me I would advise that you decide on a camera direction and stick to it until you really need to change it. Even with that lesson learned, I still had a little trouble navigating the world because sometimes I really needed to turn the camera or the camera would turn by itself, and with the direction changed I couldn't remember how to get anywhere anymore. I didn't figure out how the compass worked until the third to last dungeon. I was trying my best.
I also never 100% figured out how magic works, but it's cool.
Not sure where to put this, but the NPCs have great dialogue. That's a pretty big plus. You don't realize how much this adds to a game until you play a game with really funny/interesting NPCs or a game where the NPCs never have anything even mildly interesting to say at all.
Art & Sound: The art for promoting the game is really cute, and the ones that emphasize the backgrounds... Immaculate vibes. Within the game itself... Okay, so I actually played Grandia HD. The portraits and sprites are so obviously AI upscaled it hurts, but eventually I got used to it. I would still deduct points for that though. The animations are nice, I feel the UI in the menu is a little plain but whatever; all-around it's a pleasant, fun game to look at. The music is good too. Check THIS out. And that's far from the only emotional banger. It's sooooo animated movie, you know?
As for the voice acting, the Japanese dub is great and I love Mullen's voice the most. Looking into this. The girls in the English dub sound pretty darn okay; I don't know what Justin or Mullen's voice actors were cooking. I accidentally changed the dub to English at some point at the end and forgot to change it back before reaching the end, so I had to hear the dramatic ending in English and those guys' voices almost (almost!) killed the vibe.
Characters: ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ I love everypony except Baal who is a pretty generic bad guy. Everyone is so fun I don't know what to say, actually. No one is really my signature type of character, but they have entertaining interactions and personalities. .......... I genuinely don't know what else to say. Wild. I could spend forever in that world with them though. Maybe look at the character art or something.
Enjoyment: I had fun! It was great and I think fondly about it. I don't understand why some people were so harsh on Backloggd. It has nice gameplay, great music, cute art, a world that felt huge and ripe for venturing, it was funny, it was sweet, what more do you want?
Now, if you know when I bought it, you might be like "if it was so fun why did it take you 3-4 years to beat it?" and to that, I would say: I dunno ๐ I think there was just lots of other games I wanted to play - keep in mind Grandia was one of like 5 games I bought during a summer sale - and I would quit the game and forget to come back whenever I was stuck in a dungeon too. I have taken years to beat many a JRPG due to this. I've had FF6 unfinished for 6-7 years now. Please send help.
I really need to learn to just make posts as soon as the idea is in my head rather than hold on to them, so that I won't have to make posts like this and push other post ideas back. Procrastinating these long things that only get longer as I hold out sucks a little. I'm using a template for most of these because otherwise I won't write anything that makes sense or reads well, lol.You see, because I procrastinated writing review posts I now had to write 8 in one. Except... no I didn't. I realized late last night I can make and post them a few at a time. I've already finished 6/8, but some of them are really long, and some were even truncated for the sake of not having a miles long post. If I separate them I can talk more. So here goes!
Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Story: I agree with the assessment that the show isn't particularly smart or anything, but its sense of scale is huge. I can only imagine how many notebooks or corkboards were used up in the making of this story and setting. ... For some reason, I can't think of anything else to say. It's an epic about a perpetual space war, about democracy vs. authoritarianism, about how the people who create history are human who make choices influenced by their own trivial human reasons in case you ever doubted that for some reason, etc. I try not to overthink what the writer meant with the shadow cult puppeteering stuff from behind the scenes.
Art: Never bad; sometimes has really nice moments. The scenes with gore are used to great effect. War is hell, dying honestly isn't cool, etc. I think because the style isn't so classically "anime" you could show it to a non-otaku who really needs to watch an epic about war and political drama as their first anime, if they're okay with watching something somewhat long. (As I say later, the characters don't use extremely common anime tropes either. Safe show.)
Sound: Soundtrack is mostly known classical music, so the show is inoffensive in the sound department. Awesome, even, if you really like classical! It always fits or accentuates the intended emotional effect of the scene. Because there's so many characters, there's lots of voice actors that you may know (if you watch older anime), and they're all good. Good, down-to-Earth performances. No anime girl shrill here. (There's like 5 girls anyways......)
Characters: There's a LOTTTT of characters, but they're all pretty down-to-earth in a "this is a story about war" way. Don't expect crazy anime bullshit (/positive, we love anime bullshit) here. But they still do crazy soldier bullshit! Yayyyyy ๐๐พ I had trouble remembering names as usual, but I liked Yang (duh), Reinhardt (duhhhh), Oberstein, and in the end Mittermeyer and Reuenthal started to rub off on me. Not sure if this is my own internalized biases, but sometimes I thought it's :/ I liked watching the Empire characters talk more than the Alliance characters. Shouldn't democracy fans be just as if not more exciting to watch than dictatorship fans? But that's just how things went... Maybe the fervent dedication they had to one guy (flesh and blood person, Reinhardt) makes them more exciting to watch than those dedicated to a concept (not something you can visibly please or displease).
Enjoyment: I owe it a rewatch where I pay closer attention, maybe pausing after certain lines, because I had a tendency to forget what was said right after the subtitles disappeared. Starting to think I have memory issues. For a few days after finishing the show, every time I thought of (ROT13) Ervauneqg'f qrngu I would get kind of upset, but I'm fine now. I really enjoyed watching people sit and debate politics even if I repeatedly would forget what was said. More of this please. And, you know, the show is really long, but the ending was entirely worth it. I think it has the perfect ending. Many times I would wonder how or where this would end, considering the story takes place in the past of an unknown present. There's probably some loose threads that were never handled I don't know about because I can't remember them, but with a scope that big I'd expect that. It's not like we have all the answers from history in real life anyways.
I want to watch more things with Shiozawa's voice, but I'm busy with another anime project(?) right now. Clavis...
I wish I could remember more to say, but I finished LOGH two months ago ๐ฟ But I know it's really good! If you can watch something long and want to give something dramatic with a strong story a try, I recommend it.
Gokicha!! Cockroach Girls
Story: What if cockroaches were cute.... would you even care..... or would you walk away............
Art: Have you seen any moe anime from the 00s? Okay, now imagine the main girls are human cockroaches. Yup, that's the art. The animation is done with what looks like bones and motion tweening or something? I'm no animator, I don't know the words. But it's very low budget. But I don't think it's bad! I find it charming, even, and it serves its purpose. A two-episode comedy about cockroaches doesn't exactly require sakuga.
Sound: I don't remember what the music sounded like at all, so it wasn't bad or good. Voice acting was pretty standard too. Cutesy.
Characters: Completely flat characters. 2 girl cockroaches: a sweet one and a tsuntsun one. There's one-off characters for the gags. I think the main characters are pretty cute for cockroaches, so that's good!
Enjoyment: I watched this on Youtube. It's only two episodes, 15 minutes total. You could easily go watch this right now if you wanted.
I usually avoid comedy shows, but it was on my Watch Later and played on a device that's a pain to skip videos on (or do much of anything), so I was stuck watching it. It got some genuine laughs out of me, I'm sad/mad to admit, so it's good. -_- I hate laughing... I hate joy... *flips my emo bang and huffs*
Grandia
I beat this just 2 days ago!
Story: I don't want to just say "it felt like an anime," because almost any good JRPG does, so instead I'll say... It was presented in such a way that I felt the same sense of curiosity about the world as Justin, our protag. It really feels like a grand adventure. The story isn't game-changing or crazy, but the vibes were great. It had a sense of romance too. Such a sweet game.
Gameplay: Fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I liked it. It was like the FF thing where you're kept on your toes with that filling meter that determines turns, but 1. it paused when it was time to make a choice, and 2. you have to keep track of your position on the field too. Attacks had ranges that made you try to make it so you don't have all your party grouped together like sitting ducks and stuff. The dungeons were creative, but I can't say if they were awesome or trash because I'm not really a dungeonโข๏ธ guy.
One thing: when I first played the game, I got violently ill because I would turn the camera to keep Justin's back to it, meaning I was turning it constantly, and I got soooooooooo dizzy. So if you get sick like me I would advise that you decide on a camera direction and stick to it until you really need to change it. Even with that lesson learned, I still had a little trouble navigating the world because sometimes I really needed to turn the camera or the camera would turn by itself, and with the direction changed I couldn't remember how to get anywhere anymore. I didn't figure out how the compass worked until the third to last dungeon. I was trying my best.
I also never 100% figured out how magic works, but it's cool.
Not sure where to put this, but the NPCs have great dialogue. That's a pretty big plus. You don't realize how much this adds to a game until you play a game with really funny/interesting NPCs or a game where the NPCs never have anything even mildly interesting to say at all.
Art & Sound: The art for promoting the game is really cute, and the ones that emphasize the backgrounds... Immaculate vibes. Within the game itself... Okay, so I actually played Grandia HD. The portraits and sprites are so obviously AI upscaled it hurts, but eventually I got used to it. I would still deduct points for that though. The animations are nice, I feel the UI in the menu is a little plain but whatever; all-around it's a pleasant, fun game to look at. The music is good too. Check THIS out. And that's far from the only emotional banger. It's sooooo animated movie, you know?
As for the voice acting, the Japanese dub is great and I love Mullen's voice the most. Looking into this. The girls in the English dub sound pretty darn okay; I don't know what Justin or Mullen's voice actors were cooking. I accidentally changed the dub to English at some point at the end and forgot to change it back before reaching the end, so I had to hear the dramatic ending in English and those guys' voices almost (almost!) killed the vibe.
I love this ad :)
Characters: ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฅ I love everypony except Baal who is a pretty generic bad guy. Everyone is so fun I don't know what to say, actually. No one is really my signature type of character, but they have entertaining interactions and personalities. .......... I genuinely don't know what else to say. Wild. I could spend forever in that world with them though. Maybe look at the character art or something.
Enjoyment: I had fun! It was great and I think fondly about it. I don't understand why some people were so harsh on Backloggd. It has nice gameplay, great music, cute art, a world that felt huge and ripe for venturing, it was funny, it was sweet, what more do you want?
Now, if you know when I bought it, you might be like "if it was so fun why did it take you 3-4 years to beat it?" and to that, I would say: I dunno ๐ I think there was just lots of other games I wanted to play - keep in mind Grandia was one of like 5 games I bought during a summer sale - and I would quit the game and forget to come back whenever I was stuck in a dungeon too. I have taken years to beat many a JRPG due to this. I've had FF6 unfinished for 6-7 years now. Please send help.
